One Day When We Were Young

2021 1h 50m 8.2Movie

Documentary

After the outbreak of the war with Japan, all Beijing universities were closed or bombed. A group of young students, aged 18 or 19, set off in a hurry, moving south on foot, crossing Xiangqian and Yunnan, and eventually forming a temporary university on the Kunming plateau - the Southwest Union University, a joint venture between Tsinghua, Peking University and Nankai. They crossed a city to listen to the "best Chinese language class ever", to listen to Toselli's "Serenade", and to join the Flying Tigers. For these "post-90s" seniors, who are now in their nineties, SWU is not a dusty piece of history, but a memory of youth that is still as fresh as ever. Yang Zhenning, Xu Yuanchong, Pan Jiluan, Yang Coix, Wang Xiji and Ma Zhitu - 16 students of the University with an average age of over 96 years old are cast together to take you back to a time when war was raging and stars were shining.