Quote trevor, "The most you could say in terms of any form of gay association is that Xiao Wu's feelings for his carer? appeared at times to be in the form of a child like crush. ...

P.S. Is Xiao Wu a fairly common Chinese name?"

(i) yup to your qn.1 ... ... after all, there are only 2 main characters in the film ... the rest are really "miscellaneous" ... ha ha ha

(ii) Xiao Wu ... ha ha ... u must have asked that qn becos of Jia ZhangKe's Xiao Wu ... 

well, it all dep on how the chinese characters are written ... i have tried surfing a few chinese websites but none gave the kid's name in writing ... most of them just simply claim that the film is about a small boy blah blah blah ...

but that does not mean i cant hazard a good guess ... most likely the "xiao" is "small" or "little" (sth like Little John, Little Tom, etc) ... and "Wu" is most likely the character "fight"/"martial" (also similar to the japanese name takeshi) ... in essence, exactly the same as Jia ZhangKe's film ... click www.dianying.com/en/title/xw-1997/poster

hmmm ... in sum, it can be claimed to be a common name esp. in the past (sth like John or Tom etc); nowadays, a lot of parents are trying to think of more unique names for their kids ...