High Life

“I wear a condom when I write my poetry” . . . Dian Qiu, a policeman working as a guard in a Guangzhou prison is also an aspiring poet. He writes “trash poetry” as a means of liberating his spirit, and forces his prisoners to read the verses out loud in a desperate and cruel bid for meaning. In a crowded village slum across town, a scam artist named Jian Ming sets up a fake employment agency, hoodwinking new arrivals from the countryside. His girlfriend, a mistress kept by a wealthier patron, pleads with him to run away with her. Instead, hoping instant success can cure his sense of aimlessness and failure, he hooks up with a pyramid scheme. In this southern city in which power and money have sullied every corner of life, Jian Ming can find meaning only in the daily Chinese opera routine he performs on his rooftop.