By CCTV.com Panview editor team     

Editor’s foreword: "Looking China" International Youth Film Project is co-organized by the Academy for International Communication of Chinese Culture (AICCC), Beijing Normal University and Huilin Foundation, which aims to showcase the contrasting simplicity and glamour, the antiquity and fashion of China through unique perspectives of young foreign film makers.

The film Alice, directed by Beakar Cheakasvill, follows a middle-aged woman who shows Beijing a smiling face, but she’s a worried mother.

Alice is a tourist guide showing visitors scenery in Beijing, including the Great Wall. In the video, she marches a group of middle school students up the Great Wall.

She feels tremendous pride in her job and eats healthy meals to avoid sick days, because she has to foster her daughter, who is a diligent student. She needs to give RMB4,000 per month to her daughter to cover all her expenditure including accommodations, tuition fees and medical fees to cure her eyes. 

She explains that’s why she can’t miss work or make mistakes even for one day. She is a mother who devotes much to her daughter, one typical representative of Chinese mothers.

Alice speaks constantly about her daughter, but she never appears on film. Her daughter lives in a one-room apartment alone. The mother appears to live alone as well. With loneliness comes sadness. And this is part of the real life of ordinary people here in Beijing.

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