Zhang Xianmin

Wu is in her mid-twenties and lives with her mother in a traditional one-story house in one of Beijing’s hutongs. Both consider themselves to be writers, but success has so far eluded them. The fact that Wu is supported by a divorced, elderly man helps the women through lean periods. Their unhealthily close relationship is characterized by reproaches and quibbling; only during meals do they appear to lay down their verbal weapons. The situation escalates when both Wu and her mother hit an emotional low.

In the subtropical province of Guizhou, Chen Sheng embarks on a journey to find his nephew.

One summer night, Zhen Liu’s husband, Xiao Ping, is arrested out of the blue and cannot be reached after being dragged away by the police 30 days earlier. Liu goes to the police in search of information about her husband, but to no avail. Her husband’s sudden disappearance slowly destroys her while her relationship with her kindergarten-age daughter becomes rocky as well. She visits her husband’s friends to ask for their help, but gets only various assumptions about his arrest in return. Liu manages to bring her former boyfriend and attorney Lv Xin on board and together they search for her husband. Thanks to Lv Xin’s connections, they locate where her husband is, but the police’s unreasonably demanding requests eventually discourage her husband’s release. An unassuming examination, shown in documentary style, of a Chinese society helpless under state power.

Liu Jincai, a taxi driver, falls in love with unemployed Wu Li. Wu Li's parents ask 20 000 yuan to Liu's family to cover their daughter's fee for nurse school in a bigger city, in exchange of a promise of marriage just after graduation. Liu's parents firmly refuse. Despaired, Liu Jincai commits suicide with poison. During Jincai's funeral, beyond his buddies, his brother Liu Jinbao swears to exterminate Wu Li's whole family. Wu's family urgently moved away, Jinbao searches downtown on a motorbike with a knife...

Xiao-Li is a devoted housewife and an active member of her local Catholic church in the farmlands of southern China. Her faith is put to the test when her husband is hospitalized with respiratory illness caused by unsafe working conditions.

Xiao-Li is a devoted housewife and an active member of her local Catholic church in the farmlands of southern China. Her faith is put to the test when her husband is hospitalized with respiratory illness caused by unsafe working conditions.

Country girl Yu Hong leaves her village, her family and her lover to study in Beijing. At university, she discovers an intense world of sexual freedom and forbidden pleasure. Enraptured, compulsive, she falls madly in love with fellow student Zhou Wei. Driven by obsessive passions they can neither understand nor control, their relationship becomes one of dangerous games - betrayals, recriminations, provocations - as all around them, their fellow students begin to demonstrate, demanding democracy and freedom.

A policeman investigates an introverted signal-station manager suspected of raping a hotel clerk.