HONG KONG: Jujube, the little sour-sweet ball about the size of a cherry, is something one is unlikely to find outside Shanxi province in northern China. So it's no wonder local people have always had a very special attachment to this small fruity confection. But that exotic flavour has come this way for audiences to discover the full power of the flavour of Shanxi in the dance drama - "Forbidden Fruit Under the Great Wall". The connection to jujube? Well, the Chinese title translates literally as "A Handful of Jujubes". The drama had its Hong Kong debut at the Tuen Mun Town Hall on Friday night.

Set in the early twentieth century, "Forbidden Fruit" tells of the forbidden love between a young maid and her childhood sweetheart. The girl was forced into a marriage to the idiot son of a wealthy merchant family. The boy grew from one of the family's many apprentices to become an extremely successful businessman.

In the drama, a handful of jujubes were given by the female protagonist - their namesake - to her darling as a token of love. What she didn't know was that the fruits had already been poisoned, and events inevitably drew to a heart-rending climax.

Three years in the making, the five-act dance drama premiered in Shanxi in November 2003. It was hailed as China's "Romeo and Juliet" before taking the Hong Kong stage.

Immortal love aside, "Forbidden Fruit" also offered an oblique view of the powerful commercial culture created by Shanxi merchants, or "Jin Shang" in Chinese, who controlled the economic artery of north China for nearly five hundred years between the late fourteenth and mid-nineteenth century. Zhang Jigang, renowned Chinese choreographer who crafted the epic piece, said he'd always harbored great respect for this entrepreneurial spirit.

"The drama was never meant to be a sugar-coated love tale with a tragic ending," he said. "Through his life's strivings, our male protagonist personifies courage and perseverance, which lie at the heart of the successful Shanxi merchant.

And that explains the choreographer's firm belief in the drama's relevance in modern-day Hong Kong.

"Hong Kong as an international financial center rose to prominence long after the sun set on the so-called 'Jin Shang Culture', but the two locales shared many things in common," he said. "Both built their glory on the solid foundation of hard work. The core values they enshrined never become dated."

Thanks to their reputed sourness, jujubes, which resemble big pieces of agate, may be beautiful to look at but are hard to swallow. The audience on Friday night may have found the same about the "Forbidden Fruit", albeit in an emotional sense.

(HK Edition 05/23/2009 page4)