It grabs you in the first minute because nothing moves the way animation is supposed to move. This is paper-cut work out of the Shanghai studio era, jointed figures sliding across the frame like a folk theater troupe, and it makes the whole thing feel older and stranger than any cel could. The gag at the center is pure children's-storybook logic played completely straight: the old fisherman hauls up a painted bowl, and the boy on the glaze steps off it to fish pearls out of nothing while the lamp burns. Then the missionary shows up claiming the bowl belongs to his people, the local authority backs him up, and the short quietly sharpens into something with teeth. Watch what the boy does with his fishing line when the thieves finally reach for the bowl. Twenty minutes of woodblock-colored spite, and it still lands.

After a day without a single fish, an old fisherman pulls a lovely bowl out of the sea and carries it home, a little let down. The bowl shows a painted child fishing, and that child steps out into the real world to bring up a great many pearls for the old man. The treasure makes him rich, and it soon draws people with dishonest aims. A missionary tries to take the bowl for himself, and the fishing child punishes him for it. This short fantasy adventure film tells the story as a folk tale about sudden fortune and greed.