Yong Le has left the provinces of southern China to find work in Beijing. He salvages old furniture, which he repairs and then sells, sleeping in a tiny room in the Underground City, a former bomb shelter which gets flooded every time it rains. When he suffers an injury on a building site and nearly loses his vision, Yong has to use a rope to find his way back along the long, dimly lit corridors to his primitive lodgings. He receives help from another basement resident, Xiao Yun, and their ensuing friendship encourages her to find another way to make a living than dancing in a nightclub. Above them on the ground floor lives Lao Jin, an ailing old man who has been struggling with the authorities to get a decent compensation deal for a small house due for demolition. All three characters share their dream of a better life, but the megalopolis sustaining Chinese neocapitalism is unstoppable. The consistent lensing of his characters from above, often viewed as part of a crowd, attests to the pessimism of the director, whose first offering impressed audiences last year at Venice.