Feature film produced by Beijing Film Studio in 1980, directed by Qian Jiang and Zhao Yuan. During the period of the "Gang of Four," Chen Hao -- a veteran cadre of a certain unit of the People's Liberation Army -- is brutally persecuted. Chen's three biological sons are also tortured physically and mentally. Defending the honor of a soldier, Chen is beaten into disability. After the collapse of the "Gang of Four," Chen returns to his post. Two of his children see their love lives fall apart, due to their father's precarious status, while the third child pursues a decadent lifestyle to dangerous ends.
The Public Security Bureau intercept a telegram notifying foreign agents to retrieve the "110 secret". Shi Yan, head of the Reconnaissance Section, starts a campaign of counter-espionage, but one of his agents is soon killed on board a train.
A taut wartime thriller, Red Crag: Life in Eternal Flame anticipates the paranoia and violence of the imminent Cultural Revolution while harking back to the aesthetic splendour of the Golden Age Shanghai cinema of the late 1940s. (This opulence is largely due to the work of cinematographer Zhu Jinming, the master visual stylist of Shangrao Concentration Camp and other key "Seventeen Years" films.) The film concerns a hard-boiled woman working in the Chongqing Communist underground during World War II, whose commitment to the guerrilla cause is only intensified after she witnesses her husband's head mounted on the city walls by the Nationalist forces.
At the age of 16 Zhou Lian, who lost her parents at the age of two and was raised by a stepmother, marries Jiang Mei, a progressive young man from Changsha No. 1 Normal School. Jiang Meiqing has also lost both of his parents. The couple has two sons, Liqun, Xiaoqing and daughter Xiaolian. The film follows the family through turbulent times from 1924 to 1930.
Yang Bailao, a tenant farmer, lives with his daughter Xi'er. The despotic landlord, Huang Shiren, attempts to forcibly take Xi'er for himself. On the eve of the Chinese Spring Festival, Huang forces Yang to sell his daughter as repayment of the debt Yang owes him.
In 1947, the Northeastern People's Liberation Army won a major victory in fierce fighting. In need of work, Molong Wang and his wife Juan Zhang were sent to work in Taohuachuan, a remote and difficult new area. As soon as he arrived in the district, Molong Wang and district official Chenzhong Liang went to the village and saw the fields dry up. The dam needed to be urgently repaired. The daughter of the village kulak Xumei Sun and the Kuomintang agent Jiantou Li conspired to provoke a series of problems to undermine the unity of the two villages in order to crack down on the new head of the district, Molong Wang...