All language subtitles for [SubtitleTools.com] Shoot.for.the.Contents.1991.1080p.CRIT.WEB-DL.AAC.2.0.x264-aTroCiTy_track3_[und]

[crash]

[footsteps running]

♪acappella singing
in foreign language♪

♪Eastern music♪

-[woman VO] Any look at
China is bound to be loaded with

questions.

Her visible faces are minuscule
compared to her unknown ones.

Or, is this true?

♪gong♪

The name of the game used to
be "shoot for the contents."

Explain.

What's your desire here?

I've heard that
in Ancient China,

fung shee -- which
refers to people,

places, and cultures removed
from the central court -- dealt

mostly with the areas of
knowledge Confucius refused to

discuss, mainly
strange events, spirts,

and fate.

Fung shee influence was
significant in many areas of

culture, including
court social life.

One of the games it offers as
entertainment at the dinner

parties of the rich and powerful
is this game Shoot for the

Contents, or
Guessing the Contents.

I used to be fascinated by
the master of this art of

divination, Quan Lou, not only
because he could guess up to

13-odd items placed inside a
closed container -- there was

rarely a miss, naming them
off one by one -- but more so

because he could spin so acutely
and poetically such complex

interpretations of the
signs of the universe.

-This is just a
shot in the dark.

-There are three items.

Make a guess at any one of them.

-Let's see.

It's not quite an object.

-Right.

-Begins with a "B."

-Wrong.

-Begins with a "D."

Neither human nor quite animal.

Its miraculous
changes are inscrutable.

Comes from water
and has five colors.

Can be as small as a circle,
or as large as the world.

It changes without fixed aid and
moves up and down without fixed

time.

-When it is a he, he
is as red as fire.

And when it is a she, she
has a body like flat waves.

-It's linked directly
to the ruling class.

It is nine animal
forms: the horns of a deer,

the ears of an ox,
the eyes of a hare,

the body of a snake covered
with the skins of a carp,

the belly of a frog, and the
paws of a tiger and the claws of

an eagle.

The beast can actually be
trained to the point where you

can ride upon its back.

But on the
underside of its throat,

it has scales a foot across
that grow back from the body and

anyone who brushes
against it is sure to die.

This was a hard-faced metaphor
for the Chinese ruler who was to

represent the Chinese people: a
docile yet potentially dangerous

dragon.

-That was creation.

The dragon expresses the
idea of proverb and change.

-[woman VO] There is a
thousand trillion Chinas,

as a Chinese storyteller would
say -- the China of people's

imagining.

The Beijing Review
was quite vocal in condemning

all this talk about China
being an enigma as it keeps on

changing its policies.

They said it is quite off the
mark for observers abroad to

think of changes in politics as
an indication of instability.

Well, in the
art of reading mountains,

it is said that to
find the dragon,

one must first
find its ancestors.

Interpreting orientation
and form is not without risk,

because in the ancient books,
the beast exists in a thousand

forms.

It has 10.000 aspects,
stands and crouches,

it's huge, or tiny,
unruly or obedient,

reserved or extravagant.

Infinitely in
metamorphosis, it dives deep,

rises high,
meanders, coils, leaps,

and takes its flight.

♪Eastern music♪

With Mao's
suspicion of intellectuals,

bookworms like yourself and your
friends will fit right into one

of the 10
categories of rightists.

Yes, you would
either be a revisionist,

a right
opportunist, or a rightist.

In any case, the
stinking number nine.

-[woman VO] Oh!

What about the Two 100s
policy that have survived Mao?

-[woman VO] Well, history
seems to repeat itself.

What happened over 30 years ago?

In 1956, Mao did initiate a
period of public debate and

party rectification
under the slogan,

"Let a hundred flowers blossom.

Let a hundred schools
of thought contend."

His speech had first
provoked no reaction;

China's intellectuals had
learned to distrust all official

sugar-coated
decorations of this kind.

But in June 1957, the
hundred flowers began to bloom

furiously, and the result was
devastating for the regime.

The leaders responded to
these unexpectedly virulent

criticisms by launching an
immediate counteroffensive,

thereby reopening a
ruthless weeding-out campaign,

angered and covering the
poisonous weeds hidden among the

fragrant flowers.

Mao's hundred flowers wilted in
the heat of the short-lived but

fiercely critical voices of
students and intellectuals who

opposed reciting blindly all
the directives of the party and

questioned the party's right
to monopolize political power.

-[man] [foreign language]

-[translator VO] Right now in
China, there is no such thing as

independent filmmaking,
because there are two meanings

to independent filmmaking: one,
that it has independence and

investment decisions; second,
that it has independence in

distribution.

In the US, the decision to make
what kind of film is really up

to the situation of the
market, and so it is more free.

However in China, very often the
kind of film that is going to be

shown, going to be made, is
decided according to political

needs of the
moment, because in China,

all filmmaking enterprises
are in the hands of the state.

Although film studios can
decide themselves what film they

want to make, but afterwards it
all has to pass through state

censorship.

So if you pass through state
censorship and it's approved,

then you can
distribute the film.

If it doesn't
pass, then you can't.

The criteria for
censorship, uh,

one of them is, um,
the political content.

They want to make sure that
it is politically correct,

if you have made any
political mistakes in your film.

-[man] [foreign language]

-The second criteria is to look
at whether there are any sex

scenes or violent scenes.

-[man] [foreign language]

-A few years ago, some people
tried to experiment in the

direction of
independent filmmaking.

However, once
they made the film,

they had to deliver it over
to the state film distribution

corporation, and as
a result of that,

they didn't make
hardly any money at all.

-[man] [foreign language]

-So there are two reasons for
the difficulties of this kind of

experiment: on the one hand is
that they have so little money

that they can't
really make a decent film,

and so they don't
have an audience.

The other reason is that no
matter how good a film they

make, and no matter how welcome
the film is in terms of the

audience, how much the
audience wants to see it,

if it doesn't meet with the
approval of the higher-ups,

then it won't be released at all
or will have limited release.

-[man] [foreign language]

-So a few people who
experimented just gave up.

Although American filmmaking
can be considered all-around

independent -- and there's a lot
of freedom -- at the same time,

there are aspects of the
system which means that,

uh, it doesn't really have
freedom -- it has limitations to

its freedom -- and that is
because it is limited by the

demands of the market.

-[man] [foreign language].

-The boss of the film, uh, his
eyes always has to be focused on

the expressions on
the audience's face.

-[man] [foreign language]

-So although in China, films
are subject to all sorts of

political censorship,
however, at the same time,

you get the situation where you
can point to the superiority of

Socialism in that some film
studios can support experimental

films by young directors
which don't make any money.

These experimental
films, on the one hand,

they can be presented abroad in
international film festivals --

films of high artistic value --
and they can win great acclaim

and recognition for the studio.

At the same time, they also
exert a tremendous influence in

pushing forward the equality and
form of other films produced by

the studio.

So in China, young directors
don't have to worry about losing

their jobs.

If, in the US, a young director
makes two or three films that

don't make any money, I think
this director would lose his or

her job.

[chuckles]

[inaudible chatter]

♪Eastern music♪

-[woman VO] Outside
this journey is that of hit and

miss.

In context subtleties are felt
without being quite understood,

but important truths do
intermittently burst forth

without warning, because it's
as easy to confide in foreigners

whose shorts
guarantees their discretion.

Their being
outsiders makes them,

at times, strangely harmless.

-[woman VO] Think also of those
of us here who don't speak all

the Chinese languages.

We are bound at some stage to
hear through the translator's

ears and to speak
through their mouth.

Without them, we would
remain deaf and dumb.

All depends on their finesse and
their ability to mold our view.

The political situation is
such that actual situations

necessarily require
an indirect language,

so there's always more to
matters than meets the eye.

Seeing through our own eyes
does not guarantee any truth.

♪Eastern music♪

Only in appearance does China
often have a changing face to

the world.

In fact, Mao is borrowed
from traditional China,

for the time when truly 1.000
flowers blossomed and a hundred

schools contended was the 500
years before Confucianism was

established as the state
philosophy in the second century

BC.

It was then, aside
from Confucianism,

that Taoism, Maoism,
vitalism, dialecticism,

agrarianism, and many
other -isms fully flowered.

-[woman VO] This was the
time when it was said,

"Nothing is softer than water,
yet water is stronger than

anything else when it attacks
-- the hardest and the most

resistant."

Gentleness always
prevails over hardness.

♪Eastern music♪

-[woman VO] Today, coming
back to Mao's persuasive speech,

one breathed with some
bewilderment the following

affirmations: we think that it
is as harmful to the growth of

art and science if
administrative measures are used

to impose one particular style
of art or school of thought and

to ban another.

-[woman VO] This
is close to home.

I mean, both homes.

There are differences, but this
is nothing specific to China.

-[woman VO] Don't
shoot back at random.

Here's what Mao also said in
that speech: Throughout history,

new and correct things have
often failed at the outset to

win recognition from the
majority of the people,

and have had to develop by
twists and turns and struggle.

It is therefore necessary to be
careful about questions of right

and wrong.

[inaudible chatter and howling]

♪Eastern music♪

-[woman VO] Man
does not grind ink,

but ink grinds men.

-[woman VO] Zhuangzi once asked,
"Where can I find a man who has

forgotten words, so
I can talk to him?"

♪pulsing music♪

It is said that the five
colors will blind a man's sight.

♪pulsing music♪

-[foreign language].

-[translator VO]
As a movie director,

I personally would not wish
my films to be transmitted or

released as videos 'cause, um,
watching videos on a TV screen,

the quality is very, very low
compared to the full effect you

get watching a film on a
movie screen in a movie house.

However, at the same
time, I understand that video

distribution in the
United States is quite large.

I've heard that 30 to 40 percent
of its profits comes from its

release as a film
in a movie house,

and the rest of the profits
comes from its distribution as

video.

So therefore, I might have to
dispense with my other concerns.

-Well, um, the relationship
between video and film is like

this: um, in China, um, films
have been made increasingly into

videos, and at the same
time, in recent years,

there have been fresh
videos made -- just as videos,

not as films first.

♪man singing
in foreign language♪

-[woman VO] On the seventh
day of the seventh moon,

Ho Long chose to
lie down in the sun.

When someone asked
what he was doing,

he replied, "As with books, a
man needs an occasional sunning

to avoid mildew."

[laughter]

To the east was the Azure Dragon
and the element of wood standing

for spring and the rising sun.

In the north was
the Black Tortoise,

and the element of
water indicating winter.

With time and transformation,
even the Little Red Book was

declared bad, since it'd
been compiled by that traitor

[foreign language], who dared to
criticize the son of our hearts.

Today, the son
himself has been revised.

The people are left with only
some odds and ends of the holy

words.

Mao was a son of the earth.

For 10 years, he lived in cave
dwellings and immersed himself

in manual labor.

He cultivated many flowers and
weeded out the poisonous ones.

Mao was no peasant.

Mao was a man of mind
and a man of letters.

During a long March, it was said
that he read most of the time.

And then, he would sit
and dream solitarily.

When he immersed
himself in manual labor,

it wasn't forced labor; he
was cultivating his own garden,

[foreign language]

But there are further
differences to be made.

One of the tales spun in the
Yan'an also relates how Mao used

to be made bored
by party officials.

Although he himself was
always fond of delivering long

speeches, it was said that those
who secretly collected his poems

relied on the days of
the party's meetings,

during which Mao would write
series of short four-verse poems

while the speeches went on.

Then, he would throw
them away, under the table,

in crumpled paper balls.

-[woman VO] "He died at last.

Without your death, China
would've gone to pieces."

-[woman VO] "How dare you."

♪man singing acappella
in foreign language♪

-[man VO] [foreign language].

-[translator VO] This is a
popular song on the Yellow Loess

soil in the high plateaus
of Shanxi province.

As a child, I was very
familiar with these folk songs,

and in my films, you
can often hear them.

As a child, I grew up
in a very poor area.

It is said that here, you can
dig down really deep into the

Yellow Loess soil and all you'll
find is just the same Loess soil

-- no rocks, no stones.

I used to live in
these cave dwellings,

in the hillsides, between
northern Shanxi province and the

middle plains.

You can find these
underground cave dwellings.

It's called yaodong.

They have a long
gateway leading downwards.

They're very warm in winter
because no wind comes in,

and you also have
a very hot kang,

which is an earthern raised
bed underneath which you burn

firewood, and your whole
body is nice and cozy.

In the summer, you feel very
cool inside these dwellings.

I think if the whole world
lived in such dwellings,

everyone would be very healthy.

As a child, I used to accompany
adults to the hills and we used

to herd sheep.

We'd stand on the bare hillsides
and yell out these folk songs,

and our echoes would just
reverberate back and forth

between the hillsides.

Mixing together
with the local people,

I've really developed deep
feelings of attachment for them,

so whenever I see these ordinary
peasants from these areas,

even though they may have dirty
faces and maybe some of them may

be very selfish, I still
feel very close to them,

and I still find
them very endearing.

-[woman VO] "There cannot
be two suns in one sky,"

Mao said, when he assumed the
position of the Son of Heaven.

-[woman VO] "If I
conquer the mountain,

then it is I who
sits on the mountain."

Only the leaders
can issue orders.

They monopolized the power to
decree what is right and what is

wrong.

In every political or
economic campaign launched,

the people have been relegated
to minor roles forever,

supporting enthusiastically and
responding to the call of the

great man.

Those who stray aside
are labeled accordingly,

for the ruler's authority
encompasses every aspect of

people's private lives.

-[woman VO] "When I have
presented one corner of a

subject to anyone and he cannot
learn the other three from it,"

said Confucius, "I do
not repeat my lesson."

The sage contributed to maintain
a society rebellious to the

state system -- one based on
a complex kinship system of

loyalty and an
intricate guild economy.

But he died a pathetic old man
who felt he had thrown it away

on stony ground.

His teachings have been twisted
and he was made responsible for

every aspect of
China's backwardness.

-[woman VO] How could he not be
made so on the women's question?

A woman is not the moon.

She must rely on
herself to shine.

-[woman VO] Chinese feminists
are fond of these lines,

and the sage did nothing to
unfossilize Chinese society when

it comes to rebellion
against gender inequality.

♪Eastern music♪

♪woman singing and
playing Eastern music♪

Did you know that Empress Wu --
who reigned until the year 705

when she was 85 years old --
no woman in Chinese history had

claimed the official powers of
heaven and worn upon her back

the imperial robes embroidered
with the design of dragons and

heavenly clouds?

-[woman VO] A woman
on the Dragon Throne.

What a miracle!

No.

A poet does not take an
experience as the content of his

poem and pour it into a forum.

There is no poetry if there is
no exploration of the language.

So the poet's task is not only
to say something for the first

time, but also to say, for
the thousand-and-first time,

in a different way, what has
been said a thousand times

already.

-[woman VO] What is manifestly
real to some eyes looks

strangely stiff and
conventional to others.

"You don't catch the vital
spirit in things in formal

likeness," said Gao
Changgong of the Tang Period.

"What seems unrealistic may
transmit the life force in ways

that no mastery of the
visible likeness can."

♪Eastern music♪

-[woman] [foreign language].

-[foreign language].

-[translator VO] A good story
must have lifelike characters --

full of life and vitality, where
each individual character has a

unique personality, where the
human relations constructed

around each character
develops and changes.

A good story must
have a moving content.

Its plot must be fresh.

It mustn't repeat what
others have already done.

In other words, you don't chew
over a steamed bun that somebody

else has already chewed over.

I think that art is always
the discovery of the new --

something that you
discover yourself,

something new in
content and form.

This is what makes a good film.

Nowadays, in many films, you see
the same old things done over

and over again.

You have the same old
stories in new guises,

and you have the
same old styles,

and the character images are
traditional in the same but put

in new costumes
and trotted forth.

I think human beings are
very rich and very gated.

They have many aspects to them.

And these new things must be
discovered anew each time.

So I think this is a
way to tell a good story,

so that the audience will
get much more out of it.

♪dramatic drumming♪

-[woman VO] Mao ruled for the
power of rhymes and proverbs

turned into snuggly
capsuled slogans.

-[woman VO] "You can't eat
a steamed bun in one bite."

-[woman VO] Yes!

He was accused of formulating
a system of indoctrination

designed to turned all China
into one chanting kindergarten.

-[woman VO] There
could be worse.

♪flute music♪

-[woman VO] A temple is said to
be the landscape of the soul.

-[woman VO] Be smooth,
but be a square shooter.

-[woman VO] We seem to
forget that it is in and through

symbols that,
consciously or unconsciously,

we live, move, and work.

-[woman VO] The writings of the
master contain the solution to

all problems, the
answer to all questions.

There was no situation in life
that could not be settled with a

quote from the great man.

-[woman VO] "The great man."

Which great man?

♪melodic drumming♪

-[woman VO] Solemn wise words
were when the wrong political

tendency surges towards
us like a rising tide,

we must not feel isolation and
must dare to go against the tide

and brave it through.

Mao's word were going against
the tide is a Marxist-Leninist

principal.

-[woman VO] Confucius was
condemned for having opposed

social change.

He was said to have had men
arrested and executed for

gathering a crowd to
form an association,

for spreading heretical
views, and last but not least,

for confusing right and wrong.

♪dramatic music♪

-[woman VO] The mother of Yang
Jian was a devoted Buddhist,

invoking the holy name of
the Buddha all day long.

Then, one day, Yang Jian decided
to call his mother on a pretext.

The old lady answered.

He then continued calling
to her with great frequency.

The mother grew
annoyed and said,

"What is this all about?

Why all this yelling for me?"

Yang Jian replied.

"Aha!

You become vexed when I call
your name but three or four

times, yet the Buddha is
beckoned to thousands of times a

day.

How angry he must be!"

His mother was convinced by
this logic to limit her daily

chanting.

♪dramatic drumming♪

Mao used to compare
revolutionaries who fought hard

to overthrow feudal power but
remained skeptical vis-a-vis his

line of Socialism to the
legendary [foreign language],

a dragon-lover who collected
pictures and statues of dragons

with passion but was said to
have fled in a panic when the

live dragon came down the road.

A peasant said it all: Politics
is just beating air with air.

Confucius also knew
what he did when he said,

"I saw a dragon today.

It condenses into an entity
and disperses into nothing.

It rides on a clouds,
appears and disappears."

♪dramatic drumming♪

-[man] The people
involved in the struggle there,

as opposed to Russian
perception of things.

-[woman] Mm-hm.

-[man] But that's
all I could tell you.

You know, it
didn't start with them,

it start with the Cubans,

and also Marx extended.

Each situation has its own
social and historical dynamics,

and you have to
proceed from that.

We know all the right
Russian model has been...

a farce.

I always find it very amazing
that people can -- thousands of

miles -- situate themselves in a
country that is one-quarter the

world -- its population is
massive country in terms of,

um, just its land space --
attempt to become experts on

another country,
whether it's China,

the Caribbean.

For me, it's
virtually impossible,

and I think the most interesting
anecdote is that people don't

even know themselves.

These very experts have
the world of psychiatrists,

[chuckles] um, to tell
them what's happened to them.

What's the matter with them?

In that context,
I think that, um,

for me, China is a place-- some
place else that has an enormous

amount of people...

to carry out an organization
program -- an alignment

America's wishes, which was to
get freely to produce things for

the marketplace.

The problem is that China has
not yet decided whether it wants

to go toward the free market or
whether it wants to have a dual

economy.

And when the students and the
autonomous workers came out,

it became a serious threat to
the present status quo because

they do not understand that they
never perceive of a situation

which their response
to the modernization,

we don't know what
that represents.

I don't think
you-- first of all,

I don't think...

I'll agree with Mao to
the extent that when the

intellectuals gather,
they exchange ideas,

and ideas are never
limited or narrow.

Intellectuals are involved in
the whole spectrum of life --

material life.

That means from the
ant to human beings.

I use the ant as a
microcosm, as a small epsilon,

a small thing to a large thing.

And there's the dichotomy -- or
apparent dichotomy -- between

the two.

But, um, he's correct in that
intellectuals express certain

kinds of ideas,
and people in power,

by definition, see intellectuals
as a threat -- as a threat to

the status or the status quo.

So Mao was correct.

I would like to take it a bit
further by pointing out that

intellectuals have a
certain tradition;

they are the people
who've been taught,

who have a certain
kind of background,

and within the
context of modern society,

they're the people
who have been trained.

They are the privileged people,
whether you like it or not.

And in society, the state
has to preserve itself.

Tiananmen Square, for me,
exemplify the problem of the

problem of non-organization to
the extent that Mao's famous

speech, "Let a
hundred blossoms...

Let a hundred
flowers blossoms...

Let a...

a hundred something contend,"
was another way in bringing the

full felt of the
closet out of the holes,

out of the various
subterranean levels of society,

of Chinese society, only to
wipe them out once again,

because they pose a trap.

They wanted to know
what was going on,

and the Tiananmen Square
situation was one in which the

Chinese, again, used -- after I
suppose 50 years -- to bring the

intellectuals out so they
will expose themselves,

and then move in then.

The question is, it's a very
dangerous situation for China

because...

if people
come and express all kinds of

views openly, and the state
manipulates the manner in which

they come out, then, in my
view, the state can't progress;

it can't make amends or solve
certain kinds of institutional

problems.

-[woman VO] As a
Chinese reporter noted,

it was inevitable that either
economic reform would break

through the old political order
or that the old political order

would act as a break
on economic reform.

-[woman VO] And the truth about
China is more often than not

full of surprises, because
ruptures and continuities occur

side by side.

And, as a saying goes,

we have lifted a rock only to
drop it on our own feet.

-[woman VO] [chuckles]

♪man singing acappella♪

-[woman VO] You sitting on the
mule up in front of the pack,

where the three
lanterns are glowing.

On the mule hangs a bell
making that "wong wong" sound.

If you're my lover,
please wave your hand.

If you're not my
lover, please just go on.

-[woman VO] The Beijing
Review made it clear.

Although China after Mao
has made public the chamber's

mistakes, rectified
so-called left mistakes,

and adopted a correct
line, there was no one

decommodification.

-[woman VO] A
thousand-year sleep,

10-day wake.

It was a short spring,
but a memorable one,

for the world wept at
the sight of the massacre.

Fear was the name of the
wild shooting into the crowd.

They couldn't distinguish
all the different forms,

so they were aiming
blindly at the contents.

That night, China's hundred
flowers were again trampled

ruthlessly.

-[woman VO] The cultural
revolution was said to have

confounded right and wrong.

It made no distinction between
the people and the enemy.

♪Eastern music♪

The hundred
flowers episode had revealed

another dangerous source of
opposition: the resurgent

anti-Chinese nationalism
of all the minorities.

The government's propaganda
attacked great Han chauvinism,

but the minorities remained
by and large the barbarians.

Their liberation could only be
achieved with the intervention

of the People's Liberation Army.

-[woman VO] Writing on
China's subtropical home of many

nationalities, an official
assigned researcher from

Northern China reported that
the poverty and primitiveness of

[foreign language],
apart from political causes,

has been due to inaccessibility.

Though the changes
have been great,

this region is still backward
compared with other parts of the

country, and the People's
Government is doing much to help

bridge the gap.

-[woman VO] The same
researcher also related that,

recalling the bad old days, the
peasant sailed with a very deep

feeling; without
the bright sunshine,

the lotus flowers
could not bloom,

and without the golden
bridge of Socialism,

how could we step
from Hell into Heaven?

♪Eastern music♪

-[man] I jokingly refer to
myself as a member of the

residual class.

It's a euphemism for
living on the ground,

or living outside the
norms of the status quo.

This is important for me because
when I wake up in the morning,

I'm a creature of habit.

I either turn on the
radio to NPR or KPFA,

and it's a very difficult task
when one turns on the radio,

because you feel you're
being strangled -- gradually

asphyxiated -- because of
the way in which consciousness

reduced.

♪Eastern music♪

-[woman VO] These private
plots are called the "tails of

Capitalism."

For a long time, we did
our best to cut them off.

Why should we go back to a
less socialist organization now?

-[woman VO] While at sea, Master
Eye anchored for the night in

the cove of an island.

At night, he heard the sound of
weeping coming from the water,

coupled with human-like voices.

Listening more carefully, he
overheard this conversation: The

dragon king has issued a decree
yesterday to the effect that all

aquating animals that have
tails are to be beheaded.

As I am an alligator, I weep,
because I am afraid of death.

-[woman VO] But thou are
a frog and has no tail.

Now, why weep as thou, then?

-[woman VO] There, after he
heard the plaintive reply,

"I am indeed fortunate to
have no tail at present,

but the fact that I did once
bear a tail as a tadpole might

be recalled."

-[foreign language].

-[woman VO] Mao said it loud and
clear: "Political power goes out

of the barrel of a gun.

Only with guns can the
whole world be transformed."

-[woman VO] Still, on
the question of Tibet,

[foreign language] said, "One
cannot comb different kinds of

hair with the same brush."

[pounding]

-[man] You ask me a question
that arrises out of the sign of

Soviet and split out of
China's coming out of isolation.

The interesting thing about
Chinese model is that the

Chinese, first of
all, is autonomous.

We work side by side with you.

The decision-making process
is not left to the Chinese,

it was left to the Tanzanians,
which meant that the Tanzanians

can change the program but
kept the railroad going.

The railroad had significant
impact on that regional economic

sphere, because it allowed
Zambia to transport its good to

Tanzania that had a port,
but also enhance Tanzania's

position.

The second thing they did was to
introduce a health program based

on the restoration
of African medicine.

What they did was
integrate Western medicine,

Chinese medicine,
and African medicine,

which allowed for the Africans
to integrate all these various

facets with the health system.

The third and most important
thing was the question of the

offense.

The Chinese decided to teach
the Tanzania about guerrilla

warfare.

They modernized their
military system by teaching them

guerrilla warfare because
they were surrounded by hostile

nations.

Lastly, in view of the fact that
they were-- they had built this

railroad --
Rhodesia didn't like it,

South Africa didn't like it,
the Americans didn't like it,

the rest-- nobody liked the fact
that this unfeasible thing was

becoming a dream come
true -- a dream real.

The military aspect of it was
fundamental to the Tanzanian

economy because they were
able to engage -- if they were

engaged -- in military combat at
the level that the West was not

able to confront.

In my view, because you
are in your own backyard,

I know no country that engages
in war that has lost their war

in modern-times-based
guerrilla warfare.

So in that sense, the Chinese
model was an advance of the

Soviets because the Chinese had
a program in which they charged

no interest on loan/aid; it was
protracted over a long period of

time and was paid.

But then, the Chinese made
another attempt to get into

Africa, which was their
moving into Mozambique,

Angola, Savimbi running dog.

They went along.

They supported running dog
largely because the Soviets

supported imperially.

Now, one has to be
placed in the context.

The sign of the Soviet split
has to be seen as a crucial

departure from the old
solidarity -- international

solidarity -- with the Soviets
and all the anti-imperials and

the colonization movement.

And in this sense,
the Chinese, um,

one can say that the Chinese
decided to support Savimbi

without analyzing the role
that Savimbi will do-- the

destabilizing roles Savimbi
would've played in that region.

But they had to.

It was-- it could be viewed
as an independent position,

but in terms of Africa, it
was a very retrograde position,

in my view.

And that's why I say the
question of 50-50 there -- 50

percent, um, failure
and 50 percent success.

I saw China as a very
positive sign until Mao's death,

and for me, that's a
very realistic position.

I don't think -- except for the
people who make policy decisions

-- they have to situate
themselves into China,

because they affect policy.

But for the average person,
China is a place that is vast

and beautiful and intriguing.

I consider myself a
member of the residual class,

largely because I
am in between it,

I'm not of it.

By that, I mean
that people produce,

they appropriate people's labor
by-- the people who appropriate

people's labor,
the ruling elite,

they own the
means of production,

and then there's the working
class who doesn't have time to

think about who is
given its labor to,

or to where it's
given its debt to.

And me, who enjoy everything
that both sides produce.

[quacking]

♪Eastern music♪

-[woman VO] "China is an
attractive piece of meat,

coveted by all.

But this meat is very
tough, and for years,

no one has been
able to bite into it."

These were Zhou Enlai's words.

Is eating and
drinking a mere trifle?

-[woman VO] No, class struggle
exists even at the tips of one's

chopsticks.

Under the conditions of
proletarian dictatorship,

the class enemy will attack
us, not only with steel bullets,

but more frequently
with sugar-coated bullets.

As the saying goes, "You can't
lift your hand against them when

you eat your food."

This was [foreign language]
writing in Red Flag, the party

journal.

♪Eastern music♪

-[woman VO] No member of the
May Fourth generation was more

sensitive to the importance of
words and the uses of language

in politics than Mao.

-[woman VO] His words were
unconditionally worshipped.

But when words and
acts no longer coincided,

articles in the People's Daily
did appear with headlines such

as "Talking Nonsense"
or "Great, Empty Talk."

-[woman VO] The
politics of the word is,

as Mao put it, a
verbal struggle.

And the struggle will never end.

But Mao's word power prevails,
even when Mao is denounced in

the name of Mao.

♪Eastern music♪

When I came out
of that bookstore,

the young man in
Shanghai asked with excitement,

"What did you buy?"

And I said, "Oh, well, a
collection of essays on China

after Mao by the
Beijing Review."

The young man looked at me with
utter astonishment and exclaim.

"What did you by that crap for?"

That's when I realized
how good his English was.

[chuckles]

-[woman VO] [chuckling] What
else do you remember of him?

-[woman VO] Well, he
was a former Red guard.

One day, in the
midst of a conversation,

he asked me, "Do you know how
we'll come to know whether or

not we've reached?

Whether we've succeeded in
the full modernizations?

When each family in Shanghai
will have a toilet all of its

own."

♪Eastern music♪

-[woman VO] Now, how do we
distinguish between right and

left, anyway?

Why are those who
support progress and oppose

bureaucratism and conservatism
labeled "rightists" while those

who oppose reforming and want to
continue with the old ways are

honored as leftists?

Why the strange inversion?

This is what a Chinese
journalist asked the party

official 40 years ago.

-[woman VO] Mountain and
water are male and female.

If the dragon curls left,
the water has to curl right.

If the dragon curls right,
the water has to turn left.

The two embrace each other, and
only then does a sight coalesce.

The system may be right
in its operative manners,

but it situates
itself on the left.

♪Eastern music♪

A woman remarked that the rise
of patriarchal society probably

started when man began to
accumulate personal over

communal property.

This change in secular power
coincided with the rise of sun

worship under a male priesthood.

What was conceived as religious
or spiritual values for the

symbol of the moon was
transferred to the sun and came

under masculine control.

Sun rationale and sun cruelties
hence reigned over moon thinking

and moon madness.

The sun hero was then a man who
claimed to be the one and only

son of heaven.

-[woman VO] As the dragon was
appropriated as a symbol of the

ruler, its use by ordinary
people was considered an

encroachment on the
imperial authority.

But all this issue during the
Yuan dynasty to prohibit dragon

designs were
ignored by the people,

to compromise imperial
dragons, which have five claws,

while those used by
administrators in lower ranks,

which have only
three or four claws.

Later on, names were rectified,
and the dragon with five claws

remained the "dragon" while the
one with four claws was called a

"python."

The dragon is said to have nine
sons: the dragon of burden

usually seen
at the base of monuments;

the dragon of fantasy, standing
on the roof with its head turned

upward toward the sky;
the loudmouth dragon,

frequently found on bells; the
tiger-faced dragon guarding the

entrances of jails; the
food-lover dragon imprinted on

rice bowls; the river
dragon adorning the parapets of

bridges; the great fighter
dragon carved on the hilts of

swords; the smoke-lover dragon
decorating incense burners;

and the recluse dragon,
appearing on closed doors.

♪Eastern music♪

China is red, yellow, and
blue, feared and hated.

She used to be
identified with the red menace.

Then, she became
the "golden horde,"

the "yellow peril."

And finally, she drew both
contempt and admiration for her

"blue ants," as an American
journalist once called her

masses of workers
uniformly clad in their outfits.

-[woman VO] The story goes that
Emperor [foreign language] chose

this line from a famous poem:
One speck of red among 10.000

green, a candidate painted a
stork in a group of pine trees,

a speck of red on its head.

A second showed the crimson sun
setting over a welter of green

waves.

But the winning scene was that
of a girl leaning pensively on a

balcony with a cluster of
willow trees below her.

[applause]

The word "red" is
assembled for a woman.

[roaring applause]

♪Eastern music♪

-[man] [foreign language].

-[translator VO] The image of
the dragon was created by our

ancestors.

It is said that the image came
from the idea that there were

two snakes in the sky -- that
the dragon is a composite of a

horse's head, a deer's
antler, a snake's body,

and the chicken's claws, so the
dragon symbolizes life itself,

but to this day is a
modern Chinese totem,

and the dragon symbolizes power.

For example, the emperor
proclaimed himself a dragon;

he was the true
dragon's son of heaven.

The Chinese also made the
dragon into a kind of God.

For example, in
times of draught,

the people would beg for rain
and they would go to the dragon

king's temple.

And so the dragon really
reflects the complicated,

deep cultural attitudes
of the Chinese people.

-[foreign language].

♪Eastern music♪

-[translator VO] The
dragon, in Chinese tradition,

is known as something
that controls the waters.

I know of a story that goes back
to about the early 20th century

from the Tonghai
mountains in China.

In this story, the villagers
were having trouble getting

rain, and they sent a
representative to the dragon

king, to his temple,
to beg for sympathy.

What they did was to attach a
very sharp knives to his arms.

This method of begging for
sympathy is called the "vicious

vapors."

They would also attach four
small knives to his neck,

and so whenever he
moved, he would cut himself.

Then, he would run at the
head of the other villagers.

They would run for over
20 kilometers -- this,

in the hot summer with no water
to drink -- and the knives would

just cut into his arms
and his body and his neck,

and the blood would run out and
they would dry up and cake and

clot up.

And then, when they
got to the temple,

the whole village
would kneel down,

and this man knelt there for
one full day and one night.

But the dragon
king showed no mercy.

No rain came down.

This man, though,
died in the process.

His son then went to the
plains of Hebei province,

their old hometown, to try and
win this dragon king's mercy.

All the villagers knelt down in
front of this one for three days

and three nights.

But it still did not work.

In despair and anger, the sun
just took this dragon king's

image and hung him up from the
ceiling and beat it very hard.

All of a sudden, the
heavens broke loose.

The rain just came pouring down.

The dragon king was so angry
that he just let loose his

control over the water,
and so the people had rain.

This is a story that
expresses, a great deal,

the attitudes that people
have towards the dragon king.

-[man] [foreign language].

♪Eastern music♪

-[woman VO] Here's another view
of Red from a party official:

"10 or 100 brainwashings are
needed in the life of a man.

10 or 100 cultural revolutions
are needed in the life of China,

if she is to remain Red
for 1.000 or 10.000 years.

Red doesn't last well.

It fades."

-[woman VO] "Sure,
everything is possible,"

as a student in
[foreign language] said.

"What was bad yesterday is
good today but can be bad again

tomorrow.

One day we are told to
adulate and worship a man,

another we are told to
vilify and curse him.

Then, we are again ordered to
glue back the shattered pieces

of the same man we've damned.

In the hands of our leaders, we
are mere puppets of the game of

the day."

[inaudible chatter]

♪Eastern music♪

The traditional opera retains
its popularity with the masses

down to the present day.

Scholar Wang Shun compares it
to the paintings of Qi Baishi,

whose depictions of grass and
flowers and landscapes are in

simple vigorous strokes
that leave out many details,

yet among the
leaves and the petals,

we often see such tiny insects
as a dragonfly or the cricket

painting in the Gongbi
style, the realistic style,

with such meticulous care that
even the lines of their wings

can be seen.

The performance of the
traditional opera artist vary

from gross exaggeration
to extreme precision,

and restrictions of time
and space are removed,

giving the actors an
extraordinary degree of freedom.

Bold omissions and minute
depictions become a perfectly

harmonized entity in
the whole performance.

As with Shen Fu's garden, the
joy was to see these small in

the large and the
large in the small,

the real in the illusory
and the illusory in the real.

Dragon headwall -- its
workmanship may be very fine,

and the head, in its
own way, is splendid.

But most garden-lovers
disapprove of such literal

interpretations, for their lack
of ambiguity can only limit the

imagination.

-[woman VO] China was called
"the mother of gardens" -- of

the countries to which
Western gardens are most deeply

indebted, she holds
the highest place.

-[woman VO] An inscription above
one of the doorways of a garden

reads, "The fragrance of
antiquity lasts forever."

Meticulous naturalist
reconstructions of the landscape

by painters of the past
mainstream northern school were

disregarded by southern painters
whose landscapes of the heart

flowed freely with bold,
powerful lines and movements,

stressing the oneness of the
sensual material and spiritual

worlds, thereby reproducing not
the arrested forms of nature but

its vital spirit.

Like the painter, the
garden-maker creates landscapes

and is an
interpreter, not a copyist.

The true way has always been to
capture the [foreign language]

In a successful garden, forms
themselves are only starting

points for the imagination
to roam freely about.

-[man] You came from Shanghai?

-Yes.

-[man] Why did you
immigrate to the United States?

-[foreign language].

♪Eastern music♪

[crickets and
inaudible chatter]

♪acappella singing♪

-[woman VO] An old
house is an intimate thing.

Its walls, floors, windows, and
doors bear the traces of human

wear and tear.

And we eye a painting
like we sip our tea,

convinced that a hasty glance
can only bring a superficial

satisfaction.

We look at them until the inner
significance sinks into our

minds and the
imagination is fed to the full.

This is from painter
[foreign language]

The incense burner sits proudly
by Buddha's hand on the temple

altar, and the lowly
night pot is hidden away

under the bed.

Both are made of
clay, fired in one kiln.

Why, then, is one so
high and the other so low?

The water will not be clear if
there are too many fish in the

river.

Nothing can be accomplished if
there are too many officials in

government.

-Here's another
shot in the dark.

There's no movement.

Won't you have me?

Just allows head-on shot.

-Don't become
infatuated with this machinery.

After all, you're only offered
a guest shot on the show.

-Oh.
[chuckles]

-[inaudible].

-I'm supposed to be an actress.

-[laughs]

-I think!

[chuckling] Well, tell me, what
do you do outside of this show?

-Well, I think I think of
myself-- I'd like to think of

myself as a political activist.

It's not quite an occupation.

I've managed to somehow
make a living from it.

No, this show has been
interesting because Mao is one

of my heroes.

-[woman] Really?

-Well, most people, I think,
in the United States don't know

what China was like
before the revolution,

before liberation.

I used to go to school in
the winter stepping over dead

bodies, and it's hard to imagine
a society where 98 percent of

the people are poor with
hardly a way to make a living,

subject to famine, to drought.

And if you're in the city,
you just have to scrounge.

Probably the worst thing is
just the lack of value for human

life, the lack of dignity.

And that's something Mao -- plus
the people he was able to pull

together and work with
-- was able to change.

In 5.000 years of history,
there's never been a time,

I think, when individual Chinese
-- now over a billion of them --

at least have
clothing, shelter, food,

some dignity, and that's
the first time in history.

I think it's been a
miraculous 50 years.

-[woman] So Mao was
definitely the hope of China.

-My relatives think of him
as a wonderful revolutionary,

not so good as an administrator.

And I suppose that's right.

The cultural
revolution had its problems.

-[woman] What's your
feeling about China now?

-[woman] Well, I think
that for all the deaths,

you know,
Tiananmen was horrible,

because here were television
cameras watching tanks and

watching the troops come in.

People tend to think of the
thousands -- I don't care how

many thousands were killed.

But you have to think
about the tens of thousands,

the hundreds of thousands
who were killed before the

revolution liberation.

And they didn't die the
heroic deaths that people did in

Tiananmen Square, they died
the deaths of misery of being a

rickshaw coolie and
dying when you're 35,

because you don't
have enough to pay,

you don't have enough-- you
can't eat enough to get the

calories to drag a rickshaw.

The indignity of being a
prostitute when you were 14 or

15, being a female
in a Confucius China,

it was disgusting.

So I don't care how bad
things are now today.

It's better than it was.

-[woman] We don't have a sense
of the whole history of China.

-[woman] Well, it is a dragon.

All the incredible changes --
and some of them miraculous,

and very, very powerful.

-Well, I'm an
American born Chinese,

and I find myself in a very
fascinating position of trying

to understand China
but being American.

So I have the pull one hand on
dry land over here and one hand

on dry land over there.

Oh!

Our items!

-[woman] This
lovely fragile box.

-And yes, my position
is just as fragile,

I feel, sometimes, because
with my hands spread out,

I find my feet wet.

-[woman] You're
fourth generation, aren't you?

-Yes, I am.

I'm fourth generation, but both
my parents were very steeped in

Chinese culture.

-How did they maintain that
through three generations?

And what does it
mean being Chinese?

-I'm glad when this
is going to be over,

and I'm hoping I can do
something with it if she doesn't

approve of what I say.

Do another thing.

Let's keep my mouth going.

-Deep silence.

-Yeah.

-[man] The media in the
United States had a function to

legitimize the
modernization program,

and to that extent, I say
that the situation in Tiananmen

Square was multi-faceted,
was much more complex.

It is clear that the materiality
of the students was in question,

as well as the workers.

The workers wanted to
preserve their privileges,

as in any urban society.

But the real problem is that
after the media shut off their

revolution by TV, the regime
moved on the people -- both the

students and the workers; we
couldn't determine who was

students and who was workers.

There's a famous
thing by Gil-Scott Heron,

"The revolution
wouldn't be televised."

The problem is that
when you kill one person,

it is justified
for killing 100.000.

How long will we tolerate a
situation in which the killing

of one person can be justified
in relation to those views that

they do not expose in relation
to the ideological wishes of the

state?

After the media projected the
Tiananmen Square as something

calling
democratization and freedom...

I don't think it has
something to do with it.

Nobody knows.

Only the people who speak the
language of China understands

that problem, what it is
they were demonstrating,

protesting against.

♪Eastern music♪

-[woman VO] It's not, I love
these flowers more than life.

Only when they're gone

life, too, may flee.

♪Eastern music♪