“Achim, you must put your shoes on and you must go to the factory”, Rainer shouts down the phone. Because once again the Chinese are doing just as they please – in this case importing a Dortmund coking plant, once the most modern in the world, which is soon to supply coke to Germany from China. What is now being dismantled and covered in Chinese characters was once, in Achim’s and Rainer’s eyes “the most beautiful thing in the world”. They’ll be hanging up their helmets on the proverbial peg. But before they do, they’re making life as tough as possible for those who are shipping their jobs away, with German rules and registrations, forms and certification procedures. If nothing else works, they simply cut a length off a ladder. Not easy to supervise, these Chinese who slog seven days a week from dawn till dusk for starvation wages, fight the good fight to achieve targets and by way of thanks get to be photographed with a gigantic red sash, and are severly punished if they go absent – while their manager dreams of his new Mercedes.
This is a film about globalisation that needs no words, nor to travel the globe. Close to the people, this is a linear account which translates the culture clash into laugher and tears by such devices as the pointed use of (Far Eastern) music.
