Chinese Drama “The Savage Land”(with English subtitles)

Escaped convict Chouhu secretly returns to his home village, planning to take revenge upon the tyrant who brutally murdered his family. To his surprise, Chouhu finds that the tyrant, Jiao, is dead and Jiao’s wife has become blind. Daxing, the sheepish son of Jiao who was Chouhu’s childhood friend, has married Chouhu’s former lover, Jinzi. A wild love reignites between Chouhu and Jinzi. Meanwhile, a murder plot is brewing as Chouhu struggles between friendship and revenge, and at the same time, he has to be wary of the malevolent but despairing blind mother.

Will Chouhu be able to navigate away from an imminent disastrous end?

The Savage Land (原野 Yuanye) is a 1987 Chinese-language western-style opera by composer Jin Xiang to a libretto by Wan Fang after her own father Cao Yu’s 1937 play The Wilderness (also 原野 Yuanye). It was performed at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington in 1992, in 1997 at the Saarländisches Staatstheater in Saarbrücken(Germany) under the baton of You-Sheng Lin, then again in Vancouver in 1998.

Director: Zi Ling
Writers: Yu Cao (play), Si Ji (screenplay)
Stars: Xiaoqing Liu, Zaibao Yang, Min Bu