From one patient to the next

From one patient to the next a film by ZHANG Wenqing

The daily life of a country doctor in the desolate lands of Northern China

The JI family lives in the very depths of Nothern Shannxi, close to the deserts of Inner-Mongolia. While Naiyi and his wife cultivate the desolate land of this deserted area of northern China, he also practices his most difficult profession: that of a country doctor.

Everybody appeals to him and Doctor JI no longer counts the hours he spends at his patient’s bedside nor does he measure the time he spends in the examination of the youngest at the only school of the district. More than treating and curing, he is devoted to relieving the peasants’ sufferings as most of them cannot afford to go to the hospital in the far away town.

Each time death takes its toll, this doctor-philosopher, standing alone on the hilltop, looks down at the haunting procession of the funeral cortège heading towards the graveyard. Fortunately, once back, he will find near his wife a real home sheltered from the harsh nesses of human condition.

This film will give us the opportunity to discover, from one patient to the next, the basis of a country solidarity in a scarcely known Chinese area, where Islam is predominant and where the people seem to go on living according to thousands of years old traditions, even if modernity, little by little, enters life style.