Shanghai, China, 1930. When young Shuisheng arrives from the countryside, his uncle Liushu puts him at the service of Bijou, the mistress of Laoda, supreme boss of the Tang Triad, constantly threatened by his enemies, both those he knows and those lurking in the shadows.
Yankie director Don Tyler faces mounting insecurity and declining health while on location in Beijing, so his assistant hires down-and-out camerman YoYo to take the reins. Scrambling, studio boss sells the sagging picture to a Japanese media company. But YoYo is determined to upstage the whole production by granting the director's wish to have a grand "comedy funeral". To raise the money for it, he auctions off advertising and sponsorships for the funeral to companies around the world. But wait...is Don getting better?
A con-team couple head west after taking a city businessman for his BMW. But an encounter with a naive young carpenter traveling home with his life savings challenges their fate as thieves.
The film tells of the attempts made by a Beijing van driver (Ge You) to obtain his wage arrears from travel agency boss (Fu Biao) - even to the point of kidnapping the latter's Singaporean girlfriend (Jacklyn Wu).
Four friends come up with an unusual idea to make some money and have fun doing it. For a small fee, they will impersonate and act out any character role for their customers. In the course of executing this novel service, they encounter a whole spectrum of people in society, finding ways to genuinely help them boost their morale and overcome their fears, while gaining unusual and new insights into the human condition.
China, the 1990s. A young bookseller is in love with a woman. The woman is now with another guy, a rich man. The rich man sends his people to beat the bookseller. In the fight, the laptop computer from a man looking at the scene gets broken. Who will pay for the computer? The bookseller wants revenge. Will it be useful? The bookseller and the laptop owner are from different ages and classes. They are two different points of view, two different Chinas. How will they fight for justice?
The wife of a prominent psychiatrist can't find her marriage certificate one day. This "jiehunzheng" is all important. Without it, the family officially has never existed, including the daughter. The couple go on a wild goose chase through the Chinese bureaucracy, meeting catch-22 all the way....they need a certificate to get a new one, etc. They even journey back to the People's Commune where they met, now the site of modern private enterprises where nobody even recalls the former occupants.
Tracing the fascinating, real-life saga of one of China's most revered composers, master storyteller Teng Wenji sweeps us into China's intellectual and artistic coming of age during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). As a young composer, Zhao Liming (Shao Bing) struggles with a constellation of opposing forces: personal ambitions vs. communal obligation, romantic love vs. loyal friendship, modern music vs. traditional.
A Sigh tells the story of an affair between a struggling Chinese screenwriter and his young female assistant, its effects on his marriage and the impact on the man himself.
