The Road Home (Wo de fu qin mu qin), a film from China based on a novel by Bao Shi, refers to a dirt road from a town to Sanhetun, a mountain village in North China. At the beginning of the movie thirtysomething Luo Changyu (played by Zheng Hao) visits his mother (taking the same road, though he works in a city farther away) because his father has died at the age of 60 due to exhaustion while trying to raise money in surrounding towns to build a new schoolhouse. Changyu has not been to his home village in several years, but he has become relatively prosperous. Upon arriving in the village, the mayor tells him that his 58-year-old mother Zhao Di (played by Zhao Yuelin) wants to follow the traditional custom of having pall bearers carry the coffin from the mortuary in town to the village for burial. Since most of the young men have gone away for gainful employment, there are only feeble older people and young children to carry out the task, the mayor informs Changyu. When Changyu asks his mother to change her mind, she insists on observing the custom and even begins to weave a shroud for the coffin, using a loom that had long been put aside. Changyu then provides occasional voiceovers to accompany a tale of a sentimental love affair, related to him by his mother, with music so touching that many filmviewers will not be able to leave the movie with dry eyes. The story, stretching over a period from 1957, also tells much about changes in China that have affected even the most remote village. The romance starts with a teenage Zhao Di (played by Zhang Ziyi), the prettiest girl in the village, who falls in love with twenty-year-old Luo Yusheng (played by Sun Honglei), who arrives as the first teacher for the village. After doing everything possible to get the teacher’s attention, he realizes how much she loves him. One day he is told to report to the nearby town for questioning, and he is detained. Di then patiently awaits his return, almost as a Madame Butterfly. When he fails to come back at the expected time, she tries to visit him in town but falls on the snowbound road and nearly dies. Yusheng escapes one day to see her, but suffers a two-year imprisonment for the escape. Finally, he returns, they marry (the first in the village to do so without a marriage broker), and for nearly forty years they live in happiness. Changyu, having heard the story of the romance, agrees that the custom of bringing the coffin home on foot must be observed. Although Changyu invites Di to live with him in the city, she declines, wanting to be near her husband’s grave. Di even recalls that his father always wanted his son to replace him as the village teacher when he died; though Changyu went to teacher’s college, he took up another career. Di then says that he will make his deceased father happy by at least teaching in the old schoolhouse one day before returning to the city. Although he is willing to pay the equivalent of US$600 to hire 36 men from the nearby town to carry the coffin in shifts, along with liquid refreshments, Yusheng’s former students and friends agree to do so without payment, preferring that the money be used to build the new school. The following day Changyu conducts class in the old schoolhouse, using a textbook that Yusheng himself wrote, reciting the same words that were spoken by teacher and students on the very first day when he began to teach in the village. Behind the touching story, directed by Zhang Yimou, we realize how many customs are dying out in the new prosperous China, and we see how the picture of Chairman Mao in the school has been replaced by a Chinese flag. At the same time, the prosperity of contemporary China has not yet improved conditions in a remote village, a reminder to filmviewers in the People’s Republic that should not neglect their relatives in the provinces. Yet we also see how the Communist revolution brought education to the rural masses, resulting in upward mobility for those who began their education in one-room schoolhouses with dedicated students and teachers. MH