to me, a somewhat meaningful and touching show.
PLOT
Eight-year-old Jin-Er (who goes by the nickname Big Ears) lives with his parents and his sixteen-year-old brother Jin-Yi in a shoe shop on Wing Lee Street in late 1960s Hong Kong. Jin-Er looks up to his brother, who is a champion runner at the local high school, earns top grades, is a talented musician, and is very popular; Jin-Er's parents and teachers often scold him for not being as good as his big brother. Jin-Yi has a girlfriend, Fang Fei, who comes from a wealthy family, and whose family moves away to the United States to escape the "lawless" situation in Hong Kong. Jin-Yi gradually becomes aware of the inequalities in Hong Kong society of that time, both through interactions with a cocky British policeman who extorts money from his father in exchange for letting them keep their shop (and who insists that Jin-Yi will never "make it big" because his English isn't good enough) and through his first time seeing the inside of Fang Fei's family's mansion. Most of this is told through Jin-Er, the film's narrator.
Not long before Fang Fei leaves, Jin-Yi's grades start declining and he takes third place in a race he had hoped to win. One day he collapses suddenly after a typhoon nearly destroys the family's house, and his father takes him to the hospital, where he is diagnosed with leukemia. His parents search for a doctor who can cure him but find none, and his condition worsens until he has to remain in the hospital, where the nurses treat him poorly and extort money from his parents in exchange for basic care. Jin-Er, who spends much of his free time stealing trinkets around town, tries to offer them all to his brother in attempt to cheer him up, but Jin-Yi doesn't accept any of them. Fang Fei returns from the United States and visits him in the hospital, where they share their first kiss, but Jin-Yi dies shortly thereafter. Years later Jin-Er, narrating retrospectively, remarks that "time is the greatest thief". In the film's final scene, Jin-Er and his mother are shown visiting Jin-Yi's grave, and Jin-Er, now a teenager, recounts a lesson Jin-Yi had taught him about double rainbows.
