A Man and a Woman

The economic miracle of China’s growth is largely – or exclusively – an urban development. Large numbers of country people – not only illiterate building workers, but also a new middle class – are moving to the city. A Man and a Woman is about a man and a woman from this latter group of people, who arrive in Beijing at the end of the 1990s to teach, and are dragged along in a maelstrom of changes. It is a deceptively simple story of transition. MeiZi is a very normal woman, GangZi an everyday Chinaman. They are introduced to each other in Beijing, get into a relationship and, despite their quarrels and mutual differences, love one another. When MeiZi complains about his salary, GangZi initially answers that he loves teaching and that money is not important. But after a while, he gives up his job. Confronted with the difficulties of finding another job, he begins to acquire new insights. Through the failed marriages of her girlfriend SongZi, MeiZi also starts to look at the behaviour of her boyfriend in a different way. Hao is one of the young Chinese film makers using digital video formats to change the formal and aesthetic possibilities of the medium. He uses the width of his Scope image to record the surroundings of his ‘Adam and Eve in the Megapolis’. For instance, out of the corners of our eyes, we observe the cheap new interiors, the attitudes of the townspeople and the furnishings of offices and classrooms. (GT)

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