Lin, a sea captain, returns from a 6 month journey when he is told that his 25-year-old son Lin Bo has been gunned down by the police. In his quest to understand what happened, he realizes he knew very little about his own son. He starts a journey back to Chongqin, a city he once lived. He will understand the impact of his paternal repeated absence on the life of his child.
A coming-of-age story set during China's Cultural Revolution. 11 year old Wang Han finds himself entangled with a fugitive and struggles to understand the adult world.
A retired widow has her daily routine derailed when she starts receiving mysterious, anonymous phone calls.
A divorced couple learns that the only way to possibly save their daughter, who is suffering from blood cancer, is to have another child. The problem is they've both already remarried.
Shot over the course of ten years on both film and video, the film consists of a series of carefully composed tableaux of people and environments. Pedestrians shuffle across a bustling Beijing street, steelworkers linger outside a deserted factory, tourists laugh and scamper across a crowded beach, worshippers kneel to pray in a remote village. With a painterly eye for composition, Wang captures China as he sees it, calling to a temporary halt a land in a constant state of change.
