A dentist''s girlfriend with cavities, an elderly career criminal with no-one to turn to but the police, a dismissed housemaid on the way to a back-alley abortion clinic and a crane operator who's never had a man treat her right, for whom gold is cashed-out love.

These are the stories of the people from China's liminal sprawl, who seek a fresh start beyond a neglected countryside that''s no longer home and a metropolis indifferent to their existence. As each small cruelty only compounds their humiliation, will their hopes pan out, or are the gates to a new future rusted shut?