In this chapter, we meet two young men: Tong Yang, a talented young opera performer, and Shu Yun, a naive and innocent ballet student at the same school. The narrator describes the two men, who are very different from one another in their social class, their upbringing, and their talents. Tong yang is a "poor but distant and gifted" opera performer who has been accepted into the prestigious Murray-Hewitt college of art in Holland. Shu Yun is a talented singer who has won a position in the music industry.