It was the middle of a global pandemic. Movie theaters in China had only just started creaking their doors open after months of silence. Then came National Day 2020. While most of the world was still figuring out how to do Zoom calls without lagging, the Chinese box office exploded. The reason? A massive, star-studded anthology called My People, My Homeland.
Honestly, it shouldn't have worked as well as it did.
Anthology films are notoriously hit-or-miss. You usually get one great segment, two mediocre ones, and one that makes you want to check your phone. But this film was different. It wasn't just a movie; it was a massive cultural pulse-check. Following the footsteps of its predecessor, My People, My Country (2019), this 2020 sequel shifted the lens from grand historical milestones to something much more intimate: the dirt, the villages, and the weird, stubborn love people have for their hometowns.
The Five-Headed Monster of Chinese Cinema
To understand the scale of My People, My Homeland, you have to look at who was behind the camera. We aren't talking about indie directors. We are talking about the heavy hitters of the industry. Zhang Yimou—the man who basically defined modern Chinese cinematography—served as the executive producer. Under him, you had directors like Ning Hao, Chen Sicheng, Xu Zheng, Deng Chao, and even the duo of Jia Zhangke and Zhang Yibai involved in different capacities.
Think about that for a second. That's like getting Spielberg, Scorsese, Greta Gerwig, and Taika Waititi to all contribute thirty minutes to the same project.
Each segment tackled a different geographical region. You had the "Beijing Good Person" story by Ning Hao, which brought back Ge You as the lovable, slightly bumbling Zhang Beijing. Then the film bounced to the Guizhou mountains, the eastern lakeside villages, the desert of Shaanxi, and the cold, sprawling northeast. It was a massive logistical nightmare that somehow felt cohesive. Why? Because the core theme was "poverty alleviation," which sounds like a dry government pamphlet, but the directors treated it like a comedy-drama.
They chose to laugh.
Instead of heavy-handed melodrama, the film leaned into the absurd. Take Chen Sicheng’s segment, "A Journey Back to the Village." It’s basically a sci-fi mystery set in a rural town. He used his Detective Chinatown sensibilities to turn a story about rural innovation into a "UFO" investigation. It was weird. It was colorful. And people loved it because it didn't feel like a lecture.
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Why the Audience Actually Showed Up
Box office numbers don't lie, but they also don't tell the whole story. My People, My Homeland raked in over 2.8 billion RMB (roughly $422 million USD). That’s a staggering amount for a film released when international travel was basically dead.
The secret sauce was nostalgia.
In 2020, people were stuck. They couldn't travel easily. For millions of migrant workers in cities like Shanghai or Shenzhen, the idea of "home" felt further away than ever. The film acted as a digital tour of the countryside. It tapped into a very specific feeling called xiangchou (homesickness). But it wasn't the sad, weeping kind. It was the "remember that crazy uncle in my village?" kind.
The segment "The Last Lesson," directed by Xu Zheng, is widely considered the emotional anchor. Fan Wei plays an elderly teacher with Alzheimer’s who can only remember a specific day in 1992 at a rural school. His son tries to recreate that rainy day in the now-modernized village. It’s a tear-jerker. But it works because it highlights the massive gap between the "old China" and the "new China." It showed the audience that while the buildings changed, the people—and their weird quirks—stayed the same.
The Technical Reality: Not All Segments Are Equal
Let's be real. If you watch the film today, some parts feel a bit like a tourism commercial.
The Shaanxi segment, "The Way Back," featuring Deng Chao and Sun Li, is visually stunning. The golden deserts and the reforestation efforts are cinematic gold. However, the plot is a bit thin compared to the nuance of Ning Hao’s opening. Ning Hao is a master of the "small person" narrative. He focuses on a guy trying to use his medical insurance card to help his uncle. It’s gritty, it’s funny, and it feels lived-in.
Then you have the northeast segment, "The Ma Liang of My Hometown," starring Shen Teng and Ma Li. These two are the kings of Chinese comedy. They play a couple where the husband pretends to be in Russia for an art program but is actually working as a village official. The physical comedy is top-tier. But underneath the laughs, it deals with the very real brain drain happening in rural provinces.
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The movie manages to balance these tones, but it’s a precarious act. Sometimes the transition from "slapstick comedy" to "sobbing emotional climax" happens so fast it gives you whiplash.
The Controversy of "Mainstream Melodies"
In the West, we often label these films as pure propaganda. It's a bit more complicated than that.
While My People, My Homeland definitely aligns with national narratives about rural development, dismissing it as just "politics" ignores why it resonates with actual humans. You can't force people to spend $400 million on a movie they hate. The film succeeds because it centers on the individual. It’s about the teacher, the fake UFO hunter, the dishonest but well-meaning nephew.
Critics often point out that the film glosses over the harsher realities of rural life—the genuine struggle, the lack of resources, the isolation. That’s a fair critique. The film presents a "glossy" version of the countryside. Everything is a bit brighter, the roads are a bit smoother, and the problems are always solved by the end of the thirty-minute runtime.
But for an audience coming out of a traumatic year, that’s exactly what they wanted. They didn't want a gritty documentary. They wanted to see their culture celebrated on a big screen with high production values.
Lessons for Content Creators and Filmmakers
What can we actually learn from the success of this film?
First, the power of the "Ensemble." By pooling resources, these directors shared the burden of the box office. If one story flopped, the next one could save it. It’s a diversified investment strategy for cinema.
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Second, localization matters. My People, My Homeland used local dialects. It featured local food and specific regional jokes. In a world of globalized, "bland" content, people are starving for something that feels specific to their corner of the world.
Third, humor is the best vehicle for a message. If this movie had been a three-hour drama about irrigation systems, nobody would have watched it. By making it a comedy, the creators bypassed the audience's natural cynicism.
Practical Takeaways for Your Watchlist
If you're looking to dive into this genre or understand modern Chinese cinema, don't just stop at this movie.
- Watch the Predecessor: My People, My Country (2019) focuses on big history. It's the "macro" view, while Homeland is the "micro" view.
- Follow the Directors: If you liked the "Beijing Good Person" segment, go watch Ning Hao’s Crazy Stone. It’s a masterpiece of black comedy.
- Look for the "Third Part": The trilogy actually continued with My Country, My Parents (2021), which focuses on family legacies.
- Pay Attention to the Music: The soundtracks for these films are intentionally designed to trigger nostalgia, often using folk elements mixed with modern orchestral swells.
The impact of My People, My Homeland is still being felt in how films are marketed in Asia. It proved that you can take "official" themes and turn them into "popcorn" entertainment. It’s a weird, colorful, occasionally sappy, but undeniably impressive feat of filmmaking that captured a very specific moment in time.
To really appreciate the film, you have to look past the subtitles and the political context. Look at the faces of the characters. They are people trying to do right by their families while navigating a world that’s changing way too fast. That’s a universal story, whether you’re in a Shaanxi village or a New York apartment.
If you haven't seen it, find a streaming version that preserves the original dialects. The subtitles often miss the puns, but the emotion is impossible to misinterpret. Check out the "Last Lesson" segment first if you want to see the best of what this format can offer.