Living meagerly in the hope of making enough money off their works, it soon becomes obvious to everyone but themselves that the marriage has begun to die.

Riding the high that Chinese cinema was enjoying abroad at the time (notably by older directors such as Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige), Wang Xiaoshuai's small independent film was an early indication that a new movement was beginning to supplant the old one.

In particular, the early 1990s was a high point for many "Fifth Generation" directors, whose lavish period films, like Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern or Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine received critical accolades on the international circuit.

As Wang himself has said, "there may not be an obvious story line in The Days, but at least it presents the truth about the lives of people from my generation in the wake of the Tiananmen Square tragedy.

Rather than beginning his tenure there, Wang decided to stay in Beijing in an effort to create an independent film.

[4] His tenure at the Fujian Film Studio would be equally brief, however, and by 1992, Wang had returned to Beijing determined to make it on his own.

[5] In the beginning, Wang, along with actor Liu Xiaodong and classmate Zhang Yuan attempted an extremely small-scale production that would eventually collapse.