Chingming Festival is one of the most important festivals for Chinese people. It not only provides a specific time for us to remember our ancestors, but more importantly, it makes us realize that we must cherish our relatives who are still alive. In the Chaoshan area, which values family values, Tomb-Sweeping Day is almost like a mandatory day for family reunion. For some elderly people living alone in rural areas, this is one of the few days in the year when they can see their children and grandchildren. The original intention of creating this film and script came from my discovery that there are many elderly people living alone in my rural hometown, and they have lived in this small village almost all their lives. They don’t know how to use smartphones, they don’t understand how to watch TV, also they have almost no ability to interact with the outside world. Their children and grandchildren will choose to leave here for work and livelihood, go to work in a more prosperous city, and choose to settle there. The situation of these elderly people living alone is actually the same as that of their ancestors who were in their graves. They miss their families so much, but they can only have the opportunity to see them during the Qingming Day. In fact, my grandma and uncle are one of the groups of elderly people living alone. All the characters in this film are not played by professional actors, but are all my relatives. The main characters in the film are my uncle and grandma, and the shooting locations are places where they live their daily lives. In fact, what happens to the characters in the film is what they find themselves in real life. My grandma can only see us once or twice a year. Once, she said: "Every time you come back, you leave within a few days, then leaving me alone waiting for you to come back again." It's hard to imagine that she spent a year in anticipation, but that's the reality. I chose to create this kind of story about Chaoshan rural, not only to express myself, but also to record my family through the lens. Maybe in the future, when we or our next generation miss them, we can at least see them through this film. Therefore, in the film, I chose to deliberately remove the strong dramatic contradictions, restore the daily life of the people living in this area from an objective perspective, and show how they miss their children and grandchildren in daily life.
