Not the Cultural Revolution ballet but Xie's original melodrama. His treatment, the result of laborious research, combines impressive realism with a real feel for adventure. (“The mood is tropical gothic...the nearest western equivalent would be Black Narcissus"--B.F.I.) And what Xie would create years later in the epic Qiu Jin: A Revolutionary (April 10), he already achieves here, namely a portrait of a woman wending her way through the throes of enormous political and personal upheaval. Set circa 1930, the story tells of the slave girl Wu Chiung-hua, who escapes to join the Red Detachment of Women, a company of the Workers' and Peasants' Army made up entirely of working women. Her struggle begins as a personal vendetta against the despot Nan Pa-tien, in whose household she has slaved and been held prisoner; only slowly is she drawn into the revolutionary consciousness.