Description
Xiao Hefu and Zhang Weibi are two eldery farmers in a tiny village situated in the mountainous province of Sichuan. The access of the hamlet is troublesome. It is a few kilometers away from the markets and general stores of the nearest city. The couple of septuagenarians lives its life next to those who chose to remain faithful to an almost ancestral lifestyle, in the heart of nature and according to its pace.
The days are made of work in fields, harvest of vegetables, preparation of meals, breeding of animals, holding a small business, construction of a greenhouse. Vital activities which fill the daily life of this couple. And sometimes, breathing becomes troublesome at their age, and they need to rest their ailing bodies. They offer themselves time of exchange and rest with their family and neighbors. All of them seem to live at a pace of another era, where simplicity and solidarity are the pillars of living together. If the living conditions are precarious, the farmers do not complain about it. They know that it is not necessarily better somewhere else.
The contrast with city life therefore appears even more striking when Xiao Hefu goes to town for refurnish his store: only with the city bustle Time and Money enter into his life. Meanwhile his wife thinks of this Other life by remembering those, who, such as her grandson, left the village in search of a better life. Rightly or wrongly, they couldn’t face any more, such as her daughter-in-law, the poor living condition of rural life. For her, one thing is sure, her last breath will settle on the sides of these mountains, in the middle of its fields and near to her village.
