Xiaowen Zhou

Shenzhen, China, the present day. Nineteen-year-old Wang Baihe is a migrant worker from a village in Shaanxi province. She has a baby son from a one-night stand with a man from Hong Kong and a small income from making Chinese decorative knots at home. Her dream is to open a noodle restaurant and “make lots of money and become a city person” but she finds it difficult to find regular employment because of her baby boy. Her story emerges through interviews with journalist Liu Nan, who is writing a book about her. When Baihe discovers her son has congenital heart disease, she tries desperate ways to raise the RMB80,000 (US$12,000) for the operation, helped by her friend and fellow migrant worker Hu Jinling.

In the first story a man with cerebral palsy saves a nurse from suicide and they begin a relationship. In the second story a handicapped woman races round the city to gather money to pay for the operation of a man whose injuries she feels responsible for.

Epic drama about China's first emperor (221 BC) who struggles to make his childhood best friend, now China's greatest composer, succumb to his will and compose a grand anthem to his exploits.

A humble noodle-maker in a remote Chinese province, Ermo feels that she's being taken for granted by family and friends. She decides the best way to impress them is to bring home the biggest, most expensive television set she can find - no matter how many noodles she has to peddle.

The setting is a heavily wooded, bandit-infested mountain pass somewhere in northern China during the Sino-Japanese War. In a dilapidated church lives a sullen young woman and her ferocious mutt. Passing through are strong, silent traders and porters, to whom she dispenses food, foot care and occasional sexual favors. Following an attack by bandits, a brutish porter stays on to tend his injuries and make moves on the woman. She, meanwhile, has the mutual hots for another porter, the handsome, kindlier “Sixth Brother." As tensions rise between the two men, the Japanese arrive to take the place by force...

The setting is a heavily wooded, bandit-infested mountain pass somewhere in northern China during the Sino-Japanese War. In a dilapidated church lives a sullen young woman and her ferocious mutt. Passing through are strong, silent traders and porters, to whom she dispenses food, foot care and occasional sexual favors. Following an attack by bandits, a brutish porter stays on to tend his injuries and make moves on the woman. She, meanwhile, has the mutual hots for another porter, the handsome, kindlier “Sixth Brother." As tensions rise between the two men, the Japanese arrive to take the place by force...

Officer Lei tracks down embezzler Chen Ziliang in Mongolia. Although Chen insists he was innocent, Lei must escort him across China to bring him to justice, but it soon becomes apparent that an unknown organization wants Chen killed.

Zheng Jianong, a bulldozer driver, has been suffering from illness for years and his wife leaves him

Zheng Jianong, a bulldozer driver, has been suffering from illness for years and his wife leaves him

A young woman is increasingly out of control with her determination to nail the man who raped her teenage sister.

At the Sino-Vietnamese border, a group of nine people headed by a deputy company commander and a platoon commander braved the enemy's intensive artillery fire to the No. 3 post, a natural cave, and began three months of hard fighting.

The police have to recapture an escaped killer who is traveling on a train to Beijing.