Yong, 14 years old, lives with his parents in a remote village in northern China. He loves the land he tends to and the animals he cares for, but he hates school and the town he goes to school far away. He decides to tell his parents he wants to drop out of school and come back home to be a farmer. They are furious because they have spent a lot of money to educate him and are counting on him to have a better life for all of them. After a violent argument, Yong runs away from home into the bleak wild and the empty road along, he feels freedom.