White Deer Plain

Playwrights: Meng Bing
Premiered in 2006

The play Bailu Yuan, or White Deer Plain, is adapted from the late Chinese writer Chen Zhongshi's novel of the same title. Telling the story of two farming families surnamed Bai and Lu, it is set in northwestern Shaanxi province in the decades between the fall of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and the founding of New China in 1949.

Published in 1993, the novel won China's top literary honor, the Mao Dun Literature Prize, and has been hailed by critics as a must-read for a deeper understanding of the country.