(2003, Shanghai, China)

world

BINGJIE’s father owns a “family restaurant,” code for “underground gambling den” on the seedy outskirts of Shanghai. Poverty and desperation abound. The restaurant is a gathering place for local gangsters, loan sharks, and petty criminals–all manner of people who came from the countryside with big dreams, only to have them crushed by the cruel realities of a rapidly-industrializing China.