In 1932, when China is beset by domestic weakness and foreign assaults, three young people - whom we will know some years later as a political leader, a writer, and a great actress - form a passionate alliance. One of them is the brash young master of a once-great clan. The second is his bookmate, the lame servant chosen to shepherd his bright but unruly master through school. The third, whom they have just befriended, is a prank-playing urchin, a gravekeeper's daughter disguised as a boy.

Instinctively and immediately, they pledge a solemn oath: "We three, though of different clans, bind ourselves to one end. We swear to defend our country and save our people. We cannot undo our separate births, but on the same day we mean to die." They vow to remain forever brothers of the "Middle Heart."

1. But it is their destiny - over the years of World War II and the Communist revolution and upheavals - to be again and again separated and reunited, again and again challenged and tested by conflicting loyalties: to ideals, to country, to family; to the love of one's heart, to one's friends, to oneself.