北京电影制片厂

Guangdong special economic zone police cooperate with Macao and Hong Kong police to stop a drug ring.

Xiaoma, a young woman who has recently moved to Beijing, finds an apartment in an old courtyard apartment complex owned by Grandma, an elderly woman. Xiaoma and Grandma’s relationship almost immediately becomes strained. After trying to tidy up the courtyard, Grandma insists that Xiaoma turn over her share of the profits. Tightfisted, the elderly landlady resists even allowing Xiaoma to install a telephone. At the same time the older woman becomes increasingly interested in Xiaoma’s personal (and romantic) life. Grandma, for example, tries to pass off her grandson to the younger woman. Annoyed, Xiaoma nevertheless is flattered at the older woman’s concern. Over the course of four seasons, Xiaoma begins to learn from her landlady of the old world that the modern city of Beijing has left behind, while Grandma begins to enjoy the youth and vitality of her tenant. The two women become closer and eventually develop a deep friendship.

A wife yearns for complete independence from a narrow, restricting life in this slow-paced, undistinguished melodrama from mainland China, set in 1944-'45, in the midst of fighting. The young woman works at a good job, nurses her terminally ill husband, cares for her small child, and puts up with a difficult mother-in-law. Her desire to chuck it all is tempered by the need to take care of her family, and as China slowly heads toward the communist takeover in 1949, the chaos of the war around her further inhibits any impulse to go it alone.

Drama written by Su Shuyangin in 1978. The feature film adaptation was produced by Beijing Film Studio in 1980. Fang Lingxuan, a veteran Chinese medicine doctor, devotes himself to the research of new drugs for coronary heart disease and receives the enthusiastic support of Premier Zhou Enlai. But the Ministry of Health, controlled by the "Gang of Four," uses Fang's son-in-law to obstruct the research. Just as Fang and his colleagues finally succeed in producing a new drug, Premier Zhou dies. Grief turns into strength, and despite persecution, Fang works hard.