The literal translation of the title of this movie is: Xi-An incident.
This movie made in the early era of the reform in China depicted a very accurate picture of what happened in 1936 at Xi-An, the provincial capital of Shaanxi Province in Northwestern part of China. The importance of this movie is that previously, a historical figure portrayed in Chinese movies, and in fact, in the entire Chinese society is either depicted by political standards as saints, such as the communists and their allies, or as villains such as the enemy of the communists, particularly in the era of the Cultural Revolution. This movie is one of the early pioneers that treated historical figures as people, neither glorifying them as saints, nor demonizing them as devils. Perhaps this was part of the reason this anti-nationalist movie was able to be aired in the nationalist dominated Taiwan in 1980's.
