Stonewalling

Lynn, a young girl who is training to be a flight attendant, discovers she is pregnant. She decides to have the baby in the hope of giving it up for adoption. She hides her "condition" from her loved ones, looking for odd jobs, while awaiting delivery. In Stonewalling, Ji Huang and Ryûji Otsuka return to a character from their previous film The Foolish Bird. Then, Lynn (also played by the fantastic Honggui Yao) was still a student whose first sexual experiences brought pain and disappointment. Now, as an adult, she resolves to decide for herself in a world where, despite loosening of the restrictive “one-child policy,” childbirth is often seen as extravagant. When our daughter was five years old, she often asked us a question: Mommy and Daddy, why did you give birth to me? recalled Ji Huang. And although Stonewalling is not an autobiographical film, it was the experience of parenting that allowed the directorial couple to ask questions about why women in China so rarely choose to have children, why they have become indifferent to maternity issues, and why the system is still unable to support those who need help the most.