DE ZI lived in a crowded courtyard off a hutong, a traditional old alley in Beijing, 30 years ago. He made his living by carrying people and goods around on a bicycle rickshaw.
One day, to the astonishment of his neighbours, he brought home a beautiful, elegant bride. She was good and kind, and they took her to their hearts, even if she did wear more make up than they would approve.
The rickshaw driver's wife made the lipstick and eyeliner herself, pounding substances into powder form in their tiny home. The walls were so flimsy the neighbours heard the pounding and also a conversation between De Zi and his wife in which they alluded to her past - she had been a prostitute before Liberation and was now living a reformed life in Mao Zedong's people's republic.
The neighbours began to gossip and turn against her. When the Cultural Revolution started and an individual's past became a political liability, she was ostracised and vilified. The campaign against her was led by a woman who was covering up a worse secret - that she had a former husband living in Taiwan with the anti communist Kuomintang forces.
Taunted mercilessly by the jealous young men of the hutong, De Zi left his wife and her story ends with the sound of her pounding other substances - sleeping pills - into powder form so that she can take her own life.
This is the theme of a film released in China recently called Unwelcome Lady. I saw it last week in an auditorium of the SinoJapanese Youth Exchange Centre. Its showing was organised by a film club called "Sophia's Choice".
Chinese cinema is largely inaccessible to foreigners living in Beijing who do not have a sufficient mastery of Chinese to follow the dialogue. Yet many of them long to experience and encounter the culture of the society they live in.
Hence the club, which is named after its founder, Sophia Wong Boccio, an American citizen born in Hong Kong who is the representative of the US Wheat Association. A vivacious, dynamic woman with good connections, Ms Boccio got the idea three years ago of asking a Chinese film distribution company to provide movies which were equipped with English language sub titles. It turned out there were enough good quality films to keep "Sophia's Choice" going on a fortnightly basis.
Sophia Wong Boccio is now leaving China for Australia and the showing this week will be a special tribute to her. The title of the film club, "Sophia's Choice", will remain, said her successor, Michael Primont, a representative of an American music publishing company, Cherry Lane Inc.
Like many outsiders in Beijing Mr Primont finds it difficult to know what Chinese life is really like because of the enormous gulf between western and Chinese cultures, and the restrictions still put on social contact between Chinese and foreigners.
"Seeing these movies gives a sense of what happens in the shop after you leave," he said. "It's an opportunity to be exposed to Chinese culture and to see how good the Chinese cinema really is.
Given that Chinese cinema is today subject to stifling political censorship, the programme has been of a high enough quality to attract a couple of hundred expatriates every fortnight. It has included the more famous Fifth Generation's (post 1978) filmmakers' works as well as that of lesser known directors.
"Sophia's Choice" showings usually end with bilingual discussions involving those who made the movie. Unwelcome Lady was directed by Gu Rong, a middle aged artist, who spoke to us afterwards. The film was based on Hun Da's prize winning novel but he had experienced something similar himself, he said.
"I was a boy during the Cultural Revolution, living in a part of Beijing very similar to that shown in the film," explained Mr Ga. "I knew a woman like this. She was not married but had a son. My older brother said that the woman was bad. It was gossip, only because she had no husband.
"I and two other boys waited 10 hours for her one day, and they attacked her and shaved her head. She started to cry and I had a strange reaction. I became very upset. It left a deep impression."
Many who lived through those days when people denounced each other with extraordinary cruelty now feel a sense of shame. Chen Kaige, a director who entered the Beijing Film Academy in 1978 and is one of the most famous of the Fifth Generation movie makers, betrayed his father as a teenager during those turbulent days. "I can't forgive myself," he said once. His father now works with him on his films, many of which, including Farewell My Concubine, have won international awards.
Mr Ga showed Unwekome Lady to his own father. For a long time he was speechless, the director told us. "Then my father remarked simply, `History seems a little like a joke'."