Peacock

The film opens in a late 1970s small town, showing a middle-aged couple with three children. The eldest Weiguo is obese, mentally challenged, and a constant target for taunts, while Weihong is lively and determined. The youngest, Weiqiang, is an introvert who feels trapped by his family's misery.

Weihong begins work at a nursery, but a few days later she loses her job after dropping a child. After watching army officers parachute from a plane, she walks to the landing field to watch them. Inspired by the sight, she develops a crush on one officer and contemplates enlisting, though she never follows through.

To recreate her dream of flight, Weihong knits a makeshift parachute and straps it to her bike. The bold stunt catches the eye of Guozi, a boisterous factory worker, who follows her with interest. She momentarily entertains the idea of giving him gifts bought with her mother's money but decides not to after seeing him with other classmates.

Weihong forms a father-daughter bond with an old man who plays the accordion, whose presence gives her a sense of belonging. The old man's children suspect her motives and assault her at the factory, revealing hostile gossip surrounding her. Through her parents' connections, she meets a district leader's driver and marries him on the condition she secures a new job; before leaving, she gives her older brother a watch and says goodbye to her family.

Meanwhile, Weiguo's life remains fraught with bullying, though his parents shower him with attention. At a bathhouse, a firecracker is set off in his cigarette, triggering a seizure. The incident underscores the family's fragile balance and foreshadows further conflicts.

After the seizure, Weihong asks Guozi to avenge Weiguo by beating the bully, placing pressure on Guozi to act. Guozi agrees at first but backs off, leaving Weihong frustrated and angered. The moment marks the beginning of the siblings' spiraling grievances within their community.

When Weiguo brings Weiqiang an umbrella to school, he is accused of peeping outside the girls' bathroom and is beaten by a group of boys. Weiqiang is publicly ridiculed as well, fueling resentment between the brothers. Despite the crowd, one girl helps Weiqiang out of pity.

Out of contempt, Weiqiang denounces Weiguo before everyone and stabs his leg with the umbrella. The ostracism that follows isolates Weiguo, while Weiqiang becomes increasingly alienated from his peers. The one benevolent girl’s aid is followed by a betrayal that deepens their family rift, leading Weiqiang to contemplate harming Weiguo with poison.

Weiqiang’s plan to poison Weiguo is halted when Weihong intervenes and stops him. That night, their mother publicly demonstrates the danger by making a duck drink the rat poison and watching it convulse and die, exposing the cruelty to the family. The episode leaves the siblings reeling from the violence of their actions.

Weiqiang tries to repair the rift by buying Weiguo a meal and a baby duck, while their parents arrange for Weiguo to meet a girl with a disability. They set up a small food stall, which gradually becomes popular with customers, signaling a fragile reconstruction of family ties.

Weiqiang becomes fixated on the girl who helped him, and his father discovers drawings of naked women in his textbook, nearly expelling him. He runs away from home and disappears for days. Guozi later spots Weiqiang and, with Weihong, follows him to an elderly care home where he is found working there.

Weiqiang boards a train and leaves the town, and Weihong imagines this departure as the realization of her dream that he would become an army officer. The family is left to contend with the absence and the unfulfilled dream.

A few years pass and the parents share a meal again as Weihong returns after a separation from her husband. Weiguo and his wife run a thriving business, while Weiqiang comes back with a wife and son, having lost a finger but not explaining how. He does not work and relies on his wife, who becomes the family’s stage singer.

Weihong spots the army officer she once idolized in the street, but he is now just a regular man in simple clothes. The moment recontextualizes her memories of the dream she chased and emphasizes the distance between fantasy and ordinary life.

In the final scene, Weihong remarries and all three siblings visit a peacock enclosure with their families. They wonder why the peacock won’t display its feathers, and only after they depart does the bird unfurl its plumage, underscoring the gap between dreams and life’s ordinary pace.