Ai le zhongnian

Ai le zhongnian (The Sorrows and Joys of Middle Age)
Directed by	Sang Hu
Written by	Eileen Chang
Starring	Shi Hui Zhu Jiachen Han Fei Li Huanqing
Production company	Wenhua Film Company
Release date	1949
Running time	100 min.
Country	China
Language	Mandarin

Ai le zhongnian (Chinese: 哀乐中年; pinyin: Aī lè zhōngnián; literally: "The Sorrows and Joys of Middle Age") is a Chinese film released in 1949 and directed by Sang Hu (桑弧). The screenplay was written by Eileen Chang, and the film was produced by the Wenhua Film Company. It has appeared in several polls of the top Chinese films of all time, showing up at 71st in the Hong Kong Film Awards poll of 2013, and at 55th in the Time Out Beijing poll of 2014.

The film is a romantic comedy-drama whose protagonist is Chen Shaochang (Shi Hui), a widowed schoolmaster with three children. The film opens with Shaochang leading his three children to the cemetery for Tomb-Sweeping Day. Superimposed over them is a paraphrase of two lines from a Tang dynasty poem: "Just as Heaven loves to hide its intentions in the dark grasses / So does love between people only become clear when it is late." The children hastily pay their respects at their mother's grave and then ask to be allowed to go and play. As Chen stays behind to weed the grave, he overhears a young girl crying inconsolably. The girl is Liu Minhua (about seven years old), who is visiting her mother's grave with her father. Minhua's father sternly tells her to stop crying, but Shaochang comforts her. It turns out that Minhua's father and Shaochang are old friends. Minhua's father says that he is dissatisfied with the school his daughter is attending, and that he plans to send her to Shaochang's school. Shaochang agrees and asks how Minhua's stepmother treats her. Minhua's father confesses that she has been cruel to Minhua since they had a new child together.

When Minhua arrives at Shaochang's school on the first day of class, he is giving an address to the students. He tells the story of how there were only twelve students in the school when he first opened it more than a decade ago, but now there are hundreds, and the school has a good reputation in the community.

We cut to years later, when Shaochang's eldest son, Chen Jianzhong (Han Fei), is working at a bank. The bank manager asks Jianzhong to tutor his daughter. Jianzhong's friends tell him that this is his chance to start a relationship with her and advance his career. Back at the school, Liu Minhua (Zhu Jiachen), who is now a young lady, comes to ask Shaochang for a job as a teacher. Shaochang senses that something is wrong and asks how things are with Minhua's stepmother. Minhua confesses that, since her father died, her stepmother has been even more cruel to her, and wants her to marry a man in his 60s. After confronting Minhua's mother, Shaochang gives Minhua a job as a teacher and lets her live in the teachers' dormitory. She immediately earns the respect of her colleagues as a diligent worker.