Taking Father Home

Xu Yun leaves his rural Sichuan village, carrying only a basket with two ducks and a knife engraved with his father's name. He is driven by the memory of a vanished father and a desire to find the man who raised him, both in memory and myth. The journey begins toward Zigong.

A scar-faced older man boards Xu Yun's bus to Zigong and offers hard-won street wisdom. He captures a pickpocket for a reward and muses that the desperate carry a different courage. He also helps Xu Yun find a place to stay, but soon leaves, and Xu Yun is left to fend for himself again.

Trust proves fragile as Xu Yun is kicked out after the mentor's departure and ends up at the police station. The urban edge of Zigong reveals itself in a tense, impersonal system that knows more about danger than any map. This marks the start of Xu Yun's fragile homelessness.

A police officer offers Xu Yun shelter for a night and urges him to return to his village in the morning. The kindness is practical and brief, a reminder of the limits of mercy in a hard city. Xu Yun refuses to erase his choices and leaves the officer's shelter with renewed determination.

A radio broadcast reveals that the scar-faced man is now wanted for murder, reframing Xu Yun's perilous journey. The news deepens the sense that the city will not be kind to him or his father figure. The pursuit grows more urgent as the story tightens around him.

The officer takes Xu Yun to a quieter riverside enclave to escape the city's gravity, and Xu Yun dives into the water as a moment of calm. Yet in a cruel twist, the officer is ambushed by a gang, leaving Xu Yun to witness violence from the water's edge. The episode seismically marks Xu Yun's precarious position in Zigong.

In a hospital, Xu Yun overhears a woman speaking to his father on the phone, glimpsing a possible thread to the man he seeks. This hint of a lead is tantalizing, even as the city pressure closes in around him. The moment hints at a potential reunion that remains out of reach.

Xu Yun follows the woman to her home as a flood warning blares through the city, heightening tension and closing doors. The narrative also casts the scar-faced man’s fate in a stark light, as he is beaten by a gang and hauled away in a van. The river and rain mirror Xu Yun's unsettled state.

Back at the hospital, evacuation procedures seal Xu Yun off from the outside world and muddle any chance of a quiet search. The city’s storms intensify the sense of irreversible consequence surrounding his quest. Xu remains determined despite the isolation.

Xu Yun returns to the river and frees the two ducks, releasing the weight of his urban burdens. The act reads as a cleansing, a symbolic shedding of the life he carried through Zigong’s maze. The river's memory begins to shape his next choices.

At his father's house, the father’s stepmother reveals where to find him, and Xu Yun confronts his father under siege by creditors. The father does not recognize him, inviting him inside only for a rare moment of shared humanity before the looming storm. Xu tries to coax him to return to the village.

In a brutal turn, Xu Yun leaves the shack with blood on his hands and finds his father dead, a price paid to a city’s merciless economy. He discards the knife engraved with his father's name, letting go of a symbol that bound him to the past. The moment crystallizes the cost of this quest.

The film shifts to black and white as floodwaters swallow the city’s edge, erasing the night’s violence like a chalk line wiped clean by nature. Xu Yun rides the bus back toward the village, as the city’s memory tries to rewrite what happened. The visuals suggest a cleansing by forces larger than him.

On the return bus, Xu Yun catches another pickpocket, earning a reward that mirrors the earlier city encounter. The cycle of swift justice punctuates his conversion from vulnerability to quiet agency. The journey marks a new balance between memory and action.

Back in the village, Xu Yun buries a lock of his father’s hair with some money, a personal ritual to anchor memory in the home that could not save him. The camera lingers on Xu Yun’s bloodied hand, signaling the enduring price of his voyage. The river’s current remains a patient witness to loss and resolve.