Beijing Opera Mu Guiying Takes Command

In the Song army, there was a family of generals named Yang, who fought hard and victoriously in many a battle against the invading enemy. However, they were either sabotaged by the capitulation wing of the Song Court or distrusted by the Song Emperor. Eventually, the Yang army was defeated by the Liao with tremendous losses: all but three of the eight brother generals perished. One of the survived quit fighting and became a monk; another was captured by the enemy and became the Liao's first son-in-law. Yang Yanzhao was the only survivor who became the Commander-in-Chief. Except for the couple's very young sons, the positions of the generals missing in action were now filled by all the women of the family: Yanzhao's mother, his wife, his two sisters, and three of his brothers' widows. Together, they are known to the Chinese as the "Women Generals of the Yang Family.

They fought courageously and ferociously, but still failed to break the Seventy-Two Moves. As the hundredth day deadline was drawing near, an advisor remembered and recommended Mu Guiying, a young and beautiful greenwood chieftain in the nearby mountains, whose father had been a friend of the Great Liao's army advisor, Lu Zhong, and had been the only person on earth who knew how to break the Seventy-Two Moves formation. With her father's death, she became the only person who knew that secret. Her talent and skills soon made their due impression on friends and foes in her first battle. For the first time, the Song army had made a break-through against the formidable Seventy-Two Moves! The Commander-in-Chief thus decided to entrust his authority to Guiying.