Surreal Up the Yangtze a Haunting Journey

In 2002, Canadian director Yung Chan went to China with his grandfather and floated up the Yangtze River. In 2006, he returned to craft a documentary about the Three Rivers Dam and the effect its construction was having on both the landscape and upon the people who lived their. The result of that undertaking is the documentary Up the Yangtze, and after viewing it at this year’s Seattle International Film Festival I can say with absolute certainty it is without question one of the best films of its kind I’ve seen so far this year.

Tourists traveling towards the Three Rivers Dam in Zeitgeist Films' Up the Yangtze

The picture has an almost upstairs-downstairs vitality that’s truly breathtaking. The filmmaker chronicles life aboard one of the tourist boats, called ‘Farewell Cruises,’ following two new workers as they enter the vessel for the very first time. In doing so he photographs a landscape and country going through profound change on an almost unimaginable scale, all of it building to a final scene that’s chilling in its Joseph Conrad-like uncertainty.

On one side of the equation there is Yu Shui. Given the Westernized nickname of “Cindy” upon her arrival on the cruise ship, this young teen comes from almost unimaginable abstract poverty the likes of which I couldn’t even begin to fathom. Her parents are desperately illiterate and struggle to make ends meet for her and her two siblings, and while she wants to continue her education the realities of their station in life makes that next to impossible.

The other newcomer is Chen Bo Yu (later renamed “Jerry”), an urban kid with the over-confidence typical of single sons, the unfortunate side effect of China’s one-child-only policy. He’s egotistical to a fault, his material dreams juxtaposed to the harsh realities of the colossal human situation created as the Yangtze’s waters rise.

At the center of it all is the Three Rivers Dam, the largest hydroelectric project in history. Millions of people must be moved from their ancestral homes and centuries of history erased as the river continues to grow larger and larger. Singularly moving and cinematically breathtaking, the film gives a human dimension to the wrenching changes facing not only an increasingly globalized China, but the world at large, all of it brilliantly brought to life on the decks of a boat whose sole purpose is selling these historical events for tourists to superficially photograph and document.

Chan does a magnificent job bringing all facets of this changing Chinese physical and social landscape into focus. The scenes of the Yu family on the shore of the Yangtze struggling without any trace of self-pity or indignation at their situation to eek out survival is beyond moving, watching the elder patriot of the clan beam in magnetic pride towards what he sees as his daughter’s accomplishments one of the most emotionally magnificent moments of 2008.

I wish I would have been given more time with some of those in the villages dealing with all the social and political consequences of the Three Rivers Dam, and I’d liked to have seen more of Chen Bo Yu then the half dozen or so scenes we get of him here, but these are small complaints almost not even worth mentioning. There is so much to ponder and to think about, especially in light of recent events in China both seismically catastrophic (the earthquake) and socially explosive (the upcoming Olympics), that this is a documentary sure to stick with viewers long after the screen fades to black and the curtain closes. 

The final history of the dam and its global aftershocks won’t be known for quite some time. What I do know is Up the Yangtze is an ethereal monument to the change going on inside China right at this very moment, the country’s eventual course as cloudy and as murky as the gargantuan river splitting it in two.

Film Rating: êêê1/2  (out of 4)

Additional Links:

-  Interview with director Yung Chan by Sara Michelle Fetters
-  2008 SIFF Blog by Sara Michelle Fetters
-  2008 Seattle International Film Festival Home Page
-  Up the Yangtze Theatrical Trailer