The Jade Hairpin

SHAOSHING OPERA—IN COLOUR

Synopsis

Li Siu-yin, only daughter of Minister Li Ting-fu, is to be married to a talented young scholar, Wong Yu-lin. Siu-yin’s cousin Ku Wen-yu, who is secretly in love with her and is therefore filled with jealousy and hatred upon learning the news, plants a love letter in the bridal chamber supposedly written to him by Siu-yin arranging for a rendezvous when she is to return to her mother's house after the honeymoon, and in order to make the letter ‘authentic’, he steals Siu-yin’s jade hairpin and encloses it in the letter.

On reading this ‘love letter’, Yu-lin is deeply shocked to learn that his bride has a lover and spends the night in his study. His mother thinks he is studying too hard and locks him in the bridal chamber with Siu-yin the next day, but he refuses to make love with Siu-yin. Siu-yin dares not ask for an explanation and neither of them speaks a word to the other during the honeymoon. Yu-lin hides the letter from his mother because he thinks it would didsgrace the family and Siu-yin hides the truth from her mother-in-law because she hopes that some day her husband will change his hostile attitude and be nice to her.

The time has come for the bride to visit her mother, and it is customery for her to stay there for a few days. Yu-lin suspects that Siu-yin will now be having a rendezvous with her cousin and orders back on the very day. Siu-yin covers up for her husband's strange behaviour and insists on returning home at once, which upsets her mother very much. Mother lets Siu-yin go, but blames her for losing her affection towards her own family folks and sends her away with harsh words.

Siu-yin’s father learns the news and hurries back from the capital. When he is shown the letter by Yu-lin, he feels so ashamed of Siu-yin that he demands her death. But the truth is soon revealed and the culprit punished, and Yu-lin leaves home to sit for the Imperial Exams with the hope that Siu-yin will forgive him when he succeeds in winning an official title.

Yu-lin comes first in the Exams and becomes a high official and he returns home to present Siu-yin with a coronet, an ornament usually worn by an official's wife. Siu-yin refuses at first, recalling the wrongs Yu-lin did to her, but she finally accepts it when he kneels down to ask for her forgiveness and all members of the family appeals for him. The couple is at last reconciled.