Last train home, Raise the Red Lantern, Farewell my Concubine, Red Sorgham...

I keep mentioning that one, which is quite recent (late 2013) : No Man's Land

Back to 1942 is a good movie.

I saw a movie on the plane over when I first came to China. It was very realistic on how people live in Rural China. 

It was called "Shanghai Dreams" about a family that lost their work in Shanghai and had to come back and readjust to village life and doing their best to get back to Shanghai. The era would be around 1950s I believe, maybe a bit later. 

Watch 'TCK 父子' about a Chinese couple with a son emigrating to Canada. They get cheated by their own family already residing in Canada, manage through times of poverty. Mom learns English and gets a good job, daddy refuses and, being an engineer with no language skills, ends up doing cleaning jobs. So the parents divorce, the boy starts getting into petty crime and then, by a masterful stroke of the director, the love between a father and his son conquers all and finds its expression in a certain amount of money that is obtained in a way that some might think deplorable. Chinese people can't keep it dry but the interesting thing is, the makers of this movie unintentionally tell us a lot about Chinese culture that we're not supposed to see.

thanks for the suggestions everyone