Chen Jianguo, a factory assembly-line worker who came from a rural village in Gansu to Shenzhen, stubbornly dreams of having a "home" in the city, even after losing his job when the factory shuts down, surviving a fire in an urban village, and ending up penniless.
He scrimps and saves, even at the cost of jeopardizing his younger brother's future, until he has scraped together the 60,000-yuan down payment. But a sudden downpour and a fire on the outskirts of the city wash away and burn up all his efforts and hopes.
As he begs for money, sleeps beneath bridges, and takes day jobs, he witnesses both the city's glittering prosperity and the rot beneath it. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, his younger brother uses the money his elder brother earned at the cost of his dignity to enter the gates of university.
This is a story of trade-offs.
As Chen Jianguo struggles to survive amid the ruins of Shenzhen, his younger brother completes the "leap" on his behalf at Jianjun University. While his brother works his way through school in the library, Chen Jianguo buys a fleeting moment of dignity for five yuan in a corner of that same library.
There is no comeback, no redemption.
Only two brothers swept along by the tide of their times, each traveling a mismatched path in life toward an ending from which there is no return.
This is a brutal tale of Chinese brotherhood, the divide between city and countryside, and the dignity of the working class. It chronicles the "invisible people" surviving in the cracks of the city, and the entire process by which they are priced, reckoned with, and ultimately consigned to silence.
