God and the Emperor, The

Challenged by the Jade Emperor to discover the workings of the human heart, the Kitchen God, a Chinese deity, decides to follow the lives of Jinyi and Yuying. An unlikely couple—Yuying is a young bourgeois woman and Jinyi, a poor employee of her father—who overcome loss and tragedy to build a pure and true love. Amidst the dramatic events of 20th-century China, between the war with Japan and Mao Zedong's great revolution, the story is narrated by the god and interspersed with traditional tales, providing a beautiful panorama of Chinese culture.