Original subtitles

A May day on the Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

We're starting our brief journey to China. The filming equipment has been brought here.

The song you've just heard is called We Love Tiananmen Square.

It's sung by the Chinese students at every school.

For the Chinese, this giant space filled with silence is the center of the world,

the Gate of Heavenly Peace and the heart of Beijing.

And Beijing is the political and revolutionary center of China.

And China is Chung Kuo, the Middle Kingdom, an ancient cradle of the world civilization.

This is a place of parades, speeches, public demonstrations.

The People's Republic has been proclaimed from here as well.

And it was from here that the countless Red Guards

started their march for the Cultural Revolution.

But we've chosen to come on an ordinary day. There are many Chinese taking photographs.

It is them, the Chinese, who are the protagonists of our motion picture.

We're not pretending to understand China.

All we hope for is to present a large collection of faces, gestures, customs.

Arriving from Europe, we thought of exploring mountains and deserts.

But the fact is, most of China remains inaccessible and forbidden.

Even though, in a game of political ping-pong, the Chinese have opened a few doors,

with an unflinching persistence, our guides

keep us from taking a step away from the prescribed itineraries.

The founding fathers of Marxism oversee the Square.

Marx...

and Engels.

Tiananmen occupies a huge territory of 400,000 square meters.

Shady alleyways and winds from all direction join here, at the heart of the city.

Despite of all its imperial bearing, the Square did not exist at the time of the Great Dynasties.

It was born later out of the political need for a place of public reunions and demonstrations.

Here we can see Lenin... and Stalin, of course.

Along a major street, we are starting to move away from the Square.

Suddenly, the car driver tells us we cannot film here.

Using gestures, we're trying to ask why: the interpreters are not around at the moment.

Oops... we've filmed this, as you can see.

Later, we learned what was the reason for this complication.

This is an entrance to the park that hosts the residence of China's leader Mao Zedong.

The city schedule is strict: everybody's up very early.

Beijing and the Chinese are very laborious.

The Cultural Revolution has revised the organization of manufacture,

and has attached the primal importance to political loyalty, rather than competence.

Lately, efficiency has resurfaced as a criterion for judgement,

but without compromising the human aspect of labor.

The inhabitants of Beijing seem poor, but not miserable: without luxury and without hunger.

What surprised us most is that the living standards here, so distant from ours,

apparently do not bother people all that much.

In the morning light, under the Tatar Wall, we notice these people, who do not look like ordinary workers.

This is a kind of physical exercise, but also a dance and a ceremony.

It disciplines the body and strengthens the spirit.

They move very rhythmically, as if following music that no one else can hear.

This tradition is so old that the new leaders are willing to discontinue it,

as a rudiment of the past, as a superstition.

A school day usually starts like this: running and outdoor exercises.

One day, we're taken to a gynecology hospital in Beijing,

a quiet and neat facility managed by very young doctors.

The patient is a worker of an electric valve factory, 35 years old and expecting her first child.

She needs a Caesarian section, and is anesthetized by means of acupuncture.

It's a poor and simple practice. There is no need for expensive and complicated equipment.

A very direct human contact is established between the doctors and the patient.

Acupuncture is accessible to everybody. It can also be used in remote areas,

and by doctors without professional education that form the backbone of Chinese rural medicine.

Today, despite of the skepticism of the Western scholars,

3/4 of the surgery operations performed in China employ for the purposes of anesthesia

these extremely thin needles,

which, passing through the nerves, reduce susceptibility to pain.

Thus, the medical practice in China

shows that it's possible to overcome grave obstacles with simple means and using ancient teachings.

This kindergarten serves the 6400 workers of the 3rd cotton factory on the outskirts of Beijing.

Each big factory maintains a school, where the workers can send their children.

Starting from childhood, they are prepared for the future life in a collectivist society.

Their grace makes us forget that almost all songs they're singing have political connotations.

The most famous one goes like this:

"Navigation depends on the helmsman, Revolution depends on Chairman Mao."

A house at the same factory.

A husband and wife discuss the vegetables they've bought at the produce market.

Both work here, at the cotton factory.

Just like the others around it, this house is modest and simple.

According to the law, the rent cannot exceed 5% of the salary.

The woman is saying: "We still do not have a grandson.

To build socialism, it is better if the families are not too large."

The factories are like small autonomous villages, where the workers live and tend to their duties.

The salaries are small, and the difference between the smallest and the greatest isn't large.

The number of distinct levels of payment is also decreasing.

The workload doesn't look stressful. Perhaps this is because the workforce is abundant.

The administration of the factory is appointed according to the "three in one" principle.

The three are the technical personnel, the workers and the soldiers.

This is a heritage of the Cultural Revolution, but the organization of labor keeps changing.

The Chinese engage into discussions with enthusiasm,

even though they tend to become repetitive and monotonous.

At the end of the workday, the workers make a circle in the courtyard and talk.

Today they are discussing an art exhibition,

a relatively new phenomenon, a result of cultural liberalization.

The moderator praises the artists, because, following the teachings of Mao,

they put art to the service of workers, peasants and soldiers.

We must spin and weave for the revolution, say the others.

There are no real debates. They just put forward suggestions for various amendments.

We must improve the quality. It is a matter of primary importance.

We must manufacture good cotton and contribute to the World Revolution.

We arrive at the Great Wall on a windy day.

The Chinese call it a wall of 10,000 Ii. It's total length is 5,000 kilometers.

2500 years ago, it was constructed by slaves to protect the Empire against the barbarians.

In his poem "A Worker reads History", Brecht asks:

"Who built the seven gates of Thebes?

The books are filled with names of kings.

Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?"

It's claimed that the Great Wall is the only human-built monument to be seen from the Moon.

But the astronauts didn't say anything about it.

It's a fortification, a barrier against the Mongols.

The turrets are spaced in such a way that the sentinels can hear each other's voices.

If there is a single monument to represent the inutility of military arts, it's here.

Someone has also called it the world's longest cemetery,

because the live bodies of rebellious slaves were used to cement the blocks of stone.

But the Wall has blocked the steppe winds, and thus contributed to agriculture.

And sending the soldiers' families into remote areas assisted the propagation of Chinese culture.

A military monument has thus unintendedly served to promote civilization.

Strange stone animals oversee this verdant street on the outskirts of Beijing.

This is a sacred road, the Road of the Spirits,

along which the deceased Emperors were taken to the place of entombment.

Each shape is repeated twice. The female is seated, the male is standing.

There are lions, unicorns, camels, elephants, chimeras, horses.

Today, the significance of these sculptures is largely unknown.

The animals separate the good from the evil, inaugurate the peace of oblivion,

and prepare to serve the Emperor in the Kingdom of the Dead.

Of 16 Ming emperors, 13 are buried in this giant tomb.

Even though the Chinese do not favor the word "empire" anymore, they still come to pay homage.

In the past, no one could enter these gardens, and even the Emperor had to step out of the carriage.

A visit to the tomb is a festive occasion. There is nothing stern or solemn about it.

There isn't much of a point in going inside.

The interiors are nothing more

than giant underground chambers containing similar rectangular coffins.

One could better have a look at the museum.

There are many treasures there, but the one that impressed us most

is this specimen of political art.

This, explains the tour guide, is a representation of the workers' hardships during the Ming epoch.

Even despite of the floods and droughts, the landowner comes to the peasants to collect taxes.

A family that cannot pay is expelled from the village.

The peasants become beggars. They are starving to death on the road...

and are forced to sell their own children.

Thus was the life under feudal emperors.

And it instigated the masses to revolt.

In 1582, the whole country was in uproar.

This, concludes the guide, is exactly as Chairman Mao teaches us.

Abundant harvests are no longer made in Heaven,

nor are the peasants ever expelled from the fields.

Better stilll.. For one month in a year, all the students, arranged like this, in a square,

go to work in the agricultural communes.

We've come to visit an agricultural commune.

40 square kilometers, 3000 hectares of fields, 29000 inhabitants.

We're told that before the commune was built, this land was suffering from droughts and floods.

Today, there are kilometers of channels, where animals and fish can be raised.

There is a hospital, 6 clinics, 36 health centers.

8000 students attend 5 middle and 19 primary schools.

Of course, we've come across less prosperous villages along our itinerary.

It would be naive to think that we've found ourselves in a rural paradise.

Peasants' life is hard here, as it is everywhere.

This market in a central street of the capital

is like a country fair transposed to the city, where the animals are sold still alive.

We hide our cameras behind the heaps of fruits and tea leaves.

The prices are low. The abundance is accessible to all.

Apart from gentle manners and subtle intelligence,

food appreciation is another common trait among Chinese.

The table is rich is fanciful.

Each province is proud of its diverse specialities.

But, at least for an outsider, the important thing is

that the giant expanse of the agricultural grounds helps all Chinese

to overcome the Asian tragedy of malnutrition.

Even though not everywhere you can find as much abundance as here.

"There is a Great Palace in the City" wrote Marco Polo.

One Sunday, we leave to rediscover the walls, roofs, staircases and gardens of the Forbidden City

described in II Milione.

A few decades ago,

no Europeans were allowed to enter here, and only very few Chinese.

Closed during the Cultural Revolution, the Emperor's City has recently reopened.

And we've come here to watch the Chinese visitors,

rather than to explore the legacy of the imperial times.

The names of the halls and pavilions celebrate the enormous divine prominence

that the emperors associated with their own presence.

Supreme Harmony, Celestial Purity, Terrestrial Serenity, Nourishment of the Spirit.

The actual life behind these walls was a rather different story.

These were cruel and greedy courts

dominated by extravagant and hardly human customs.

The halls and palaces formed an itinerary leading toward the inaccessible power.

The visitors and court officials kept pacing from one hall to another,

waiting to be summoned to the Emperor's chamber,

often passing away or abandoning their original intention

before being able to reach the destination.

The modern Chinese have a peaceful relationship with their past.

They see its grandeur as a motivation to look into the present,

and visit without solemn trepidation these no longer forbidden grounds.

Beijing is still an old city with small houses

narrow streets and closed courtyards.

This old woman has tiny feet. Her steps are unsteady.

Since childhood, her feet were tightly bound and not allowed to grow.

One emperor had a concubine with shapely buttocks and tiny feet,

and that's how this cruel custom has originated.

The officials at the court decided that the prominent shape of the buttocks, a symbol of beauty,

depends on the size of the feet.

Hence they invented the custom.

A woman with feet like this must have been young in the days of the last dynasty.

This is an antique trading street called Liu Li Chang.

It is brimming with shops selling all sorts of curiosities. They are all managed by the state.

And all the goods are sold at fixed prices.

The streets are narrow. And there is always a Public Security Guard

who would maintain the order and prevent strangers from entering.

The roofs protrude beyond the walls.

There are no windows outside.

The life is confined to the courtyards.

They are a kind of communal area used for both work and recreation.

A kind of private order is maintained inside by consent of all inhabitants.

The houses are simple and poor.

Getting inside is hard.

You have to overcome the diffidence and shyness.

But once you're in you'll discover the human warmth as well.

There is also a new growing Beijing.

Even though the government does not favor urban expansion,

the natural growth cannot be stopped.

New districts are built in a place formerly crossed by the wall

that was delimiting the ancient Mongol City.

The trade and commerce in Beijing are mostly concentrated around two streets.

This one is called Wang Fu Jing.

To record its daily activities, we have to hide the cameras.

A stern capital of the Revolution, Beijing does not exhibit much color.

The garments are simple and frugal.

Here, you can witness the virtues of the long-forgotten times:

decency, modesty, the spirit of self-restraint.

The other street is called Feng Sheng.

Here, it's like this every day, anytime.

A wall of pedestrians, which is nearly impossible to traverse with a camera in your hands.

Beijing has hundreds of temples and pagodas.

But, for us, the most beautiful and mysterious is this one. Tian Tan, the Temple of Heaven.

Here, the Emperors were tending to the Gods

in hope for ample rain and abundant harvest.

Today, when the elephant driven carriages, processions of aristocrats

and brutal human sacrifices are nothing more than stories of distant past.

Tian Tan is a public park very much favored by the tourists.

It is made of whole pieces of wood without a single nail.

It's said that there is more than a million bicycles in Beijing.

This is Chang An theater which Chinese like to visit after work.

Tonight, it's a puppet show. The hostess announces a piece for orchestra.

From Beijing, we travel south by train for three days

and arrive in Henan province.

Its name means "south of the river",

the Yellow River in the central part of China.

This is Linxian district.

The Chinese do not try to conceal the rural poverty of this province.

Henan is the place where the first Chinese state was established 2500 years ago.

It is the capital of wheat and maize, the principal grain of China.

But, most importantly, Henan is also the first region where, in 1958,

agricultural communes were introduced in place of the cooperatives.

Every commune is divided into production brigades. And every brigade is divided into squads.

Every worker receives a small annual monetary salary

and a share of grain sufficient to his needs.

Also the children.

The elderly, who cannot work anymore, are provided with housing, food, garments,

medical aid and coverage of the burial costs.

The pride of this district is the Red Flag Canal.

It is 1500km long and was constructed with bare hands.

The water of Chanhe river was thus brought to this side of the mountains.

The people who live here like to say that, before, water was more rare than petroleum.

30,000 workers known as the Heroes of Linxian

spent 10 years excavating through the granite.

17,000,000 cubic meters of rocks had to be removed.

The dam, the diversion canal and the reservoir were then constructed.

All with very primitive instruments.

Today, Linxian is celebrated as the First Pinnacle of Socialism.

The house and the agricultural instruments are the only private property.

Everything else belongs to the state.

We requested to visit a small village. Ta Zai Tuan, 1628 inhabitants.

All the public facilities are in this courtyard:

farming equipment and grain storage, the mill and the tailor shop.

The same courtyard hosts the Revolutionary Committee

that supervises the workers at the village.

Today, they hold a meeting.

The nine members of the committee join after work at a cup of tea.

The chairman is called Ma Yongqi. He is 34,

has received a middle school education, and is of peasant backgrounds.

They read a few sayings by Mao, which are made into the starting point of the discussion.

It's May, and the seeding season is over. The commune must now prepare for the autumn.

One of the members remarks that the ideological work

should be put above all other issues.

Once the political discussion is over, they proceed talking about plowing, mowing and sifting the seeds.

After the meeting, the chairman and the vice-chairman

leave to pay a visit to one of the village families.

This is the village school.

Since the time of the Maoist Revolution, the population has doubled.

Very few people left for the cities, and those had to be approved by the entire village.

They've finally come to the family expecting them.

Today, there are no serious questions to be discussed.

But, when necessary, the committee can put to use all its power.

They've told us they can approve divorces,

but added that the occasion is rare, as the commune workers do not divorce often,

because they usually do not quarrel.

Today, they discuss cultivation and harvesting,

a tractor that needs to be purchased, barley and beans.

The bedroom. In winter, fire is kindled in these cavities.

The bricks ignite and maintain the heat all night long.

The pains and sentiments are nearly invisible in China.

They are concealed behind propriety and restraint.

We ask if we could see a funeral, but the response is that those occasions are too personal.

China is a country without cemeteries.

The state recommends cremation. But in the rural areas, the dead are still often buried

The tomb location needs to be approved, but the permissions are not hard to obtain.

A strange crowd of people catches our sight in another part of the Linxian district.

We ask our guides to stop the car, but they pretend they don't understand us.

So we jump out of the car and insist on shooting.

They respond: "If you really want to do it, you can. But it doesn't make us happy..."

So, we've filmed this, as you can see.

This is one of the rare private markets,

where the peasants trade their own products:

vegetables from a small garden, a pig, a straw hat, a hoe blade.

A single exception from the collectivism of the entire territory.

The authorities disapprove of it, and think about it as a marginal phenomenon, nothing to speak of.

We're now entering a village in the mountains without any advance warning.

It seems abandoned and deserted.

The first thing to draw our attention is an inscription on the wall.

Once it's translated we discover, to our surprise,

that, written in perfect Chinese,

it protests the invasion of Indian troops into the Chinese territory.

The governor of the village is reluctant to give us the permission to enter.

He keeps striding in front of us now, vexed.

The walls of the buildings are covered with fanciful inscriptions.

For example, "May the Red Sun keep rising for a thousand years!"

"Oppose individualism, criticize revisionism!"

or "May we wish Chairman Mao to live forever!"

These Chinese have never seen a Westerner.

They come to the doorways: amazed, a bit scared and curious.

They can't resist the temptation to stare at us.

We go on with filming.

But, soon, we realize that it's us who are peculiar and foreign.

For the people to the other side of the camera, we're completely unknown

and perhaps a bit ridiculous.

A hard blow against our European arrogance!

For one fourth of the earth's population, we're so unfamiliar that it fills us with awe.

Our big eyes, curly hair, big long noses,

pale skin, extravagant gestures, outlandish costumes...

They are taken aback, but very courteous.

Afraid to offend us by fleeing,

they come out and stand still in front of the camera,

often motionless and as if petrified.

During our brief digression into the highland,

we've witnessed a gallery of astounded faces,

but we've never noticed any expression of hostility.

The governor wants everything to be captured properly.

He explains to the villagers who we are and what we want.

During the time of our stay,

he forces out of sight the elderly men and women, especially those wearing shabby clothes.

We continue travelling south and arrive in the drainage areas of Yangtze.

This river is the principal source of water for the irrigation in central China.

This agricultural commune is on the outskirts of Suzhou city.

The experiment of agricultural communes continues through surges of enthusiasm and disappointment.

And these work units are presently the foundation of the Chinese rural economy.

China lives along its rivers and channels.

The origins of both political centralization and collectivism

lie in the historical need to build and maintain the network of dams and channels,

so precious, yet so vulnerable.

The Chinese historians see it as a sign of the imminent decline of a dynasty,

when the emperors start treating irrigation with negligence.

We arrive in Suzhou almost by chance, and discover a city of remarkable beauty

covered with a patchwork of channels,

not too different from the remote times when they were constructed.

Of course, Suzhou reminds us of Venice.

It has a long history and has been often ruled by militant sovereigns.

A thousand years ago, the silk produced in Suzhou was the most sought-after in China.

When Marco Polo arrived here, he was struck by the advances of civilization.

Back then, the city was already using paper money, producing brocade,

it excelled in literature and medicine,

and had "6000 bridges, so tall that a boat could pass underneath,

or maybe even two boats together."

Today it's a city of industry, commerce and laborious life.

Like in the other Chinese cities,

the elderly people attempt to regulate traffic and maintain order at their own discretion.

This is the best restaurant in town.

For a few yuan, you can get broad noodles and flatbreads.

The broad noodles, served in soy sauce, are the prototype of fettuccine.

It's hard to accept the idea that the Chinese have invented everything,

including the fettuccine.

Suzhou is most famous for its parks.

The rich Mandarins and the court officials

built these gardens to spend here their years of retirement.

They are labyrinths of stones, streams, water lilies and small temples.

They continue to please the eyes of the generation that has separated from the aristocratic life,

the intellectual discourse, the nostalgic feelings for nature.

Every window, every rock has some significance.

And so does the name of the gardens:

the Gardens of Harmony, or the Gardens of the Humble Administrators.

It's not easy to enter a Buddhist temple in China.

They are closed or do not allow public admission,

and are not often desecrated and transformed into factories.

It's hard to believe that the religious sentiments have disappeared completely in a country

that has been dominated for hundreds of years

by the thoughts and ideas of Buddha and Confucius,

and where the Emperor was worshipped as a divine being.

Today, this West Garden Temple in Suzhou

is visited as a museum of the past preserved as a curiosity.

500 statues. All of them representing Buddha

in his various fantastic and symbolic incarnations.

The same deity depicted through the different stages of life.

An example of a personality cult from the former times.

Once, Nanjing was a corrupt capital

that hosted the glorious Ming Emperors.

Now it's an industrial and commercial center

that has played an important role in the Civil War and the Communist Revolution.

This district in the ancient center of Nanjing

used to be a lair of petty crimes and prostitution.

There is a medical center in the district, neat and efficient.

It has to rely, however, on herbal medicine and acupuncture,

which are the common resorts of the needy medicine.

These are medical plants. They can cure flu, cough, fever,

malaria, high blood pressure, skin and liver diseases.

There are not many historical monuments that have survived in Nanjing.

A few gardens, a few restored pagodas.

The Palaces of the Southern Dynasties and the temples have all decayed into ruins.

The monument that Nanjing is most proud of is made of iron.

It's a bridge across Yangtze, 6km long.

The construction has taken 8 years and involved 5000 workers.

The bridge is a magnificent accomplishment. It has connected the banks of the river

that, until recently, used to separate the north and south of China.

We're at the central square dedicated to the people of Nanjing,

filming the mundane daily activities.

Nanjing takes a lot of pride in its schools.

Every district has a kindergarten supervised by a revolutionary committee.

China is a country of the young. Half of its population is less than 20.

But it's the children who are in the focus of everybody's attention.

Since the early age, they absorb the values of collectivism.

They are quiet, obedient and not at all capricious.

Since childhood, the basis for education is the thoughts and sayings by Mao,

his language, examples of his gestures.

"I am a golden sunflower", says one of the songs,

and continues: "a sunflower turning after the Red Sun of the Revolution."