Butterfly Lovers

Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai

Classroom love cut short by arranged marriage ends in a shared grave and butterflies flying free.

Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai is the Chinese Romeo and Juliet, told for a thousand years. Zhu Yingtai, dressed as a man, studies with Liang Shanbo for three years; when her identity is revealed, their friendship has already become love. But her family has promised her to another, and Liang dies of grief. On the wedding day her procession passes his grave, the earth opens, and the lovers rise as butterflies — free at last from the world that separated them.