Beneath the Shadow Puppets

Sheng, dan, jing, mo, and chou: ruling the land and bringing peace to the people, passed down through the generations.

Shadow puppetry, a cherished part of the country's cultural heritage, has gradually faded from view. Yet since the Western Han Dynasty, it has carried countless tales of prosperous times.

Ban Juelin came from a family that had passed down the art of shadow puppetry for generations. She was the youngest child in the family. Her older brother and sister had no interest in their father's craft, but ever since she was little, Ban Juelin had loved listening to him bring tales from past and present to life on the white screen.

But when she was thirteen, her father was killed in a kidnapping and fraud case. The only thing found in his hand was a piece of donkey hide. The case shook the whole city, and the three Ban siblings were forced to leave their home. Before they departed, however, they were stopped by the wife of a Changgang Enterprises executive, who invited the three siblings to watch a shadow-puppet show with a smile that concealed a dagger. The play was Farewell My Concubine. Afterward, the three siblings were forced apart, and only Ban Juelin was taken in by her father's closest colleague.

Ten years later, chance brought the grown siblings back together in their hometown. Though they had become strangers to one another, they shared one obsession: finding out the real cause of their father's death...

After years buried in silence, the truth began to emerge through the clues hidden in the shadow-puppet plays.