28 Films & TV Shows Set In China During The 1980s
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Wonder Woman 1984
District of Columbia Virginia England 🇷🇺 Russia 🇪🇬 Egypt 🇨🇳 China Tokyo Prefecture The 1980sA new era of wonder begins. — A botched store robbery places Wonder Woman in a global battle against a powerful and mysterious ancient force that puts her powers in jeopardy.
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Love Song 1980
Beijing The 1980sSet in Beijing during the early 1980s, Zhengwu and Zhengwen are brothers in their twenties, living their most vibrant and youthful years. Zhengwu takes his classmates and younger brother, Zhengwen out for dinner, in which he introduces Mao Zhen and her best friend, Feng Siyi. Zhengwen becomes enamored of Mao Zhen, an amicable, outgoing, and mystic young woman.
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One Child Nation
🇨🇳 China The 1980s The 1990s The 2000s The 2010sThe truth beyond the propaganda. — Through interviews with both victims and instigators, Nanfu Wang, a first-time mother, breaks open decades of silence on a vast, unprecedented social experiment that shaped — and destroyed — countless lives in China.
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De acá a la China
🇨🇳 China The 1980s The 2010sIn 1986, Facundo's father had a store in the heart of Buenos Aires, and it was very successful. However, in the early 90s, with the arrival of Chinese supermarkets, the store couldn't compete and had to close. Thirty years later, Facundo travels to the other end of the planet with the sole purpose of getting revenge by opening the first Argentine supermarket in China.
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Now You See Me 2
🇨🇳 China England New York New Jersey 🇲🇴 Macao Tokyo Prefecture New South Wales The 2010s The 1980sYou haven't seen anything yet. — One year after outwitting the FBI and winning the public’s adulation with their mind-bending spectacles, the Four Horsemen resurface only to find themselves face to face with a new enemy who enlists them to pull off their most dangerous heist yet.
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Mojin: The Lost Legend
New York Inner Mongolia The 1980s The 1960sAt the beginning of the 1990s, famous tomb explorer Hu Bayi decided to retire and move to the United States with his girlfriend Shirley. But before his wedding, Bayi discovers his first love Ding Shitian, who supposedly had died in the "One Hundred Cave" 20 years ago, is actually still alive. Together with Shirley and his old exploration partner, Bayi unravels a terrible millennium-old secret...
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Mountain Cry
🇨🇳 China The 1980sA pained cry pierces the heart of a rustic mountain town in Larry Yang’s remarkable second feature Mountain Cry. When La Hong (Yu Ailei) dies in an accident involving an explosive badger trap, naïve Han Chong (Wang Ziyi) obeys village decree and takes the responsibility of caring for La Hong’s mute widow Hong Xia (Lang Yueting) and their children. But as they start to form an emotional bond, suspicions arise concerning La Hong’s death. A melodrama condemning intolerance, it is also a love story of remarkable credibility and emotional depth.
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American Dreams in China
Beijing The 1980s The 1990s The 2000sDuring the economic reform period of the 80’s, three undergraduates bind together by a common ambition – to live the American dream. They are Cheng Dongqing, a hillbilly who refuses to accept his destiny of being a farmer; Meng Xiaojun, a self-confident, cynical intellectual; and Wang Yang, an idealistic romantic poet. Xiaojun is the first to obtain an US Visa for studying abroad. Yang follows but decides to remain in China for his beloved. Poor Dongqing is rejected by the US Embassy repeatedly. Baffled, he reluctantly accepts the job as an English instructor in the university but eventually gets fired for teaching tutorial classes in private. Across the Pacific, Xiaojun fails to find a decent job and is driven to work as a busboy in a diner.
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The Way Back
🇵🇱 Poland 🇷🇺 Russia 🇮🇳 India 🇨🇳 China 🇲🇳 Mongolia The 1980s The 1940s The 1930sTheir escape was just the beginning. — At the dawn of WWII, several men escape from a Russian gulag—to take a perilous and uncertain journey to freedom as they cross deserts, mountains and several nations.
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Mao's Last Dancer
Texas Shandong Province The 1970s The 1980sBefore you can fly, you have to be free. — At the age of 11, Li was plucked from a poor Chinese village by Madame Mao's cultural delegates and taken to Beijing to study ballet. In 1979, during a cultural exchange to Texas, he fell in love with an American woman. Two years later, he managed to defect and went on to perform as a principal dancer for the Houston Ballet and as a principal artist with the Australian Ballet.
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Summer Palace
Beijing Chongqing Municipality Hubei Province The 1990s The 1980sCountry girl Yu Hong leaves her village, her family and her lover to study in Beijing. At university, she discovers an intense world of sexual freedom and forbidden pleasure. Enraptured, compulsive, she falls madly in love with fellow student Zhou Wei. Driven by obsessive passions they can neither understand nor control, their relationship becomes one of dangerous games - betrayals, recriminations, provocations - as all around them, their fellow students begin to demonstrate, demanding democracy and freedom.
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Dam Street
Sichuan Province The 1980sLoneliness, saving face, and public mores. In 1983 in China, Yun is a bright schoolgirl who gets pregnant. She's expelled, her boyfriend leaves town, and her mother arranges the baby's adoption, telling Yun the child died at birth. Ten years later, Yun sings pop songs in a dive, takes the occasional married lover, and lives with her mother, a teacher. The mother tutors a student, Xiao-yong, a lad of ten, who becomes attached to Yun. Yun's mother discovers who the boy's really is and a struggle begins. Should he be told; should Yun reclaim him; does her mother's opinion matter; what about the woman who's raised him? Is there room in a Chinese town for a woman to breathe?
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Shanghai Dreams
Guizhou Province The 1980sIn the 1960s, encouraged by the government, a large number of families leave Chinese cities to settle in the poorer regions of the country, in order to develop local industry. The film's main character is a 19 year old girl who lives in the Guizhou province, where her parents have settled. That's where she has grown up, where her friends are and where she first experiences love. But her father believes that their future lies in Shanghai. How can they all keep on living together when they don't share the same dreams?
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Jasmine Women
Shanghai The 1970s The 1980s The 1950s The 1930sZhang Ziyi plays the youngest of three generations of women who leads lives in Shanghai. Joan Chen plays the great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother. The film recounts this family, the mistakes they make, and a cycle that the granddaughter breaks out of.
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Spy Game
Jiangsu Province 🇩🇪 Germany 🇭🇰 Hong Kong 🇱🇧 Lebanon 🇻🇳 Vietnam The 1970s The 1980s The 1990sIt's not how you play the game. It's how the game plays you. — On the day of his retirement, a veteran CIA agent learns that his former protégé has been arrested in China, is sentenced to die the next morning in Beijing, and that the CIA is considering letting that happen to avoid an international scandal.
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Lan Yu
Beijing The 1980s The 1990sA love story between a country boy in Beijing to study and a wealthy businessman set against the backdrop of the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident
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Platform
Shanxi Province The 1980s The 1970sThe movie is set in the remote Chinese province of Fenyang, and spans the turbulent 1980s by following four performers in the state-run Peasant Culture Group. We see the group evolve from workers that are restricted to approved revolutionary classics that praise Chairman Mao, through performance of Western classics, after China adopts an 'open door' policy, and the effects on their lives.
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The Mirror
Shanghai 🇭🇰 Hong Kong 🇹🇼 Taiwan 🇸🇬 Singapore The 1980s The 1990s The 1920s The 2000sThe grandson of a rich widow returns to Hong Kong with his girlfriend. They are charmed by an antique mirror at the grandmother's home. The mirror used to belonged to a famous courtesan in ...
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Forrest Gump
Alabama Arizona California Georgia Louisiana New York Virginia District of Columbia 🇨🇳 China 🇻🇳 Vietnam The 1950s The 1960s The 1970s The 1980sLife is like a box of chocolates...you never know what you're gonna get. — A man with a low IQ has accomplished great things in his life and been present during significant historic events—in each case, far exceeding what anyone imagined he could do. But despite all he has achieved, his one true love eludes him.
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The Days
Beijing The 1980sA portrait of urban anomie focusing on two bohemian artists who drift through the miasma of old Beijing in the 1980s.
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Close to Eden
Inner Mongolia The 1980sVeteran Russian writer-director Nikita Mikhalkov's film about the impact of modern civilization on an idyllic part of Mongolia won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar as Best Foreign Film. A farmer (Bayyartu) and his wife, who live in a rural part of Inner Mongolia, have three children. Chinese population control policies prevent them from having any more. The farmer sets out for the nearest town to obtain birth control. He comes upon a Russian truck driver (Vladimir Gostyukhin) who has ended up in a lake. The farmer takes the man back to his farm, and after initially being appalled at the lack of civilization, the Russian becomes enchanted with the peaceful life of the backwards countryside and decides to stay. But his presence presages big changes for the peasants.
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Long Arm of the Law III
🇨🇳 China 🇭🇰 Hong Kong The 1980sMichal Mak's second sequel to his brother's action classic finds an ex-soldier/escaped death row prisoner fleeing to Hong Kong and forced to work for a gang of criminals when they kidnap the woman he loves.
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Life is Cheap... But Toilet Paper Is Expensive
🇨🇳 China 🇭🇰 Hong Kong The 1980sA man is hired by a group of people he believes to be gangsters to escort a briefcase from America to Hong Kong. When he arrives, however, his contact is nowhere to be found. With no further instructions, he decides to take in the sights of Hong Kong, which consist of him taking part in a great deal of blood, sex and general weirdness, all while wearing a briefcase handcuffed to his arm.
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The Last Emperor
Beijing Shanghai The 1980s The 1960s The 1950s The 1940s The 1930s The 1920s The 1910s The 1900s1500 slaves. 353,260,000 royal subjects. Warlords. Concubines. And 2 wives. He was the loneliest boy in the world. — A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.
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