but it is...

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Lianqing is a girl from Burma. When she crosses the Thailand border, she dreams about getting a good job to help her family economically. After crossing rivers, riverbanks, thick bunches of reed and dense forest, she has to face many toll gates. Each has its own trick of stripping money off. Then a journey in a two-wheeler; after that, she has to travel hiding in a jeep.

During the journey, she meets a young man Guo who becomes her friend later. Lianqing is driven out as she has no proper travel papers. She has to take the work of cleaning the vessels in a hotel for a pittance. Soon she is driven out from her room. As she has no proper papers, she is arrested. Guo helps her to come out. They live together.

She works in his company. Her only desire is to get proper papers to get some good employment and then try to go to some foreign country. She has an employment card in the mill with a number, but her name is not on it-some other name and some other address. Guo has expressed his love for her by gifting her a gilt chain. He tells her that he would gift her a gold chain later. She has no need for them in the present job, Guo tells her often. But she is spending a good sum frequently to get those papers.

Her recent dream is to get a Taiwanese passport. She gets her food in the mill itself. She has no rest. She receives the shock of her life when the mill shows little care on a colleague of her who had met with an accident during a power cut. She is sent out dubbing that incident an accident. She would be sent out the same way, sometime Lianqing realizes... She may be arrested at any time. Even a case of petty theft may wreck her life. When Guo fucks her amidst trees, she is happy. The smell of money drives her continuously. She goes even to bed for money.

Guo ends her journey by murdering her. The blood coming out of her body splashes on a picture of Buddha. With its detailed explanations of travel, the mode of work and of the police, the film becomes almost a documentary. Guo always dreams about earning more and more money, returning to Burma and putting up a shop there. It tells about the general condition of the migrant labourers who migrate illegally seeking jobs.

The pathetic conditions of the migrants in the European countries the number of people who migrate to these countries, the border crossings that happen in the borders of America and Mexico, of India and Bangla Desh, the migration of the Africans into Italy and the migrations that happen in Burma and Thailand give birth to such films which have some literary value. People with identity cards but no identities wander all over the world.

Written by Subrabharathi Manian

Translated by P. Ramgopal

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