Lili Huang

Lili, a young mother, lives with her gambler husband in a remote part of Sichuan. Lonely and poor, she heads for the city in a bid to earn enough money to save her dying father.

Dong Bin has opened a surfing shop by the sea where Xiao Fang started working. The young man, however, seems to be on the run from himself, not being able to move beyond his grief and guilt for an accident that took place when he was still in school. He spends his days doing nothing outside of working, essentially just waiting for time to pass, with no particular purpose. Things change when two individuals his age, Yuan Yong and Yang Fan, appear in the shop, searching for a surfing board not to surf, but to take photographs on. An initially aggravated Xiao Fang eventually becomes friends with them, and the three start hanging out, with their relationship finding its zenith on a night out that ends up in a rather eventful karaoke. It turns out that Yuan Yong is trying to escape his parents' arrangements and Yang Fan is looking for a future in a life that seems as vague as Xiao Fang's.

Zhang Yinglong, who had been working alone in Beijing, returned to his hometown to visit relatives and learned that due to logging and coal mining, the environment in his hometown had deteriorated from once being a place of abundant water and grass to now being covered in yellow sand. Despite the opposition of his relatives, he resigned from his job as a deputy general manager and sold his house to return to his hometown to fight the desert. After experiencing difficulties and perseverance, he has now become a "national model worker" with green trees lining the streets.

A man is released from prison and saved by his roommates after a suicide attempt. When he visits a bar and sees a Russian woman performing the classic song "Blue Train," he is inspired to go off in search of his ex-girlfriend.

A young man in China struggles to make ends meet, caught between his loan shark and pregnant girlfriend. His desperation and helplessness will make him consider an unthinkable solution.