The play “Ho Lang Tan” (The Singing Girl) portrays the punishment of vice and the triumph of virtue. A rich merchant decides to take into his house a second wife, a certain singing girl. He finds himself desperately in love with this lady of easy virtue, while the girl herself is planning to get his money in order to run off with her real lover. There is a scene between husband and wife in which the latter bitterly resents the plan of bringing a concubine into the house and pronounces grave warnings of the evils that will befall her husband in consequence. But the merchant persists in his plan and brings the singing girl to salute his wife as mistress of the house. The former is required by etiquette to make four bows, of which the last two must be returned by the wife. The wife refuses to greet the interloper, and after a short but violent quarrel she dies of anger. The next scene shows the singing girl stealing the merchant’s money and setting his house on fire. Her lover, disguised as a boatman, throws the husband into a stream and tries to strangle the latter’s son and his nurse. But passers-by prevent the cowardly murder, and one of the strangers buys from the nurse the seven-year-old boy for one ounce of silver. The poor nurse faces starvation and decides to adopt the profession of a singing girl. While traveling about in this capacity she meets the merchant who has had a miraculous escape from drowning and has sunk to the position of swineherd in a far country. His lowly state eloquently points the moral. At first he upbraids the nurse for having adopted her dishonorable calling, but afterward he accepts her invitation to quit his miserable post and to be supported by her. Thirteen years have passed and the young son has become a famous judge by virtue of having passed a brilliant examination. He happens to arrive in the same city where his relatives are and calls on the keeper of his inn to provide some singers for his entertainment. The host leads in his childhood nurse and his father. The young judge wipes his teacup with a piece of paper which he throws on the floor. As this paper happens to be the contract of his sale by the nurse to the kind-hearted stranger who later made him his heir and as it happens to be picked up by the father, a recognition is effected. At the same time two thieves are brought before the judge, who turn out to be the erstwhile second wife and her scoundrel lover. They meet their just punishment; the judge puts them to death with his own hand as a pious offering to the spirit of his deceased mother. The father praises the justice of Heaven and asks his son to order a feast that they may celebrate in due form this remarkable meeting.