introduced by NYU Professor Zhen Zhang
The drastic economic disparity between rural and urban areas in contemporary China causes large numbers of the rural population to pour into cities. The Chinese laws and regulations on the detention and repatriation of permit-less vagrants and beggars in the cities have made these new migrants susceptible to punishment and discrimination. Originally coming from the rural Henan Province, Yang is a singer who ekes out a living by singing in the underground passages of urban business centers in the city of Guangzhou. Everyday he carries with him his temporary residency card and ID card to avoid being caught and detained by the local police. To protect his business, he has to bribe the security guards who are in charge of the underground passages where he sings. Many of Yang's friends have been detained by the local police and sent back home, but soon after that they come back to the city and continue their drifting life. Already turning thirty, Yang is thinking about ending his drifting life and going back to his home village to start a married life with his first love. But back home life is even more chaotic. In the end Yang, like his other friends, is caught by the police in Guangzhou and sent back home.
Zhen Zhang is an assistant professor of Cinema Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU and editor of the forthcoming The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the 21st Century from Duke University Press.
2005, color, 1 hour 33 minutes, China