A portrait of urban anomie focusing on two bohemian artists who drift through the miasma of old Beijing in the 1980s.

Two married couples adjust to the vast social and economic changes taking place in China from the 1980s to the present.

A retired widow has her daily routine derailed when she starts receiving mysterious, anonymous phone calls.

A coming-of-age story set during China's Cultural Revolution. 11 year old Wang Han finds himself entangled with a fugitive and struggles to understand the adult world.

Lin, a sea captain, returns from a 6 month journey when he is told that his 25-year-old son Lin Bo has been gunned down by the police. In his quest to understand what happened, he realizes he knew very little about his own son. He starts a journey back to Chongqin, a city he once lived. He will understand the impact of his paternal repeated absence on the life of his child.

A seventeen-year-old country boy working in Beijing as a courier has his bicycle stolen, and finds it with a schoolboy his age.

In 1980s China, the country is beginning to reform and workers who had been moved with their families to the provinces in the 60s now long to return to Shanghai. For one displaced family a conflict arises when their 19-year-old daughter finds love with a local boy, threatening their chance of a return to the city.