Liu's second film and the first under government approval, Two Great Sheep can be located as part of a broader trend of independent Chinese filmmakers switching their focuses to state-approved productions during the early years of the 21st century.

[2] Besides Liu, these years saw many of the leading figures of the "sixth-generation" turning in their first SARFT-approved productions, including Jia Zhangke (2004's The World), Zhu Wen (2004's South of the Clouds), and Wang Xiaoshuai (2005's Shanghai Dreams).

[1] The film follows a peasant couple, Zhao Deshan (Sun Yunkun) and his wife Xiuzhi (Jiang Zhikun), living in rural Yunnan province near Zhaotong in southern China.

Their lives are thrown into upheaval when the local mayor (Chen Dajiang) "rewards" them with two foreign sheep donated by a former villager, now an official in Beijing.

[1] The New York Times critic Stephen Holden aptly summed up the two ways of viewing Two Great Sheep: as either "an uplifting fable about teamwork and good citizenship or as a spoof of a frightened society's blind obedience to authority.