Beijing bicycle

A tale of urban isolation, class consciousness, and peer group pressure, “Beijing bicycle” plays out as a re-imagining of De Sica’s classic Italian neo-realist film, “Bicycle thieves.” Gui, a rural young man, decides to relocate to Beijing and lands a job as a courier on the condition that he pay off his bicycle with numerous (over fifty) trips - after which the bicycle is his to keep. Gui is on the cusp of this exacting goal when his bicycle is stolen. Despite Beijing’s scale, Giu finds the bike in the possession of Jian - a petulant middle class youth who has stolen it in order to impress his friends for whom the bicycle is a status symbol. Risking the wrath of the gang, Gui steals the bike back - for Gui the bicycle equals survival in the sprawling metropolis. Winner of the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, 2001, “Beijing bicycle” is a social critique that address the social and economic difficulties that China and its peoples face in the light of modernisation and adaptation to consumerist economics. Director Wang Xiaoshuai is a sixth generation Chinese filmmaker, praised for his realist approach to filmmaking that belies the tradition of opulent historical melodramas in favour of contemporary stories addressing China’s conflicts.