Bride Hunter

Dir: Hu Siao-fung, Lin Huan (a.k.a. Jin Yong)
Screenplay: Hsu Sing
Cast: Hsia Moon, Li Tziang, Yu Wanfei, Betty Bai
1960 | Colour | D Beta | Shaoxing dialect | Lyrics with Chi Subtitles | 111min | Shaoxing Opera

A romantic comedy of mistaken identity and gender, Bride Hunter features an all-female cast as with the tradition of Shaoxing opera. Hsia Moon, in her first cross-dressing role, plays the dandy scholar Zhou, who dons female disguise at the Lantern Festival where she is seized forcibly by the womanizer Tiger Wang. But thanks to the timely abduction, Zhou eventually seals marriage with Tiger's sister (Li Tziang), his longtime love interest. Hsia and Li's singing voices were dubbed by Shaoxing opera masters Bi Chunfang and Qi Yaxian. Great Wall Studio arranged for the leading ladies to attend a crash course in Chinese opera for months, before putting into production this movie and two other Shaoxing opera titles – The Princess Falls in Love (1962) and My Darling Princess (1964).

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