Desire

A scholar takes in a beautiful stranger, and learns too late what wears her face after dark.

A scholar stares too long at a temple mural — at one loose-haired maiden in particular — and finds himself on the other side of the plaster. What happens there is real enough. Whether any of it matters is the monk's problem to explain.

The Tang original behind The Romance of the Western Chamber — and far more unsparing. The scholar Zhang wins the reluctant Cui Yingying through her maid Hongniang, loves her, then abandons her and calls it wisdom. The star-crossed romance that Chinese theater spent centuries trying to give a kinder ending.