“My career as a filmmaker began with West of the Tracks, which I shot in a giant industrial complex in China’s North- East. From there I moved on to the North-West, with The Ditch, then to Yunnan, in the South-West, for Three Sisters. After that I started thinking about doing something in the area around Shanghai, but I didn’t have anything well defined in mind. Some of the kids I’d met while filming Bitter Money pointed me towards Zhili City, a hub for the garment industry. That was the first time I really traveled around the Yangtze Delta and the whole Shanghai hinterland. I was curious to learn more about its unique character, and I started filming some of the scenes that you can see in this first part of Youth. But there were a lot of obstacles; I’m from the North, I didn’t understand their dialects, and it was hard to make any real contact. Everything was different, the way people lived, how they related and interacted. I soon realised it would take me much longer than on previous occasions to get to a point where I could make a documentary.” (Wang Bing)