The Bird People in ChinaMovies like The Bird People in China
- Key Features:
- Exploration, Cultural clash, Yakuza, Quest, China, Accidental discovery, Gangster, Adventure, Friendship
- Tone:
- serious, poetic
- Target Audience:
- Art house enthusiasts, World cinema fans, Adventure seekers
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Disorientation → Wonder
The Bird People in China

Wada, a salary man, is enlisted to venture off to China to investigate a potential Jade mine. After his arrival, Wada encounters a violent, yet sentimental, yakuza, who takes the liberty of joining his adventure through China. Led on their long and disastrous journey to the mine by Shen, the three men come across something even more magical and enticing.
The Bird People in China
Three men living in the Eastern most island of China go on a road trip to the Western most end of the country, and facing crises of love, friendship, and faith on their journey to the West.

An overstressed American businessman and a French chambermaid make a connection at an airport hotel in Paris.

A young boy and a girl with a magic crystal must race against pirates and foreign agents in a search for a legendary floating castle.

Tang Ren and Qin Feng travel to Japan to investigate the death of a mafia head. As they suspect foul play, they engage in a battle of wits against foreign detectives.

Asian Hawk leads a mercenary team to recover several lost artifacts from the Old Summer Palace, the bronze heads of the twelve Chinese Zodiac animals which were sacked by the French and British armies from the imperial Summer Palace in Beijing in 1860. Assisted by a Chinese student and a Parisian woman, Hawk stops at nothing to accomplish the mission.

A simple Chinese immigrant wages a perilous war against one of the most powerful criminal organizations on the planet.

Nishi is a loser who has a crush on his childhood girlfriend. After an encounter with the Japanese mafia, he journeys to heaven and back, and ends up trapped in an even more unlikely place.

Five men plot to steal a large sum of money from the local yakuza, but everything does not go as planned and the men find themselves hunted down by contract killers.

Mining engineer Shigeru investigates the disappearance and death of his fellow coworkers when prehistoric nymphs are discovered emerging from the mines. After an attack on the local village, Shigeru heads deeper into the mines only to make a more horrifying discovery in the form a prehistoric flying creature. Soon a second monster appears as the two converge in Fukuoka.

Tang Zhijun, an editor of a science fiction magazine, attempts to find signs of an alien civilisation. When a strange young man claims to have received instructions from aliens, Tang and his team follow him in search of extraterrestrial creatures.

A young Japanese woman named Yoko finds her cautious and insular nature tested when she travels to Uzbekistan to shoot the latest episode of her travel variety show.

Tokyo, Japan, 1989. Lucy Fly, a foreigner who works as a translator, begins a passionate relationship with Teiji, a mysterious man obsessed with photography.

An archeologist noticed that the texture of the relics discovered during the excavation of a glacier closely resembled a jade pendant seen in one of his dreams. He and his team then embark on an expedition into the depths of the glacier.

A Japanese assassin stranded in Taiwan must take work from a local crime boss to make ends meet when suddenly a woman from his past delivers a son to him.

With a price on his head, Ichi seeks tranquillity in a favorite village. Since his last visit, it has fallen prey to Boss Masagoro, the son of a merchant rumored to have stolen gold from the shogunate. The boss has hired Yojimbo as his hard-drinking enforcer, but Yojimbo is both a spy for the shogunate, trying to find the gold, and in love with the merchant's unwilling mistress, Umeno. Ichi hires on as the merchant's masseur and buys Umeno's freedom with his employer's own money. This embarrasses Yojimbo who withdraws from a pact with Ichi to stir up trouble between father and son and their gangs. As the two sides fight, Ichi finds the gold and sets up a final set of confrontations.

Brash, loudmouthed and opportunistic, Kikujiro is the unlikely companion for Masao who is determined to see the mother he has never met. The two begin a series of adventures which soon turns out to be a whimsical journey of laughter and tears with a wide array of surprises and unique characters along the way.

Pan Xiao, a young lawyer, goes to a rural small village settled in the western desert lands of China to handle the case of a falcon poacher who has ran over a policeman. Pan wins the case through sophisticated reasoning and forces the poacher to give him his car as a reward. Then, he just drives back home, but the return will not be an easy one.

Hubert is a French policeman with very sharp methods. After being forced to take 2 months off by his boss, who doesn't share his view on working methods, he goes back to Japan, where he used to work 19 years ago, to settle the probate of his girlfriend who left him shortly after marriage without a trace.

Tatsuhito, a cop, pursues Chinese warlord Wang through the underworld of Shinjuku and over to Taiwan.

A comedy that chronicles a chance encounter between Robert and a Chinese named Jun who wanders lost through the city of Buenos Aires in search of his uncle after being assaulted by a taxi driver and his henchmen.

Majime, an eccentric man in publishing company, who has unique ability of words, joins the team that will compile a new dictionary, The Great Passage. In the eclectic team, he becomes immersed in the world of dictionaries. But the team is overwhelmed with problems.

Takada, a Japanese fisherman has been estranged from his son for many years, but when the son is diagnosed with terminal cancer his daughter-in-law, Rie, summons him to the hospital. Through a series of obstacles and relationships, he is brought unexpectedly closer to both an understanding of himself and of his son.

Three years after the infamous Dragon Inn was burnt down in the desert when its innkeeper Jade vanished. A new gang of marauders had taken over - innkeepers by day and treasure hunters by night. The inn is the rumoured location of a lost city buried under the desert, and its hidden treasure would only be revealed by a gigantic storm every 60 years. The gang used the inn as a front to locate the lost treasure.

When George Tanner does business with high-ranking Yakuza Tono, Tono kidnaps his daughter, and George summons his old friend, private eye Harry Kilmer, to Japan to investigate.

Dragon and his madcap pal Cowboy spend their days getting into mischief, frustrating the elders, chasing girls, and competing in the village sport. When Dragon overhears a fiendish plot by smugglers to sell China's national treasures overseas, the pair leap into action. Also, Cowboy's wealthy father is kidnapped by the villainous and lethal Big Boss, and the scene is set for a furious martial arts showdown.

A motley group of Chinese prisoners held in the US is sent on a covert mission with the promise of a pardon: to go deep into Vietnam and destroy a secret depot of missiles that the US left behind during the pull-out.

A terrorist group invades a laboratory containing a deadly bacteria and destroys the lab with an explosion. They later announce via the internet they have gained possession of the bacteria and declare themselves to be the Red Siamese Cats, a terrorist group that was eradicated a decade ago.

A nameless ronin, or samurai with no master, enters a small village in feudal Japan where two rival businessmen are struggling for control of the local gambling trade. Taking the name Sanjuro Kuwabatake, the ronin convinces both silk merchant Tazaemon and sake merchant Tokuemon to hire him as a personal bodyguard, then artfully sets in motion a full-scale gang war between the two ambitious and unscrupulous men.

Life has not been kind to drinking buddies Sam, Fai, and Mok as they struggle to make ends meet, until one stormy evening a mysterious old man appears before them in a bar with a 'get rich quick' scheme: an ancient treasure is buried under a high-security government building.

When a fellow scientist asks for Jack's help in locating the mausoleum of China's first emperor, the past collides violently with the present as Jack discovers his amazing visions are based in fact.

An American woman is stranded in Tokyo after breaking up with her boyfriend. Searching for direction in life, she trains to be a ramen chef under a tyrannical Japanese master.

A samurai's path leads him to a young waitress whose hometown was destroyed by a dragon. He doesn't want any trouble — but it finds them anyway.

When a series of martial misunderstandings spirals into an international incident, a Chinese martial arts student struggling to relate to his new Japanese wife is forced to take on seven of Japan's most powerful martial arts masters, each an expert in a different discipline, ranging from karate to samurai to ninjitsu.

A boss of a toy corporation, Chenggong Li, tries to head back to Chan Sar to celebrate the Chinese New Year with his family. However, plans don't go as smoothly after he crosses paths with a stranger, Geng Niu.

When a tough yakuza gangster is betrayed by his bosses, it means all out war. Bodies pile up as he takes out everyone in his way to the top in a brutal quest for revenge.

Chen Sheng goes off in search of his nephew who has been abandoned by his father. Along the way, he encounters numerous people from his past and also those from his future.

In the suburbs of Rome two very different souls intersect. One is the son of a restaurant owner who disappeared with his lover. The other is a young mysterious woman who has arrived from China in search of her missing sister.

There's a crisis in the Chinese Spirit World -- humans don't believe in gods anymore! A Door God, facing unemployment, ventures into the human world to prove his worth, leading to unexpected encounters and transformations for humans and spirits alike.

In dreamlike mountain scenery, Toshiko makes a daring escape from her sexually warped Uncle Sonezaki. Fortunately, she met Samehada as she runs for her life, which is also escaping from some slayers. What follows is a wild chase that leads the audience into a comically violent world.

When Xu Lai goes on vacation with his wife and extended family, he gets a chance to meet his former lover. However, his brother-in-law foils his plans and he becomes a suspect in a murder case.

Blind traveler Zatoichi is a master swordsman and a masseur with a fondness for gambling on dice games. When he arrives in a village torn apart by warring gangs, he sets out to protect the townspeople.

Set in Han Imperial China, the plot follows the adventures of enslaved girl Ping with ancient dragon Long Danzi. Dragons had been banished from the kingdom. Ping, an orphan, finds one of the last remaining dragon eggs. Palace guards force Ping to run away in order to return the dragon egg to the ocean and save all dragons from extinction. Ping discovers that she is a true Dragonkeeper.

Ashitaka, a prince of the disappearing Emishi people, is cursed by a demonized boar god and must journey to the west to find a cure. Along the way, he encounters San, a young human woman fighting to protect the forest, and Lady Eboshi, who is trying to destroy it. Ashitaka must find a way to bring balance to this conflict.

Sandy, a geologist, finds herself stuck on a field trip to the Pilbara desert with a Japanese man she finds inscrutable, annoying and decidedly arrogant. Hiromitsu's view of her is not much better. Things go from bad to worse when they become stranded in one of the most remote regions on Earth.

Two professors team up to locate a lost treasure and embark on an adventure that takes them from a Tibetan ice cave to Dubai, and to a mountain temple in India.

Nobita finds a stray dog and brings him home, little does hi knows that the dog is actually a prince in his homeland, a world appart deep in the african 'Smokers Forest' were the dogs evolved and have their own empire, so he and his friends take on a journey to take back the young prince to his homeland but when they get there things have changed.

Masato is a young ramen chef in Japan. When he finds his late mother's journal after the sudden death of his emotionally distant father, he takes it with him to her native country, Singapore, hoping to piece together the story of his family and his life.

French silkworm trader Hervé is married to the beautiful Hélène. When an outbreak of disease ravages European silkworms, Hervé must travel to Japan to retrieve healthy eggs. After a long journey, Hervé finally arrives at a village where he can buy them. He becomes infatuated with a young concubine and goes to great lengths to see her again. But, when war breaks out in Japan, the concubine flees, forcing Hervé to return home to his wife.

Two alchemist brothers go on a quest for the Philosopher's Stone after an attempt to revive their dead mother goes horribly wrong.

A Japanese master of ninjutsu and a Chinese expert in kung fu, put their differences aside after their master is killed by a mortal enemy.

A military explorer meets and befriends a Goldi man in Russia’s unmapped forests. A deep and abiding bond evolves between the two men, one civilized in the usual sense, the other at home in the glacial Siberian woods.

A warrior-in-training and his bumbling friends go in pursuit of a stolen sword.

During the Ming Dynasty, Tso Siu Yan, a power-crazed eunuch who rules his desert region of China as if he were the Emperor, ruthlessly thwarts plots against him and sets a trap for one of his enemies at the Dragon Gate Inn.

Kuno purchases a strange egg, believing that the mysterious powers of the legendary Phoenix will help him defeat Ranma. But when the egg hatches on his head, the bird goes out of control and wreaks havoc all over Tokyo. Ranma and the gang must use any means necessary to get the Phoenix to leave Kuno's head and fly away.

On the Hokkaido frontier, a war veteran and Ainu girl race against misfits and military renegades to find treasure mapped out on tattooed outlaws.

A look at modern-day life in China's capital centered on a ménage-a-quatre involving a young woman, her boss, her husband and her boss's wife.

Beleaguered police detective Nishi takes desperate measures to try and set things right in a world gone wrong. With his wife suffering from leukemia and his business partner paralyzed from a brutal gangster attack, Nishi borrows from a yakuza loan shark and then robs a bank to clear his debt.

After handing in a report on the treatment of Chinese colonial labor, Kaji is offered the post of labor chief at a large mining operation in Manchuria, which also grants him exemption from military service. He accepts, and moves to Manchuria with his newly-wed wife Michiko, but when he tries to put his ideas of more humane treatment into practice, he finds himself at odds with scheming officials, cruel foremen, and the military police.

Australian authorities arrest a man believed to be connected to the Sydney criminal underworld and send for Inspector Fang Sing Leng from Hong Kong to question him. After the alleged criminal is assassinated, Inspector Leng and the Sydney police try to hunt down those responsible and hope to solve their case along the way.

A study of the friendship between a Chinese woman and a fisherman who came to Italy from Yugoslavia many years ago, who live in a small city-island in the Veneto lagoon.

A group of travelers is stranded in a small country inn when the river floods during heavy rains. As the bad weather continues, tensions rise amongst the trapped travelers.

A Chinese emissary is sent to the Gobi desert to execute a renegade soldier. When a caravan transporting a Buddhist monk and a valuable treasure is threatened by thieves, however, the two warriors might unite to protect the travelers.

Hired by a Spanish baron, Hong Kong treasure hunter Jackie, a.k.a. "Asian Hawk" and his entourage seek WWII Nazi gold buried in the Sahara Desert.

The students of Suzuran High compete for the King of School title. An ex-graduate yakuza is sent to kill the son of a criminal group, but he can't make himself do it as he reminds him of his youth.

A railroad worker in China in 1941 leads a team of freedom fighters against the Japanese in order to get food for the poor.

During the marijuana bonanza, a violent decade that saw the origins of drug trafficking in Colombia, Rapayet and his indigenous family get involved in a war to control the business that ends up destroying their lives and their culture.

The film revolves around a mysterious girl named Éclair who appears before Fairy Tail, the world's most notorious wizard's guild. She lost all of her memories, except for the imperative that she must deliver two Phoenix Stones somewhere. The stones may spell the collapse of the magical world, and Natsu, Lucy, and the rest of the Fairy Tail guild are caught up in the intrigue.

A Japanese Yakuza gangster's deadly existence in his homeland gets him exiled to Los Angeles, where he is taken in by his little brother and his brother's gang.

In the town of Saima, when summer is about to begin, a group of six high school students intend to live a secret adventure by spending seven carefree days in a ruined mining facility.

The story follows a trio of Japanese youths of Chinese descent who escape their semi-rural upbringing and relocate to Shinjuku, Tokyo, where they befriend a troubled Shanghai prostitute and fall foul of a local crime syndicate. Like many of Miike's works, the film examines the underbelly of respectable Japanese society and the problems of assimilation faced by non-ethnically Japanese people in Japan.

In 9th century China, a corrupt government wages war against a rebel army called the Flying Daggers. A romantic warrior breaks a beautiful rebel out of prison to help her rejoin her fellows, but things are not what they seem.

The Batman family has returned to the present to discover that Japan has disappeared, and a giant island - Hinomoto - is now in the sky over Gotham City. At the top sit the Yakuza, a group of superpowered individuals who reign without honor or humanity and look suspiciously like the Justice League. Now, it’s up to Batman and his allies to save Gotham!

Alan gets a map to some war treasure which the Japanese army left behind on a small Pacific island at the end of World War II. But some gangsters try to steal the map from him and so he hides on Charlie's boat which just leaves the harbor. He manipulates the ship's compass so that Charlie is not aware that he is sailing to the treasure island. But when they step on the island, they discover that it is not as abandoned as they believed: there are some natives - and a Japanese soldier still defending the treasure

Thousands of years ago in ancient China, a man fights against his destiny. He wants another chance to be reunited with his loved one and he gets that chance, in a far away place and a far away time, in modern Finland.

Cousins Thomas and David, owners of a mobile restaurant, team up with their friend Moby, a bumbling private detective, to save the beautiful Sylvia, a pickpocket.

While trying to free her sister from Fahai's clutches, Xiao Qing winds up in a dystopian city and meets a mysterious man who can't recall his past life.

One day a young woman named Blanca is saved by Xuan, a snake catcher from a nearby village. She has lost her memory, and together they go on a journey to discover her real identity, developing deeper feelings for one another along the way. But as they learn more about her past, they uncover a darker plot of supernatural forces vying for power, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.

Shiba, a wandering ronin, encounters a band of peasants who have kidnapped the daughter of their dictatorial magistrate, in hopes of coercing from him a reduction in taxes. Shiba takes up their fight, joined by two renegades from the magistrate's guard, Sakura and Kikyo. The three outlaws find themselves in a battle to the death.

Falsely accused for cheating in a martial arts competition, two boyhood friends are banished from their Shaolin Temple and go their separate ways. As adults, they join opposing sides in a civil war. When one betrays the other, they settle their differences mano-a-mano.

In Burma during the closing days of WWII, a Japanese soldier separated from his unit disguises himself as a Buddhist monk to escape imprisonment as a POW.

So goes to the U.S. to open a martial arts school. Around this time, many Chinese people were sold off to U.S. railroad companies, and were brutally treated by the Americans under the harsh working conditions. Thus, the American workers' hatred towards the Chinese immigrants is high. As a result, So gets into trouble with the Americans and the mob, and calls Master Wong for help.

Two contract killers cross paths in the middle of the same job and realize they are childhood friends. Together they take a break from killing and visit the small island they once called home. After reflecting on their past lives they decided to team up and use their talents in killing for good... much to the upset of the crime syndicates.

When João goes to Brazil in search of a better life, he meets punk music enthusiast Maria and falls in love with her. But his involvement in the local drug trade makes him the target of a vicious drug lord.

Three American tourists follow a mysterious map deep into the jungles of Japan searching for an ancient temple. When spirits entrap them, their adventure quickly becomes a horrific nightmare.

A-yuan and A-yun are both from the small mining town of Jio-fen. They move to Taipei, where A-yuan is an apprentice by day and goes to night school, and A-yun works as a helper at a tailors. Everyone thinks they are meant for each other, and so do they. They fail to see time and fate are beyond their control.

In Japan, scientifically advanced invaders from the war-destroyed planet Mysteroid cause an entire village to vanish, then send a giant robot out to storm the city by night, after which they request a small patch of land on Earth and the right to marry earthling women, claiming to be pacifists. Mankind must decide whether to capitulate or to resist.

A middle-aged office worker encounters aliens and is gifted with alien technology and limitless powers.

Three thieves try to steal a valuable jade that is tightly guarded by a security chief. But the security guards are not the only obstacle these thieves are facing. An extremely unlucky internationally known master thief is also trying to get a hand on this piece of precious jade. What would be the final destination of this piece of crazy stone?

Two warriors in pursuit of a stolen sword and a notorious fugitive are led to an impetuous, physically-skilled, teenage nobleman's daughter, who is at a crossroads in her life.

A spectacular journey of an unwilling young hero thrust into a mysterious past full of monsters, dragons, and strange hidden powers. Through a series of out of this world battles and adventures, Jun, a shy middle school boy, is transformed into a hero destined to battle evil and ensure harmony and tranquility in the world.

A young adventurous panda travels from China to Africa to rescue his best friend, Jielong the Dragon, who has been kidnapped. On his journey, he discovers a strange amazing new world of mountains, deserts and jungles.

Set in Qin Dynasty during the warring states period in ancient China. Shin was a war orphan. He has a dream of becoming a great general Shin has a fateful encounter with young King Eisei. King Eisei aims to unify all of China.

A shaman from the South American rain forest visits France for a public relations campaign. In a hotel's elevator in Paris he meets a French good-for-nothing named Perrin he's fascinated with. He follows Perrin to his flat and although Perrin is not very enthusiastic about so much interest in his person, he lets the shaman spend the night in his flat. After an official meeting on the next day being part of the PR campaign the shaman suffers from a heart attack. Hardly being able to speak and laying in a hospital bed he demands to see Perrin. The latter is not very interested in meeting the shaman again. However it looks like it is to late for animosities as the shaman and Perrin seem to be tied mentally somehow since they've met in the elevator.

Luo Hongwu returns to Kaili, the hometown from which he fled many years ago. He begins the search for the woman he loved and whom he has never been able to forget.

Frustrated with her mundane life, a Tokyo office worker becomes obsessed with a fictional movie that she mistakes for a documentary. Fixating on a scene where stolen cash is buried in North Dakota, she travels to America to find it.

Kei is the experienced leader of a team of pickpockets — also known as "Sparrows" in HK slang. He enjoys a carefree lifestyle taking photos. One day a dashing beauty, Chun-Lei, suddenly appears in Kei's viewfinder. Kei is mesmerized. But behind Chun-Lei's attractive facade lies a mysterious past and a mission to set herself free.

During the Japanese occupation of China, two prisoners are dumped in a peasant's home in a small town. The owner is bullied into keeping the prisoners until the next New Year, at which time they will be collected. The village leaders convene to interrogate the prisoners. The townspeople then struggle to accommodate the prisoners. One is a bellicose Japanese nationalist, the other a nervous translator. Will the townspeople manage to keep the prisoners until the New Year?

Liam Liu unwittingly gets involved with a high school girl. He suddenly has to go to China after learning from his father that he has inherited his grandmother's home in Shanghai. He's not very appreciative of his Chinese roots, and at first, only wants to sell the house and get back to the U.S. as fast as possible. He gets a taste of the Chinese culture and ends up having some big decisions to make.

In the city of Yokosuka, Kinta and his lover Haruko, both involved with yakuza, brave the post-occupation period with a goal to be together.
