Qiu Fu, a leading actor in Sichuan opera who began his stage career at age seven and has been an actor for over 40 years, dies and meets two underworld officials. He refuses to drink the liquor of oblivion, so until he departs for the underworld, the officials and his long-time friends stay with him and reminisce about the past. Amidst the tumultuous history of modern China, from the time of the Kuomintang government in the 1920s to the Sino-Japanese War, the civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, and the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution, Qiu Fu’s life is shown in several acts of a play.