Successful Chinese Movie《Dying to Survive》is sensitive and refreshing: a middle-aged loser, while facing his wife divorce petition and bankrupting business, tried to ‘rescue’ himself by smuggling unlicensed medicine from Indian into China. The medicine was 8 times cheaper than the licensed one in the market and saved thousand of life. The new business improved his living and that of the underdogs helping him. Awakened because of his conscience, he later decided to sell the medicine at a loss in order to save more lives. At this point of time, the Police received complaints and started to crack down his illegal business. The supportive patients, in great despair, went to beg the Police to stop the action as this ‘hero’ was saving their lives…

Apart from numerous awards, the movie earned box-office receipts as high as around US$400,000,000. Chinese movies in recent years are mostly commercial copycats and in lack of creativity, originality and sincerity. This amazing sad comedy, produced by Xu Zheng and directed by Wen Muye, has brought an encouraging outlook to the stodgy Chinese movie industry (Dying to Survive ).

For me, the movie’s success is not so much attributed to its artistic values. In fact, the movie is simply solid, straightforward, and fast-paced. The most astonishing charm is its touching story and acting of the actor Xu Zheng which displayed concern and love for the under-privileged class in China.

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