The Film An Autumn’s Tale is a romantic comedy where it showcases the cultural shocks a Hong Kong woman experienced when residing in NYC.

The film begins with a woman from Hong Kong packing up to go to NYC, with her mind set on meeting her boyfriend that she didn't see for a few years. Her image of their reunion, of course, is quite rosy, only to have her expectations ruined a day after she arrived to NYC when she realized that her boyfriend (now not) had a new girl friend. Thus, this set the wheels in motion for the cousin (whom she was going to live with) to spark a romantic relationship with her. 

At first, the woman had a negative image of her cousin; After all, on the first day she met him, he was a rowdy guy pushing through the police, was noisy, had a somewhat broken, rusty car, and went on a street race on the way home. Furthermore, the place he lives is in a bad part of NYC; Loud, overnight parties, dirty, etc. But the women likely started seeing the cousin in better eyes when he helped her decorate her room. 

Later, she went got a babysitting job and a job as waitress in a restaurant, both under the same family. The husband however started having interest in her, and to protect her, the cousin and his crew beat the “dirty old man” up.

I think the main point the began to start turning the relationship between the cousin and woman into a romantic one was when they went to the beach. The cousin mentioned how he wanted to open a new restaurant facing the Atlantic Ocean. However when he couldn't come up with a good name, the woman came up with the name Sampan. Afterward, they implicitly agreed to run the restaurant together, which to me, sounds like they hinted interest in becoming boyfriend/girlfriend, and perhaps later, husband/wife.

After this incident, the cousin decided to start a party. At first, I thought he did it because it was the woman’s birthday on the day of the party, but then a scene came up where the woman goes into the guys room, and realizes that his birthday is on the day of the party. I am still unsure of the reasoning behind the party. This party was important because it started the (temporary) separation between the two. 

Of course, since this is a hollywood-like film, the two re-met at the same place the cousin decided to start up his restaurant, while the cousin was handling business in the restaurant. After that, they probably lived happily ever after. 

The film Not One Less is about issues of the unevenness of development throughout China. Despite China’s rapid rise as a world power, there is still a large percent of people living in poor villages, where it is hard to find jobs or funding for education. Furthermore, what is most troubling is that China may have a very big city, and only two hours away from it, you may find a very poor village.

The movie starts off with a school in a poor village bringing in a 13 year old child as a substitute for a teacher that needs to leave for a month. In exchange for substituting for a month, she only gets 50 yuan. The school seems to be in very rough condition; Very old, fragile tables, little chalk, bad flooring, etc. Furthermore, the school also seems to be having trouble keeping students in the school.

At the beginning, the substitute seemed not to do much, perhaps because she didn't know what to do or she just didn't care. All she did give the students something to copy, and then go outside and sit outside the door to make sure no-one goes out. On one of the days, while she was out, the trouble maker kid was stewing up trouble, thus forcing the substitute to come in. In the aftermath of the issue, almost all of the chalk was wasted, making the class manager upset. As can be seen, she was not very productive at the beginning.

However, after the troublemaker kid left in order to make money for his parents, she starting engaging with the entire class to bring the troublemaker back. In the process, since she had to figure out the bus fares to go to the city, she taught the students practical uses of math, and brought vigor and vitality to the environment of the class. 

When she went to the city, she had many obstacles she had to go through to get the kid back. At first, she tried to find him through the help of one of his acquaintances. When that proved to be worthless, she went over and created many flyers to have help to find him. However, the man at the train station said that would be worthless, and instead suggested to go to the t.v. station to get help. While she had to stay for more than a day to get admitted in, she was able to not only find the kid through the t.v. station, but was also able to get considerable funding from donors to rebuild the school.

I believe the ending of the movie was meant to show people two things: First, it was meant to show the difficulties villages face, and second, it was intended to message that little contributions from many people in the city can make a big differences in the lives of the villagers, and help spur development in areas that are hardly developed at all.

A Touch of Sin is a Chinese Film that is split into four different sections (and maybe one subsection) that showcases a different issue in China per section.

The first section discusses about the corruption in coal mines. Apparently, China has undergone a period where a bunch of coal mines popped out in remote villages. In this movie, in order to have the coal mines to be built, the village leader promised 40% of all profit earned to be redistributed to the villagers. However, what he said turned out to be a lie, and so he took the profit to himself. Due to the corrupt acts of the villager leader, one of the villagers (who worked in the coal mine) got upset with the leader and went berserk, killing a few villages, the coal mine manager, and the village leader himself.

The second section, I think, was about safety concerns for the regular pedestrian in China. The story starts off with a thief going over to his family’s village. They seemed quite poor, and so in order for the family to get money, the thief steals it from others. He was thinking about going to three different places (don’t know exactly why though). Later on, he leaves the village and at a factory workplace, he shoots two people and takes their purse in broad daylight. 

The third section section started with two lovers meeting up in a restaurant. She tells the man that she’ll give him six months to make up his mind over whether to choose her or his current wife. The women then goes to her workplace, and she finds the man’s wife along with a few other men and they beat her down. Later, the women once again goes to her workplace, which seems to be a place for prostitutes (although the women herself is a cleric), and after her worksheet was finished, she went up a floor to clean her clothes in a sauna. There she was bothered by a two rich men. To protect herself from getting violated, she kills them and then later confesses to the police over the phone

The last section addresses the concerns with one child policy. It begins with a guy accidentally cutting his hand because another guy was distracting him. As a result, he had to pay compensations while the other guy was healing. To avoid this, he runs away from the factory, and starts working at a high end brothel. There, he falls in love, but gets rejected by his lover. Since he cant face her any longer, he goes to work at another factory. However, since he is broke, and won’t receive another paycheck for some time, he asks money from the mother, in which she refuses to give. At this point, he’s quite stressed about the reality of life (he’s likely not used to it because he was the only child in the family, which made him a little spoiled I guess). Furthermore, the guy who cut his hand found the guy who was suppose to compensate him, adding to his stress. Ultimately, he suicided on the factory grounds. I think the combination of being spoiled as the only child and the stress he had while facing reality led to him suiciding. Also, perhaps subconsciously he felt the need to support his family, even though he was broke and was asking the money from the family.