In a rural primary school, eight-year-old left-behind girl Xiaoya was mocked for capturing spring inside plastic bottles. Yet these misshapen containers hold a heavy secret: one filled with loess from her hometown, another with dried peach blossoms, and an old MP3 player recording the crickets’ chirps of summer nights.
Amid the cold, harsh sprawl of Shenzhen, Xiaoya’s parents drift through concrete and steel, bearing daily insults and crushing pressure. After her father sighed, “Not even weeds can grow in the city—our hearts are growing sick,” Xiaoya resolved to pack up spring from their hometown and send it to them.
Late at night, in their cramped rental room, the worn-out, numbed parents opened the parcel. The earthy scent of soil and the sound of their daughter’s tender voice shattered all the humiliation they had endured through the day. The two marginalized adults, adrift in the city, broke down in tears, clinging to those plain plastic bottles.
Set against the stark contrast of soft natural white noise and the thunder of heavy industry, the film tells a poignant yet tender story: no matter how towering the concrete skyscrapers rise, the human heart will always need to find its anchor in the soil.