Debbie Tam Kit-Man

In the god-forsaken satellite city of Tuen Mun, 13-year-old Cookie suspects she's pregnant. Lately things have not been going her way. Her mother left; her father ignores her; her best friend is in reform school; and her boyfriend is off selling bootleg VCDs in bustling Mong Kok. Flanked by her ride-or-dies Banana, Sissy, and Bean-Curd, she journeys into town to find an abortionist.

A prostitute named Tong Tong enters the life of a man who runs a barbecue pork restaurant and quickly begins to ruin his life, as well as the life of his two rotund sons, and a local gangster.

Ah Sei is the second wife of poverty-stricken apothecary, and deals quietly with the hand that fate has dealt her. She is a virtual "house slave" to the first wife, and looks closely after the first wive's daughter, Irene, although Irene treats her with complete contempt. When the couple is killed in a car crash, Ah Sei is thrust into the position of caring for Irene first-hand, as she begins to prepare for her wedding, and must persevere through one turmoil after another

Ah Poon is a man of strong principles, and adopts Lu Xun’s quote of “Fierce-browed, I coolly defy a thousand pointing fingers” as his motto. When he gets into a fight with school authority because of something written by his daughter, he takes his daughter away in rage. Is Ah Poon right or wrong?

A 16-year-old girl falls in love with a boy and gets pregnant. The boy wants nothing to do with the baby, and the girl's mother, believing she's doing the right thing, forces her daughter to get an abortion. This story may happen everywhere, and we may read about them everyday in the news. However, what sets The White Balloon apart from those stories is the emotional journey the girl and her mother take as they realize that they have no one in the world but each other.