China 1839. Because the British imports of opium into Southern China are creating such widespread medical and economic problems, the weak Manchu emperor Tao Kuang is forced to take action that precipitates the ‘Opium War’.Read More »
Junli Zheng
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Junli Zheng – Lin Zexu AKA The Opium Wars (1959)
1951-1960ChinaDramaJunli ZhengWar -
Junli Zheng – Nie Er (1962)
1961-1970AsianChinaChinese cinema under MaoDramaJunli ZhengBiography of famous Chinese composer Nie Er, who found the meaning of life by composing for national rejuvenation.Read More »
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Chusheng Cai & Junli Zheng – Yi jiang chun shui xiang dong liu AKA The Spring River Flows East (1947)
Chusheng Cai1941-1950ChinaClassicsDramaJunli ZhengSynopsis:
An idealistic schoolteacher leaves his wife and family behind in 1930s Shanghai to join the Red Cross in the fight against the Japanese invasion. After he is captured, he escapes to Chongqing, where he marries a high-society hostess and establishes a new bourgeois life for himself. Meanwhile, his family lives a life of poverty in a squatter’s camp in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. Director Zheng and veteran filmmaker Cai (who focused mainly on the screenplay for fear of reprimand from the ruling Kuomintang Government) successfully intercut between the parallel narratives, which reflect the contradictory social conditions of prerevolutionary China and bring an epic scale to the life of the Chinese everyman. Considered the country’s equivalent of Gone with the Wind, this sweeping melodrama gave rise to a “romantic family epic” craze in 1940s China.Read More »