Based on the eponymous novel by Zhang Henshui, it stars Violet Wong as a country girl who, after being discovered by the Milky Way Film Company, rises to stardom through a Cantonese opera.

The first sound film produced by UPS, Two Stars in the Milky Way featured extensive scenes of music and dance, with dialogue presented through intertitles and songs recorded to a separate medium.

Between May and September 1931 at Shanghai Studio Two, United Photoplay Service (UPS)[2] adapted the novel Two Stars in the Milky Way by Zhang Henshui, which had been serialized in the Huabei Huabao between 1928 and 1929.

[5] Sound technology had gained popularity through imported works, and the Mingxing Film Company had recently employed it for Sing-Song Girl Red Peony (1931).

[14] Screenwriter Zhu recalled that Wong had greatly resembled the "innocent young protagonist who gains fame through her distinctive singing and dancing", such that viewers perceived the film as a biopic.

[16] Yang Yiyun was portrayed by Jin Yan,[2] who had previously appeared in such UPS films as Love and Duty and The Peach Girl (both 1931) and gained a reputation for his debonair good looks.

[23] Two Stars in the Milky Way was adapted from the eponymous novel by Zhang Henshui, a popular writer with the Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies school.

This departure, underscored through the performance of the Cantonese-language song "Raindrops on a Banana Leaf" in the opening as well as other Cantonese music, capitalized on the popularity of the genre in contemporary China.

Where the novel had presented Li Yueying as coming from Beijing and drawing inspiration from popular media, the film has her discovered during location shooting in a rural area.

This, Kristine Harris writes in her exploration of Two Stars in the Milky Way as a metafilm, emphasized the character's innate talent;[26] the feminist scholar Qilun Han notes that it also allowed the film to draw from the cultural notions associated with these locales.

[27] At the same time, although the rural setting was more naturalistic, elements of foreign culture remain present, including a piano and a bust of Ludwig van Beethoven.

[26] A chorus line of majorettes led by Li Lili paired with an Egyptian-style dance, collectively replacing the novel's immortal fairy maiden performance, further highlights the cosmopolitanism of the setting.

[28] Such elements, the film scholar Bo Cheng writes, reflect a general tendency in early Chinese cinema to Europeanize novels during the adaptation process.

[31] The adapted opera, a romance based on the story of Emperor Xuanzong, had been widely performed in the two decades prior to the film's production,[32] including by Wong during her time as a stage performer,[33] and contemporary audiences would have recognized the parallels between Consort Mei and Li Yueying;[18] As with the novel, Two Stars in the Milky Way centred on its female protagonist and maintained her as a sympathetic figure.

The stories differed, however, in their treatment of the male protagonist Yang Yiyun, who is depicted not as a philandering womanizer but rather as a man burdened by his moral obligations.

Such films had been produced in the United States since at least 1908,[36] and contemporary productions such as Show People (1928) and Showgirl in Hollywood (1930) had been imported to the Republic of China.

[42] UPS' fictional corollary, Milky Way, is presented as modern through communication technologies while still maintaining traditional morals and Confucian values.

Through such presentations, Kerlan argues, UPS offered itself as a "perfect world" wherein "professionalism and modern spirit [are combined] with a sense of duty and respect for cultural traditions".

Advertisements described the film with phrases such as "Dance and Sound Mega-Film",[45] and although the soundtrack itself has been lost, reviews of contemporary coverage have allowed a reconstruction.

[12] The final sequence occurs towards the end of the film, in which an aged Yueying reprises "Rain on a Banana Leaf", unknowingly overheard by Yiyun.

"[54] Such sequences are expanded by depictions of sound media, including phonographs and radio broadcasts,[55] and further enhanced by the rhythmic physicality of visual activities such as footsteps and a rocking chair.

[47] As the sound-on-disc technology used for Two Stars in the Milky Way required the manual synchronization of the film and its soundtrack, audience experiences would have varied between venues and showings.

[58] Critical reviewers generally praised Wong's vocal performance,[59] but found that the overall sound quality was lower than that of earlier domestic productions.

[60] Wong was praised in Yingxi Zazhi magazine for her rendition of "Raindrops on a Banana Leaf", describing it as "a lyrical invocation of the romantic beauty of the south".

[66] A double feature edition, in which the film was paired with Bu Wancang's A Spray of Plum Blossoms (1931), was released by the Los Angeles-based Cinema Epoch in 2007.

[67] This edition featured a soundtrack by Toshiyuki Hiraoka, with the opera scenes overdubbed with excerpts from Bai Guang's performance of "Ten Sighs".