Thoughts on Jia Zhangke’s 24 City 對賈樟柯新電影《24城記》之隨想

Normally I prefer to write a straight up review, but in light of an unusual experience in watching film, I thought I’d make this a meta-review of sorts:

I went to watch this film at Zhongshan park in Shanghai last Tuesday. When the lights dimmed, a “documentary” about Tibet came on. As you know, this is the sensitive year for anniversaries in China, and is, in particular, the 50th anniversary of the uprising in Tibet that led to the exile of the Dalai Lama.The documentary was called, quite pointedly, “China’s Tibet, Past and Future”. If you’ve followed this issue at all, none of the information presented in this film are surprising:

*Tibet has always been part of China and the Tibetan rulers have acknowledged Chinese suzerainty since ancient times. Here are pictures and images of various historical documents that prove this point.
*WHy bother decrying the vetting of Tibetan religious leaders by China’s central government? Emperors used to do this, including with the latest Dalai Lama, so what’s the big deal if the CCP inherits this role.
*Tibet was a despotic, feudal system before the Chinese liberated it. It was a cruel theocracy of vast socio-economic inequality. The lamas and their families–the upper strata of the ancien regime–owned everything, including virtually all the arable land and other resources of production. Regular people had next to nothing.
*China liberated Tibet and gave it a good dose of progressive socialist ideology–and things improved greatly.
*Tibetan heritage is fluorishng and the standard of living has steadily improved.

It was clearly and unambiguously agitprop, but 21st. century China style, wrapping the historical narrative of Tibet up in and interweaving it with that of modern China as a whole, including the successful Beijing Olympics and the upcoming World Expo. At fifteen minutes, it was long and tendentious, and made me a bit impatient, since even after it finished, there was yet another long preview (of a regular movie), so that the film we came to watch didn’t start until a good twenty or twenty five minutes after the time stated on the ticket.

*24 City (24城記）*

Jia Zhangke has said, over the years, that he wants to alternate making docs and fiction films, and in this case he has melded the two.There are real people mixed with actors doing recreations–Joan Chen, Lv Liping, Zhao Tao, among others–but while these actors put on some decent performances these interviewees, the film doesn’t end up being more than a series of vignettes. I doubt that Jia intended to put together some systematic history of the place, but there is an unfinished, work-in-progress feel to this movie that tends to work towards its detriment. However, many of the interviews with the real people are better, because you know they are real–so here, again,is a meta-level question–how does the fact that you are watching Joan Chen change your perception of what’s being shown? It’s obvious that no matter how good Chen’s acting chops are, what she is doing is a performance. Most of the time, of course, we accept this–because that’s what makes fictional films possible in the first place–however, in this case, while Chen and the others are fine, they are still a bit actorly–and you wouldn’t really notice that fact unless you had all these more “real” performances to compare them with.

Jia is probably too intelligent not to notice this himself, but it still took me aback when he confronted this head on during the Joan Chen segment, where she says in her youth, at the prime of her beauty, her coworkers at the factory compared her to the actress Joan Chen. A little pomo joke? Maybe, but it made me a bit skittish. I suppose I still relish the suspension of disbelief,and don’t like the feeling of being taken for a ride, even if the ride, for the most part, is an enjoyable one.

That said, there are some moving moments, both from the actors and the real interviewees–enough to remind you that Jia Zhangke is one of the only Chinese filmmakers out there that can convey the gravity of China’s changing. That pathos, that uniquely Chinese pathos that glossier magazines and Western media don’t–or rather, *can’t* pick up on–are captured by Jia’s lens. One can almost forgive the lack of polish for that very reason–Jia, more than other filmmakers is continually creating audiovisual artifacts for us, the rest of the world, Chinese and non-Chinese alike–that will, I believe, stand the test of time,not only for their aesthetic excellence but because they are excellent chronicles of China. They are chronicles of physical reality, of its metamorphosis–but more than that,they are chronicles of the spirit, of what Chinese people call *jingshen*, which can mean anything mental, intellectual, spiritual–and in Jia’s case, it’s the emotional undertow, the things that are not said, that are glossed over and ignored by ideological or mainstream rhetorics that finally, as it were, get their say.

It is this kind of pathos that you don’t normally see among the audiovisual artifacts being produced today: and that’s what makes the contrast with the Tibetan propaganda film so striking. Jia was once an unofficial or underground filmmaker–and he no longer is, and he is, as well as know, no longer a skint and scrappy indie guy. He makes money. He’s got connections. But there’s still something very real, and very heartfelt at the core, and in a world of cinematic
phoniness, there’s something to be said for that stick to your guns type mentality.

To bring it back to Tibet: it is a strange juxtaposition, watching these two films together–we’re so used to seeing just previews before the movie that to see this stylish bit of agitprop is a bit startling: it hearkens back to newsreels of old, a time when the news was delivered on big screens, or when the political just had to intrude everywhere
because the world was in the throes of war or what have you. I feel obliged to mention that when we went, on Tuesday afternoon, even with the half off discount the theater was nearly empty.I highly doubt that Jia is going to make much money off this film, at least on the domestic market. Likewise, watching propaganda in the afternoon with a handful of other people didn’t quite jibe with I am sure that they play the Tibet film before the other, popular movies, so that before you settle down to watching “Transporter 3″ you get a good dose of “historical” education about the Tibet issue. Just in case things get hairy and out of control in Tibetan areas this March, or throughout the rest of this sensitive year.

China changes, or China never changes. Same ideological posture, except now in IMAX. However, Jia’s world, everything changes–and the only thing that lasts, the only thing that binds us are memories.Children are lost to their parents. Migrations, emotional rows, generation gaps all tear families asunder. The ligature of memory is strained as people get older–it seems strong when they are recalling it in front of us–but of course, we know that simply recalling something and saying it verbally doesn’t really do justice to the “strength” or “saturation” of that memory among the many memories that are stored in your brain or the salient memories constitutive of the sense of self and identity. Therefore, you get the uneasy sense that you are watching something that was unearthed quite by accident, and could very well have been lost. Maybe these “little people”, these “laobaixing” don’t mean much in the large scale of things: you read media articles with Chinese government planners, bureaucrats and energy scientists that are talking about the year 2100 like it’s tomorrow. Just about all of us who are alive now will be dead by that time, and our secrets and wounds, the maybes and could have beens–both individual and collective–will be just as gone. I’ve always been afraid that the official Chinese meta-narrative would swamp and subsume everything else–which is why it’s that much more incumbent on artists, in whatever medium, to keep recording the micro-sadnesses, vicissitudes, twists and turns, warp and woof of the individual life and consciousness. Lest it be completely be forgotten by History.

China sends “stability” teams to regional areas ahead of sensitive anniversaries

Just got this courtesy of a fanfou feed: the Chinese government is sending “stability” teams to local governments to help maintain social stability. Of course, as this fanfou person pointed out, this year marks several sensitive anniversaries: uprising in Lhasa, 20th anniversary of June 4th, etc. The news reports even mention how impt this year is, in particular: 今年维护国家安全和社会稳定工作面临的任务繁重而艰巨.

Pictures from Yuan Xiao Jie in Shanghai (上海元宵节及老城区夜景）

前天晚上去了豫园看灯会，观摩的主要是人海，但是喜气洋洋的，感觉还是不错。后来跟朋友在老城区溜达，久违的灵感也终于回来了，当然，这也跟我带新的相机出去也有关。谢谢长辈的提携以及各位朋友的支持！我要坚持拍下去！

Tech drool: the Meizu M8

I’d love to have an iPhone but i think that I would settle for the Meizu M8, which bears a not so uncanny resemblance to the former. The 8GB version can be obtained for about 2400 rmb, making it a bit of a better deal than a new IPhone. I found some nice picture of it and its interface on taobao.com.

Now that’s a fine looking specimen. Of course the IPhone is farther ahead in its development, especially with regards to third party apps. BUt i think that the Meizu is a fine phone as far as they go. Maybe if i get some money i will buy one of these.

The two year old cigarette smoking boy of Chongqing

This is one that has been making the rounds on the internets. Most people are understandably pissed off about it.

Not sure what to say about this: not really the moment for cultural criticism. Most of what can be said i am sure you have already thought in your minds.
ugh.

Recent pictures from Anchang, Sichuan

I spent the week or so prior to the chinese new year in Anchang and the Beichuan area, which was one of the hardest hit and in which there are many quake victims living in temporary housing. I talked a bunch of them and in general just observed their lives there. I will write something more in depth later. I hope to follow their story in the coming months and years.

Technorati Tags: quake, earthquake, victims, pictures, photos, tragedy, life, china, chinese

More on social unrest in China, 2008.

I was just reading an article about the social unrest that has plagued China in 2008, and it says, in the title that the problem lies with the government competing with the people’s interests, that is, the government has, if only through inaction, sided more with capital than labor, the companies more than regular people.

The latest incident to happen is the Long’an 11.17 incident in Gansu province. The article talks about the other mass incidents–the taxi cab strikes in Sanya, Hainan as well as in Chongqing, and then the Wen’an incident in Guizhou, where the proximate cause of the riots was the death of a teenage girl and what was perceived as a failure of the government to fully investigate the cause of her death and mete out justice, were that to be necessary, but which I have read and heard was merely just the tip of the iceberg. Yes, like many other places in China, there were plenty of grievances that added fuel to the fire. The article quotes the Lianhe Zaobao as to the reasons why this is happening:

这些群体性事件一经媒体披露，迅速在网上引起广泛讨论。“地方政府与民夺利”被中国网民认为是“罪魁祸首”。“部分地方政府片面维护企业与自身利益，漠视农民的权利要求与利益诉求，将损害群众利益当做增加企业与政府利益的前提。”中国一位资深评论员魏文彪说。《联合早报》评论说，一些地方政府片面强调经济发展，忽略了应有的服务职能。比如在公共事业范围内，修路要过路费，建校要集资费，拆迁要劳务费，对治下百姓敲膏吸髓，刮地三尺，所作所为有的甚至比黑帮有过之而无不及。

The government has been to involved in economic growth and creating capitalist wealth and forgotten its other mission, which is to serve the people and protect the little guy’s interest. They have done the former at the expense of the latter, squeezing the peasants and migrants and fueling the kind of resentment that results in mass dissatisfaction and unrest.

The last paragraph is also interesting

2008年究竟发生了多少群体性事件，官方尚未公布最新的数据。不过三年前的一组数据已经说明问题的严重性。根据2005年的《社会蓝皮书》披露，从1993年到2003年间，中国群体性事件数量已由1万起增加到6万起，参与人数也由约73万增加到约307万。“群体性事件发生的根本性原因在于个人无法找到协商机制和利益维护机制”，中国人民大学毛寿龙教授这样说道。

Here they talk about the rise of mass unrest in China…according to a 2005 blue book, the number of incidents rose from 10,000 to about 60,000 (assuming this means per year? or does that seem too high an estimate even by Chinese standards?) and and the number of people involved in such incidents rose from 730,000 to about 3.07 million. The explanation given in that blue book for the steep rise in such incidents is the lack of a systemic mechanism for dealing with social and political conflict.

The original article linked to quotes an expert as saying that despite 2008 being a banner year for protesters, that the government’s attitude towards such incidents has shown signs of improvements—there is, overall, more lenience, tolerance, and transparency. I think on the whole, that such a description is true. But prognosis for the future—well i don’t know, but if the global downturn is going to last a few more years, and if the stimulus packages don’t work that well to revivify demands for Chinese exports, then perhaps the party will have to either start working on that mechanism or see how much money they can dole out and see how much time and patience that buys them.

CCP: we’re stupid, it was the economy

I was reading an essay on People.com.cn about another essay:

Here is what the People essay says about the original, which was written by aguy from one Zhou Tianyong, a scholar at the Party School*:

文章总结说，由于革命胜利后，党没有从一个工作中心为阶级斗争的“革命党”转变为一个工作中心为经济建设的执政党，对怎样搞社会主义经济建设并不熟悉，学习了苏联模式，而且在资源配置方式上实行了计划经济，生产资料所有制形式上采取了一大二公的国有制、城镇集体所有制和农村人民公社社队体制，在对外关系上走了自我封闭的道路，发展上倾斜于国防工业和重工业。其结果是劳动生产效率较低，科技人员和企业没有创新和技术进步的动力来源，技术进步缓慢，投资建设浪费较大，与整个世界各国经济社会发展的差距越来越大。可以这样评价：建国后的30年里，在全球经济社会发展的竞争中，我们走了弯路，延误了时机。

Which more or less says that after the revolution, instead of working right away on building up the economy and lifting people out of poverty, China embarked on this Soviet style planned economy, heavily biased in favor of defense and other heavy industries, and closed itself off from the rest of the world. And thus, as a result, China lagged further and further behind the rest of the world economy, and so, taken that way, the first thirty years after the revolution (49-79)–in terms of the world economy (that is, being part of the system), we have taken a circuitous route and wasted very precious time.

I suppose there is nothing new in this: this is how everyone thinks about it now. I mean, what young Shanghainese person would think that being part of the capitalist world-system was bad–it’s just a matter of finding a domestic economic system that guarantees 1. standard of living rises and more people are lifted from poverty and 2. that society remains stable. Which is why, as the old nostrum goes, China is not yet ready for democracy, or rather why it should avoid radical democratization, or more precisely, emulation of those mechanisms of democracy that liberal capitalist democracies favor, ie elections.

But still, to have things change in thirty years is fairly drastic and really does give one pause. THe ideological fig leaf is rotting “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. In truth everyone is just trying to steer the ship in a fairly safe and stable way. No one wants to rock the boat that much. NOt when there is this much at stake. That’s why you bailout banks and that’s why you go fro stimulus packages and that’s why you refrain from introducing elections into a country that doesn’t have that tradition in place. Of course, the problem is that we know that every choice that is made is made in the interest of someone–and that someone often believes that their interests take precedence over that of someone else–and so that is where the debate ought to come in, but that is, actually, the point of democracy. However situating that much energy and democratic energy at the grassroots level would, again, be possibly detrimental in China. Or not. Anyway while all of us debate and ponder various models of growth, our lives pass by–not to say that such ponderings are a waste, no, it’s more a reminder of how short our lives are compared to these magnificent macrohistorical backdrops that we can concoct and hold in our minds. Our minds can see the vast sweep of history, or hell, of the universe–but our bodies are obviously much more perishable.

*Party School. snicker, snicker.

Hangzhou subway tunnel collapse: problems discovered a month ago

This CNN article has the number of dead pegged at 4 but it seems that now the official number of dead has risen to five. What makes the whole thing much much worse is the fact that, according to one SIna report that we read, that problems were discovered a month ago. Check out what is said in this paragraph:

金德水责问地铁施工相关负责人：“是否在事故之前就曾发现过事故隐患？”该负责人表示确实存在隐患。

　　赵铁锤随即痛批，为什么不事先采取措施解除隐患？相关负责人表示，已经和上级部门汇报过，需要等待上级批示。

　　三位领导均表示，不可能有这种事，出现这么重大的安全隐患，施工单位应该及时采取措施补救，根本不需要等待审批。

The leaders–provincial and city officials–asked some of the construction company reps if there really had been problems discovered earlier–and the reps said yes, and then the officials asked why immediate measures were not taken to solve the problem, and the reps said that they needed to report the problem to their superiors and wait for approval. And the officials said that a problem of this seriousness did not have to go through that whole bureaucratic rigamarole.

If you’ve lived in China, and know Chinese people—this kind of tragedy is nothing new. The numbness follows and subdues the anger much more quickly now, because you almost expect this kind of thing to happen on a regular basis in China. They are notoriously bad on worker safety. They are known around the world for cutting corners at the cost of human life.

I’ve had enough of people dying needlessly of late, what with Tom passing away and then this shit. Every fucking day. Every fucking day. This shit and this shit world. How do you manage to go on, without your consciousness bludgeoned by fear? You know full well that people around are NOT trying their best to keep you alive and healthy. They aren’t wishing for your death, but this kind of laxity really just drives you insane because it implies that for someone, somewhere, decisions are being made that place something else above human life in value. And guess what, there are very few things in life that have greater value than a human being’s life, and the meaning in each person’s existence.

Should Uighur use the latin or slavic alphabet?

That’s the debate going in one of the bbs threads on uighurbiz and something that i am altogether not familiar with. Of course I don’t know much about what happens in that region at all, but that is what informative sites like New Dominion are for.

According to the posters, who are writing in Chinese, many of the other Central Asian Turkic languages have already transliterated their languages into Latin and Slavic alphabets, which facilitates the spread and accessibility of the language. This increase in cultural fecundity is good for the obvious reasons that most of these ethnicities have or currently are part of larger political formations such as the USSR or China, and often find their cultures subsumed, especially during the age of ideology (latter half of the 20th c.). However, some people are against it, because they argue that continuity is quite impt, and they remark that the reason why Chinese people have sustained that contact with their ancient culture is precisely because they are using essentially the same characters as they did thousands of years ago. They are afraid of the cultural rupture that might occur if this language “reform” is too radical–and eschewing one type of alphabet for another might certainly qualify as radical.