Part documentary and part video diary, Apartment captures the late-night gatherings of men at a deserted construction site in Beijing. The short is Wang Haiyang’s response to the often ignored lives of social and economic outcasts in contemporary China. The sparse bits of dialogue share slices of the men’s experiences as they exchange greetings and candidly express their feelings and desires. The construction site can be seen as a symbolic limbo in which those who gather there are the “phantoms” of the city. The dilapidated surroundings form a stark contrast with the high-rise buildings in the distance, which seem to promise a life that is always just beyond reach. Captured on location and played over the end of the video, the somewhat unrefined melody of Zhang Dongling’s pop ballad Come to See Me When the Flowers Bloom (2014) is another indicator of the marginalized social status of these men
