Tian Zhuangzhuang
Zhang described that To Live is the film he felt the strongest connection to because of the Cultural Revolution background in the film. The political background of Zhang’s family was the label “double-counterrevolutionary”, which was the worst kind of counterrevolutionary. Different from other fifth-generation filmmakers such as Chen Kaige and Tian Zhuangzhuang, Zhang was in a desperate state and cannot trace back things that were lost during the Cultural Revolution.  Zhang said “For me, that was an era without hope – I lived in a world of desperation”.