Often cited as China’s first independent feature film, this low-budget drama, filmed largely in the director’s Beijing apartment, depicts the life of a single mother (a topic considered taboo at the time) caring for her mentally challenged son. Shot with a documentary aesthetic that includes interviews with families of mentally challenged persons, the film helped kick-start the Sixth Generation of filmmakers (including Wang Xiaoshuai and Jia Zhangke) and their ethos of employing documentary realism to depict the true conditions of contemporary China.
The story takes place in Xinzhuang Village in western Henan Province. Due to poverty, Heidun (played by Li Wangxiong) has not yet married and started a family at the age of 27. Ding Yunhe (played by Yu Shaokang) is a retired railway worker who has a unique skill in growing melons.The village party secretary Zhang Migui (played by Yang Zichun) was initially opposed to everyone abandoning the farm to plant melons. Now after the melon farmers harvested a good harvest, he refused to pay Ding Yunhe a large amount of remuneration according to the contract. He began to fabricate baseless charges against Ding Yunhe and took advantage of everyone's small-scale farmer consciousness to defraud Ding Yunhe. Ding Yunhe received the reward he deserved, and organized a farce to catch the rapist, falsely accusing him of having an affair with the landlady. Ding Yunhe angrily left this dishonest village.
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