An autistic child, a determined mother, the whole world against them. In the city of Shenzhen – a symbol of the Chinese economic miracle, a place where human solidarity has trouble coexisting with the obsession for material wealth – nine-year-old Xihe has a routine made up of small rituals that allow him to live an apparently normal life. His mother Tian Lin has taught him how to get ready every morning and go with her on the train to the elementary school where he is loved by his teacher and classmates, but where he often gets into trouble.
Tian Lin works in a bank, her husband installs air-conditioning, they are part of the urban middle-class heading for a future of economic and social well-being. But the birth of an autistic child changes everything, especially for Tian Lin. She comes from a rural village, where she left behind her mother and brother – the latter also with an acute form of autism – to escape the life that seemed to be her destiny. She was conceived not out of love, but so that, as an adult, she could look after her brother, forced to live in a cage like an animal to avoid him getting into trouble with the other inhabitants of the village.
But Tian Lin rebelled against the life mapped out for her, wanting to take control of her own life. And she also wants Xihe to be in control of his own destiny, starting by not attending a “special” school, but one for “normal” pupils, something that is not easy in a society which, in the words of the doctor who cares for Xihe, “without tolerance becomes autistic itself.”
With every incident at school – when Xihe begins to scream if the teachers suddenly decide to change the lesson plan, throwing the boy’s dependency on routine into crisis, or he accidentally injures a classmate – the parents’ of the other pupils protest to the teachers, who want to help Xihe and his mother, but need to take heed of the other parents’ wishes.
The only person who shows understanding is the grandmother of another pupil with autism, one who has reached puberty and is unable to control his sexual urges in class. But the solidarity between the two women struggles in the face of the narrow-mindedness of the majority, which increases: despite Tian Lin trying to win over the other pupils and parents with gifts, pleads frantically to the school principal, distributes a door-to-door petition to the obstructionist parents, both children are expelled.
They have been excluded from the “normal” life which Tian Lin and Xihe envision when they look back at the schoolyard. Even Xihe’s father wants to send him to a “special” school where he will be accepted. But Tian Lin does not give up the fight: the right to education is the same for everyone, and Xihe will never learn to live in a world if he is excluded from it.
The woman makes a dramatic decision: attracting the attention of the media, she forces the community and the authorities to discuss the issue of diversity, of tolerance and, as a result, the rights of minors against the will of the masses. Because even more restricting than the metal cage that encloses Tian Lin’s brother is the psychological cage that imprisons humans.