Film Review: Beijing Bicycle (2001) by Wang Xiaoshuai (2025)

A masterpiece of Chinese neorealism

“Beijing Bicycle” (originally “Shiji suide danche”, or “The Bicycle of a Seventeen-Year-Old”) was the third film by Wang Xiaoshuai, who was born in Shanghai in 1966 and originally wanted to become a painter. Awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the Berlinale in 2001, this was Wang’s first film to be “officially” shown abroad. His first film, “The Days” (1993), was a rough piece of independent cinema, made with minimal resources, and was not submitted for censorship. Without approval from the censors, it was (and is) forbidden to be shown in public. It was thanks to non-Chinese friends that “The Days” was able to be screened in the Forum at the 1994 Berlinale. In 1997, this process was repeated with “Frozen”, which was already sensitive due to its political subject matter. It premiered at the Rotterdam Festival, with the pseudonym Wu Ming (“no name”) given as the director’s name.

“Beijing Bicycle” is notable, among many other things, because it was a co-production between the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan and, as was rare at the time, was made with French funding, as were some of Wang Xiaoshuai’s later works. And, which was also rare at the time, it was released in regular cinemas in many European countries, as well as in the USA and Canada.

17-year-old Guei (Cui Lin), a shy country boy, comes to Beijing like many others to try his luck there. It takes a while before he finds work. He becomes a bicycle courier, despite the shockingly poor pay. For each of his often very long journeys he only gets ten yuan. If he one day managed to save up 600 Yuan, that would enable him to buy the silver mountain bike that the company has only lent him, but which he is very proud of. The work is not without mishaps, partly due to his lack of local knowledge, but partly also to his boundless naivety. Nevertheless, he carries on, with his big goal in mind.

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He lives with Mantis (Liu Lei), a friend who runs a small shop and is especially happy when the beautiful Qin (Zhou Xun), who lives in the neighborhood, buys something from him. Just when Guei has almost paid off the 600 Yuan, his bike is stolen one day. He searches half the city, but finding the bike again seems more difficult than finding a needle in a haystack. He is about to lose hope when Mantis, by pure chance, spots a young man riding exactly this bike through the streets. Guei tracks him down and learns from Jian (Li Bin), the new owner, that he did not steal it but bought it at a flea market. Guei urgently needs his bike back. While Jian’s friends harass him and try to force him to buy the bike back, the two young men find an amazing solution – if only for a short time.

Along with Zhang Yuan, Guan Hu, Diao Yinan, the documentary filmmaker Wang Bing, the female director Ning Ying and, perhaps the best known internationally, Jia Zhangke, Wang Xiaoshuai is part of the Sixth Generation of directors in the People’s Republic. Born in the 1960s, they grew up during the Cultural Revolution and made their first films in the early 1990s. They followed in the footsteps of the successful Fifth Generation, of filmmakers such as Chen Kaige, Tian Zhuangzhuang, Huang Jianxin and especially Zhang Yimou. The films of the Sixth Generation, such as Zhang Yuan’s “Mama” (1990) and “Beijing Bastards” (1993), as well as Guan Hu’s “Dirt” (1994), which is set against the backdrop of Beijing’s underground rock scene at the time, and also Wang’s “The Days”, were early examples of what could be called neorealist Chinese cinema: films that dealt with the given circumstances in an unvarnished way – above all with the far-reaching social and economic upheavals in the emerging superpower China.

Subjects that had previously been taboo, such as mental disability, abortion, poverty, drug use or simply political disinterest or a certain rebelliousness, were suddenly present in these films, which the authorities, how could it be otherwise, did not like. Zhang Yuan’s disputes with the authorities, for example, affected all of his early films, especially “East Palace, West Palace” (1996), which explicitly addressed the topic of homosexuality.

In the case of “Beijing Bicycle,” the reference to Italian neorealism and Vittorio De Sica’s masterpiece “Bicycle Thieves” (1948) is very clear and is already given in the title. The topic that Wang touches on in many of his films, including this one, is the traces that decades of Maoist and post-Maoist politics have left in the lives of individuals. Typical of Wang Xiaoshuai is his almost documentary approach. The camera of Liu Jie, with whom he had already worked on “The Days,” is always close to the action, to the characters. Nevertheless, it is clear whose side Wang’s sympathies lie on – this is particularly evident in a scene in which the young bicycle courier is ordered to a nouveau riche club to pick up a package and is treated very badly there.

Another parallel to neorealism is that Wang works almost exclusively with amateurs or practically unknown actors, apart from Zhou Xun, who had played her first leading role a year earlier in “Suzhou River” by Wang’s fellow student Lou Ye.

Like other films by this generation of directors, “Beijing Bicycle” paints a differentiated picture of Chinese society, analyzing its difficulties, desires and moral dilemmas. It is about the radical changes that are clearly overwhelming people, and about real problems in the present.