Trama

Zhou Yu, a beautiful artisan, indulges in a torrid affair with Chen Ching, her poet-lover. United by their passion, he finds in Zhou the ultimate muse, while she believes Chen to be her ideal soul mate.

Zhou Yu, a ceramic decorative artist, travels twice a week from her home town of San Ming to Chongyang to visit her boyfriend, Chen Qing, a government worker and budding poet. The two met at a dance while Chen Qing was in San Ming, his old home town, on a business trip. She is the inspiration for the best of his poetry. Zhou Yu is a strong willed woman, whereas Cheng Qing is a sensitive soul. These differences in addition to the growing disparity in their life situations places an unspoken strain in their relationship, despite each truly loving the other. As such, Zhou Yu befriends Zhang Qiang, a veterinarian who travels on the same trains as her. Like Zhou Yu, Zhang Qiang is a strong personality whose emotional temperament more closely matches hers. Ultimately, the three, individually and collectively, have to decide if, and if so how each of the others fits into his/her future life, especially as Cheng Qing has to make a further decision about his professional life.—Huggo

Twice a week, Zhou Yu (Gong Li), a beautiful artisan, takes the train to faraway Chongyang, where she indulges in a torrid affair with Chen Ching (Tony Ka Fai Leung), her poet-lover. United by their passion, he finds in Zhou the ultimate muse, while she believes Chen to be her ideal soul mate. But accompanying Zhou on her long, lonely train rides are two individuals who threaten to derail her romantic idyll: Zhang Qiang (Honglei Sun), a young doctor hopelessly obsessed with her, and Ziu (Li, in a dual role), a mysterious young woman who bares a striking resemblance to Zhou and seems to be following her every move. A passionate tale of one woman's search for perfect love, ZHOU YU'S TRAIN is a sensual evocation of distance and time, reality and imagination, where the only thing that's truly real is what's in one's heart.—Anonymous

Zhou Yu, a ceramic artisan in China's rural Northwest, has a deep rapport with Chen Qing, a shy sensitive poet. Taking a long train ride every weekend just to make mad passionate love with him, her longing seems insatiable. Until one day, she meets the hedonistic vet Zhang Qiang and begins a torrid affair, which takes her to another train station, and another level of lust. Driven by the locomotive of love and desire, she hustles through a dark tunnel of no return.—taipansmith@lycos.com