Thinking of You at Dawn

Kunming, 1990. A rag-and-bone man named Chen Housheng finds an abandoned baby girl beside Green Lake. With a bowl of rice broth, a battered tricycle, and a street cry of "Scrap metal, old books, cardboard — bring them out to sell," he raises her on his own. The girl is named Xiaoman, and when she grows up she becomes the singer "Manxing." She changes her name, changes her life, and leaves her adoptive father behind in the old house in the old quarter. He fills a biscuit tin with slips of paper bearing the character "Man" and waits for her to come home. The day she rushes back, dawn is just breaking. The door is ajar. He is already gone. Some kinds of love arrive too late — only after you finally hear them.