Cotton Fleece: Magical Gaomi County

Cotton Fleece

Directed by Li Youqiao
Written by Mo Yan
Starring Su Youpeng
Ning Jing
Tuo Zonghua
Release Year 1999
Running Time 90 minutes
Language Chinese

Cotton Fleece, a movie adapted from a synonymous novel by Chinese author Mo Yan, was directed by famous director LI Youqiao (director of Postmen in the Mountains), starring by Ning Jing, Su Youpeng, etc. It was released in 1999.

The story happened a few decades ago in China’s Gaomi county, famous for its production of cotton. Ma Chenggong, a seventeen-year-old country youth, had crush on a girl named Fang Biyu, who was beautiful, righteous and brave. They were lucky to leave the cotton fields and went to work in the cotton manufacturing factory. In this factory, they met many different people, such as Li Zhigao a proud and talented youth, Sun Hedou a demobilized soldier, Sun Honghua the daughter of the township leader. Their life began to be changed in this place.

Mo Yan’s novels are of rich colors, unique imageries and different senses. Mo created an artistic world called Northeast Gaomi Township, which is just like the magic town Macondo in One Hundred Years of Solitude. Some critics said that Mo Yan is China’s Gabriel García Márquez. Because of his unique creating techniques, Mo Yan has good reputation in Chinese literature. On October 11, the Nobel Prize in Literature 2012 was awarded to Mo Yan "who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary".