Colby-Sawyer College Presents 'Up the Yangtze' Documentary, A Moving Metaphor for Life in Contemporary China
NEW LONDON, N.H. — Colby-Sawyer College will show a Mandarin documentary with English subtitles about the effects of the world's largest engineering feat since the Great Wall: the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River. Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Yung Chang shows the magnitude of China's economic power in creating the world's largest dam and its impact on the two million people who live along the Yangtze.
The film, part of the college's Human Rights Film Series, will be shown on Tuesday, Feb. 24, at 7 p.m. in Clements Hall at the Curtis L. Ivey Science Center. Admission is free and the showing is open to the public.
“Up the Yangtze” focuses on two young people who work on a cruise line that takes tourists up the Yangtze River. By documenting their different experiences, the film captures a sense of how those who live along the Yangtze have been forced to change their ways of life.
The main character, Yu Shui— the eldest daughter of the Yu family—is forced to work on the cruise ship because her family of poor, illiterate farmers has few options available to them as the river starts to rise and flood their land. Also working for the same cruise line is Chen Bo Yu, the only son of a middle-class couple. Unlike Yu Shui, (called Cindy by the cruise line) Chen Bo Yu (renamed Jerry) is well adapted to speaking English and views the job as an opportunity. Yu Shui, or Cindy, has a harder time coping with her changing life, as she would rather be in school getting an education. Both characters must learn to understand and adapt to Western ways, which proves difficult for both Cindy and Jerry.
“Up the Yangtze” has won the World Cinema Documentary Competition at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008 as well as Best Canadian Documentary at the Vancouver International Film Festival. The film “restores your faith in the documentary film medium,” wrote the Montreal Mirror. According to Time Out New York the film shows “a potent indictment of the dam-age done! Says more about what's being lost—culturally, geographically, morally—than any parade of talking heads ever could." Drawing inspiration from modern Asian cinema and post-war neo-realism, the filmmaker Yung Chang crafts a beautifully photographed and moving metaphor for life in contemporary China, as well as a disquieting glimpse into a future that awaits us all.
To learn more about “Up the Yangtze” visit the website at uptheyangtze.com. To learn more about other public events at Colby-Sawyer, visit www.colby-sawyer.edu/events.
-Michelle L. Buser '09
Michelle L. Buser is a Communications Studies major and an intern in College Communications at Colby-Sawyer College.
Colby-Sawyer, founded in 1837, is a comprehensive liberal arts college located in the scenic Lake Sunapee Region of central New Hampshire. Students learn in small classes through a select array of programs that integrate the liberal arts and sciences with pre-professional experience. Visit us on the World Wide Web at www.colby-sawyer.edu.
Colby-Sawyer College, 541 Main Street, New London, N.H. 03257 (603) 526-3000
