Mengxia de guoshi

Upon her grandfather’s death, fourteen-year-old Wang Xiaoshen finds herself alone in a large residential complex. Her father has disappeared and her remarried mother is not keen on taking her back. She finishes the school year but, for want of money, is forced to interrupt her education. Her block’s Residents’ Committee, headed by the dynamic Zhu Qiqi, takes her into temporary care. Zhu Qiqi decides to take legal action against the mother and spends most of summer 2002 preparing the upcoming case. The teenager is then faced with a dilemma: if condemned, her mother may resent having to look after her; if not, she may disappoint her neighbours, who are hoping to see her back with her real family. As a counterpoint to these events, the filmmakers show Wang Xiaoshen’s vision of things by drawing on the teenager’s diary, in which she confides her love for a young boy at school, who is also living through a difficult family situation.