Review from Stanley Yuen

is a film from director Jia Zhangke who was trying to express his feelings and memories of China in the 80s to the 90s during Dang Xiaoping's reform era. The four main characters were art workers at their twenties who were relatively open minded comparing to the rest of the people in the inland underdeveloped city called FanYeung.

The film was trying to express the impact of the reform era to the city brought by the reform era. The teenagers were trying to follow the foreign new cultures such as styling their hairs, wearing bell-bottom pants, listening to pop music and wish to position themselves as the new era which is outstanding to the traditional working class people. They have lots of expectations to their future which would brought changes to their life, and refuse to face and follow the traditional life they were having.

There are lots of different cultures of China of the era expressed inside the film. From the beginning drama praising chairman Mao, to the CCP's influences to people's life and how the city changes during the revolutionary growth of China. Most of them were remarkable memories of director Jia. By watching the life of the four characters was like living in the era.

also pointed out some of the social problems during the reform. There is a touching theme about a mid-twenty uneducated teenager signing a contract with the coal mine who couldn’t understand the harsh and unacceptable conditions on the paper, but he had no choices but signing it as that was the only way he could earn money to live on and support his family. It also showed that education was not guaranteed for everyone, there is a huge gap in between the educated and uneducated people.

The director named the film because he saw those young characters as a train who was full of hope to the future, and they are running hard from the current platform to the ultimate platform representing their new life in the new era. However, even they were in the train full of hopes, the next platform was too far away for them to reach, it seemed a destination that they could never reached. As they have to face the reality of the life and at certain point they had to give up their longed dream and follow everyone else's path to live at their original life. The ending theme expressing the hopeless character had to finally gave up chasing his dream to the new life and built up his family at PanYeung to live the traditional life as his last generation.