[5] It ran continuously in theatres for three months and attracted 712,874 viewers during the period, setting a record in post World War II China.

Part One, Eight War-Torn Years tells the story of the early life and marriage of a young couple, Sufen (Bai Yang) and Zhang Zhongliang (Tao Jin) and the strain produced when the husband is forced to flee to Chongqing, losing contact with the family he leaves behind in wartime Shanghai.

Part Two describes Zhang Zhongliang's return to Shanghai after a second marriage into a wealthy business family among whom by chance his impoverished first wife Sufen has found work as a maid.

In Shanghai after the 1931 Mukden Incident, Sufen (Bai Yang), is a poor but honest young girl who works at a textile factory.

Asking them to donate to the Northeastern Volunteer Army resisting the Japanese invasion of northeast China, the audience throws money on the stage with fervor.

They solidify their mutual attraction, and as they embrace, he places a ring on her finger while professing his plans for a long and happy future with her.

Meanwhile, the well-connected Miss Wang Lizhen, leaves Shanghai for Hankou to stay with a wealthy trading tycoon, Pang Haogong and his wife after receiving a letter of recommendation from her brother-in-law.

The Japanese begin bombing Shanghai and Sufen, with her mother-in-law and the baby, travel to the countryside to live with Zhongliang's father and younger brother Zhongmin.

The starving villagers beg Zhongliang's father to use his wisdom and authority to try to convince the Japanese officers to reduce the rice levy so they will have something to eat and be able to work harder.

That night the guerrilla fighters, led by Zhongmin, blow up the Japanese headquarters, killing the officers, and retrieve his father's body for burial.

To avoid reprisals, the fighters help the villagers escape into the mountains, but send Sufen, her child and her ailing mother-in-law, back to Shanghai by boat.

Zhongliang only survives by feigning death but is later captured and made to do forced labor by the Japanese until a vision of Sufen inspires him to finally make a successful escape.

However, back in Shanghai, Sufen now works during the day in a war refugee camp while taking care of her son and ailing mother-in-law in the evenings.

He is introduced into Pang Haogong's circle of wealthy industrialists, shows talent for wheeling and dealing, and soon makes his mark as an entrepreneur.

To welcome his new turning point in life, Zhongliang changes his hairstyle to "more of a bouffant" to match the latest fashion trend in the city which also foreshadows the transformation of his nature.

5 refugee center in Shanghai, the impoverished Sufen devotedly takes care of the children and writes letters to conscripted soldiers for their illiterate family members while supporting her mother-in-law and son, now a young boy, until the Japanese decide to dismantle the camp for military purposes.

When one of the prisoners escapes, the others, many of them elderly women, are collectively punished by being made to stand all night in the waist-high, freezing waters of a canal.

The contrast with her own life is too much; Sufen collapses in sobs and bursts out that she has discovered that Zhongliang is back in Shanghai and is now married to another woman and has forgotten all about them.

Resilience after experiencing loss, deprivation, exploitation, and mistreatment from the effects of the Sino-Japanese War, Sufen's struggles become a symbol for sorrow.

However, scenario writer and director committees were established as a critical forum to check the abuse of directorial power.”[12] The film was released on the eve of the Double Tenth in Shanghai, the anniversary of the Wuchang Uprising in 1911.

[14] By using montage techniques, the editing of this film builds up stark contrast between male and female characters, clearly showing the gender confrontation to the public.

[17] With the Japanese surrender in 1945, within two years the economy was in a disastrous state and in need of recovery while Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong fought for political dominance.

The post-war discussions in China were primarily about the complexity of political engagements and acts of treason to the country as this discourse was defined by individuals who had lived through the war in the interior.

[21] Spring River Flows East is one of the most famous post-war films about the Japanese-occupied life through the narratives and perspectives of the suppressed who lived during the occupation.

[25] The main character Sufen embodies two contrasting characterizations during and after the Sino-Japanese War, one being the “wife in the occupied areas" (lunxian furen), who shows great perseverance and takes the full burden of family-survival during the war as the husband leaves for the front lines, and the other being the woman that lacks courage in dealing with her husband's betrayal and reacts to it with self-destruction.

The type of postwar female image represented by Sufen's character at the end of the film is attributed to the sociocultural expectation for women to relinquish independence accumulated during the war and return to a static lifestyle grounded in the family household.

The construction of the domestic female image was propagated primarily by contemporary male directors who promoted the ideal of tranquil housewives during the postwar reconstruction period thus crafting female figures in films with qualities such as “nurturance, humility, and charity, traits that negate the barbarism of war and underscore the notion of social stability.” Therefore, the theme of “women returning to their kitchen” and stereotypical weakness of womanhood portrayed in the media is reflected in the tragic ending designed for the character of Sufen.

However, in the eyes of female audiences, the act of suicide only said more about the perspectives of postwar male filmmakers than they did about a woman's nature or role in society.

[27] The film was remade in 2005 as a television adaptation starring Hu Jun, Anita Yuen, Carina Lau, and Chen Daoming, but the newer version is translated into English as The River Flows Eastwards.

The remake in 1965 was directed by Zhang Ying, a Taiwanese director, starring Li Hong, Ko Chun-hsiung and Cheng Li-wun.