Director: Zhou Xinlei

Synopsis

Today, a short film about nostalgia for an ancient village in the Jiangnan region, is based on my own experience (I am the director, Zhou Xinlei). Many young people in the village leave once they go to university, and some even hope that by studying hard and finding a good job they can escape the village and their hometown. My mother often says, "You only stay a few days when you come back anyway." Looking back, this simple sentence is a little sad, and it made me reflect. Parents want their children to come home, but they are afraid of being a bother; they do not want to disturb their children's lives and would rather stay in the place they know. This is common to many families today. The film is told in documentary form, with some childhood scenes reenacted. It aims to convey two things. First, it tells young people working away from home to visit their parents more often and to step away from busy city life from time to time. Second, through the mother's conversion of an old house into a cafe, it shows rural revitalization on a small scale: the thousand-year-old village is developing tourism, and the villagers are working to raise their incomes. The hometown has not changed, because the familiar people and things are still there; the hometown is also changing, from muddy paths to a beautiful village, from old houses to guesthouses and cafes, with idle assets turned into a source of income for villagers, so that a "beautiful village" and "prosperous villagers" go hand in hand. The place you once wanted to escape is now where many people seek poetry and faraway places.