Chin-tien Ku

A Chinese drama

In this drama, the harsh treatment of women in Chinese society is examined and subtly commented upon as it tells the tale of an impoverished woman living in Shanghai, circa 1910 who tries to support her brother and sister-in-law. A marriage to a wealthy man is arranged for her, and reluctantly she endures it, even though she does not love the man who is as cruel as he is wealthy. His mother is also brutally unkind to her. She then has a son, but her struggles are not over when her husband dies and only leaves her a modest inheritance. Her wretched life has made her bitter, and so she begins making her son suffer as she die; she also becomes addicted to opium.

During the last years of Japanese occupation in Taiwan, as tenants from the preceding generation, the family of Chan brothers was suffering from poor harvest. With a deaf old mother, a mental disordered sister whose husband was killed in war, and a bunch of children, it was not hard to imagine that they were really poor. One day, a heavy unexploded bomb fell down from the sky on two brothers' farmland. The brothers brought the bomb to the Japanese police as a "gift for the Emperor of Japan". Unfortunately, the Japanese were frightened by the bomb and order them to throw it into the sea. They could do nothing but obeyed the order. The bomb exploded when thrown into the sea. A great number of dead fishes came out of the sea. The two brothers collected the fishes back home. When they saw their exciting family enjoy the fishes, they felt that God is fair.

Kidnapped by a group of bandits and raped by their chief, Dan Zhu slowly develops feelings for the perpetrator. Echoing the social realism of Taiwanese new wave filmmaking, director Wang Tung revisits the wuxia genre, with the emphasis on psychology rather than action.