Du Gong Guan 杜公馆

Description:

Old Shanghai — the glittering bustle of the foreign concessions could not hide the cutthroat underworld battles raging behind the scenes.
Du Yue-Sheng served Huang Jin-Rong, risking his life and earning great merit; he honored Madame Huang and won her favor; he sheltered his men and won their loyalty; calm in crisis and shrewd in command, he walked alone into an enemy barracks to save Huang Jin-Rong at the risk of death, and his fame soared until he and Huang Jin-Rong called each other brothers.
Du secretly freed the opera girl Yan Yang-Chun, whom Huang Jin-Rong coveted, while throwing her lover into prison; on his wife's birthday, he had her former lover's eyes put out; all of it done without a flicker of emotion — his cunning was deep, and all too clear.
When Du's secret release of Yan Yang-Chun came to light, he set out to track down her whereabouts to answer to Huang Jin-Rong, and there he met Yan Yang-Chun's apprentice, Han Xue-Fang. Introduced to another woman, Du took a second wife, yet his heart yearned for Han Xue-Fang. After he founded the Zhonghui Bank and built the Du family ancestral hall, inviting famous opera performers from north and south to celebrate with a grand gala, Yan Yang-Chun went mad and rushed into the Gong Wutai stage, and Han Xue-Fang left Shanghai in despair. Du could only bid her a sorrowful farewell. He sighed that after years in the underworld, commanding the winds and clouds, he now could not keep a beauty's heart...
This drama exposes the brutality of the old Shanghai underworld gangs of the foreign concessions, the harm they inflicted on the innocent, and the ruthless man-eat-man reality of the old society.