Xiau Wu is a small town pickpocket in crisis. A local cop is out to get him. An old thief friend snobs him since turning entrepreneur. And Mei Mei, the local Karaoke hostess, is stringing him along. A visit to his parents in a neighboring village could push him over the edge. In any case it’s time to Xiao Wu think about his future. The film starts out looking like an exercise in grungy social realism but gradually reveals itself to be something much more surprising. The eponymous protagonist is a scummy-but-likeable petty criminal, a pickpocket preying on visitors to Fengyang, the provincial dirt-town he calls home. But times are hard and getting harder: his best friend is suddenly a model entrepreneur and doesn’t want to know him any more, his family is falling apart, the leggy Mei-Mei from the local karaoke hostess bar seems to be stringing him along, and the cops are launching a crackdown on crime in the streets… The film’s turning-point is a scene in a public bath-house where Xiao Wu, alone, does what he has always refused to do in the karaoke bar: he sings his heart out. From this scene on, the film leaves mere sociology behind.
