Small angle, wide view

Writer Wang Anyi finds the drama of life in its fine details as she examines social changes, she tells Mei Jia.

In a quiet corner in the heart of downtown Shanghai, a handsome young man with a stutter reaches a tacit friendship with an elderly button-shop owner, who finds it difficult to speak long sentences after a stroke and has opened the shop to sustain himself and kill time.

Both struggle to get others to understand them, but they come to know each others' hearts through simple words.