Costume Design
It's the 10th century BC, the emperor (Tien Feng) is not well, and the medicines he is receiving from con artist "Immortal Li" are in reality only making him worse. There is a man in a nearby kingdom, "Divine Physician" Chang Po-chao, whom it's said could cure his epilepsy, but the only way to bribe the head of the border guard is with a new work by painter Wei Yu-pi. He, meanwhile, wishes to be paid in jade, in fact with a specific piece, which requires a thief. But Ting Yu-yu, the best in the area, claims to be retired, though his daughter Li-ting (Cheng Pei-pei) seems enthusiastic. And for the sake of secrecy, the archivists originally sent to recruit Chang don't even know it's on behalf of the emperor!
Costume Design
In 1949 when the Communist regime was established in China, the world-famed painter Ling Chen-kuang, believing his conviction for a new-born society had come true on his motherland, returned anxiously from the U.S., whither he had fled apprehension by lawmen when cracking down on rebellious activities he had actively engaged in out of cynicism and hostility – the feelings evolved from constant haunting by the memories of his childhood miserableness – to the then existing institutions in China. Alas, to his disillusion, the land he had so deeply loved, the society of which he had expected so much, should have turned out to be the hell on earth. Why? The enigma kept obsessing and puzzling him even to his dying moment.
