Located in Chongqing, China, ShiBaTi is a slum surrounded by a modern commercial district. Ms Hu, who lives here, earns her living by running inexpensive inns and collecting rubbish. Although the reality of her life is difficult, she uses her poetic imagination to build a gorgeous garden out of discarded rubbish from the commercial district, hoping to redeem herself and her depressive son. But in her son’s perspective, the garden is just a rubbish dump for his mother to escape from reality. With the rapid expansion of modern commerce, ShiBaTi faces demolition. Ms. Hu’s inn and her garden faces relocation, and the son begins to persuade his mother to move away from ShiBaTi.

Filmed over a period of nearly eight years since 2013. the film using Ms. Hu’s garden as a thread, the documentary tracks her and her son’s emotional world and the changes in their lives. It also presents a picture of the lives of the underclass in the rapidly developing Chinese society through the demolition of the slum area ShiBaTi.