Youth (Hard Times)
(Qing chun (Ku))

The second chapter of the Youth trilogy, Hard Times continues its immersion in the garment workshops with their captive workers in the factory town of Zhili – contemporary avatars of the slaves of the industrial age, unscrupulously reinvented in the capitalist China of today, under harsh neon lighting, in overcrowded dormitories. They dream of bettering their life while losing it in a succession of days without night. For these pariahs, social classes also exist, shady small-time bosses, shifty supervisors, indifferent cops, while poverty puts both the toiling bodies and the fluctuating surges of solidarity to the test. And, since his West of the Tracks (2002), Wang Bing is there, tirelessly documenting the physical and moral servitude of the mass of Chinese workers.  JB