Fashion designer YYY is traveling in her car toards the countryside.

She speaks of the

tranquility of little villages hile driving. Just before a turning the camera moves outside
the car, hich disappears in the background unveiling a middle age man holding a plastic
bag. The man starts alking on a muddy road and leads us to the village of XXX, here the
second part of the story begins. YYY is an internationally appreciated designer, whose
clothes are exhibited in sophisticated performances in Paris. Her clothes are inspired by
the garments worn by miners at work. The middle age man at the border of the street is
one of those miners who inspire YYY designs. He leads us to a small workshop where a
woman fixes a pair of worn out trousers.
A fictional device the man waiting on the border of the street to lead us to the second
part of the film is used to introduce a character whose reality is the source of a fiction
that has produced another reality (quite remove from the so-called original). The
document puts the fiction into perspective, only though through the reminder that a link
between the two can only be established by crafting another fiction.
This kind of subtle play on the limit between fiction and document marks most of Zhang
Kes work, both in outright fictional films and in his documentaries.