Gu Zheng

Two disaffected, unemployed Chinese youth drift through life on the streets of their industrial town, their paths crossing with that of a local young singer and dancer working for a liquor company as a spokesmodel.

Ding Mao, a supermarket employee, accidentally cooks the ornamental shark kept in the store. Soon after, he starts hearing a strange voice. Travelling from a southern city to the wilds of Northeast China, he sets out to trace his father’s whereabouts. During this journey, he pieces together his father’s bizarre life through an abandoned amusement park, a zoo in winter, and the supermarket where shark meat is sold. A quirky experimental musician, a blind fortune-teller who can understand animal language, a trainer whose legs were bitten off by a shark, and a female picture book painter — guided by the mysterious voice, all these souls become intertwined.

Xiao Shan, a temporary worker at the Hongyuan Restaurant, has just been fired by his boss Zhao Guoqing. Deciding to leave Beijing and returns to his home in Anyang, he goes to see a series of people from his hometown who have also been living in Beijing-construction workers, train ticket scalpers, university students, attendant, prostitutes-but no one wants to go back with him. Dispirited and confused, he searches out one after another of his old friends who are still in Beijing. Finally he leaves his wild long hair, the symbol of his life in the city, at a roadside barber stand as his offering to Beijing.

A story of vengeance set in China’s wild Southwest, where brutality can be the norm rather than the exception.

The camera gazes at the crowd in Tiananmen Square. Accompanied by the music of Qigong exercises, the lives passing to and fro seem imbued with an immense weight.