Jalainur
Jalainur (a Mongolian word meaning “ocean-like lake”) is a colliery in Manzhouli City of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Located in the northernmost part of China, near the border of China and Russia, Jalainur is an open-pit colliery with over-100-years of history, where you can still see the unusual sight of steam trains in service.
100 years of exploitation has made a huge pit in the ground of the colliery, where the steam trains rumble day after day. Now the “huge pit” is almost empty, the steam trains will be retired, and a large number of colliery workers are facing the crisis of being laid off.
The idea of this film comes from an old Chinese saying, “Even if I can accompany you for one thousand miles, finally we must bid farewell.”
The two protagonists of this film are Old Zhu, a steam train driver, and his apprentice, Li Zhizhong, a train signalman, they have worked very closely together. They are inseparable, both at work and around the colliery after work.
However, one day Zhizhong finds that his old friend is not driving the train and is not at the colliery where he has worked for over 30 years. It transpires that Old Zhu has decided to retire a few weeks early and has just left to be with his daughter, who lives with her husband very near the border.
Zhizhong gets on the road and starts to follow Old Zhu. Old Zhu tries to convince Zhizhong to turn around and go back, but at the same time, he emotionally hesitates to really let him go. Zhizhong manages to follow Old Zhu all the way and finally decided to let go and leaves him at the moment that Old ZhuÂ’s daughter and her husband shows up.
Zhizhong wanders around at the border, he misses the train to go back to work that day.
The entire film is shot on actual location in Jalainur.