Fifth Generation Chinese Films

By Trailokya Aryal

A few weeks ago, I read an announcement in a Nepali discussion board on the Web (soc.culture.nepal) posted by Ashutosh Tiwari regarding the establishment of the Kathmandu Film Archives (KFA). The KFA, Mr. Tiwari wrote, is a collaboration between Martin Chautari and The Godavari Alumni Association (GAA) to show quality movies to a Nepali audience twice every month. Most appropriately, the KFA was launched with a "Fifth Generation" Chinese movie, Red Sorghum.

Movies produced in China after the end of the Cultural Revolution (1976) are known as "Fifth Generation" Chinese movies because they represent a new school of film compared to the Mao era in which movies were merely tools of state propaganda. "Fifth Generation" Chinese movies not only give their viewers an insight into Chinese politics, society and new cultural traits, but also have a high degree of professionalism in them, which make them most sought after in the West.

Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou, 1982 graduates of the prestigious Beijing Film Academy, collaborated to produce the first fifth generation movie, Yellow Earth, in 1984, which is still revered by movie critics as a milestone in Chinese movies. Yellow Earth is a story of revolutionary era China. In it a soldier of the Eighth Route Army of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), in his mission to collect folk songs, arrives in a village which has been devastated by a terrible drought. His arrival brings hopes that he will help villagers transform their village.

Depressed by what he sees and experiences, the soldier leaves the village promising to come back later. He does come back, but finds the village is still the same, and a girl who had initially hoped the soldier would help her exit her marriage and join the CCP, has committed suicide by drowning herself in a river. The movie’s message was crystal-clear. With China and the CCP symbolized by the barren village and the soldier respectively, it implied that the CCP could not free the Chinese people from their sufferings.

Yellow Earth became an instant hit in China and according to some Western movie critics, Yellow Earth was responsible for reviving interest in Chinese movies in the West.

Then in 1987 came, Red Sorghum by Zhang Yimou, who had worked as a cameraman for Chen Kaige in "Yellow Earth". As a movie attempting to revive Chinese nationalism, its underlying message was, if the Chinese people could unite and stand against the Japanese invasion in the 30s, they could do it again in the 80’s against the "problems" they were facing. This movie established Zhang as one of the most talented filmmakers of China and also presented Gong Li, the most famous actress in China, to the West.

After the Chen-Zhang split in the early nineties, Chen made Farewell my Concubine, which some observers believe is his autobiography. Farewell my concubine was a controversial movie because it depicted the homoerotic relationship between two male opera singers and their relationship during the turning points of Chinese history such as the revolution of 1949, the Cultural Revolution and the beginning of the reform era. Since, this movie had dealt with a concept still taboo in Chinese society, the movie was first banned in China but with its international recognition (the movie won awards in various film festivals including the Cannes), a censored version of this movie was allowed to be shown in China.

After the success of Farewell my Concubine Chen appeared fascinated with big projects. His last release, The Emperor and the assassin is a story of the ambitious Qin emperor Ying Zhen (3rd century BC) who hoped to unify China and establish a centralized government. More than 11 million US dollars were spent in making this movie, making it the most expensive Asian movie ever produced.

In the meanwhile, Zhang made movies like Raise The Red lantern and Judou. Raise the Red Lantern dealt with polygamy in China. Juduo dealt with female sexuality. Banned in China for it’s strong sexual content, the latter movie revealed the dangers of suppressed female sexuality and attacked the rural tradition of arranged marriages in which, for the most part, young girls were married to men twice their age.

Another Zhang film is The Story of Qiu Jiu, in which the protagonist of the movie Qiu Jiu struggles to get justice for her husband who has been kicked in the groin by the village chief. All she wants is a formal apology from the village chief who adamantly refuses. Later, when the matter is getting resolved within the village, the police arrive and take the village chief into custody. The underlying message of the movie was that things get done in China but not necessarily what one wanted nor in the manner in which one wanted it done. This movie too, received wide acclaim in the west for it’s story, cinematography and Gong Li’s acting as Qiu Jiu. Not One Less is yet another movie by Zhang Yimou to achieve international recognition. In this movie Zhang compares China to a growing child who needs support from everyone to achieve success.

Tian Zhuanzhuang, another renowned Chinese film personality directed The Blue Kite in the early 90’s. The Blue Kite took the political defiance of the fifth generation Chinese movies to an even higher level. The central character of this movie is Tietou whose parents fall victims to the CCP policies throughout the 50’s and 60s. Boldly portraying the affect of the Anti-Rightists Campaign, the Great Leap Forward etc on the lives of the common Chinese people, the movie was banned in China for its political content and Tian was temporarily barred from making movies. However, the print of this movie had already crossed the Chinese boundaries and was released in the US, where it received wide acclaim from US film critics. The movie also received the best film award in the Tokyo Film festival.

There are some fifth generation Chinese moviemakers who have made movies on the problems of economic reforms perpetuated by Deng Xiaoping. One such movie is Er’mo by Zhou Xiaowen. The protagonist of this movie, Er’mo, is a village woman who wants to buy a bigger television than that of her neighbor. To earn money to buy her dream TV set, she goes to the town to sell noodles where she is sexually exploited. The movie shows the ugly aspect of consumerism and materialism haunting Chinese society and the female sexual exploitation that takes place in the reform era.

The above-mentioned movies are just a few examples of the work of Chinese fifth generation movie makers. For the most part they recreate the past to depict present realities of Chinese society, using their creative and artistic talents to criticize the government and it’s policies in a country where submission to the state has been the norm for the last 2000 years.

Let’s hope that the recently established Kathmandu Film Archives (KFA) will make these groundbreaking world-class movies accessible to a Nepali audience looking for a refreshing alternative to the commercial junk being served to them through satellite channels and Nepal Television.

(T.Aryal concentrated on Chinese studies in college in the US. Note: For updates on future KFA movie-shows, please send a request to: chautari@mos.com.np)

A Mediocre Novel, An Enthralling Read

By Manjushree Thapa

Amitav Ghosh’s narrative skill can be breathtaking; his writing can sparkle with intelligence. In contrast to Salman Rushdie, Ghosh has an unmistakably local sensibility: the abiding religious tensions, crippling historical legacies, uneven technological advances and absurdly tragic follies of today’s Asia all come within the scope of his oeuvre. And in contrast to another giant of Indian English letters, Vikram Seth, Ghosh places his characters amid fascinating social backgrounds. His characters are never just individuals leading their own private lives, but members of turbulent, changing societies which toss them about carelessly at the whims of larger powers. A self-described "independent leftist," Ghosh shirks neither from the political nor the personal, but aims for the place where the two intersect, in happy or unhappy circumstances. Arguably, there are no finer works of English writing from India than his novel Shadow Lines, or his non-fiction narrative Dancing in Cambodia.

The Glass Palace, his latest fiction work, shows off all his strengths and exposes some of his weaknesses. It is a book everyone should read—not for the pleasure of losing oneself in a made-up fictional world, but to benefit from the author’s insight into Burma’s colonial and post-colonial period. It is a book to recommend heartily—but with a few qualifications. For The Glass Palace is, on the whole, far too clunky to afford much reading pleasure; but it is far too important to be dismissed for its stylistic flaws. What the novel lacks in craft it more than makes up for in content. It is a mediocre novel but an enthralling read.

The novel begins expertly, with an orphaned Indian boy, Rajkumar, witnessing the exile of the Burmese royal family by the British forces as they move into Rangoon using the pretext of a teak war. The shifting perspectives allow the reader to see the colonization of Burma from the point of view of King Thebaw and Queen Supayalat, and the orphaned girl Dolly, an attendant to the Queen who follows the royal family into exile.

The second section of the novel is as brilliant as Ghosh can get. The story meanders between Rajkumar’s life at a teak camp in rural Burma, and the lives of the exiled Burmese royals in Ratnagiri, south of Bombay. An impressive amount of research has gone into this section, and Ghosh effortlessly weaves into his narrative stunning details about teak logging, about diseases afflicting elephants at teak camps, about the lives of exiled Burmese royals, and about the odd, antagonistic relationship between the Burmese royals and local Indian officials. The local collector’s wife, Uma, begins her long journey to political consciousness when she questions her husband for rigidly enforcing British mores on his Burmese captives. By the end of this second section, with Uma’s help, the now well-off teak merchant Rajkumar meets, and marries, the Burmese royal family’s attendant Dolly.

And here, the author seems to run out of stamina a bit. The novel gradually begins to suffer from technical problems—the most bothersome of which is the erratic pacing. After having followed all the characters at a leisurely pace, the novel suddenly begins to skip months, then years, as Dolly and Rajkumar have two sons, and the widowed Uma sets up as a dissident in New York. Minor characters occupy much space in the novel, distracting readers from Dolly’s gradual transformation into a devout Buddhist, and Rajkumar’s transformation into a profiteering teak tycoon. When Uma eventually returns to India via Burma, the author hurries through the emotional tumult of his characters in order to keep up the clip at which events must occur if the novel is to span Burma’s entire process of decolonization. As the novel progresses, the characters begin to serve primarily (though not solely) as ploys to keep the plot moving forward; and the reader cannot help but lose interest in them.

Through all this, however, the reader remains riveted to the page. This is because Ghosh has placed his characters at a fascinating historical juncture—between India and Burma, through Burma’s colonization (with the help of colonized Indian forces) and decolonization (which entailed not just a liberation from the British, but also a backlash against migrant Indians in Burma). Rajkumar is not just an orphaned Indian boy who made it good in Burma; he is a migrant tycoon who imported hundreds of impoverished Indians to work in Burma’s teak camps, exploiting poor migrants and profiteering from Burma’s colonization. Dolly spent years in exile with the Burmese royal family, yet her patriotism is questioned for marrying an Indian. The two of them, along with family members, join the thousands of Indians who are eventually forced to leave Burma on foot, walking across the mountains through Assam to Calcutta.

The later sections of the book follow the Indian army’s actions in Burma, highlighting the extremely problematic role that India played in trying to suppress Burma’s independence—even while the independence movement in India was gaining ground. By the end, none of Ghosh’s characters is left unscarred by the violent historical events that take place around them, and which they often abet, either in consciousness or in bad faith. The Glass Palace contains more than ten novels’ worth of insight into the way private lives are shaped by political forces. It is a flawed novel, surely. But it is the most brilliant English novel that has come out of India in many, many years.

(M Thapa is a writer based in Kathmandu)

The Fuss About Harry Potter

By Seira Tamang

There is something about being an adult and confessing that you’ve just read Harry Potter. That initial bracing for the inevitable question, "But isn’t that a children’s book?" After the slight pause during which time you have mentally pummeled the ignoramus for his wretched stupidity, you sweetly respond, "Why yes, but it is just as interesting and engaging for adults."

Actually, the words "interesting" and "engaging" are not the words that initially spring into my finely tuned, social science trained mind. "It will suck you in", "you’ve got to read it", "it’s about Muggles, and good versus evil," "there’s broomsticks and dungeons," "there’s magic trains", and and…….Then I have to stop. Because the other person has that glazed look in their eyes behind which they are calculating – "How can I get to the nearest exit without alarming her?" Such is my willingness to brazenly disclose my complete infatuation with Harry Potter that I freely admit that while I had only picked up the first volume to take a half-hour break from my studies, I was only able to stop reading after I had finished the fourth volume, a couple of days later. Eating and sleeping had become annoying, although necessary, interruptions. School, work and friends had turned into obstacles to be ignored or most efficiently dispatched with.

So what’s the fuss about Harry Potter? Well, let me tell you – with a caveat that I will not disclose plot details of any of the books – I would hate to ruin the Potter experience for others and/or risk being later stalked by enraged readers. Not that I think Kathmandu Post Review of Books readers are that ways inclined.

Till today, four books targeting readers aged 9 to 12 have been completed on Harry Potter by J.K. Rowlings. (I quickly add in my defense, that 30 percent of the first three Harry Potter books were purchased by and for a reader 35 or older. I was unable to obtain figures covering the fourth in the series). In the order of their publication, they are, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone," "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of "Azkaban," and lastly, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." The first book introduces us into the non-magical, human world – the world of "Muggles" - in which the boy Harry Potter resides. The hero of these books lives at the bottom of the stairs of the awful aunt and uncle and spoilt cousin, ignorant of the fact that his parents, killed by the evil Voldermort, were wizards. All of this changes with a letter delivered on his eleventh birthday, proclaiming that "We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry." Thus begins Harry Potter’s adventures into the world of magic and wizardry, packed full of mystery, danger and suspense.

Much of his adventures occur while he is at school, at Hogwarts. While under constant scrutiny – as the only ever survivor of an encounter with Voldermort with a lightening-bolt scar on his head as evidence, he is a famous figure at school and the world of magic in general – he and his two best friends, Ron and Hermione, begin classes in magic and encounter adventure after adventure. As each year of school finishes, so does the world of thrill and the book – and we are left with the return of Harry to his horrible relatives, awaiting the end of the summer holidays and thus the next new book and adventures in store for our protagonist.

The magical world created by Rowlings is truly enthralling. There are: dark boding dungeons and forests; permanent Hogwart residents such as Peeves the Poltergeist, Nearly Headless Nick and Moaning Myrtle; dragons, serpents and magic potions and teachers such Snape, and the mysterious Mad Eye Moody. It is a wondrous reality where mail is brought to the students by owls and where the Ministry of Magic legislates rules of practicing magic in order to keep the Muggles oblivious to the world of magic that surrounds them. But it is also a vaguely familiar reality with the fierce competition of school sport – in Harry’s world as Quidditch played on flying brooms; the latter being far from your mother’s cleaning implements with such models as the ultra new Super Nimbus – the fastest, sleekest and top-of-the-line broom.

And in the backdrop, a backdrop that regularly emerges to the forefront for Harry and his friends in their various adventures, is the figure of LordVoldemort and the forces of evil. Intertwined into this dominant struggle between good and evil, are other lessons of loyalty, bravery, friendship, ethics and even bigotry – Hermione faces discrimination from certain students who belittle her as she was born of Muggle parents, and is thus not of wizard heritage.

Much has been written about how the Harry Potter books have turned children back to reading books. The joy of reading has been said to have been reintroduced to a new generation with children being swept into the stories and becoming emotionally invested in the characters. One of my nieces – age 7 – attempting to read the first Harry Potter book by herself, becomes so excited and filled with suspense at times that, unable to wait and rely on her own reading skill and pace, she grabs the nearest adult to read the section in question, and then resumes reading at her own, more stilted and faltering rate – a time and effort investment which she is clearly willing to make.

A book that can be enjoyed by all ages, Harry Potter invites rethinking education in Nepal beyond the politics of English versus Nepali language and boarding versus public, to questions of what kinds of books are and should be available to excite the imagination and reading appetite of the boys and girls of Nepal?

(S. Tamang would like to be paid to read novels.)

Weakening Welfare

By Anil Bhattarai

Empty bellies and overflowing godowns—nothing can capture the food security (or rather insecurity!!) of people in India better than this. And this situation is worsening. Underlying this predicament are the policies followed by the government which give primacy to liberalization of the market over the welfare and food security need of the population.

On 26 October 2000, one of India’s leading English daily The Hindu carried a small piece of news in one corner of one of its inside pages. The news was about the proposed selling of rice by the government to private traders at Rs.6 per kg whereas the government public distribution system was selling it at Rs 11.78 per kg to the consumers. The reason: stock of rice is piling up and rotting in food godowns. By the end of October, it was estimated that the stock would be more than 400 lakh tonnes and by December this would reach over 500 lakh tonnes. The reason for this piling up was not that Indians have got enough to eat. They do not. Half of the adult and child population is malnourished in India. The majority of children and newborns are underweight and India in fact accounts for half of the total of low-weight birth babies in the world. The reason people are eating less is that the price is too high for people to buy enough food. According to Kerala’s minister for Food and Tourism, Mr. E. Chandrasekhar Nair, this is nothing but cruel.

This is the state of India’s current public distribution system(PDS). This, however, did not always used to be so. In "Weakening Welfare: The Public Distribution of Food in India," Madhura Swaminathan has examined the PDS in the context of India’s food insecurity and the change in PDS following the adoption of structural adjustment policies in the early nineties and their present continuation. The forseeable impact of the latter on the food security situation, the inherent problems in the PDS itself, and the need for universal PDS system in order to ensure food security for the majority of the people in the country constitutes the core of the book.

The PDS is a little over sixty years old in India. Started in 1939 to deal with the need of war-time rationing during the World War II, it was universalized during the 1970s—before which it had remained a predominantly urban phenomena. Today, India has an elaborate network of public operated food distribution centers, with 4.5 lakhs fair price shops all over the country, out of which 3.6 lakhs are in the rural areas. This system, however, is gradually being dismantled with the orthodox economic thinking of liberalization and the free market becoming more and more dominant in national policy making. Drawing on the experiences of several othercountries, in addition to that of India itself, the book clearly shows that the dismantling of PDS is bound to have negative impact on the food security of the majority of the populations.

Since the early nineties, there has been fundamental changes in the PDS. The author points out four areas in which the change is occurring. First, there has been a shift in the economic principles upon which PDS was based away from the welfare objectives of the state towards liberalization of the market. Second, there has been direct impact on the price structure of the food sold through the PDS—prices have gone up sharply. Thirdly, the amount of food being sold has been drastically cut down. And fourthly, the universal PDS is being replaced by what is called targeted PDS under which only people below the poverty line are eligible for access to PDS food. All this does not augur well for the food security of the majority of the people in the country, argues the author. One of the arguments for starting the targeted PDS as opposed to universal PDS put forward by the policy makers is that government is subsidising even the higher-income group. Targeted PDS is only for those below the poverty line. But in a context where more than bottom half of the population is spending more than 70% of its total income on food, the distinction between people below and above the poverty line does not help in terms of devising the food security interventions. She therefore argues that there is no alternative to the universal PDS as far as the food security needs of the population is concerned.

The author also says that the current form of PDS needs to be changed. It is beset with corruption, leakages and other administrative anomalies. By drawing on the experience of states like Kerala, she suggests it is only through the political commitment towards food security and strong popular demand for it that an efficient and effective PDS can be established. The state wide variations in the utilization of the PDS is instructive. Whereas 93% of the household were under coverage in Kerala, the number is less than 3% in Utter Pradesh and Bihar.

This book is useful to all those who are interested in the field of food security, the economic policies, and the public responsibility of the state.

(A.Bhattarai is a graduate student at Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Centre for Social Medicine and Community Health in Delhi)