Gouwazi and the Widow Village

In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, Sichuan is littered with corpses. A farmhand who cut off his own finger to evade conscription wanders into a village of widows deep in the mountains. Thirteen widows and one “cripple” band together to survive amid tigers, defeated soldiers, plague, and famine. Thirty-three years later, Liugou has grown from a dozen or so people to eighty-seven, and the ancestral hall is covered with names. This is no heroic epic. It is the story of the lowliest man, in the most desperate of times, sinking roots as deep as he can with sheer grit.