An American teenager who is obsessed with Hong Kong cinema and kung fu classics unexpectedly finds himself traveling back to ancient China. He meets the drunken kung fu master, Lu Yan, an enigmatic and skillful Silent Monk, and the vengeance-bent Golden Sparrow. These three lead him on a quest to find the Monkey King, who has been imprisoned in stone by the evil Jade Warlord for five hundred years.

A breathtakingly intimate romance unfolds against a sweeping backdrop of social upheaval in renowned director Chen Kaige's sumptuous saga of passion, fate, and the transcendent possibilities of art. Spanning fifty years of twentieth-century Chinese history, Farewell My Concubine follows aspiring actors Dieyi and Xiaolou as they emerge from a childhood of brutal training to become Beijing-opera stars, with life mirroring art as Dieyi's unrequited love...