| Director | Zhang Yibai |
|---|---|
| Genre | drama film, romance film |
| Runtime | 93 min |
| Country | People's Republic of China |
Jianbin (Geng Le) and Xiaohui (Xu Jinglei) are a young couple living in Beijing who have been married for seven years. As the film starts, the couple has begun to grow bored with their existence bringing their relationship to an impasse. Xiaohui, who works at a designing firm, tentatively begins a flirtatious relationship with one of her customers, Lao Hu, a coffee-shop owner (played by director Zhang Yang). Jianbin, meanwhile, has recently been laid off, though he keeps it a secret from his wife by dressing for work every morning, hiding his briefcase in a public bathroom and riding the Beijing metro for most of the day.
While riding the subway every day, Jianbin (and the audience) becomes aware of various romances and relationships blossoming around him. Wang Yao (Fan Wei), a thirty-four-year-old cook is despondent when his blind date, Li Chuan (Wang Ning), is seriously injured in a natural gas explosion. Meanwhile, a fellow subway passenger, a health food saleswoman (Ke Lan) who hawks her goods every day on the same subway car, discovers her boyfriend has been cheating on her and has decided to leave her. The unlikely pair of the cook and the saleswoman eventually find love and become engaged to be married. Another relationship also begins in the subway between Da Ming (Tu Qiang), a young man, and a photo-development salesgirl, Tian Ai (Gao Yuanyuan). The man, painfully shy, takes pictures of himself with a note asking to meet the girl, but he flees at the last moment. When Tian Ai finally finds and confronts him, he is too ashamed to speak but manages to communicate to her his cell phone number as the train pulls away.
As for Jianbin, his life seems to spiral more out of control. Unable to pay the rent, and quickly running out of money, he also becomes aware that his wife may be having an affair, though Xiaohui keeps her relationship with Lao Hu strictly platonic. Jianbin, however, tells his wife that his "work" has decided to send him to France for training, and he begins to contemplate leaving Xiaohui while he visits the blinded schoolteacher after learning about her from Wang Yao. Pretending to be the cook, the two begin a close friendship. After Jianbin decides to confront Lao Hu in a scene where he lights the latter man's newspaper on fire, Jianbin and Xiaohui's relationship seems to be on the brink of self-destruction, as neither is willing to reveal the truth about themselves. Xiaohui, however, finally learns that Jianbin has lost his job and has been riding the subway for the past six months from Wang Yao, just as Jianbin leaves for his "trip." Instead of heading to the airport, Jianbin heads to the hospital to see Li Chuan's bandages to come off. But he leaves before she can see him, as Jianbin realizes that he still loves his wife. Xiaohui and Jianbin then meet in the same subway station where they first arrived in Beijing seven years ago as the film ends.