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Home Subscribe About Us Features News Album Reviews Movie Reviews Past Movies Movie Resources Concert Reviews Book Reviews Top 10 Contact Us	Up The Yangtze (documentary) Stars: Chinese citizens, Yu Shui (Cindy) and Chen Bo Yu (Jerry) Director: Yung Chang Composer: Olivier Alary Cinematography: Shi Quing Wang Chinese and English (some subtitles) Eye Steel Films/National Board of Canada Rated: no rating but could be PG Running Length: 95 minutes Up the Yangtze is a beautifully photographed film of a countryside that will soon disappear under the waters of an enormous lake. The actual construction of The Three Gorges Dam is not shown. What filmmaker Yung Chang focuses on are the people who are forced to move as rising water covers their farm lands and homes. Coolies work hard at hand-crushing rock that is piled along the banks to prevent erosion. One wonders just how clean this lake will be, after covering farm lands and buildings. There are markers along the bank to show when and where the water will be rising. Cruise boats are making a business of taking people for a ride and show them what will be covered up by water. Part of the film centers on these boats, and the young people of the region who go to work there. Wages and tips are higher than what they earn at home, but at age fourteen, who would send a girl there? Desperate parents, that’s who. One of the stories we follow is that of Yu Shui (given the English name of Cindy) who tearfully leaves home for work on the boat. She begins at the bottom rung of the ladder, as a dishwasher and gradually, as she learns some English, to be a maid. At home, her uneducated parents see this as a way out for her, and daily they try to find food and keep dry as the waters rise and cover their lands. Eventually, they are forced to move to an apartment and, with no one to help, carry their heavy furniture themselves. Another story explores the world of the one-child-per-family edict of China. Chen Bo Yu (named Jerry for work on a boat) is a handsome young man with a singing voice, so earns tips for his performance. His arrogance is blind sided when he is let go from his job. Nonchalantly, he says, “I’ll just go back home and live with my parents. They have to support me.” So, the privileged one-child is may become something of a nuisance in behavior. A tearful statement is made by a middle-class businessman, forced to leave his building, who firmly states that the government is making two classes of people now, rich and poor and leaving no room for the middle ones. He seems to see himself sliding into he poorer class, if he can’t make a go of another business, and is not a happy citizen. Up the Yangtze turns out to be a poignant film and an eye-opener. The candidness of this work makes you wonder how the filmmaker managed it. The Three Gorges Dam, built by the Chinese government, will provide hydroelectric power, and prevent flooding. But at what cost to the population? Not only is this project designed to be one of the wonders of the modern world, but the displacement of millions of people. It bids us ask the question, “What good is electricity if you have no home in which to use it?” Copyright 2008 Marie Asner