 The title is a synonym for the Chinese harvest season. The harvest is very poor for Cui, a Korean single mother in a hostile Chinese environment. In order to make ends meet she sells self-made snacks along dusty industrial roads. To factory workers, to a policeman who provides her with a license, and to a married man with Korean roots. Her affair with this man leads to heaps of trouble for Cui and her son, who does not understand their clandestine existence. The immobile camera, the strictly observing style and the apparently unruffled characters offer this portrait of a mother on the fringes of an industrial no-man s-land a venomous documentary edge.