To live ♥ Y
Starring: Gong Li, Niu Ben
Director: Zhang Yimou
Entire Story:
The story begins some time in the 1940s. Xu Fugui (Ge You) is a local rich man's son and compulsive gambler, who loses his family property to the scheming Long'er, driving his father to his grave in the process. His behaviour also causes his long-suffering wife Jiazhen (Gong Li) to leave him with their daughter, Fengxia and their unborn son, Youqing.
After he loses his entire family fortune, Fugui eventually reunites with his wife and children, but is forced to start a shadow puppet troupe with partner Chunsheng to support his family. The Chinese Civil War is in full swing at the time, and both Fugui and Chunsheng are forcibly enlisted into the Kuomintang forces during a performance. After a heavy battle, Fugui and Chunsheng are captured by the communist side, where they quickly become entertainers for the troops. Eventually Fugui is able to return home, and once there, finds out that Fengxia has become mute due to a fever.
After the communist victory, Fugui attends a local public trial where the new communist authority convicts and executes a local landlord accused of sabotaging the revolution. (Chunsheng becomes a driver in the war and stays behind.) Fugui finds out that the man being executed is Long'er, to whom he lost his entire family fortune in gambling. Long'er also recognizes Fugui, and tries to break free from his capturers, but he is brought away, and shot. The situation frightens Fugui so much that he wets himself. Afterwards he tells his wife that if he didn't squander away his fortune, he would be the one getting shot. It turned out that Long'er, a man who was known for being extremely miserly, did not want to donate any of his personal wealth to the "people's government" as the communists had hoped, and when they tried to pressure Long'er to do so in the name of "helping" him, they only enraged Long'er further and he decided that he would rather destroy all of his property instead of giving it away. Therefore Long'er started a fire to burn down his own mansion, which was formerly Fugui's, and the fire lasted three days. Everyone in the village was happy to see that Long'er burned down his own mansion due to his bad reputation, so nobody helped to put out the fire, but Long'er's action of burning down his own mansion was sufficient to make him a reactionary for sabotaging the revolution in the eyes of communists.
Luckily, Fugui is penniless, and is thus exalted as a "townsfolk in poverty" by the communists. A certificate affirming Fugui's status as a member of the People's Militia, the auxiliary of the People's Liberation Army becomes the family's most prized possession, and is framed and hung up. Still, the shock and the fear were deeply planted in the heart of Fugui: when the village cadre mentioned to Fugui that the fire lasted three days and carelessly said that "because the wood used in your family's mansion was very good wood", Fugui was quick to proclaim his innocence by telling the village chief "No! It was not the wood of my family, it was the wood of the counter revolutionary."
The story moves forward a decade into the future, to the heyday of the Great Leap Forward. The local town chief enlists Fugui and Jiazhen to donate all scrap iron in their possession to the national drive to produce steel and make weaponry for invading Taiwan. As an entertainer, Fugui performs for the entire town, which has been devoted entirely over to producing steel. They enter this work with great passion, and the movie devotes some time to portraying the family's unity and happiness. For example, the young boy Youqing defends his sister from bullies picking on her for her muteness.
The happiness of the family is then cruelly dashed. Youqing falls asleep sitting against the walls of his school, after having lost several days of sleep working for the town's steel drive. The district head accidentally backs a truck into the wall. Fugui's son is crushed and killed. In the next scene, the crowd shows Fugui the mangled body of his son, then hides it from the hysterical Jiazhen. In a twist of irony, the district head turns out to be Chunsheng, Fugui's former shadow puppet performance colleague during the Chinese Civil War, who has since risen through the ranks of the Communist Party. At the gravesite of the boy, his mother leaves for him a lunchbox of 20 stale dumplings, which were intended as his lunch for school that day, plus 20 newly made dumplings. Chunsheng arrives at the grave, but his contrite attempts to apologize and compensate the family are rebuffed by the grieving family. Fengxia is also seen breaking the windows of Chunsheng's jeep. A man tries to stop her from doing even more damage, but Chunsheng shuts the man up. Instead of normally driving home in his jeep, Chungsheng walks home.
The story moves forward again another decade, to the Cultural Revolution. The village chief advises Fugui's family to burn their shadow puppet drama props, which have been deemed as counter-revolutionary as they are traditional cultural elements. Also, Fugui's daughter is now grown up. Her family arranges for her to meet Wan Erxi, who is a local leader of the Red Guards, a worker with a salary, and also a kind-hearted and caring man, but lame in one leg. They fall in love and marry.
We then learn that Chunsheng, the district chief, has been branded a reactionary. He arrives late at night to inform Fugui and Jiazhen that his wife has killed herself. He himself wants to do the same thing. Chunsheng wanted to give all of his money to Fugui's family as a form of his final apology and wished that they accept the money before his death. Jiazhen, who up to that point has refused to talk to the man who killed her son, breaks the ice and tells him to keep living, because "you still owe us a life!"
During Fengxia's childbirth, her parents and husband accompany her to the county hospital, where they find out that nurses are in charge as all doctors have been sent to do hard labor for being "reactionary academic authorities". The nurses assure the family that they have nothing to fear, but the family is skeptical, and manages to retrieve a doctor from confinement to oversee the birth, under the pretext of making the doctor "see his revolutionary mistakes". As the doctor has not eaten for several days, the family purchases for him seven steamed buns (mantou), and Fugui tried to calm his wife's nerves by naming the new baby. Jiazhen named the boy Mantou. However, the young woman begins to hemorrhage, and the nurses panic, admitting that they are only students and do not know what to do. The frantic family and nurses seek the advice of the doctor, but it is found out that he has overeaten and is semiconscious. The family is helpless, and Jiazhen can only hold the hand of her daughter as she slowly dies.
The movie ends several years later, with the family now consisting of Fugui, Jiazhen, their son-in-law Erxi, and grandson Mantou. The family visits the graves of Youqing and Fengxia, where Jiazhen, as per tradition, leaves dumplings for her son. Erxi buys for his son a box full of young chicks, which they decide to keep in the puppet drama prop chest, now empty of its contents. The family then sits down to eat, and the film ends.
Super summarized synopsis: Fugui and Jiazhen endure tumultuous events in China as their personal fortunes move from wealthy landownership to peasantry. Addicted to gambling, Fugui loses everything. In the years that follow he is pressed into both the nationalist and communist armies, while Jiazhen is forced into menial work. They raise a family and survive, managing "to live" from the 40's to the 70's in this epic, but personal, story of life through an amazing period.
Review:
This movie follows the life of one family in China, from the heady days of gambling dens in the 1940s to the severe hardships of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. “To Live” is a heart-warming yet heart-rending story that honours the resiliency of Fugui and his wife in the face of political change and personal tragedies. This extraordinary movie gives us a very realistic account of the kind of pain, torture and suffering the Chinese faced during the communist rule. A History student does not have to read the entire History textbook in order to know the series of events that took place during the 1940s to 1960s in communist China. All it takes is 125 minutes of your time to watch the movie! Enjoy!
5:19 PM, Thursday, January 24, 2008
21st jan 2008
On chemical industry road in east Beijing, you can find saunas, outlet malls, hardware stores, karaoke parlors, tire-repair shops, horse-drawn carts piled high with persimmons and a hot-pot restaurant that specializes in dog meat.
One thing that's getting tougher to find on Chemical Industry Road these days, though, is the chemical industry. Two years ago, the 48-year-old Beijing Coking and Chemical Works closed up shop to move to neighboring Hebei province, part of a multibillion-dollar effort to clean up Beijing's air before the 2008 Summer Olympics. To its neighbors, closing the factory was a huge improvement. Before, "it was really extreme," says Zhang Qi, a former steelworker who lives near the shuttered plant. "The air, one breath of it would start you coughing. And the sky was wrapped in black smoke." Now, he says, the air "is so, so much better."
That doesn't mean it's good, though. Pollution in the Chinese capital still regularly hits levels two or three times what the World Health Organization considers safe, and on Dec. 28, the city's air-pollution index hit the worst-possible score of 500. With less than a year before the Games, Beijing, which made environmental protection a key part of its successful Olympic bid, is in the final stages of a pitched effort to clean up its air.
Beijing is not alone. Across the planet, legendary brown-cloud metropolises, such as Mexico City, Los Angeles and New Delhi, have been grappling with the issue with varying degrees of success. For any megacity wishing to remain economically competitive, healthy air quality is a must. The critical issue: how to clean the atmosphere without choking off growth, and nowhere is that challenge bigger than in China.
Beijing has made modest progress in making its air less visible. From 2000 to '06, concentrations of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide have all dropped, while the annual number of days that Beijing has met national air-quality standards has gone up, from 177 to 243. In 2007, Beijing had 246 "blue sky" days (low or moderate pollution, as defined by the government), but that's no guarantee that these Olympics won't be remembered as the Smog Games. "Beijing has done a lot of work, and our air quality has gone up year on year," Yu Xiaoxuan, an environmental official with the Beijing Olympic committee, told a press conference in September. "But for the Olympics and for the health of the public, there's still a gap. Compared with developed countries in Europe or North America, we're still not sufficient."
Beijing's gains have come as part of a vast and expensive cleanup program. Nearly 60,000 pollution-spewing coal-fired boilers were switched to cleaner energy sources like natural gas. The city has shut down dozens of cement kilns, lime plants, brick-production lines and gravel pits that clog the air with particulates. In addition to Beijing Coking and Chemical Works, nearly 200 factories were moved out of the capital from 2000 to '06. The coke plant consumed 5% of the coal burned in Beijing. (Coke, used in manufacturing steel, is made by cooking coal.) By moving the plant, the capital reduced emissions of sulfur dioxide by 3 million tons, or about 15%. The Shougang Group, the country's fourth largest steel producer, will reduce its output by half and then move to neighboring Hebei province by 2010. "The emissions from Shougang, they're not only from the stacks, but from the movement of raw materials through the city," says Hao Jiming, an environmental-science professor at Beijing's Tsinghua University. "That's why it's always been important to get Shougang to move out of the city." The steel producer's move could cut Beijing's coal consumption 12%, Hao estimates.
While pollution is a ticket out of town for some businesses, for others it is a welcoming opportunity. General Electric secured $300 million in contracts related to Beijing's green push, including work at Olympic venues. Among them is a rainwater-recycling system for the National Stadium and solar-powered lighting for the softball fields. The company is also helping Beijing reduce its dependence on coal. GE supplied two gas-turbine generators at a local power plant and wind turbines for a project in Hebei that supplies power to the capital.
GE's deals are signs that Beijing is serious about its environment, says Jennifer Turner, director of the Washington-based China Environment Forum. But she worries that neighboring provinces don't have the same drive. "I don't think they'll be able to do the environmental-authoritarianism thing," she says. "Factories are saying 'Not now. Hell no. We won't shut down for two weeks.'" That could be a problem even if the factories are hundreds of miles away. A study by U.S. and Chinese scientists found that even if Beijing reduced its emissions to zero, it could still face unhealthy levels of ozone and airborne particles during the Games.
Beijing's car craziness, symbolic of China's growth, makes things even tougher to manage. Vehicular pollutants now make up about 60% of the city's emissions, says Zhang Hongjun, a former senior official with China's State Environmental Protection Administration. The city has 3 million cars, a number that grows by about 1,000 each day. No wonder there are midnight traffic jams. In August, Beijing held a trial that kept 1.3 million vehicles off the roads for a four-day stretch. Traffic improved vastly; not so the air, with pollutants cut only 15%-20%, half of what had been anticipated--a shortfall attributed to calm winds that failed to push pollution out of the city.
A partial ban on vehicles is likely during the Olympics, but there are no plans to reduce cars over the long term. Such an effort wouldn't fly with the growing number of car buyers. "Some people have suggested a ceiling for Beijing's vehicle population," Hao says. "But people would say, 'Why can government officers have a car but I can't?'" And China has promoted auto production as an engine for GDP growth, employment and tax revenue, Zhang says, all of which make for an unbeatable argument for continued unfettered sales. "The agencies and officials promoting the car industry are much stronger than those pushing for controls," he says.
Oddly, official Beijing hasn't used its authority to improve public transportation, an obvious solution to both cars and pollution. Since the city opened its first subway in 1969, growth has been slow--until the Olympics made subway-building a top priority. A new north-south line was opened in early October, and three more will be finished this summer, nearly doubling the total mileage of track.
Those lines will remain after the Olympics, but the big question is whether Beijing's environmental drive will too. "I don't want to say the city can't turn itself around. It can. But it takes more than good intentions and impressive targets. It takes real commitments," says Elizabeth Economy, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China's Future. While the Olympics did touch off a new effort, the Games didn't change the fundamental weakness of China's environmental management. The central government's power to enforce green initiatives wanes in the provinces, which often pursue development over environmental protection. The biggest risk, says Zhang, is not that Beijing won't stay clean but that the rest of the country could remain stuck in an ecological tar pit. "My concern is that Beijing will be something of a showcase," he says. "Improvements in Beijing don't necessarily mean improvements in the rest of China." After all, you can kick all the polluters off Chemical Industry Road, but that doesn't stop them from going somewhere else.Comment- Although China is trying very hard to alleviate its environmental problems, there are still many hurdles to cross if China is to be taken seriously in their conquest for a clean environment. The people are having a hard time grappling with the rapid change in China. They have taken a taste for materialism. The Chinese will find it difficult to grapple with global pressure for a cleaner environment and their new found materialism.
Although the Chinese are doing their best for the Olympics, I doubt their ability to follow through in their effort for the environment in the future. If I could do something to help China, I would educate the Chinese about clean energy alternatives and provide grants and attractive tax incentives for agencies to invest in clean technologies. （Ivan）
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1. Last day of 12th lunar month
Chinese New Year Eve 除夕(chúxì), 大年夜
Cleaning the house, putting up new posters of "door gods" on front doors, fireworks before the family union dinner, which should be at least 10 course meal with a whole fish entrée symbolizing the abundance of the coming year. (The fish entrée should not be consumed completely because the leftover symbolizes the abundance)
2. 1st day of 1st lunar month
Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) 新年(xīnnián), 农历新年, 春節, 春节,大年初一
Families visit the oldest and most senior members of their extended family, usually their parents, grandparents or great-grandparents.Red packets are given to the young ones as a form of blessings
3. 15th day of 1st lunar month
Lantern Festival 元宵節(yuánxiāojié), 元宵节，小年
Lantern parade and lion dance celebrating the first full moon
4. 2nd day of 2nd lunar month
Zhonghe Festival (Zhong He Jie) 中和节(zhōnghéjié)
Eating Chinese fajitas (Chun Ping, 春饼) and noodles, rid of insect pests via house cleaning. Also known as Dragon Raising its Head
5. At the jie qi known as qing ming, solar longitude 15 degrees (around April 5)
Qing Ming Jie (Tomb Sweeping Day)/Mourning Day / Ching Ming Festival
清明節(qīngmíngjié), 清明节
Visiting, cleaning, and make offerings at ancestral gravesites, spring outing. It is a day to remember and honour ancestors at grave sites
6. 5th day of 5th lunar month
Dragon Boat Festival (Dragon Festival) / Tuen Ng Festival
端午節(duānwǔjié), 端午节
Dragon boat racing, eat rice wrap Zongzi, commemorating the ancient poet Qu Yuan; drink yellow rice wine, related to the White Snake Lady legend
7. 7th day of 7th lunar month
The Night of Sevens /Magpie Festival/ Qi Xi
七夕(qīxì)
According to legend, the goddess "Zhi Nü" (the star Vega) fell in love with the farmer boy "Niu Lang" (the star Altair), but was disapproved by the her mother goddess. As punishment, they were separated by the Milky Way and could only meet once a year on this night.
8. 7th lunar month Spirit Festival (Ghost Festival)
中元節(zhōngyuánjié), 中元节
Activities during the month would include preparing ritualistic food offerings, burn incense, and burn joss papers, including bags containing clothes, gold and other fine goods made out of paper for the visiting spirits
9. 15th day of 8th lunar month
Mid-Autumn Festival (Moon Festival)
中秋節(zhōngqiūjié), 中秋节
Chinese family members and friends will gather to admire the bright mid-autumn harvest moon, and eat mooncake and pomeloes together,carrying brightly lit lanterns.
10. 9th day of 9th lunar month ,Double Ninth Festival /Dual-Yang Festival/ Chung Yeung Festival
重陽節(chóngyángjié), 重阳节
Autumn outing and mountain climbing, some Chinese also visit the graves of their ancestors to pay their respects.
11. Day of the Winter Solstice (solar longitude 270 degrees), around December 22
Winter Solstice Festival/Mid-Winter Festival
冬至(dōngzhì)
Have Tangyuan and Jiuniang and perform ancestor worship, Feast day, family gatherings, also named "Chinese Thanksgiving"
12.8th day of 12th lunar month
Laba Festival/Congee Festival
腊八节(làbājié)
It is the day the Buddha attained enlightenment. People usually eat Laba congee, which is usually made of mixed grains and fruits.
Credits to wikipedia
designer: detonatedlove♥
images: dusty_memories
