This is a love play taking place in Nan-an.Tu Li-niang is a daughter of a high official.Once,she dreams she loves a scholar called liu Meng-mei.After that,she is ill for longing and dies soon.Later,Mr. Liu takes shelter in Tu's family one summer by chance for an examination.In Miss Tu's room,he finds her portrait.Strangely enough,the girl comes back to life.They leave together without telling her father.Later,a fight begins.Tu sends her husband to look in her father.But the elderly Tu refuses to accept the fact that his daughter is still alive,so he puts Liu into prison.Finally,he is rescued by an official party in search of the scholar who had come out first in the imperial examination and proves successively his claims, with the help of his resurrected wife.