The Story Of Qui Ju

The Story of Qui Ju is a film about one womans quest to find justice. The only problem is that the person she is seeking justice from is pretty much invincible when it comes to the law. Qui Ju's husband gets kicked in the groin by the cheif of their village. Because of this she fears that he will not heal correctly and they will not be able to have another child.

Qui Ju goes to all levels of law in order to get this case settle and find the justice she is searching for. Each time she wins but is unhappy with the decision mainly because it just states that the chief must pay for her husbands medical bills and lost wages and contains nothing about an appology. The money is unimportant to Qui Ju she just wants the Chief, Wang Shantang, to make a formal appology for his actions toward her husband, Wan Qinglai. In order to appeal the decisions each time she must travel far into the city. This is very expensive and she has little money so her and her sister must sell the chiles they have been growing in order to get around.

After many trips and meeting with the director of the courts it comes down to a court hearing. Qui Ju hires and attourney for the hearing, but she ends up losing in court. The only thing left to do is to try and charge Wang Shantang with assualt. In order to do that there would have to be evidence that her husband was injured. At the request of the peoples court Wan Qinglai goes for an x-ray. Instead of waiting for the results of the x-ray he leaves due to the fact that Qui Ju is going into labor. During birth the baby gets stuck and Qui Ju starts losing alot of blood. With everyone in the village at the opera and no one to turn to Wan Qinglai turns to the chief for help.

At first the cheif does not want to be of assistance and tells him to go ask the court for help. Then eventually the cheif helps and get Qui Ju the help that she needs. She gives birth to a baby boy, if it had not been for the chief the baby probably would have died. In a following scene there is a party for the newborn child. You see everyone but the chief, the chiefs wife shows up and tells them he is still home getting ready. Suddenly Officer Li comes to speak to Qui Ju and Wan Qinglai. He informs them that the x-rays came back showing that Wan had broken a rib during the altercation with the chief and that it was enough evidence to charge the cheif with assualt. He then says that the police have taken the chief away for 15 days of detainment. Shocked by the news Qui Ju tells him that all she ever wanted was an appology and leave the party running for the chiefs house but she arrives too late. The film ends there.

This film was a great story with an even more important lesson. It teaches you not to press charges on people unless it is absolutely necessary and to always consider the worst outcome and the firs outcome. The fact that the chief was wrong for what he did is clearly evident. However, it is still unnecessary for him to spend time in jail over it. I think that Qui Ju shows that she is sorry in the closing seconds of the film however she is too late. She realizes the mess she has caused. Sometimes there is no way of completely resolving a situation exactly to your expectations but there is always a way to make a comprimise and put it behind you. This is what Qui Ju could not do for the entire film, except for the very end but by then it was too late.

Overall i enjoyed the film i just think that it could have been better if you say the actual argument between the chief and Wan Qinglai I think it would give the viewers a better idea for what actually happened in the altercation even though the details of it are irrelevant to the plot and theme of the story. There really was not one scene that stood out from the others this film did contain a great story but the cinematography was nothing to exciting it was fairly basic and could have used a little more style.

Eat Drink Man Woman

Eat Drink Man Woman is the story of a widowed father, Mr. Chu, who is living in a house with his three daughters. The story is ultimately about family, and no matter what you lose in life, family will conquer all. The family has a tradition of eating dinner together. The way the family communicates to each other is through this dinner. Mr. Chu who is a famous chef prepares all day for this dinner and has a big feast planned for him and his daughters. It is through these dinner nin the film that major events happen and that the members of the family are brought up to speed on the lives of one another.

Through out the course of the story Mr. Chu seems to be losing alot. He loses his best friend and coworker Wen, this hits Mr. Chu hard, he loses his sense of taste he is depressed and seems like he is in bad health. His daughters wonder if he will be able to rebound from this shocking event. Each of Chu's three daughters are dealing with a love story throughout the film. Jia-Jen and Jia-Ning the oldest and youngest daughters both find themselves in love with men, who ultimately end up marrying them and taking them away from Mr. Chu. Jia-Ning gets pregnant however and is forced to marry her husband. These marriages are annouced to the family at thier traditional dinner. With two of the three daughters out of the house it is just Mr. Chu and the middle daughter Jia-Chien living in the house. Jia-Chein gets offered a promotion at her job in the airline industry which would require her to move and work in Amsterdam. She turns it down because she is worried about her fathers condition and wants to stay with him.

Meanwhile in the story there is Mrs. Liang who is an older woman who is interested in Mr. Chu. She is always over talking to Mr. Chu trying to get with him. Mrs. Liang's daughter on the other hand Jin-Rong is a young mother with a daughter, Shan-Shan. During the film Mr. Chu makes lunch for Shan-Shan and trades it to her for the lunch that her mother had made for her.

With two of his daughters married and Mrs. Liang in persuit of Mr. Chu. He invites everyone to a family dinner, including his daughters new husbands, Mrs. Liang, Jin-Rong, and Shan-Shan. Everyone is at the table enjoying the meal when Mr. Chu says that he has an announcment to make. He stands and begins to speak. Everyone is anticipating that he is going to annouce that he is planning to marry Mrs. Liang. He begins by saying that he will be selling the house and then shockingly he annouces his love for young Jin-Rong. Mrs. Liang is stunned by the news and goes crazy at the table and has to be carried out of the room. Everyone at the dinner is upset and disappointed at the fathers decision. You later see him in his new apartment with Jin-Rong she is pregnant and she tells him she loves him. The final scene is of Mr. Chu going to the old house for his last dinner there, this time being cooked by Jia-Chien. He tastes her soup and immediately begins complaining about the taste until he realizes that he got his sense of taste back. Happy that he is back to normal again he grabs his daughters hand and says "daughter" she responds by saying "father" and the film ends.

I personally think that the films is an interesting story however i wish some of the elements were a little more realistic. The time period in which the girls meet their boyfriends and get married seems extremely unrealistic. I know it is a film but there director should have shown some symbol of time passing. Other than the timeline of the film I felt that it was a great story about a man who needed to find something new in his life and did so through the least expected means. As for my favorite scene i really like the opening sequence because it really depicted just who Mr. Chu is and how great he truely is at his job. It is reflectant of the way he runs his household as well. here is the scene:

Yi Yi- Taiwan

After viewing Yi Yi it took me a bit of time to digest everything that had happened over the course of the film. It starts off with marraige and ends in death, however there is alot of life's lessons that happen in between. Birth, reunion, love, loss, hardtimes, and most of all family. NJ is faced with many of these struggles that everyone will go through at one point in their life. However NJ is forced to go through them all at once rather than one at a time. At the point in NJ's life that the film takes place NJ is faced with hardtimes in the workplace, being reunited with his first love 30 years later, having his mother in the hosital in a coma, and ultimately the challenge of keeping everything together while everything around him is falling apart.

There are many stories with in the film that capture just who the other characters and family memebers are by displaying the struggles that they encounter throughout the film. NJ's wife is fighting her own personal struggle with happiness, after looking at her life she feels empty as if she hasn't accomplished anything. His daughter is dealing with her first love and is going through emotional swings that make things hard for her when trying to find a boyfriend. Yang Yang, NJ's 8 year-old son is facing some hardtimes at school with the teachers, aswell as trying to find the answers to many of life's questions Yang Yang looks to his father for answers about life and why certain things are the way they are.

Everyone in the story is going through one of life's struggles and all of their struggles ultimately come back to NJ. NJ being the strong individual that he is manages to keep his composure through all of the struggles.

My favorite scene in the film is the closing scene. It is an extremely touching scene that directly depicts one of life's lesson being learned in the moment. It is Yang Yang the 8 year-old dealing with the death of his grandmother and saying his last goodbye to her. You can tell he does not fully understand where she has gone, but he knows she is gone. There are parts in Yang Yang's speech to his grandmother where he explains what she has taught him and how he wants to be able to teach people the same things one day when he is older. This is a very sad yet touching moment in the film that reflects on family values as you see the father holding the daughter while the son in standing before his grandmothers memorial. Here is the Scene:

Happy Times- China

"Happy Times" is a great film with a plot that changes as the story develops. It starts with Zhao, a retired factory worker who is constantly trying to find himself a wife. He is extremely desperate and almost foolish at times in the ways in which he tries to get women to marry him. Zhao doesn't have much money and when he meets a woman, who is a stepmother with 2 children, who wants to marry him and have a wedding that will cost 50,000 yuan. He foolishly begins lying and tells her that he is a wealthy person and that 50,000 yuan should be no problem. Zhao goes to his friends, fellow retired factory workers, and asks them to lend him money for the wedding. They tell him no because he has borrowed money in the past for this same reason. Zhao's friend however comes up with a business proposal involving an old bus in the woods behind the factory where young lovers go since they have no other place. The two men fix up the bus and make it romantic and charge people to use the bus for privacy.

Meanwhile the stepmother tells Zhao to find her blind step-daughter a job at the "hotel" since she doesn't want her living in her house anymore. Zhao then takes the blind girl Little Wu to find her a job. Along the way things happen that make this very hard, especially when his bus is removed by a cleaning crew. In fear of disappointing his future wife he tells Little Wu a series of lies to keep the impression going that he owns a beautiful hotel. In order to get Little Wu a job, Zhao and his friends build Little Wu a fake massage parlor in the middle of their old factory. Zhao takes her to work at the massage parlor and has all of his friends go in as clients.

It is at this point that Zhao stops doing all this to impress his future wife and starts doing it for little Wu because he feels sorry for her and wants her to succeed. The two start bonding and eventually become like father and daughter through their experiences together. Near the end of the film Zhao goes to bring the stepmother flowers and when he opens the door she is kissing another man. There is an argument between Zhao and the stepmother and he is told to leave. Brokenhearted he begins drinking and talking to himself when he says something about the stepmother being fat, a rather fat man is walking by who takes offense and punches Zhao in the face. Zhao goes to a restaurant and writes Little Wu a letter. He then leaves he restaurant and on the way back is hit by a truck while crossing the street.

He is unconscious in the hospital when his friends come to see him. They do however get a hold of the note he wrote to Little Wu. They then go back to the house where Little Wu has been staying, only to find a note and a tape recorder. They play the tape and it is little Wu saying goodbye. She tells them that she knew it all along that the massage parlor was fake and that the money they were giving her was not real but at the same time she is very happy that they did that for her because it made her feel important. The take gets to the end when Zhao's friend rewinds it plays it again and reads the letter aloud over the tape. It is in the letter where Zhao writes to Little Wu as her father. This is a touching moment and the film ends from there.

The story of Zhao changes throughout the film. He realizes late through his experiences with little Wu that the whole time he was searching for a wife to fulfill his needs it really wasn't that at all. What Zhao needed was love. There are many types of love out there and the kind that Zhao found with Little Wu is genuine unlike the love he had been trying to find with the women he was trying to marry. Little Wu at the same time needed to feel important to someone. It was Zhao who she found that feeling in. He treated her like an equal and went out of his way to make her life better and give her something that she was good at for once in her life.

This is truly a story of people finding one another on a different scale than you see in most films dealing with love. Usually there are two people who fall in love get married and live happily ever after. This film was not the mushy love that you see in romantic movies but rather the genuine love shared between a father and his daughter. I really enjoyed the story and they way that it ended. It seems that you rarely find endings like that in American film. I think that American films always have to fix everything in the conclusion of the film so that everything is perfect before the credits come on the screen. But leaving Zhao in the hospital and Little Wu on her journey, still allows you to feel happy for both of them for what they have gained through their relationship.

Chungking Express- Hong Kong

Chungking Express is a film comprised of 2 very similar story's that support each other in theme. The story's are about police officers who are struggling with their love lives. The first, Officer 223 is brokenhearted after his girlfriend, May, leaves him. In the second story it is officer 663 who is facing a similar issue with a flight attendant he loves. Essentially its a story of how both men cope with being let down by the person they love most. Part of the film deals with officer 223 purchasing cans of pineapple dated may 1st as a way of waiting for his girlfriend May to come back. There is a scene where the officer expresses his feelings to the clerk about expiration.
Here is the scene:

Don't pay attention to the first subtitle about Bruce Willis I don't know why the person who posted it added that in)


The symbolism that I found in this clip is that he makes a point that not only is it a waste of food but he is concerned about the cans feelings. This says that he feels like the expired can. That to May he has expired and she has discarded him in the same way.

While your are seeing the officers stories unfold you are also seeing the lives of the women who will change the officers situation later in the story. Although the storylines themselves do not interwind like other movies presented by Quentin Tarantino both stories do share a common location, The Midnight Express. This is where the officers go to get food and they are both friendly with the manager. He knows of thier love struggles and is always willing to give them advice as well as try to set them up with his employees. The woman that officer 223 ends up meeting is trying to make it in illegal business like drug smuggling. She has a operation that goes bad so while she is dealing with her own crisis she meets the officer at the bar the she doesnt do much for the officer except keep him company and wish him a happy birthday and that was all that the officer needed just to know that someone else besides his ex-girlfriend cared enough to tell him happy birthday. Instantly taking away the feeling of an expired canned pineapple.

Officer 663 on the other hand meets Faye a girl who is working at the Midnight Express. She has a letter for him that he has been delaying to pick up. She likes him and begins to start sneaking around his house and cleans it for him. He eventually catches her in his apartment one day and realizes who has been making all the improvements in his house. Now realizing that she likes him he invites her to dinner at a restuarant called California. This is symbolic because when he first meets her she is working at the Midnight Express while blasting the song "California Dreamin", she ends up standing him up at the bar and instead leaves for California. Faye sends the owner of the Midnight Express to tell officer 663 and give him the letter she has for him. It is a boarding pass that she drew for him dated one year from the day. The Film ends with Faye returning months later and going to the Midnight Express where she finds the officer inside remodeling the place when he tells he that he has purchased the business. It sets up a great ending with potential of a great future together for the two of them.


Overall, I feel that the film was an excellent film. It possessed many elements and they were especially well used throughout the production. I enjoyed the use of symbolism and the way the symbolism was reference in the film especially with the canned pineapple. I definately would recommend this film to anyone looking to watch a chinese-language film. It was very much like an American film but differed enough to make it something new and different.