...does a pre-adolescent girl who'd lost her hearing manage to run away from a small village and in 10-15 years end up living in a big city high-rise apartment complete with a storage room, a well-equipped private screening room that seats at least ten and a balcony that just happens to overlook the hutong inhabited by her long-estranged parents...in contemporary China (population: 1.4 billion)? I know one is supposed to suspend disbelief at the movies, but this is beyond ridiculous! And how about the fact the the young man she injures in the present-day part of the story just happens to be an "adopted" childhood playmate from whom she was separated dozens of years before, hundreds of miles away? And the fact that she doesn't even recognize the guy whom she thinks has killed a beloved pooch and yet trusts and sends him to look after her fish, so that he can conveniently discover their childhood connection that lasted, what, maybe a week, which is more than enough time for an enraged father to locate his errant son in a small Chinese village? This is probably the worst-written Chinese film to make it to western arthouses and festivals in many a moon. It is an insult to the pre-Communist and Communist movies about which it waxes nostalgic. And shame on the critics who bestowed even an iota of praise on this wrongheaded and sentimental hogwash!