[Photo provided to China Daily]

When Taiwan's contemporary theater scene was forming in the early 1980s, Ku opened the Lan Lin Theater with friends such as veteran actor Chin Shih-chieh.

Boss Yuan, a leading man in the play Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land, by Taipei-based director Stan Lai, is among Ku's major roles. The play was performed in 1986 and is still staged.

When his father was alive, he wished to return to the mainland to reunite with friends－something that the main character from Jie Song Qing also wants to do.

While Ku's parents went to Taiwan together, Zhao Guozhong is separated from his family in the play, which shows him as the driver of a doctor who saved him. He develops a close relationship with the doctor's daughter, Xu Baihe, and witnesses her sufferings from losing her father to being betrayed by her husband.

"I like the portrayal of long-lasting relationships in the play, which is simple but powerful," Ku says. "Though Zhao Guozhong and Xu Baihe are not husband and wife, the emotions between them is beyond that."

Taipei-based actress Lang Tsu-yun plays the role of Xu. Both Ku and Lang have built a performance reputation with TV dramas, movies and stage plays. Like Ku she was drawn to the play due to a personal connection.

"I remember on Mother's Day ... lots of elderly people joined a parade. They wore T-shirts, which had printed words like 'going home'. My father was one of them," says Lang, 51, referring to 1987, when former Kuomintang soldiers were allowed to visit the mainland for the first time after the founding of New China.