For Beijing with Love & Squalor (1997) is a remarkable insider's look at a seldom-seen segment of contemporary Beijing's underground youth culture. The film follows Liu Jianfeng and Zhao Weiqing as they try (unsuccessfully) to start a rock band - undeterred by the fact they have neither musical instruments nor money.
Jianfeng is twenty-six and a self described professional parasite. Since moving to Beijing from Shandong province three years ago , he's supported himself by living illegally in other people's abandoned college dorm beds and borrowing money from various wealthy women, all of whom he calls "girlfriends."
Jianfeng's friend Weiqing is a twenty-three year old senior at Beijing's Central Academy of Fine Arts. Also, from Shandong province, he moved to Beijing to go to art school, where he's enrolled in the classical painting program.
The two are determined to follow their rock star dreams, despite obstacles that might seem insurmountable to others. They've started a rock band called Mercury, which seems like a promising beginning - except that Weiqing can't seem to finish any of the songs he starts writing, and, although Jianfeng (the drummer) has several pairs of drumsticks, he has no drum set - and it's not entirely clear that he would know what to do with one if even he did have one.
Through their eyes, see a riveting and intimate portrait of the new, cynical post-Tiananmen Beijing, a world of chaotic cultural collisions, confused politics, and disillusioned ideals, where, as Weiqing says, only rock music brings "hope for a brighter Chinese future."
For Beijing with Love & Squalor is an award-winning documentary that has screened at numerous film festivals in Europe, Asia and the US, including the 1998 Singapore International Film Festival, the 1998 Taiwan International Documentary Film Festival, Berlin Ethno Filmfest 1999, Ovarvideo Portugal '98, and the 1998 UFVA Nextframe Film Festival, as well as broadcast nationally on Taiwanese public television.