The Peach Blossom Land
(Anlian Taohua Yuan)

Two theatre groups find themselves booked in the same Taipei theatre for dress rehearsal at the same time. The two groups’ competition for the stage is a mixture of tragedy and comedy. The first troupe arrives to rehearse a play about a dying man’s memories of his love affair in Shanghai in 1948. Jiang Bingliu recalls how the 1949 Communist takeover ofChina separated him from the woman he loved. Forty years later, he is trying to find her again and see her once more before he dies. In the middle of this rehearsal, a second troupe cornes in, claiming they have booked the theatre for the rehearsal of their own play, The Peach Blossom Land, a farce adapted from an age-old utopian quest. The interruption creates chaos. Scenes of the tragic play start interacting with the comedy. Meanwhile, a mysterious young woman appears from nowhere and roams about the theatre looking for a man who may or may not exist…