Multimedia Collection
The Teahouse
VHS
129 minutes
PN1997 .T4231 1982
The story begins in 1898 on the eve of the Qing Dynasty's collapse. There is a teahouse in Beijing which is full of customers every day. There is the upright and robust Master Chang; there is Qin Zhangyi, a capitalist with reformist leanings; there is the evil Eunuch Pang, who comes to buy a wife; and there is Pock-Mark Liu, a vile and venomous pimp. This teahouse is an important social institution, a place where people come for business, or just to while away the time. Wang Lifa, the shrewd manager of the teahouse, meets everbody with a smiling face.
Nearly twenty years later, comes the period when the warlords set up their separatist regimes of terror and people live in fear and misery. Wang Lifa has had to change both the appearance and the function of his business in order to survive. The rear section of the teahouse has been converted into a boarding-house while the front part continues to serve tea. Then his money is extorted by the warlord's police and soldiers. Wang Life is incensed but helpless, and he does his best to save the teahouse.
After the defeat of the Japanese in 1945, KMT reactionaries are running loose in Beijing. The teahouse is occupied by agents of the secret service. In the face of this desperate situation. Wang and two of his old friends celebrate their own funeral and then Wang Lifa hangs himself.
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