Winter 1948: in a Shanghai lane house about to change owners, the landlord, the sub-landlord and several ordinary tenants fight over staying and leaving, compressing a great historical turn into a cramped urban space. Widely regarded as one of the finest combinations of political satire and realism in Chinese film history, it ranks high on the Hong Kong Film Awards Association's "Best 100 Chinese Films" and the Golden Horse "100 Greatest Chinese-language Films" lists, the most brilliant final chapter of the "golden age" of early Chinese cinema. In 2024, to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Shanghai, the film was re-dubbed in Shanghainese and restored.
