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.