Passion of past love

A Chinese director and scriptwriter embraces the story of an old flame desperate to be rekindled, Chen Nan reports.

'You swore that you'd love me forever. Now I've come to hold you to that promise," says a woman who turns up on the doorstep of a married man's home. She was the man's lover 24 years ago, and he couldn't even recognize her.

That's the first scene from German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig's work, The Woman Before, which premiered in Vienna in 2004. The scene instantly hooked Chinese drama director and scriptwriter Zhang Nan.