As China’s rapid economic development has reshaped its cities, a growing number of people have been pushed to the margins of society, gradually disconnected from the mainstream. Behind the rising skylines and uniform urban aesthetics, urban villanges (城中村) persist as transitional spaces. These villages expose the structural tension between modernization and displacement, where economic progress often prioritizes efficiency and visual order over social continuity.Within this context emerge the so-called “Sanhe Gods” (三和大神), a loosely defined group of migrant workers who travel from rural or semi-urban regions to megacities such as Shenzhen in search of opportunity. Many of these migrant workers ultimately fall into a state of extreme precarity: lacking permanent housing, surviving on minimal food intake, and relying on energy drinks to sustain themselves, and often ended up from Sanhe youths（青年） to gods （大神）(metaphor for not eating being like a god) .

 

Through this trajectory, we examine how external structural forces, such as labor commodification, urban planning policies, and economic stratification, shape individual lives. Rather than framing marginalization as personal failure, the film situates it within broader systems of development, questioning who truly benefits from rapid modernization and who is rendered invisible in the process.