In China's Zhuang region of Guangxi, there is a ninth-century legend of a young, beautiful, courageous and clever singer, Third Sister Liu, whose militant mountain ballads moved the people to rise up against feudalism. This colorful folk musical, filmed entirely on location amid the mountains and lakes of Guilin, “is nearer to Rodgers and Hammerstein than Peking Opera...set in a fairytale past.... The conflict comes to a head in a witty singing contest between the peasant girl and three self-important scholars” (National Film Theatre).
“Third Sister Liu took the principle of filming in the open to an extreme rarely seen in the Chinese cinema.... In any language, its visual qualities are amazingly seductive” (A.F.I.).