The movie King of Yak, which premiered on Monday, shares the human story of an East China county cooperating with a remote county in Northwest China in the grand national strategy of developing western regions.
King of Yak portrays coordinated development between China’s eastern and western areas with Yangxin county in the Shandong Province city of Binzhou aiding Qilian county in Qinghai Province.
Poster of King of Yak
Qilian has a vast number of yaks and Tibetan sheep. But due to its remote location and sophisticated landscape, exporting the animals to other parts of China was once difficult.
Yangxin county brought thousands of yaks and Tibetan sheep to Shandong to help alleviate the poverty of Qilian county, promoting resource sharing between two places and assisting the industrial transformation of two provinces.
Since the project was initiated, Yangxin has bought 4,331 yaks and 650,000 Tibetan sheep with the total sales revenue reaching 550 million yuan. Peasants in both Qinghai and Shandong increased their incomes by 27 million yuan as of 2020.
King of Yak tells the story of Gesang, a Tibetan boy, searching for his beloved bovine, the king of yak. He travels between Qinghai and Shandong with truck driver Jin Wu. During the adventure, Jin Wu helps him find back his yak friend.
Li Moyan directs the movie with actors Zhang Guoqiang and Wang Dazhi taking the leading role. The story stresses friendships between people of different ethnic groups, echoing Chinese President Xi Jinping’s saying that "the people of all ethnic groups are tightly held together like pomegranate seeds.”
