The North Wind Blows

Winter 1978, old industrial base in Northeast China. Eighteen-year-old Wang Weidong replaced his ill father and became an apprentice at Guanghui Machinery Factory. With the cold machine tools and fixed wages, he thought his life trajectory was anchored here. However, the north wind of change has quietly blown into the fabric of this huge state-owned factory. The shrewd senior brother Zhao Kangmei rummaged around with electronic watches in the cracks of the planned economy, looking for ways to make money while the silent coworker Zhou Wenbin hid a blue poetry collection deep in the tool cabinet to guard the spiritual world that was incompatible with the roar of machines. Wang Weidong was trapped between three realities: the "iron rice bowl" ethics adhered to by his father's generation, the adventurous temptation of representative Zhao Kangmei, and the inner longing reflected by Zhou Wenbin. The salary of thirty-seven and five yuan per month, family responsibilities, and the agitation of the times forced him to start thinking about his own way out in this cold and suggestive north wind.