Chapter 1

Farewell My Concubine starts out with a brief discussion about prostitution and theater, and how both of these vocations are removed from reality. The reader is then introduced to the stage characters of the woman Yu Ji and the man General Xiang Yu, and learns that both roles are played by men and that one man is in love with the other. Following this short introduction, the narrative jumps back in time to winter 1929 to a marketplace in Peking, China.

Yanhong asks Master Guan, a noted Peking opera instructor, to take on her little boy, Xiao Douzi, as an apprentice. Guan refuses, until Yanhong chops off Douzi's extra finger—a birth defect—with a cleaver. Yanhong and Douzi sign a contract with Guan for a period of ten years, during which time Douzi's life and earnings belong to Guan in exchange for opera training. Douzi finds it...