Distant Love
(Yaoyuan de ai)

A supporter of women’s liberation, professor Xiao Yuanxi decides to carry out his great project, transforming women into citizens of the new era. He choses to experiment with a young servant girl called Yu Zhen. His “Pygmalion” project proves very successful. In no time, through the professor’s teaching, Yu Zhen gets rid of her “feudal” habits and becomes élégant, open to social issues and free-spirited. In short, she becomes a modem woman and the professor’s “ideal” wife. Yet Yu Zhen wants to be more than a woman of wit. Soon she takes part in the popular movement against the Japanese encroachments on China. During the first Japanese attack on Shanghai (from January 28 to March 3, 1932), when her father and brother  die, Yu Zhen participates in meetings and demonstrations and looks after the wounded, despite the professor’s disapproval.