JIN TIAN DE YU ZE ME YANG?

How Is Your Fish Today? führt auf erstaunliche Weise verschiedene filmische Ansätze und Stile zusammen: von der narrativen Doppelung (ein Schriftsteller schreibt über das Schreiben) über Genre-Elemente (die Flucht vor der Polizei) bis hin zu einem persönlichen Reisebericht (Interviews und Anmerkungen zum kulturellen Wandel Chinas). Wenn Rao schließlich in Mohe ankommt, muss er erkennen, dass der Ort mit seiner Vorstellung nicht viel gemeinsam hat. Zum Beispiel gibt es in dem kleinen Dorf elektrischen Strom, und es existiert sogar eine frisch gestrichene Grundschule, an welcher der fortschrittliche Schullehrer Englisch als Zweitsprache unterrichtet. Und Rao beginnt, die unverdorbene Schönheit der Landschaft und die Freundlichkeit der Bewohner zu schätzen. (Mel Valentin)

Rao Hui (the film's screenwriter who plays a fictionalised version of himself) is a post-Tiananmen intellectual whose life has stagnated. He writes film scripts that will never be produced and he substitutes his cinephilia for real achievement in his life. On the basis that writers invent characters to explore the activities they can only imagine, our author creates a story within the story in which his protagonist, Lin Hao, is an outlaw on the run. Lin is constantly moving, forming a liaison with an enigmatic woman (played by the director Guo Xiaolu), as he traverses the whole of China from Guangdong to the village of Mohe, the northernmost place in China. Two men contemplate the icy landscape. One wants to cross the border to see the other side of the world. The other longs to head back to his hometown, which he has left so many years ago.

An imaginary landscape as the main character - that's what I want to do with this film.
And then I need a man, or a man's voice rather than my own voice, to take us to this imaginary landscape, or to mine, and I hope, ultimately people in the cinema will paint their own imaginary world, too. (Guo Xiaolu)

This film is screened together with Min xin pian.