I Ride a White Horse Through Three Passes

In 1905, Chen Jinniang, a performer of Zhangzhou Jinge ballads, crossed the sea to Taiwan with half a copy of The Seven-Character Lock. Beneath a large tree in Yilan, she taught the first generation of "local gezi opera" and quietly planted a promise that would span a century. One hundred and twenty years later, Chen Ziqiang, fifth-generation heir to the Chen Family Troupe, a Yilan gezi opera family, travels with the troupe to Zhangzhou to perform Chen San and Wuniang. On a typhoon night, the stage suddenly collapses. He rescues Chen Jingxuan, a Jinge performer, from the rubble. In her arms is a tin box she clutches tightly, containing the other half of the secret manuscript Chen Jinniang took away all those years ago. The two handwritten manuscripts and a pair of matching jade pendants uncover a cross-strait theatrical bond buried beneath a great fire, Japanese police suppression, and a commercial conspiracy. From sweeping the temple square to the airwaves, from television screens to the livestreaming age, Chen Ziqiang and Chen Jingxuan search for the lost "seventh character" of a century ago while fighting off a cultural group's acquisition and forced eviction. When the century-old tree catches fire once more, they finally understand Jinniang's last words from the flames: The song has no lock; the heart is the lock. The opera carries people across, and people carry the opera across. This is an opera sung for both sides of the strait: as long as the singing continues, there is nothing to fear.