The Bitter Tea of General Yen

The Bitter Tea of General Yen is a 1933 American pre-Code drama war film directed by Frank Capra, based on the 1930 novel The Bitter Tea of General Yen by Grace Zaring Stone. The film is about an American missionary in Shanghai during the Chinese Civil War (1927–1950) who gets caught in a battle while trying to save a group of orphans. Knocked unconscious, she is saved by a Chinese general warlord who brings her to his palace. When the general falls in love with the naive young woman, she fights her attraction to the powerful general and resists his flirtation, yet remains at his side when his fortune turns. The film was notable for openly dealing with interracial sexual attraction, which was only possibly because the film was shot before the 1934 Hollywood censorship production code.