Stay on the South Bank of the River

Independent woman An Yanhe is leaving Henan for the distant city of Hong Kong in search of a better salary and career prospects.

Hakka woman Yu Zhisu came to Henan for the first time during a devastating rainstorm, and returned for love the second time.

A traveler bound for elsewhere and a visitor returning home meet in a field of wheat in western Henan, where stone carvings from the Song dynasty stand.

The stone carvings have watched a thousand years pass, while the wheat grows year after year.

The Yellow River flows eastward, wind at its back. Why has history continued here, never once broken?

All their lives, people from Henan want to escape Henan's red earth.

And yet the thing they find hardest to leave behind is that same red earth.

Across the red earth, golden wheat fields thrive without end, sheltering the ancestors and nurturing life.

A grain of wheat, a mouthful of food, a great river, a civilization.

The girls, each carrying her own dreams, ultimately stay in the wheat fields.

They stay on this red earth, where so much is possible.

They stay south of the river.