Ellen Liu Oi-Ling

This is apparently a true story about Ching Man Fei, played by the very pretty Alice Lau, who has been blind since six months old and lives with her family in Canton, China. She is about 17 in the role, though Ms. Lau looks older. Ching wants to study, to learn, but her family does not really want that. Throughout the first part of this film, people say to and about her that she is a burden, that she had to do something evil in a past life etc. The family maid Wo becomes the one person who truly believes in her, taking her around the city and answering her questions about everything and eventually being instrumental in her being able to study. The scenes together of Ching and Wo are terrific, you feel the love and trust between them. There are people who pass by in Ching's life, a blind beggar street girl named Jade and a radio actor, who helps her, but their characters are underdeveloped, as if they really were blips in this person's life (perhaps they were).

Chu (Mickey Chu Kin-Kwan) is a young fellow who's made it big in the business world, and makes headlines when he offers a large reward for a special $1000 bill with a personal inscription on it. The bill is a memento of his adolescent friendship with Ching (Athena Chu) and Ricky (Nicky Wu), who were once the best of friends. The three have since gone their separate ways, but Chu holds onto the bittersweet memories of their youth, when the three were inseparable, and saw only bright futures ahead of them. But misplaced emotions and the painful trials of youth split them apart, and now that Chu has finally made it big, he wants nothing more than to see the three reunited. Will the two respond to his impassioned plea to find them once again?

Ching’s mother asks Ching to take her grandmother in until she is sent to a nursing home and that makes her ponder over her relationship with her mother. Three generations of women, each has their own share of pain.

Ashes are all that remain when someone dies, as the rest of us carry on with the remembrance of the past, in the form of things that continue to burden us. Granny Di makes a meagre living out of recycling cardboard and found objects on the street, carrying the ashes of her late husband wherever she goes. As the going gets tough, she is reduced to stealing and selling sacrificial offerings from the funeral home. Ellen Liu plays the desolate and desperate Granny Di, rendering a lively and moving performance with a human touch. The short brings us through the nooks and crannies of Hung Hom district, chronicling a sorrowful tale about forsaken old age.