The scar of China

A deep bloody scar has been left in the hearts of generations of Chinese by the invasion of Old Summer Palace (Yuan Ming Yuan in Chinese) in 1860.

That is why the recent auction of fountainheads in Paris headlined almost all newspapers in China.

The two items, bronze rabbit and rat head sculptures, are of  the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and were kept in Yuan Ming Yuan.

Beijing’s Imperial Summer Palace was auctioned by Christie’s in Paris from Feb. 23 th to 25th. They were lost when the palace was burned down by Anglo-French allied forces during the Second Opium War in 1860.

Tens of thousands of treasures were shipped out of the country, and the fire after plundering destroyed the magnificent palace dubbed “Eastern Versailles”.

Auction backlash

The still-painful memory of being bullied is quite emotional and still felt throughout China.

After news of the auction spread, many online forums were flooded with angry demands for the return of the relics.

The three main Chinese news websites reporting the story ended up with 103,798, 48,309 and 23,797 comments respectively.

On the legal front, 81 Chinese lawyers spontaneously joined forces and wrote to Christie’s in an effort to stop the sale.

People will find many Chinese movies on this subject, behind which the same kind of emotion can be sensed.

These films can help an outsider to understand why the Chinese were so angry with the auction.

Reason behind the anger

One of these films is the box office blockbusters-documentary YUAN MIN YUAN, named after the Summer Palace in 2006, which earned  ￥5,000,000 (about ￡500,000).

This film’s first half is told from the viewpoint of Giuseppe Castiglione, an Italian who arrived in China in 1714.

As the emperor’s painter, he witnessed the wonders of the Yuan Min Yuan gardens.

The latter half of the film is narrated by a missionary from an Anglo-French allied army, who described the destruction of this garden, which is the miniaturised landscape of China.

A summer palace for emperors

A touched viewer wrote on his blog after watching the film, “I held the arms of the seat tightly to help me hold the feeling of being about to cry when I was watching the movie.

If I were in my youth, I would cry at that time.

It is a summer palace for emperors, but it is a work of art for those architects, the sweat of construction workers’ brow and the symbol of China.”

For many Chinese, the destruction of Yuan Ming Yuan was the opening that industrialized nations forced the old agricultural country to take a new road to industrialization following their rules by speedy ships and fierce fire.

Using:The dark dream of drugs

The famous singer Amy Winehouse is back in the UK on 2nd this month from her vacation, whose problem with drug addiction was the regular tabloid news since 2007. It is said that she comes back with a fresh new start this time. If she managed to be a good girl, it would be the happy ending of Requiem for a Dream in real life.

If there is anything that can make reality more like a dream and drive dream far away, it is addiction, whether to drug, dream or truth.
When Sara (Ellen Burstyn) was chasing her star dream desperately in Requiem for a Dream, her son (Jared Leto) and his girlfriend (Jennifer Connelly) who were rapt in the fantasy of happy life were addicted to drugs in real life. Only warm but hopeless dream connected them tightly together. Whether getting the satisfaction of mind or body while ignorance the other one of them, they may end up with endless pain.

Using: drugs in China

Another Chinese documentary film Using tells a real story also about an addict, while dreams shattered in Requiem for a Dream. A Long and A Jun are couples one of whom is addicted to drugs and have a friend who is also an addict.

The difference is instead of dream-chasing Mom here is the film director after truth who also is in the film. He makes friends with the addict, buys him meal and lends money to him, however, ends up with being cheated two hundred Yuan by the addict to buy drugs.

The filmmaker recorded the close relationship between him and the addicts in order to reflect authenticity of the story but the lie that addicts told him ruined his plan..

What makes the difference….

What really differentiates the two films is the source of pain which pushed them to the devil kiss of drugs step by step. In the Requiem for a Dream, the desperation comes from the confliction between body and mind, the constraint on dreams and restlessness of the heart.

However in the Using, the pain roots in the black side of the society which come along with prosperity of economics. Vulnerable people can hardly survive the social crisis like distrust between people, indifference to each other and polarization between the rich and the poor

Apart from investigating at close range a dark and cruel layer of reality of contemporary Chinese society that has rarely been broadcast, the documentary is also reveal the mutually using relationship between the filmmaker and the filmed subject, the director used the record of their relationship to go after his effect and the addict used the director’s trust to cheat him which added a kind of black humor flavor to the film.

(The Chinese documentary film Using will be premiered at 6pm on 24th of February in NLT2 Lecture Theatre 1 & 2, Regent Campus, University of Westminster)