Crossroads (1937 film)

Crossroads is a 1937 Chinese seriocomedy film directed by Shen Xiling, starring Bai Yang and Zhao Dan. The film exemplified the growing trend of Chinese films by the mid1930s of incorporating references both veiled and explicit to the war with Japan. In this way, Crossroads joins films like Blood on Wolf Mountain by Fei Mu and The Big Road by Sun Yu.

The film begins at a dock at Shanghai, where college graduate Xu is contemplating suicide because he cannot find a job. His friend Zhao Zhao Dan stops him, and leads him back to their rented apartment. We learn that the four graduate friends are all jobless. Zhao serenades to Xu and dissuades him from thoughts of suicide, asking him to concentrate on his freelance translation job instead. Xu tells Zhao he has decided to sell his degree in order to raise funds to see his mother in the countryside. His other friend Tang comes to celebrate his own birthday with a fourth friend, Liu.A female college graduate Yang Bai Yang comes to Shanghai to look for a job, and rents the room beside Zhaos. Meanwhile, Zhao finds a job at the press. Jubilant, he washes his laundry and hangs them up on a pole that extends into his neighbours room. Yang is napping, and the wet laundry drips her pillow damp. Yangs friend comes in and bangs a few nails for her to hang her clothes, and Zhaos framed photos fall off at the opposite side of the wall. ........

Source: Wikipedia