My Father and I 2003

Jing Xu Jinglei is a Beijing teenager who is suddenly left without a mother after a traffic accident. Jing’s mother Su Xiaoming is part of the past that casts a shadow over her present. Her father, Lao Yu Daying Ye, with whom she has had little contact, becomes her guardian. He is unsure how to navigate fatherhood, and his flaws—gambling, small-time black market deals, and long nights at a bar with other men who live similar lives—shape their early years together. This unstable dynamic culminates in his arrest and time in prison, a rupture that forces Jing to navigate life largely on her own.

During his absence, Jing graduates from high school and begins university, and she starts living with her boyfriend, a hot-tempered student from Hunan. When Lao Yu is released, their relationship grows tense, his past neglect weighing on Jing, and his worries about her living arrangement adding strain. She and her boyfriend leave Beijing for Shanghai, where Jing becomes pregnant. When the relationship doesn’t work out, she returns to Beijing to live with her father, who supports her through the pregnancy and helps raise the child. Yet Lao Yu never fully reforms and continues to sneak out at night to gamble.

One night, his friends barge into the game, pretending to be police; the stress triggers a stroke, leaving him unable to care for himself. Jing steps into a caregiver role, nursing him at home while tending to the baby, clinging to hope for his recovery. But the stroke proves permanent, and the family must navigate a new, quieter reality where love, duty, and memory struggle to coexist.