Mei Anxiang

Mei Anxiang, the daughter of a general, has extraordinary martial skill, while her brother, Mei Sheng, is timid and not good at martial arts. One day,Anxiang meets Wei Zhaoren, who is from a fallen family and sells swords on the street. She falls in love with him at first sight and hopes to marry him.

Huns invade the country and put the frontier in an emergency state. Despite being a hereditary general, Mei Sheng cannot effectively lead the army; he is defeated and flees. Anxiang has to disguise herself as a man and assume leadership in her brother’s place. With Zhaoren and her cousin, Wen Mingqi, she goes to battlefield to resist Hun aggression.

Anxiang and Zhaoren return in triumph, and are honored at a banquet thrown by Prince Jia Huaiyi. Jia wants to find a son-in-law at the banquet; Zhaoren, blinded by gain, breaks his promise to Anxiang and agrees to marry Jia’s daughter, leaving Anxiang heartbroken. In order to keep Anxiang from interfering with his marriage, Zhaoren accuses her of dressing like a man in order to peep into the barracks. Anxiang is demoted to a commoner and is so distressed that she spits blood. Her ailing mother dies of anger when told that Zhaoren has deserted her daughter.

Later, when the Huns invade the country’s border once again, Zhaoren’s repeated battles against them end only in defeat, and he eventually is forced to beg the enemy for mercy. Anxiang and Mingqi march to the warfield and recapture the lost land. In the end, Zhaoren commits suicide by cutting his own throat to compensate for his misdeeds. Anxiang follows family tradition and remains in the army, defending her homeland.

(Source from: Cantonese Opera Research Programme, The Chinese University of Hong Kong)