Try to Remember

22-year-old Jian Zhong escorts his mother on a visit to the country village where she grew up. He films her while they walk through the village and across the land, pay a visit to his grandmother's grave and chat with some villagers. Every place brings back fresh memories. His mother is quite cheerful and there is a good deal of laughter. But most stories are serious and always involve two subjects that dominated the childhood of this almost fifty-year-old woman: hunger and the Cultural Revolution. The family of seven sisters toiled hard on the land, but despite excellent crops they often had nothing to eat. Jian Zhong's mother was the only one permitted to go to school, so she could keep a tally of the family production. She also recalls that all families in the village smashed their nice vases, because personal possessions were considered capitalist; that she could not comprehend that people were beaten because they were allegedly bad; and that you could only cross a certain intersection if you had quoted a few lines from the Red Book. These are the personal recollections of a woman, but also the history of a generation that should not be forgotten.