The Piano in a Factory

Musical intermezzos emphasise the resilience of the Chinese worker in this comic musical with an implicit social commentary. Chen, an unemployed man in a seedy town in northeastern China, hears that his wife wants to divorce him. Their daughter only wants to live with her father if he gives her a piano.
In the battle for the favours of his daughter, Chen builds a metal piano for her in a deserted factory with his friends. And in the background of this film set in light keys, the deplorable economic situation is permanently present.
Zhang indirectly shows the transition from the industrial era to modern capitalism. It’s the early 1990s, and the resilience of the working class, which has formed the basis of the nation for years, is put to the test every day because steel factories making a loss have to close. Chen’s untiring attempts to build a piano from nothing and are therefore also larger than life.