Zhu Shilin had a knack for portraying familial and cultural clashes between the old and new worlds, spinning realistic Chinese dramas with a storyteller's deft hand. A masterpiece in his later years, The Eternal Love begins auspiciously with the newly crowned Number One Scholar (Fu Che) returning home to marry a lady (Hsia Moon) from a respectable family, while his chaste widowed mother (Kung Chiu-hsia) is honoured with a chastity arch. But tragedy soon strikes and the family is forever ripped apart: the wife accused of poisoning her father and the trio are driven to end their lives – all happen within a few days. Hsia played the modest and graceful wife with a subtlety of nuance and delicacy. Under Zhu's astute gaze, a cauldron of dramatic tensions, dysfunctional family and stark images unfold and cumulate in a tragic end, exposing its rotten roots in feudal ethical codes.

The contents of the programme do not represent the views of the presenter. The presenter reserves the right to change the programme should unavoidable circumstances make it necessary.