Falling Flowers (2013)

Falling Flowers 2013 / 蕭紅 2013 / Xiao Hong

In Hong Kong, 1941, as the Japanese bomb the city, Zhang Nai Ying, aka writer Xiao Hong, lies ill in a hotel room, where she is visited by an admirer, Luo Bin Ji. She remembers how, as a teenager in Hulan county, Heilongjiang province, northeast China, she ran away from home, where she was being pushed by her father into an arranged marriage with Wang En Jia, the son of a powerful family. In 1929, she ended up in Harbin, the provincial capital, and in 1931 went to university in Beiping (modern Beijing). En Jia tracked her down there and forced himself on her; she agreed to marry him as long as she could stay in Beiping and study. After En Jia's money ran out, the couple stayed at the house of a friend of his father in Harbin. The Japanese were already occupying the northeast of China. In 1932, after Xiao Hong found she was pregnant, En Jia abandoned her, and she ended up living in the house's attic, alone and in debt. Hearing about her plight, local journalist Xiao Jun helped her out, and the two fell in love. When the Songhua River flooded the city, he rescued her. After giving birth, Xiao Hong sold the baby, but Xiao Jun returned the money to the woman who bought it; they were again penniless, as he had meanwhile lost his job. Finally, Xiao Jun found employment teaching martial arts to a boy in the Feng family but also started an affair with the boy's elder sister. Xiao Hong penned her first story, The Death of Sister-in-Law Wang, the couple joined the Petunia Club literary group, and all finally seemed well. But with writers being arrested, they decided to move south, away from the advancing Japanese. In Shanghai, 1934, Xiao Hong finally met her idol, the writer Lu Xun, who helped her out. But soon events conspired to send her on travels to Japan; to Linfen, Shanxi province, where she met an admirer, Duanmu Hong Liang, whom she married after splitting with Xiao Jun; and to Wuhan and finally Hong Kong.