RADISH

During China''s collectivist era in the later 1950s, a rural work team set to repair a river floodgate receives a new labour recruit: Hei-hai, a skinny, sorry, silent boy.

Assigned to pump the bellows at the worksite forge, Hei-hai proves indifferent to pain or suffering, but eerily sensitive to the beauties of the natural world. As the worksite becomes embroiled in human jealousy and strife, Hei-hai''s eyes remain trained on a world that only he can see, searching for wonders that only he understands.

One day, he finds all that he has been seeking embodied in the most mundane and fragile of objects: a radish.