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!
5:11 PM, Thursday, January 24, 2008
Power to the People
By MATTHEW FORNEY /YUNAN PROVINCE
They gathered by a grave tucked into fields of yellow rape flowers high in the Himalayan foothills. There, a dozen-odd guardians of China's last free-flowing rivers unveiled a memorial to a fallen comrade, an activist who had died of a heart attack in January. But their mission had another motive. Following the ceremony, they traveled into remote regions of Yunnan province to gauge opposition to a spate of new dam projects and offer assistance to vulnerable peasants trying to stop them from being built. This wasn't a secret trip. Plainclothes police videotaped everything. Undeterred, the outsiders met with peasants in the prosperous village of Chezhou and found many unwilling to sacrifice their homes to the waters behind a proposed dam. "We eat fish, chicken and pork," an old woman told them, indicating her good fortune. "We don't want to move."
If the activists succeed, they might not have to. The visitors at the graveside included leaders of Beijing environmental groups, reporters from national newspapers and a film crew. Together they make up a loose network opposed to what they consider the devastation of natural resources in a part of the country where snowmelt from the Himalayas irrigates rivers throughout China and Southeast Asia. Already the network has helped delay approval of two impoundments on the upper Yangtze and Salween rivers. Yet in taking on state-run companies and political interests, the environmentalists face daunting odds. Says activist Xue Ye of the Beijing-based Friends of Nature: "We are weak, but we have a chance."
Since the massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989, many have seen China's government as nothing but repressive. But groups like these environmentalists have become drivers of social and political change. They don't directly challenge the Communist Party's power but instead focus on issues like AIDS education, legal reform and, above all, environmental protection--endeavors the government professes to support. What unifies the new generation is a commitment to individual rights. The cover of the influential Beijing magazine Economics last year called the anti-dam movement a "New Social Power in China." "They're promoting the rights of ordinary people," says Elizabeth Economy of the New York--based Council on Foreign Relations, author of The River Runs Black, about China's environment. "Although it's dangerous for them to say so, that means political reform."
Until recently, Beijing saw those affected by dams as little more than obstacles to a bigger goal--powering the world's most eye-popping economy. Beijing's planners want hydropower to help ease their reliance on imported oil. Especially enticing is a swath of Yunnan province where three of Asia's great rivers--the Salween, Mekong and Yangtze--descend through valleys that account for nearly a quarter of China's hydropower potential. Developers have proposed 27 dams on those three rivers.
The mere presence of environmentalists marks a sea change. When Beijing approved the massive Three Gorges Dam in 1992, public opposition was nearly impossible. The $24 billion hydropower station at the center of the project, now under construction, will turn the middle of the Yangtze into a lake half the length of California and force 1.5 million people to relocate. Since the dam was conceived as a monument to Communist Party power, opponents were branded as dissidents. Reforms have changed that. "The government sees activist groups as less of a threat now," says Fu Tao, of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "With China calling for an environmentally friendly Olympics in 2008, it's even promised to give them a voice."
Activists had virtually no voice until the 1990s, when Beijing allowed nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to register in large numbers. Today China has 280,000 NGOs, ranging from Ping-Pong clubs to cancer-survivor groups to economic think tanks. Consider them potential interest groups--what social scientists call a budding "civil society"--that will demand a say in government policy. The most active by far are environmentalists. They notched their first triumph in 1998 by blocking a logging scheme in Yunnan province that would have imperiled the rare golden monkey. Today they have graduated to representing people.
Yu Xiaogang, 53, the founder of Green Watershed, realized that the millions of villagers affected by China's 80,000 dams are a powerful weapon. Tens of thousands facing relocation in Sichuan province rioted last October over compensation for their paddy lands along the Dadu River. They formed a "dare-to-die brigade" that held a local official hostage until Beijing dispatched paramilitary police to the area. At least two smaller demonstrations followed in neighboring provinces. Since the media are barred from reporting on trouble at dam sites, peasants remain ignorant of resettlement problems elsewhere. "If people know what's happened at other dams, they can better engage their own governments peacefully," Yu says.
Last summer Yu chartered a bus and drove peasants from a proposed dam area along the upper Salween to visit a 10-year-old dam a few hours away. The government had celebrated the Manwan Dam as a model of development for its cheap electricity and successful relocation of 3,500 people. The visitors saw something different: peasant women picking through the hydropower station's garbage dump for plastic bottles to recycle for pennies. Sobbing, the women explained that they had not found jobs after losing their land. The scene was captured in an underground documentary that environmentalists have passed hand to hand. It concludes with the visitors returning home to warn their families not to believe claims that relocations will mean a good life.
Yu has even taken a page from civil rights struggles elsewhere by promoting a living symbol for the anti-dam movement. Ge Quanxiao, a farmer from the Jinsha River area, stands to lose his home to a planned dam. Yu arranged elocution lessons for Ge and taught him to protect himself by invoking political slogans introduced by China's leader, Hu Jintao. He brought Ge to Beijing to address a United Nations Development Program conference on dams and plead for villagers' right to review settlement plans. Most of all, Yu armed Ge with information to take back to his fellow villagers. "We've survived wars and we've survived earthquakes," Ge tells them. "I don't know if we'll survive dams."
Thanks to such pressure, Beijing has at least started to plan more carefully. Wang Yongchen, a radio journalist who runs the China Rivers Network, an umbrella organization for anti-dam groups, meets frequently with officials at the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) to argue that mandatory environmental impact assessments are often inadequate. SEPA agreed and issued desist orders in January to 30 construction projects. Although construction has restarted on all but four, Wang realized that "we can work with the government."
Yet such incremental successes cause little celebration in remote villages. After the peasants returned home from the Manwan Dam, police called a meeting. "They told us we'll bear responsibility if anybody talks about what was seen," says a villager. "Now we know the real situation, but there's nothing we can do." A few miles upstream, workers for the China Huadian Corp. are drilling 500-ft.-deep holes as part of the proposed dam's geological test. The government has not divulged its plans. And the party has ordered newspapers to stop reporting on debates over dam construction. But opposition to dams has become the emblem of activism in China--for now. The movement remains vulnerable, and the government could quickly view it as a threat. "A few extreme people could have the whole movement considered anti--Communist Party, which it is not," says Yu Xiaogang. "But if we can keep discipline, we will be strong."There is a lot more than dams at stake.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1074145,00.htmlReview:
On the surface the article seems to project freedom of speech and opinion, but is that really true? Peasants although given the rights to voice their opinion, are being watched by undercover policemen who videotaped their every action. One of the reason China`s government is doing this is, because they think peasants are opposing for the sake of opposing, as they are doing it to guard their own interest. However, even if peasants are not doing it for their own sake, will the government seriously listen to what they want to bring across? I doubt so, since China is still an autocratic country, whereby rules are set solely by the government, without consensus by their citizens. It is for this reason that Human Rights organization, always classify China as a country without human rights.
(Kai Hui 08S204)
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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
