The story takes place in 1920 during the Republic of China, in the residence of the magistrate Lu Jingren in Jiangyang County; the Mingde Mansion; inside. Lu Jingren's eldest son, Daojing, is homosexual and has a peculiar hobby of secretly collecting and playing with women's clothing and exquisite literature. Daojing's wife cannot bear this nominally empty marital life and secretly becomes involved with a young silversmith named Shaoheng from Jiangyang County. After Jingren learns about his daughter-in-law's affair with Shaoheng, he remains calm. He believes he can invite the young silversmith to the Mingde Mansion under the guise of being a fellow official's family member and conspires to poison Shaoheng, framing his daughter-in-law in the process, using the pain of Shaoheng's father, the old silversmith, losing his son to strangle his daughter-in-law. Daojing, upon discovering that his wife has died after finding the old silversmith who provided the poison, realizes that his father orchestrated this tragedy. In the autumn wind at the grave, Lu Daojing, dressed in women's clothing, quietly dies; regarding a scene about 'nursing', there is a passionately charged scene between the female lead and the young silversmith. In the initial version of the filming, this scene was shot with complete authenticity, including a close-up of the female lead's exposed breast. In the novel, this scene is meant to reflect the female lead's repressed sexual needs, involving her breast entering the male lead's mouth, and the crew referred to this scene as 'nursing'. Wang Tonghui mentioned that if there is any aspect of the film that he would label 'excessive', it would be this scene. However, this scene was also removed from the public version; during the filming, I felt that this director was quite bold, but really thinking about it, in that situation, a normal woman, whose husband does not even touch her, would naturally have her repressed sexual needs erupt with fervor. The focus of this film is to tell a 'love' story, not to showcase 'sex'. It is unreasonable to impose the label of 'pornography' on it. Wang Tonghui said that if the original version had been shown in front of reporters during the premiere, there would have been no controversy surrounding this film.
