Spring Film Recommendations

Six Chinese-language classics for experiencing the season aesthetically

As spring begins, I would like to invite participants in this project of intangible cultural heritage of the 24 Solar Terms to experience the changing of the seasons through observations, creations and the arts. Beyond customs and calendar traditions, the solar terms offer a way of feeling time: through light, atmosphere, labour, memory, longing, renewal, and loss.

Film can offer a particularly rich way into this experience. Through cinema, participants may encounter spring from many different angles — as awakening, desire, rural labour, remembrance, emotional renewal, and the quiet passing of time. Alongside music, poetry, and literature, these films offer another way into the rhythms of the seasons and the textures of Chinese culture.

The six films recommended here do not all depict the solar terms directly. Instead, they resonate with spring either literally or metaphorically. Some are closely tied to the agricultural or seasonal cycle; others evoke qualities often associated with spring: tenderness, restraint, sorrow, hope, and rebirth. Taken together, they offer a small cinematic journey through the many moods of the season.

I hope these films will help participants to understand Chinese culture more deeply and to enjoy it more fully through shared aesthetic experience.

Recommended Films

Spring in a Small Town《小城之春》
Director: Fei Mu 费穆
Year: 1948
I recommend this masterpiece for the way it presents spring as a quiet awakening of feeling, memory, and human connection in the aftermath of historical rupture.

Spring Silkworms《春蚕》
Director: Cheng Bugao 程步高
Year: 1933
I include this film because it offers a powerful entry into the seasonal world of rural labour, showing how spring in Chinese culture is closely tied to livelihood, agriculture, and the rhythms of everyday life.

The Spring River Flows East《一江春水向东流》
Directors: Cai Chusheng 蔡楚生 and Zheng Junli 郑君里
Year: 1947
I recommend this sweeping classic for its moving evocation of loss, remembrance, and endurance, inviting viewers to reflect on spring not only as renewal, but also as a season marked by emotional depth and historical memory.

In the Mood for Love《花样年华》
Director: Wong Kar-wai 王家卫 (Hong Kong)
Year: 2000
I have chosen this film for its extraordinary visual beauty and emotional restraint, through which spring can be felt as longing, possibility, and all that remains delicately unspoken.

Three Times《最好的时光》
Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien 侯孝贤 (Taiwan)
Year: 2005
I especially admire the way this film captures love and time in cycles, offering a particularly rich way to think about spring as recurrence, youth, and the return of feeling across different moments in history.

Street Angel《马路天使》
Director: Yuan Muzhi 袁牧之
Year: 1937
I include this vibrant classic because its music, urban energy, and emotional immediacy offer a lively and accessible way of encountering the atmosphere of a changing season within Chinese cinematic culture.

Through these six films, I would like to invite participants to encounter spring as both a natural season and a cultural imagination: a time of labour and renewal, of desire and restraint, of memory, sorrow, and rebirth. Seen together, they offer not only an introduction to Chinese-language cinema, but also a richer and more enjoyable way of engaging with Chinese culture through aesthetic experience.

You are most welcome to share your feeling and reflection after the viewing of some or all of the films. And more than anything else, do you have a favourite to share with us?