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Yung Chang
was 24 when he first saw the Yangtze River. It was 2002 and Chang,
who grew up in Canada, had agreed to accompany his grandfather on a
“farewell cruise” through China's Three Gorges before the area is
flooded by the world's biggest dam project. The experience laid the
foundations for Chang's film Up the Yangtze, which was screened in
London in March 2008 as part of the Human Rights Watch International
Film Festival.
I ask Chang
when he decided to make the film. “As we approached the waiting
cruise ship,” he says, “there was this marching band, and the
marching band played 'Yankee Doodle Dandy' – and that moment I
decided to make this film.”
Chang
persuaded the tour company to let him shoot a documentary on their
ship, describing it as “a sort-of Gosford Park film.” It seems an
unusual analogy at first. The country house in Robert Altman's 2001
murder mystery straddles floors and social classes, while Up the
Yangtze spans Asia’s largest river and puts one of the world's most
controversial engineering projects at its heart. However, the
comparison is not so far off. In his careful attention to the
economic dimensions of the tourist cruise down the Yangtze – and the
social implications of the mega-dam project – Chang says he tried to
show the viewer the “human face behind that dam”.
The
principal human faces of the film are Yu Shui and Chen Boyu, two
young workers on the cruise ship. Yu,16, dreams of becoming a
scientist. She is the daughter of poor farmers and grew up in an
illegal settlement on the banks of the Yangtze River in Fengdu,
Sichuan province. Chen is an urbane 19-year-old from a wealthier
background than Yu. Both teenagers reflect important aspects of the
country's youth, but with his confidence and short attention span,
Chen better embodies China’s single-child “little emperor”
generation. We see his struggles with the ship management and his
love of karaoke. Yu, meanwhile, learns how to be a woman and a
consumer in fast-developing China.
Progress,
change and development are at the heart of the film, not least in
the lives of its two teenage protagonists. At one point in the film,
Chang's voiceover quotes Mao Zedong’s famous 1956 poem about the dam
project, which was then just a dream, but now has displaced nearly
two million people:
“The
mountain goddess, if she is still there;
Will marvel
at a world so changed.”
This
changing world is the film’s only constant. Chang first visited the
country in 1997 “with some idea of a more preserved culture.” He now
regards his nostalgia as naïve. Chang was awed by Chongqing, the
world’s largest municipality and home to more than 30 million
people. “It was like a scene out of the movie Blade Runner, arriving
in this city lit up in neon lights,” he says. “It’s certainly a
country that’s always moving forward. The sense of preservation is
something that doesn’t exist.”
Chang,
however, describes the march of progress with a hint of sadness.
Over the four years he researched and shot Up the Yangtze, the
filmmaker accompanied countless near-identical trips up and down the
disappearing gorges, but as memories of the river were drowned
beneath the rising waters, the only thing that altered was the
language. “It's the same boat,” he says. “The only thing that
changes is the language of how people describe things: there was a
change in the tense that was used [to describe the river]. For me,
it was almost like being in some kind of time-warp.”
If Up the
Yangtze is a film about progress, it is also about sacrifice. The
ship's workers and local residents often reflect on the choice
between the “little family” -- their loved ones and livelihoods
displaced by the dam project -- and the “big family” -- the nation
and its economic development. It is a difficult choice at the heart
of the film.
In September
2007, Chinese officials admitted for the first time that the dam had
caused myriad ecological problems in the region. The People’s Daily
reported that these included “more frequent landslides and
pollution”. If preventive measures were not taken, said the
newspaper, “there could be an environmental ‘catastrophe’”. Does
Chang agree with this assessment? “I know there are a handful of
benefits,” says Chang. After witnessing the project, however, he
found “the negative effects well outweigh the benefits in terms of
social and environmental impact.”
The
filmmaker met fishermen whose stocks had dwindled due to pollution
in the river. He also saw deeply unhappy residents protesting
corrupt local officials who had mishandled the resettlement
programmes for people displaced by the dam. The film is not simply
reportage, however, Chang says he set out to capture something
“dramatic and cinematic”. “It’s really about finding the human
emotions, and by extension triggering the discussion about the
environment and social issues.”
Chang's
training in Meisner technique, a method of acting, may be one of the
ways he managed to capture such raw, intimate exchanges between its
protagonists. The documentary is cinéma verité at its best: striking
and moving, not only in its vivid depiction of environmental and
social issues, but also its keen eye for Chinese family lives. Up
the Yangtze is showing at film festivals around the world and has
impressed prominent Chinese environmentalists, some of them critics
of the dam for 20 years or more.
But what
effect did the film have on its subjects? Chang, who became part of
Yu Shui's “extended family” during the filming, said Yu was deeply
affected by the documentary. “She told me that through watching the
film, she was able to see her fate and her destiny. In fact, she
decided to leave the boat to go back to high school.”
But what
lies in Yu Shui's future? Chang says he doesn't know. And the same,
of course, is true of the Three Gorges. We cannot know what lies in
its future, but one thing is for sure: this important story of
progress and sacrifice is not over yet.
From
Chinadialogue
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