Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl

Xiu Xiu trusts the peddler because he offers her the only glimmer of hope after learning she cannot return to her cavalry unit. After six months in the countryside, her dream of leading an all-girl cavalry is shattered, and the peddler's promises of a way out feel like her only escape route. Her desperation to leave outweighs her judgment, leading her to believe his romantic promises.

Earlier, Xiu Xiu's entire sense of purpose was built around returning to her cavalry, so when that collapses, she becomes vulnerable to any offer of escape.

Xiu Xiu becomes pregnant after the traveling peddler seduces her. He promises to help her escape and return home, but after their encounter, he vanishes entirely, leaving her alone and vulnerable without any real help.

The peddler's initial appearance with stories of escape sets up the betrayal that follows.

Lao Jin agrees to kill Xiu Xiu because she directly asks him to end her life rather than let her suffer further. After experiencing repeated exploitation, trauma from the abortion, and being raped at the hospital, she sees no way out and begs him to shoot her dead instead of merely injuring her foot to trigger a medical return home. Lao Jin, who has been her protector throughout, responds to her desperate request in a final act of mercy.

Earlier, Xiu Xiu had contemplated shooting her own foot to force a return home, showing how far she has fallen into despair.

At the hospital, Xiu Xiu undergoes a traumatic abortion after becoming pregnant from the peddler. Immediately after the procedure, she is raped by a patient who deliberately injured himself to obtain disability benefits in the state-controlled economy. When Lao Jin confronts the rapist, he is restrained by other patients, and the doctors cruelly mock Xiu Xiu, suggesting she enjoyed the assault.

The hospital, which should be a place of healing, becomes the setting for her further victimization, reinforcing the film's theme of institutional indifference.

The patient rapes Xiu Xiu because he deliberately shot himself to obtain disability benefits, revealing the desperate and dehumanizing environment of the hospital. His act of self-harm for personal gain reflects the corrupt moral landscape that surrounds Xiu Xiu, and he exploits her vulnerability while she is physically and emotionally weakened from the abortion.

The self-harm for benefits hints at the broader societal decay and moral distortion that enables the exploitation of women like Xiu Xiu.

No one helps Xiu Xiu because the institutions and people around her are either indifferent, exploitative, or powerless. The doctors mock her assault, the patients either participate in her exploitation or restrain her protector, and the men who approach her only seek to satisfy their own desires while making hollow promises. The social system during the Cultural Revolution has left her without legitimate avenues for escape or protection.

From the moment her return is forbidden, the narrative establishes that Xiu Xiu has been discarded by the system with no recourse.

Xiu Xiu's original goal was to study horses for six months and then return to lead an all-girl cavalry unit. She envisioned this as a temporary assignment with a clear purpose, learning horsemanship so she could return to Chengdu and command her cavalry, giving her life meaning and direction.

The collapse of this dream after six months when she learns she cannot return is the catalyst for her downward spiral.

Xiu Xiu asks Lao Jin to kill her because she has lost all hope of escape or meaningful life. After the peddler abandons her, she is exploited by multiple men, suffers a traumatic abortion, and is raped at the hospital. She had earlier considered shooting her own foot to force a medical return home, but eventually realizes that even that plan offers no real escape, she would merely return to a life without dignity or purpose. Death becomes her only perceived way out of suffering.

Her earlier contemplation of self-harm to trigger a return establishes her desperate mental state.

Lao Jin kills himself immediately after killing Xiu Xiu because he cannot live with the weight of having murdered the person he was meant to protect. Throughout the film, he has been her guardian and mentor, and fulfilling her request to end her life breaks him completely. His suicide represents the final destruction of any hope or meaning he had left, as his role as protector has been utterly shattered.

Earlier scenes show the deep bond between mentor and pupil, making his inability to survive after her death emotionally inevitable.

The ending, where Lao Jin kills Xiu Xiu and then himself, signifies the complete failure of protection and care in a system that abandons vulnerable individuals. Their bodies together in the hospital room create a stark final image that underscores the film's exploration of exploitation, powerlessness, and the devastating cost of neglect. There is no rescue, only mutual destruction born from impossible circumstances.

The film consistently erodes hope at every turn, making this tragic finale inevitable rather than shocking.