YUNG HWA PROUDLY PRESENTS

"THE SINS OF OUR FATHERS"

THE STORY

Remote from the rest of the country, the Lolos live their secluded tribal life on the Yunnan, Szechwan and Sikong border area.

To this wild and desolate region at the edge of civilisation comes Battalion Commander Cheng of the Chinese Army with a mission to end the useless bloodshed between the Lolos and the Hans (Chinese).

He finds that Yang, head of the local militia, and his wife are engaged in trafficking arms for opium with the Lolos and that much of the enmity against the Chinese is fostered by Yang and his cohorts to further their selfish scramble for money.

Cheng and his men choose to stay in a temple, which has been dedicated to Cheng's father — killed by the Lolos — and he reveals his identity. His first act is to re-light the "Lamp of Heaven" — erected by his late father to guide escaping Chinese slaves of the Lolos to a haven of safety — and this light is seen after years of darkness by the Lolos and their Slaves in the hills.

Meanwhile, in the Lolo stronghold, the old Chinese nurse of the tribe — in reality the mother of Battalion Commander Cheng, who was torn from her arms as a boy and lost as she and her other son were captured by the Lolos — sees the light and recalls the slaughter of her husband.

She exhorts her other son, now slave major-domo of the chief's household, to kill the Lolo chief, his son and daughter, whom he loves deeply, despite the fact that there are three distinct classes of tribesmen — the Black Lolos or the ruling classes, the White Lolos or Commoners and the slaves, of which he is one — and that any intercourse among the various strata is entirely forbidden on pain of death.

Treated well by the Lolos, who give their slaves liberty after a time, the son is shocked by the suggestion but, after persuasion by his mother, he agrees to kill the son of the Lolo chief on the latter's way to steal the "Lamp of Heaven". Then he is ordered by his mother to lead the Chinese troops under Cheng (his brother) to the Lolo stronghold.

He wounds the son of the chief but is captured by the Lolos shortly after the chief's son has been made prisoner by Cheng and his troops.

Meanwhile, Cheng releases his prisoner and, with sound reasoning, forgiveness and brotherhood, convinces the son that there are better ways to settle differences than by slaughter and rancour. Thus the son of the Lolo chief and the son of the man who was killed by that chief, join hands in friendship and make their way to the Lolo stronghold, where they are just in time to save the Major-Domo and the chief's daughter from death by fire — the penalty for love between a Black Lolo and a slave.

In a dramatic climax, the old chief is killed and a new generation takes the reins. Peace returns to a blood-soaked land and just deserts are meted out to those who have held the two races in enmity.