The Bitter Tea of General Yen is a 1932 American pre-Code drama war film directed by Frank Capra and starring Barbara Stanwyck, and featuring Nils Asther and Walter Connolly.

Based on the 1930 novel of the same name by Grace Zaring Stone, the film is about an American missionary in Shanghai during the Chinese Civil War who gets caught in a battle while trying to save a group of orphans.

The Bitter Tea of General Yen was the first film to play at Radio City Music Hall upon its full theatrical release on January 6, 1933.

Shortly after Megan arrives, her fiancé Bob rushes in and postpones the wedding so he can rescue a group of orphans who are in danger from the spreading civil war.

Bob and Megan reach St. Andrews orphanage safely, but the pass only makes the soldiers laugh and steal their car when they try to leave with the children.

Fascinated and attracted by the young beautiful missionary, the general has his men move the executions out of earshot and assures her that he will send her back to Shanghai as soon as it is safe.

Megan naively accepts and ends up unwittingly helping Mah-Li betray the general by passing information to his enemies about the location of his hidden fortune.

[2] Director Frank Capra bluntly informed Columbia Pictures' head Harry Cohn that he wanted to win an Academy Award nomination.

He asked 65 stenographers at the studio to vote for their favorite actor, and by a three-to-one margin they chose Nils Asther for the lead in the film.

[12] The New York Times reviewer Mordaunt Hall said it was "a handsomely mounted affair with conspicuously good portrayals by Nils Asther and Walter Connolly...It is a story that is scarcely plausible but which has the saving grace of being fairly entertaining.

"[13] According to Time magazine, "Stanwyck is satisfactory ... but the most noteworthy female member of the cast is Toshia Mori, a sloe-eyed Japanese girl.

Kevin Lee, writing in Senses of Cinema, notes that with changes in racial and sexual conventions, film scholars have objected to its Orientalism and white actors portraying Asian characters.

Lee grants these objections but argues that for "those who are willing to plough beyond these surface reactions, what's left is a film that weaves an elaborate web out of competing cultural perceptions, social and religious values, and sexual desires."

What Lee finds of values is that the film "risks offence for the sake of constructing a dialogue, one fraught with so many perils in the realms of politics, religion, cultures and sex, that it would not be worth it if it weren’t necessary.