This documentary film follows the lives of workers behind the rise of Chinese manufacturing.
An assembly line worker in an Apple factory who commits suicide at the young age of 24, leaving behind 200 poems of despair-"I swallowed an iron moon....."; a guileless lathe operator who is rebuffed at every turn, living in the world of his poetry; a female clothing factory worker who lives in poverty but writes poetry rich in dignity and love; a coal miner who works deep in the earth year round, trying to contact and make peace with the spirits of his dead coworkers through his poetry; and a goldmine demolitions worker who blasts rocks several kilometers into mountainsides to support his family, while writing poetry to carry the weight of his fury and affections-"My body carries three tons of dynamite...." They could be any of the 350 million workers in China, and yet these five are also poets. Using poetry as a tool to chip away at the ice of silence, they express the hidden life stories and experiences of people living at the bottom of the society.