Ku Cai Hua 苦菜花

Description:

Ku Cai Hua is a novel of over 300,000 characters written by author Feng De-Ying in the mid-1950s. This literary work on a revolutionary-historical theme was adapted for the screen in 1965 and became a huge hit. Nearly 40 years later, director Wang Ji-Xing re-adapted this "red classic" into a 20-episode TV series.
The grand mansion of the Wang family teems with wives and concubines. The third young master, Wang Jian-Zhi, returns from studying at university in Beijing and discovers that his wife has been carrying on an affair with the hired hand Wang Chang-Suo, and has borne an illegitimate daughter, Xing Li. Yet Wang swallows his pride and tacitly accepts the "adulterous pair" living right under his nose. "Mother," who once served as a maid in the Wang household, throws herself into the village's anti-Japanese struggle. Becoming a revolutionary mother, she comes to understand the truth: the only way to deal with a brutal enemy is to take up arms and fight. "Mother's" daughter Juan Zi falls in love with the young and promising county Party secretary Jiang Yong-Quan, but finds herself rivaled by Zhao Xing-Mei, head of the women's rescue association. The director of the arsenal who dies a heroic death turns out to be Juan Zi's own brother, and her "rival" Zhao Xing-Mei is actually her sister-in-law! The girl Shu-Hua is brutally gang-raped by Japanese soldiers; after being rescued, she is arranged to work as a primary school teacher and becomes close friends with Xing Li, the "daughter" of principal Wang Jian-Zhi. Xing Li accidentally enters the underground tunnel of the Wang house and, as if sleepwalking, discovers that the person closest to her is secretly sending radio messages to the Japanese from the cellar. He brutally rapes and murders Xing Li. After his arrest, this exceptionally cunning agent reveals his immediate superior — and it turns out to be a frail woman whom people often pitied. In truth, her real name is "Yamashima Hanako,"