Living the Land

Set in the rural village of Bawangtai in the early 90s, Huo Meng’s second feature presents a remarkably sober portrayal of the first generation of China’s left-behind children. Subtle and slow-moving, Living the Land (Sheng xi zhi di) follows ten-year-old Xu Chuang (Wang Shang) as he adjusts to life with the mother’s family as his parents – who are never seen and rarely mentioned – head to the prosperous south in search of better opportunities. 

This parental absence cast a quiet shadow over Chuang’s world. As a testament to his resiliency of young age and the large extended family dynamics of the culture beyond immediate family, he does not dwell on it, and his remaining relatives – particularly his great-grandmother (Zhang Yanrong), his mentally disabled teenage cousin Jihua (Zhou Haotian) and his 21-year-old aunt Xiuying (Zhang Chuwen) – help fill the gap. As the film’s largely unfold through Chuang’s perspective,  weddings – marked by raucous gatherings of villagers pushing and pulling at the bride and groom – become nightmarish affairs, offering another poignant challenge to the idealised notion of family. 

Celebrating its agricultural roots while acknowledging the encroachment of industrialisation, Living the Land spans four seasons, capturing the village’s evolving landscape as it shifts away from farming. While the film’s events – life, death, and everything in between – remain confined within the insular Bawangtai, broader sociopolitical undercurrents are woven into the script. These references arguably rely too heavily on audiences to fill in the blanks, with the region’s AIDS epidemic subtly alluded to through villagers whispering about selling blood plasma for extra money and Chuang’s aunt retrieving an unexplained wad of cash from her backpocket and refusing to disclose its source.

Through Chuang’s journey, Living the Land remembers the unspoken costs of progress and the lives affected – or lost – when tradition and modernity collide and captures the metamorphosis of rural China.

Christina Yang

Living the Land (Sheng xi zhi di) does not have a release date yet.

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