De film laat ons kennismaken met de tienjarige YingYing, de zesjarige Zhenzhen en de vier jaar oude Fenfen, die alleen leven in Xiyangtang, een klein dorp in het hooggebergte van China’s Yunnan provincie. Hun vader werkt in de stad; hun moeder is lang geleden vertrokken. De meisjes helpen hun grootvader of tante in ruil voor maaltijden. Ze worden dagelijks belast met zware taken: het hoeden van schapen, geiten en varkens, het zoeken naar brandhout en het verzamelen van dierlijke mest. Tijd voor vermaak is er amper. De oudste, Yingying, heeft de hoede van haar zusjes op zich genomen, een verantwoordelijkheid die haar leeftijd ontstijgt.

“When I first met the family, I was touched by the incredibly difficult situation in which those kids were growing up. It reminded me of my childhood, and the poverty I had to face and adapt to. It’s an inhuman world where these young human beings live like animals, yet at the same time so human as the bound exists between them helps them cope with life. This is why I want to testify about the reality of these poor peasants’ children’s life in contemporary China. The image of modernity, of economic development, and of an almost occidental world that China is presenting nowadays has slowly made the other side – the human side – disappear from our sight. What about the humanity in all of that? Those who can’t go to school because of the lack of money? And those who survive without much hope to benefit from economic growth? I didn’t want to make an ethnographical study of the family. I wanted to leave the experience of this life directly to the audience, with the idea of a direct comprehension of the universality of those children’s lives, a more objective and direct image of their reality, in order to feel and understand in their inner self the intimate feelings of this family.” (WB)

Mandarin with English subtitles