Ruby Yang

Young teen girl Xiu Xiu is sent away to a remote corner of the Sichuan steppes for manual labor in 1975 (sending young people to there was a part of Cultural Revolution in China). A year later, she agrees to go to even more remote spot with a Tibetan saddle tramp Lao Jin to learn horse herding.

Will Keane, a Manhattan restaurateur, is content with his playboy lifestyle until he meets Charlotte Fielding, a free-spirited young woman. Together the pair pursue a passionate affair that forces them both to reevaluate what they want out of life, even as fate threatens to steal away their future.

Young Sung Neng Yee, who is brought as part of a wealthy Chinese family. She is eager to become part of Mao Tze Tung's "new society", but soon becomes disenchanted by the economic misery the changes bring to her family. Before long, the authorities become aware of Neng Yee's feelings and she is taken to a labour camp, overseen by the sadistic Colonel Cheng.

Ten-year-old HE Fangfei and her family are "eco-refugees" living in Minqin County. Minqin, once an oasis, is now one of the major sources of sandstorms in China. The deserts are encroaching on the towns and swallowing up farmland, schools and homes. The government advisers privately describe Minqin and the surrounding areas as "ecological disaster areas", and try to convince the villagers that the only option the Chinese people in this region have is to respect nature’s rules by allowing the sand to encroach and restore these regions to the original ecological system. The film examines this ongoing battle, now carried out by young villagers like HE, between human nature and Mother Nature.

How are ordinary people adapting to China's transformation - market economies, globalization, small families? Using compact digital video gear filmmakers Ruby Yang and Lambert Yam track four Chinese families as they step into the 21st century. Opting for the personal over the abstract, China 21 introduces lively and appealing people who would be lost in a bigger picture.

J and Jacky are good friends who attend the same school. J is from a single-parent family, and will be taken care by Jacky’s family whenever his mother has to return to Mainland to renew her visa; such kind of story is not an isolated case. These families have been uprooted for a “better future” in Hong Kong, but is this “future” that the children really long to have? A Chinese saying: “How does one understand the joy of fish, if one is not a fish?” Will the adults really understand what the children want?

Acting is not always a life of glamour and excitement, and is often filled with sweat and tears. Devoted actor Gus is crushed when he fails to cry on cue. As self-doubt sinks in, he hears that his father has suffered a sunstroke. He decides to help at his father’s company and cast his dream aside. When his friend Mo offers him a role in a new film, he declines but not before Mo shoves him the script. When he starts to read the script at night, he is amazed to find that the plot is identical to the events around him. In the realm of a dream-like script or a script-like dream, Gus ponders his life as an actor and finds his own direction.

The movie tells an intimate story of one woman's journey that questions traditional notions of family and identity, revealing the wounds that tear at the heart of Chinese society in the aftermath of the one-child policy.