This Chinese novel is often known by its film rendition by the same title. The story involves the Peking opera where a vicious Master Guan directs, who rules over his troupe with an iron fist, often mistreating them, and even beating them nearly to death. For instance, a prostitute whose son is a talented performer is told that the son will not be accepted, because he has a deformed hand. The prostitute cuts the extra finger off of her sons hand in order to make him acceptable, and Master Guan accepts. This character is named Douzi, and his friends are Laizi and Shitou.
Douzi finds himself and Shitou becoming very close, perhaps due to their constant intimacy on stage, since Douzi often plays women on stage, while Shitou usually plays men. Laizi and Douzi find that the overwhelming abuse of Master Guan is not worth it, so they escape, but quickly return out of love for opera. Shitou is being mercilessly attacked when they return, since he helped them escape, and Douzi subjects himself to the same fate. Laizi unfortunately chooses suicide, and he hangs himself.
Back in the troupe, Douzi doesn't undergo his gender reversal easily, and his basic psychology leads him to make mistakes when he has to reference himself as a woman. He often messes up and says the wrong thing, and one time, instead of saying, "I am by nature a girl," he says, "boy," in front of a potential agent for the troupe, and the brutal master attacks him.
A eunuch named Zhang invites the performers to his house after a performance, and the man sexually assaults Douzi. Douzi can't bring himself to talk about it, but Shitou knows implicitly what happened. Douzi finds an abandoned child, and in an act of mercy, adopts the child, unfortunately subjecting the child to the brutal reign of Master Guan.
The title of the novel comes from a play that bring the two performers tremendous success, the play "Farewell My Concubine." The performers have professional pseudonyms, and they play the characters, so the names start to get a tad confusing, but in the play, Xiangyu and Dieyi (Douzi) plays a prostitute named Yu, bring the story full circle to his mother. In real life, Dieyi has fallen in love with his childhood friend, but his advances are not returned.
Just before the Cultural Revolution of Mao Zedong's China, Shitou is seen with a lover, before he meets the new communist government, the Red Guards. The communists are interrogating Shitou for his political views, and ultimately, the take him into the streets and invite an angry mob to torture him until he admits to crimes. One of his admissions is that Douzi likely had a same-sex relationship with a Japanese soldier, and in a fit of anger, Douzi accuses Shitou of taking a prostitute for a lover. He admits, and the woman in question commits suicide.
In 1977, Shitou and Douzi are reunited, and they practice the scene were Douzi has to say, "I am by nature a girl," again, but just like he used to, he gets the line wrong, and then suddenly, he commits suicide using the prop sword.
