Zhao Tao

Fenyang, 1991: Shen Tao, a dance instructor, has two suitors, choosing Zheng, an entrepreneur-to-be, with a note of regret. 15 years later, the couple’s son, Dollar, visits his now-estranged mother. By 2025, lives Dollar in Australia, forgetting both his native country and mother.

Qiao gets five years in prison for an act of loyalty to a local mobster she is in love with. Upon her release she looks to take up where they left off

Shanghai, a fast-changing metropolis, a port city where people come and go. Eighteen locals, including film director Hou Hsiao-Hsien, ex-soldiers and criminals, recall their lives. Their personal experiences, like eighteen chapters of a novel, tell stories of Shanghai from the 1930s to 2010.

Shun Li works in a textile factory on the outskirts of Rome and hopes to get Italian citizenship so her eight-year-old son can join her in Italy. When she is suddenly transferred to Chioggia, a small city-island in the Veneto lagoon, to work as a bartender in a pub, she meets Bepi, a Slavic fisherman, nicknamed “the Poet” by his friends, a regular at that pub for years and a writer of doggerel verse. Shun Li shares with Bepi stories of Qu Yuan, China's most celebrated poet, and the two strike up a friendship that has the potential to become something more. However the budding relationship is threatened by the objections of both the Chinese immigrant population and the local Italian fishing community.

In Chengdu, a factory is being pulled down to make way for multi-storey buildings with luxury flats - China is changing. Scenes of the workforce and building stripped bare and razed are intercut with workers telling their stories about the factory, their work and lives.

An angry miner revolts against the corruption of his village leaders. A migrant worker at home for the New Year discovers the infinite possibilities a firearm can offer. A pretty receptionist at a sauna is pushed to the limit when a rich client assaults her. A young factory worker goes from job to job trying to improve his lot in life. Four people, four different provinces. A reflection on contemporary China: that of an economic giant slowly being eroded by violence.