Inspiration
Wang has stated that inspiration for The Days came from a variety of sources. One of those was, of course, the harsh reality of his situation. Wang realized that a large-budget film would be impossible and therefore became interested in the small-scale, independent features. Beyond pragmatics, with The Days, Wang Xiaoshuai was consciously rebelling against the films of the period. In particular, the early 1990s was a high point for many "Fifth Generation" directors, whose lavish period films, like Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern or Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine received critical accolades on the international circuit. Wang, however, found them "unnatural and pretentious." As such, he set out to create a film that spoke to the contemporary Chinese generation. As Wang himself has said, "there may not be an obvious story line in The Days, but at least it presents the truth about the lives of people from my generation in the wake of the Tiananmen Square tragedy."
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