From one of China's foremost authors, Jia Pingwa's Happy Dreams is a
powerful depiction of life in industrializing contemporary China, in all
its humor and pathos, as seen through the eyes of Happy Liu, a charming
and clever rural laborer who leaves his home for the gritty, harsh
streets of Xi'an in search of better life.
After a disastrous end to a relationship, Hawa "Happy" Liu embarks on a
quest to find the recipient of his donated kidney and a life that lives
up to his self-given moniker. Traveling from his rural home in Freshwind
to the city of Xi'an, Happy brings only an eternally positive attitude,
his devoted best friend Wufu, and a pair of high-heeled women's shoes he
hopes to fill with the love of his life.
In Xi'an, Happy and Wufu find jobs as trash pickers sorting through the
city's filth, but Happy refuses to be deterred by inauspicious
beginnings. In his eyes, dusty birds become phoenixes, the streets
become rivers, and life is what you make of it. When he meets the
beautiful Yichun, he imagines she is the one to fill the shoes and his
Cinderella-esque dream. But when the harsh city conditions and the crush
of societal inequalities take the life of his friend and shake Happy to
his soul, he'll need more than just his unrelenting optimism to hold on
to the belief that something better is possible.
