General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Under the Hawthorn Tree (山楂树之恋)

Under the Hawthorn Tree (山楂树之恋) is a 2010 Chinese romantic drama directed by Zhang Yimou, adapted from Aimi's novel Hawthorn Tree Forever, about a forbidden first love between two young people during China's Cultural Revolution.¹^•² It was released in China on September 15, 2010 and screened as the opening film of the 2010 Pusan International Film Festival.¹

Key fact	Detail
Director / year	Zhang Yimou, 2010, China; Mandarin with English subtitles³
Source	Novel Hawthorn Tree Forever by Aimi, adapted from the real-life story of her friend²
Runtime	114 minutes (some listings give 110 or 113 minutes)⁴^•¹
Lead cast	Zhou Dongyu as Jing (Jingqiu) and Shawn Dou as Sun Jianxin (Lao San)²
Screenwriters	Yin Lichuan, Gu Xiaobai, A Mei, and Xiao Kefan (credited as writer of the shooting script)¹^•⁵
Key crew	Cinematography Zhao Xiaoding; music Chen Qigang; producers Zhang Weiping, Bill Kong, Hugo Shong, Cao Huayi¹
Reception	75% Tomatometer (3 critics) and 250+ audience ratings on Rotten Tomatoes; 7.2/10 on IMDb⁶^•⁷

Spoilers

Plot and setting

The story is set during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Jing Qiu, a city schoolgirl whose father has been jailed as a "Rightist" and whose mother struggles to support three children, is sent to the countryside for "re-education" under Mao's call for "a classroom in every field." She is lodged with the family of the village head, Zhang, in Xiping village in the Three Gorges region of Hubei, and is tasked with helping to write a textbook.⁸^•²^•⁷

There she meets Sun Jianxin, known as Lao San, a geology student who takes his meals in the same house. His father held a high military post; his mother was branded a Rightist and killed herself four years earlier. Because Jing knows that a misstep could endanger her family's welfare and her chance of becoming a teacher, the romance that develops is secret and dangerous. After Jing returns to the city the two continue a clandestine relationship under the threat of discovery by her mother and school authorities.²^•¹^•⁸

The story ends in tragedy: Lao San, suffering from leukemia, waits for Jing to graduate, find work, and see her dreams realized, but dies before they can be together.⁹ A line repeated in the film's promotion became widely quoted: "I cannot wait for you for one year and one month. I cannot wait for you until you are 25. But I have waited for you my whole life."⁴

Origin and adaptation

The film adapts a best-selling online novel by the author Aimi, who based it on the real-life story of her friend; the prototype of Jing Qiu is named Xiong Yin.³^•²^•⁹ A production company first bought the film rights and commissioned three screenwriters, including Yin Lichuan and A Mei; Zhang Yimou then bought the rights and the existing script and commissioned a rewrite.¹⁰^•¹¹

The shooting script. The Tianjin-based novelist Xiao Kefan, who had not written a screenplay for about ten years, was brought in in early February 2010 and credited as "writer of the shooting script." He and Zhang worked out the outline through days of conversation, and the script was completed in about two months before shooting began in early April; Zhang told him he had never worked from a script finished in so short a time.⁵^•¹¹ Xiao added details not in the novel, such as the small wooden stick with which Lao San leads Jing across the river and the washbasin with a hawthorn-tree design, and changed the photograph in Lao San's hospital room from a picture of six-year-old Jing to a studio portrait of the two together.¹²

The adaptation drew criticism from the novelist herself. In an interview with China Youth Daily, Aimi said the film changed the story's season from early to mid spring, deleted several kissing scenes that she considered essential to Jing's transformation, and in her view handled the novel's fidelity poorly.¹³ Xiao Kefan responded that the film kept the novel's overall structure while making the love story purer than the book's, and that "the film is Zhang Yimou's Under the Hawthorn Tree, the novel is Aimi's."¹¹ Zhang Yimou himself said he did not want drastic changes out of respect for the novel's large readership.¹⁴

Casting and style

Zhang searched art colleges across Beijing for an actress who was both pretty and unpolished before casting Zhou Dongyu, who had no prior acting experience and was preparing for university when she won the role.¹²^•⁸ Critics singled out her performance: Screen Daily's Darcy Paquet wrote that the newcomer "stands out for her nuance and control," and the film placed the young actors' performances at its center with minimal plot twists.¹

Visual restraint. Unlike the saturated color of Zhang's epics such as Raise the Red Lantern and Hero, the film uses a muted palette built on simple white and red; reviewers read the white shirts worn by the two leads as a sign of the love's purity, and red as a marker of the era's political background.⁴^•⁹^•¹⁵ Zhao Xiaoding's cinematography was called one of the film's strengths, and Zhang made notable use of intertitles to convey plot developments directly.¹ Producer Zhang Weiping described the film as "pak choi and bean curd, healthy and light" in a market of visual-spectacle blockbusters, positioning it in the wenyi (art/romance) genre.¹⁶

Reception

The film earned a 75% Tomatometer from three critics and 250+ audience ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, and holds 7.2/10 on IMDb from more than 4,000 votes.⁶^•² Variety's Russell Edwards called it "a tender, understated romancer" that "touches the heart with a disarming, almost stealthy sweetness," and the Jerusalem Post's Hannah Brown called it probably Zhang's most emotionally resonant film since To Live.⁶ It was nominated for the Crystal Bear in the Generation 14plus section of the Berlinale, and at the 2011 Asian Film Awards it received nominations for Best Editor and Best Newcomer.⁴^•¹⁷^•²⁰

Commercially, the film grossed over 100 million yuan, and a Chinese government-published study of web-literature adaptations groups it with Xu Jinglei's Go Lala Go! as 2010 releases whose success raised film capital's confidence in adapting contemporary-source fiction.¹⁸ Academic commentary has been mixed on the film's treatment of history: one study notes Wang's argument that, compared with the novel, the film reduced, split, or twisted the story and added a sequence that could not have occurred in real history.¹⁹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 2010 to 2014 › Romantic and coming-of-age drama films

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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