The introverted Xiaodou works for the post office in Peking. One day he has to take over the route of a postman who has been sacked for no obvious reason. The area is promisingly called Xingfu, ‘the district of happiness’. There he meets an old man who tells him that the previous postman was arrested because he read everyone’s post. Xiaodou gets an ominous premonition. At the post office he then gets to know Yunqing, a young and inconspicuous girl. She entertains herself by guessing the contents of letters from the handwriting on the envelope and the kind of envelope used. Driven by a desire he can’t put his finger on, Xiaodou now also starts reading the post of people in ‘Happiness District’. He discovers a prostitute, a suicide note and a homosexual… Driven by a feeling for justice and determined to right the wrongs of society, Xiaodou starts meddling in their lives.
