Eight Thousand Li of Cloud and Moon (film)

Eight Thousand Li of Cloud and Moon
Traditional	八千里路雲和月
Simplified	八千里路云和月
Mandarin	Bāqiān lǐ lù yún hé yuè
Directed by	Shi Dongshan Wang Weiyi
Written by	Shi Dongshan
Starring	Bai Yang Tao Jin
Cinematography	Wu Tingfang
Edited by	Han Zhongxia
Production company	Kunlun Film Studio
Release date	1947 (1947)
Running time	124 minutes
Language	Mandarin

Eight Thousand Li of Cloud and Moon is a 1947 Chinese film directed by Shi Dongshan and Wang Weiyi, starring Bai Yang and Tao Jin, two actors who were the leads in The Spring River Flows East released that same year. The film was selected as one of the 100 greatest 20th-century Chinese-language films chosen by Asia Weekly.

Jiang Lingyu (Bai Yang), a female student who is studying in Shanghai, decides to join the Resistance Acting Troupe after Marco Polo Bridge Incident of 1937. Although dissuaded by her uncle, aunt and cousin, she adamantly leaves her uncle's home, where she has been staying, without telling them. The company arrives at Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou and Xuzhou and many other cities to perform for soldiers and ordinary folks alike.

For years the company perseveres with their arduous journey, with many of them falling sick. Finally they reach Chongqing, where musical instructor Gao Libin (Tao Jin) falls ill. Jiang remains behind to take care of him, where they receive news that Jiang's father has agreed to their marriage. They decide to get married once the war is over. Jiang's cousin, an entrepreneur, comes to see her. Soon, the troupe read from the papers that the Japanese has surrendered. Ecstatic, the couple gets married immediately.

The couple leaves the troupe to take a barge home. Postwar situation is bad, and they discover Jiang's father has died in the Jiangxi countryside before the war ended. They take up lodging at Jiang's uncle's mansion in Shanghai. They are disappointed at the self-centered, bourgeois attitude held by her uncle's family.

During Chinese New Year, a widow comes to visit Jiang's cousin. It turns out the widow has had her house forcibly occupied by her cousin. Indignant at this, Jiang and Gao decide to move out to a smaller, shabbier attic apartment scouted out by their friends. Gao becomes a schoolteacher and Jiang a journalist. Jiang becomes pregnant. She writes in her column about the incident of the widow and of her cousin's oppression. Jiang and her cousin later has a falling-out, and Jiang asserts that she will continue writing about such injustices in the papers.