Cao Yu's "Sunrise" & CitiGO Hotel.

In October 1935, a socialite who had been living in the Hui Zhong Hotel in the French Concession in Tianjin for many years committed suicide due to bankruptcy, and the people around her scattered. This shocked Cao Yu, who frequently visited the Hui Zhong Hotel at that time. He immediately thought of Ai Xia, a 22-year-old actress from the Star Film Company, who committed suicide on February 12 of the previous year because she was unwilling to "go with the flow and be corrupted" (Ke Ling's words). Although Lianhua Film Company made a left-wing film "New Woman" based on Ai Xia a year later, when the film was a sensation, the talented and popular actress Ruan Lingyu, who starred in the film, also committed suicide due to "fear of public opinion" half a year ago. Within more than a year, Cao Yu was shocked by several tragedies of beautiful women, and he was suddenly inspired to create a new play that "breaks the technique" and "is not very like a play" and "is more profound" to get rid of the "tiredness of Thunderstorm". The death of the socialite in the Hui Zhong Hotel and the tragedies of the two actresses who committed suicide in the foreign concessions, as well as the drunken lives and dreams of the people around them, coincided with his recollection two years later: "Here, it is the so-called 'cross-sectional description', as much as possible, to reduce the ups and downs of the story and the technique of 'beginning, development, turn and conclusion', so that "each character should have a considerable weight", "together, they create a consistent impression". As for this "consistent" "impression", it is "the hope to present to the audience, it should be a bloody impression, deeply engraved in the heart, and it should also be for this 'loss is not enough to support the surplus' social form", and thus trigger "a shocking oath: 'When will the days be lost, I will die with you!'" So he first thought of the line "The sun is rising, and the darkness is left behind. But the sun is not ours, we are going to sleep"; "So I decided to write 'Sunrise'"; So he began to conceive during his stay in the Hui Zhong Hotel, and finally chose this hotel as the scene of the character's activities.