Yang Yazhou
On an old barge moored close to a small village inhabited by old people and children, live young Wang Wang and his grandfather. The latter is immensely fond of the local doctor, Ms. Bei, who keeps prompting him to buy her a ring as proof of his good intentions. Wang Wang attends the local school, but, in the absence of maternal authority, with great reluctance. Then, one night, a young pregnant woman is discovered hiding on the boat, ready to give birth. With the arrival of her little baby girl, the young mother, already used to her river accommodations, opts to stay with them. Life on the barge is no longer the same. Wang Wang feels the stirring of adolescence and an Oedipal attraction to the young woman; the grandfather is diagnosed with dementia and and is warned that its first signs could soon manifest themselves; and the new young mother keeps a bag whose contents will later reveal a dark secret. Three people at a crossroads in their lives.
A country girl marries a projectionist to satisfy her passion for the movies, but when her husband has an accident, she is forced to take over, and their life together is never the same.
A divorced woman takes twin daughters to Beijing for living opportunities. She meets a widowed labor contractor. The two both have same nickname 'Loach'. They help each other for their adrift lives.
In response to the death of her husband and young son, peasant Zhang Meili founds a school in the dry desert landscape of northwest China. When cultured and chipper Xia Yu arrives from Beijing to help her out, the two women bond and learn from each other's character how to best serve the children. Various subplots include the arrival of Xia's husband, who tries in vain to persuade her to return to the city, Xia's quick abortion, and the comically clandestine relationship between Zhang and a local projectionist.
Hailed by the Chinese government as one of the ten best films of the 1996-97 season, this irony-laced light drama is based on a novel by Fang Fang, and begins with the brutal slaying and robbery of a dock worker's family. The city assigns one of its best detectives, Yan Gao to find "the Wise One," the crime lord behind the murders. To do this, Yan sets up a series of surveillance sights around the city. When port guard Ye learns that he and his supervisor have been chosen to monitor one of the Wise One's main hideouts, he is delighted. It is the most exciting thing to have happened to him in years. But problems come because he must work nights and is sworn to secrecy. His girlfriend Bai Lin misinterprets his absences and this causes trouble. More trouble comes when her old lover shows up. Matters are made worse when a message for Ye and Tian to stop their surveillance does not get through.
A commercial airliner on a routine flight between Taipei and Seoul is hijacked and taken to mainland China by the Taiwan Revolutionary Army Front. Chinese authorities cannot seize the plane because of the presence of an important business figure on board, but agree to cooperate with Taiwanese authorities to defuse the tense situation.
This historical drama tells the story of Qin Shihuang, who unified China’s vast territory and declared himself emperor in 221 B.C. During his reign, he introduced sweeping reforms, built a vast network of roads and connected the Great Wall of China. From the grandiose inner sanctum of Emperor Qin's royal palace, to fierce battles with feudal kings, this film re-creates the glory and the terror of the Qin Dynasty, including footage of Qin's life-sized terra cotta army, constructed 2,200 years ago for his tomb.
A key Fifth Generation work released during the second phase of Deng Xiaoping's social and economic reforms, this robust social satire delightfully depicts the clash between the rising class of rapid industrial modernizers and old Party cadres with a serious Cultural Revolution hangover. The film chronicles the Kafkaesque predicament of a bumbling factory translator who is suspected of industrial espionage after sending an innocent telegram that is intercepted by a militant snoop. (The "black cannon" of the title refers to the missing chess piece the hapless hero is trying to locate.) Placed under investigation and reassigned to a less sensitive department but never informed of the reason for his demotion, he petitions to get his job back, sparking an increasingly obtuse and hilarious series of Party meetings, set in a boardroom straight out of German Expressionism.
