A hostess in Shanghai invites her secondary schoolmates to a reunion. They each reminisce about their lives, with some having difficulties in marriage or career. Some led destructive lives, while others contributed to the country.
Twin girls separated at birth are reunited when the one raised in poverty becomes a servant in the household of her sister, now the pampered wife of a warlord general.
This early classic of Golden Age Shanghai cinema echoes Visconti's classic La Terra Trema in its beautifully rendered story of a humble silk-farming family struggling to be free of debt to exploitative middlemen.
After being defeated in a fight by a local gang, local official Lu Fengyang sends his weak and sickly son Lu Xiaoqing to study with a master of the Kunlun school of martial arts. Recovered and strong, he comes upon the Red Lotus Temple, and puts up there for the night. Unable to sleep, he begins looking around the palatial temple, and discovers a room decorated with many images of Buddhist demons, and an altar to worship them. Entering to look around, he finds the entrance to a deep cave from which an oppressive, foul odor emanates. (https://web.archive.org/web/20131015062919/http://www.chinesemirror.com/index/2009/07/1928-31-burning-of-red-lotus-temple.html) This wuxia serial was adapted from a newspaper serial (Strange Tales of the Adventurer in the Wild Country) and released in 18 feature-length parts over a period of 3 years. In its entirety it would be 27 hours long. Considered lost.
