"Chang Hen Ge" ("Song of Everlasting Sorrow") was adapted from writer Wang Anyi's novel of the same name by Tian Han and Cao Yu drama awards recipient Zhao Yaomin of the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center. Directed by Su Leci, dean of the Directing Department of the Shanghai Theater Academy, the play stars Zhang Lu as the heroine Wang Qiyao. Liu Yuansheng of the Shanghai Theater Academy designed a stage setting in a shikumen (stone-arched) lane.

From all of her works, "Song of Everlasting Sorrow" is the only play that the author has permitted to be adapted into a stage drama. The drama made its debut in April 2003 and was re-staged in October following some major alterations to the script, stage design and cast. The work has become a repertoire of the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center and a representative drama of Shanghai.

Published in 1996, Chang Hen Ge was an instant hit among both critics and readers largely due to its vivid descriptions of daily life in "Old Shanghai". The play centers on Wang Qiyao who first appears in the early 1940s as a high school girl and winner of the Miss Shanghai beauty pageant. But her beauty proves to be a mixed blessing when she becomes the mistress of a high-ranking Kuomintang official who dies in 1949. Though she falls into penury, Wang has love affairs with six men to maintain the semblance of a privileged lifestyle. Her life ends suddenly in the 1980s after a love affair with a young man.

It took two years for playwright Zhao Yaomin to turn the 376-page novel, which did not contain a single line of dialogue, into a coherent script.