I also want to recommend the companion disc, which I am afraid many of you have ignored. This can be viewed as Tian's working journal, offering an honest paralle narrative to the feature film. Example: "你把那发白的树杈儿啊,抹点儿灰,做做旧."
Tian also faithfully presents his own constantly changing thoughts on the place and the journey. When he said: "how natural this place is; no SARS, either", we may echo his sentiment facing such primeval beauty, but this was immediately juxtaposed against the rescue of a peasant woman, who was a victim of a brutal attempted murder in the hands of her own husband. Tian seems to be saying, "here is Pastoral for you!", and we are invited to share in his self-directed irony.
In the companion disc, the camera is also more fixed on the ground, on what is under the feet, instead of full occupation with the breathtaking scenery, as in the feature. There are delicious digressions that did not go into the feature. Examples: (1) Tian's own digression on 划拳: 陕西 vs.河南; 又以全国酒令乱七八糟为有趣---老田诚然妙人也. (2) And the drunk who barged into one of the scenes and must be kept quiet with cigaretts. How can we miss these tidbits? (3) And the Yunnan woman who followed her husband to the territory and open a non-too-successful country restaurant, in order to make money and support their kids' education, but saddened by her separation from them.
However, I do have one fault to pick with this film: the scripts between segments are very silly tiresome: pretentious and semi-illiterate. Wondering whose ideas those are: Tian's cutie-pie little girlfriend? Can't Brother Tian find a lover with more taste?
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