The stage drama, Under the Eaves of Shanghai, premiered in the National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in Beijing on February 14.It will continue to be performed in Beijing for four consecutive days until Sunday night. [Photo: CRIENGLISH.COM/ Liu Bing] 

What was Shanghai like and how did people make a living during China's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression in the 1930s? The stage drama, Under the Eaves of Shanghai, which premiered in the National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in Beijing on February 14, will definitely give people vivid answers to the above questions.

As an important work for celebrating the one hundredth year of drama in China, Under the Eaves of Shanghai depicts Shanghai in 1937, telling the sorrow and happiness of the ordinary people in a Shanghai alley during that rainy season. In the crowded two-floor building, 5 families with different thoughts and backgrounds are struggling for life, and each of them had their own problems.

Lin Zhicheng, when his good friend Kuang Fu was arrested, took care of Kuang's wife Yang Caiyu and her daughter. After hearing of Kuang's death, Lin and Yang started living together. Eight years later, Kuang became free. How does the woman face these two men?

The abandoned wife Shi Xiaobao was forced to become a prostitute, she fought, but without any help...

Unemployed Huang Jiamei, who was already poor and sick, had to accommodate his father who came to Shanghai from the countryside. The old man thought his son who had graduated from college must have already done something big now...

School teacher Zhao Zhenyu is content with the unsatisfying life, but his wife keeps nagging about the poverty, in order to take advantage of a greengrocer, she cheats...

The script for the drama was written by famous director Xia Yan in June of 1937. The outbreak of the war on August 15 that year suspended the initial premiere, which was scheduled for the 13th. Instead of feeling disappointed, Xia Yan expressed his excitement in an autobiographic note. "The war is to bury old stories, old feelings, old play books, and to create more good works for the nation's liberation." Not until 1957 was the drama put onto the stage again by the National Theatre Company of China.

Decades later, artistic director of Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre, Lu Liang, is very excited.