The film follows the rise and fall of a family in Shanghai. Once wealthy and capitalist, the family unraveled during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s. Their home, once a French concession mansion, was converted into a multi-family dwelling.
After Women’s Story, Peng returns to the most straightforward representation of women’s issues in Shanghai Women, a film about three rural women. As the first work in Peng’s Shanghai Trilogy, Shanghai Women describes the problem that women encounter trying to secure urban (residential) space through the story of women from three generations.
Recounts the experiences and deep feelings of two revolutionary predecessors, Li Fuchun and Cai Chang, for half a century, and eulogizes the older generation of proletarian revolutionaries.
An old mother of five struggles to get by after her husband is killed during the liberation war. The simple and kind-hearted Ah-Fu stumbles across them, and tries to help them as much as he can.
It is the late 1920s when six-year-old Yingzi and her family move to Beijing. As Yingzi explores the busy streets and alleys, she befriends a widow who, driven mad by grief, stands vigil at the entrance of her hutong, waiting for her missing daughter to return.
