Wu Houyuan’s “Red Plum Concerto for Erhu” is made of the music in the Chinese opera “Sister Jiang”, presenting Jiang’s different kinds of emotions. The erhu piece was finished in 1980. At that time China tried to recover from the havoc of Cultural Revolution and go on the way of innovations and open door policy, and the compositions of Chinese music also had some new atmosphere, producing lots of large-scale erhu pieces, including Wu’s “Red Plum Concerto for Erhu.” In this thesis, I will begin from the compositional background to introduce the Chinese social environment and the general situation of Chinese music compositions of the day, explain the effect that the change of social condition made on the environment of music compositions, and generalize the characteristics of the erhu pieces which represent the feminine images. Afterwards, I will introduce the life and works of the composer Wu, discussing his musical ideas and the objectives that he pursued in his life, which would help explain the compositional process and meaning of “Red Plum Concerto for Erhu.” Besides, I will also analyze the musical structure of “Red Plum Concerto for Erhu” to see how the music elements of the opera “Sister Jiang” work in the piece and what the relation between the two is. Finally, I will illustrate Jiang’s image in the opera, analyze how Wu’s “Red Plum Concerto for Erhu” represents Jiang’s image through the music elements in the opera, and discuss the question about interpretation to give another way of thinking when musicians play this piece.