Korean War, winter 1950. In the frozen and snowy area of Changjin Lake, a bloody battle is about to begin between the elite troops of the United States and China.
The story takes place in the last years of the Qing Dynasty, when the great detective Sherlock Holmes (played by Fan Eilly) and his assistant Watson (played by Xu Zhongquan) came to China to play together and stayed at the Xianlai Inn.
Princess Fragrance is a 1987 Hong Kong film based on Louis Cha's novel The Book and the Sword. The film is a sequel to The Romance of Book and Sword, which was released earlier in the same month and was also directed by Ann Hui.
The story is based on the popular novel developed from folk legend. It goes that the Manchurian emperor Qianlong of China (circa 18th Century) was actually the son of a Han Chinese, the subject ethnicity. His brother of blood, Chen Jialuo just happened to be the chief of the Red Flower Society, an anti-Manchu secret society. Chen, a learned scholar, thought he could get his brother turn his back on the Manchu and restore the Han Chinese reign. But the story was ended by brutal clearence of the society members. It reflects one of the dark pages in Chinese culture, that ethics and humanity always become impotent when countered with power.
