Sand and Sea (1991)

Liu Zeyuan is a farmer on the edge of the desert at the junction of Inner Mongolia and Ningxia. He grows food and raises camels, and his family's annual income is 5,000 yuan. Liu Picheng is a fisherman on Jingwa Island, part of the isolated Liaodong Peninsula; he is unwilling to attract attention and becomes hostile to the camera. The living environment and conditions of these two families are different, but the directors try to find some common ground while expressing unique lifestyles. In fact, these lives are firmly swayed by nature: sand storms can destroy everything, just as the ocean tide can destroy everything, and for the two protagonists, the difficult grasp of the future and their children also brings them the same loneliness. Filmed in 1989, Sand and Sea (a 50-minute cut) received the Grand Prix award from the 1991 Asian Broadcasting and Television Union. The more known version of the film, however, was broadcast on Chinese TV in 2003, and is much shorter (25 minutes).