youthful, perhaps naive, enthusiasm to discover what's on “the other side of the mountain” and Ouyang's own world-weary pessimism. At first, Ouyang indicates that Hong's impulse will always be futile, and the film seems to agree with him, since what has been abandoned always turns out to be exactly what was being sought in the first place. Yet Ouyang also comes to understand that it is this irrepressible desire itself, perhaps because it is naive, that gives meaning to life and that must be indulged if one is to be anything but an empty shell. “Once I could have been like Hong, but I failed,” he tells us bitterly.