There is a too much

Every individual element was well executed and all. And people trying to keep positive no matter what is something that reminded me of the Wind Rises which was a movie that really clicked well with me because of that.
I watched Raise the Red Lantern shortly before this which also shows a small group of people through several "political changes" (to put it lightly) in China.
But this movie just didn't work for me.
I thought it opened great with Fugui just losing everything. But after that moment his character just makes an absolute immediate change and the way they lost their money doesn't particularly matter so why couldn't they just started off poor? From that point we basically have our characters just happen to have everything happen to them coincidentally.
It basically turned me just pretty blunt to all of it because I just didn't buy it.