In this long-form visual essay, the freshness and innocence of youth ebb and flow to the beat of the capitalist system. Spring is the first part of Wang Bing’s immersive Youth trilogy, and it documents relationships as they fold and unfold amongst a group of young Chinese textile workers. Filming over five years in Zhili, a town located 150 kilometres from Shanghai, Wang’s empathetic camera focuses on the labourers toiling under tungsten lighting, producing brightly coloured children's clothes in factories lining the paradoxically named ‘Happiness Road’. The stamina of Spring – and all involved in it – allows for humanity to flourish in otherwise merciless industrial conditions, giving the film its unique lyricism. As J. Hoberman notes, for Wang, there is a correspondence between spring as a natural season and the idea of youth as a ‘life-season … a state of being’: in Mandarin, the words ‘youth’ and ‘spring’ are nearly synonymous. Here, geographical dispersion, financial insecurity, and family tensions run alongside the rampant seasonal demands of clothing production.
