Xiaomei has been a prostitute in Beijing for three years. Around Chinese New Year, she starts having trouble with her boyfriend, and in an angry frame of mind she decides to go to Beidaihe, a small seaside town, to commit suicide. With the approach of winter, the resort town is covered in ice and snow and the tourists have all left. Xiaomei meets a young man, supposedly a poet. The next morning he is found to have committed suicide. Xiaomei is questioned by Deng, a middle-aged local policeman. He figures out her plan to kill herself and uses very coarse methods to try to stop her. Xiaomei crosses over to Shanghaiguan to carry out the deed, but Deng follows her and brings her back, and their relationship becomes rather complicated. The mystery of all those political secrecies and conspiracies associated with the resort town seems most fitting for the story of a complicated relationship between a prostitute and a corrupt policeman intertwined with power, exploitation, carnal desire and spiritual freedom. The film also explores the irony of how a good deed is carried out by way of a criminal practice, and how death begets life. Zhu Wen: “I consider Seafood a film that looks directly at the reality of contemporary China and represents the painful scream of a truth-seeking and responsible artist. The film was completed under very difficult circumstances. There were many times when I thought I couldn’t finish the film, but then a change would always take place and the situation would resolve itself.“ [aus dem Forumprogramm]