This was a video I made last October when I visited Dandong, a Chinese city on the border of North Korea, during the National Holiday travel period. I included some footage from Beijing–the shots of Tiananmen Square, the reverse cars in Sanlitun, the beginning shot of the female student trying to pass the guards to go sit with her friends. I included these shots because they were relevant with both the lyrics and message I was trying to convey.
The story with the girl is this: It was the 60th anniversary celebration of UIBE (one of the best universities in Beijing and consequently China) and it was a very important and spectacular event for the Chinese. A lot of students came to watch, so many so that the security officials starting exercising crowd control. There was still plenty of room in the bleachers and on the field, but for some reason these officials would not let anyone pass. The girl pleaded with the officials for fifteen minutes but they would not budge. She cried for another fifteen, and by then so many adamant students had come to urge the guards that they finally decided to let us all pass and go sit down.
For me, that story encapsulates many things: That there are too many people in China (Chinese people tell me so frequently; my host mom just said so to me last night “人太多了!” “Too many people!”) Infuriatingly nonsensical bureaucratic decisions (The guards wouldn’t let us sit down even though there was room), and the issue of control, which is a big issue in China (who has it, who doesn’t).
Later on in the video, I show a lantern that floats over North Korea. The footage I have of the couple lighting a lantern is actually taken in Dalian (coastal city in Northeast China), so I used that to explain what had happened with the lantern floating over NK. I don’t know who lit that one, or why, and that will remain an eternal mystery.
I took footage of the man with the statue and the kids riding bicycles in Shenyang (capital of Liaoning Province and biggest city in NE China). I did not see that the kid was wearing a McDonalds shirt until much later during the editing process (it was quite the hidden gem). The construction going on in the Western shopping district was also in Shenyang. This touched on another theme of mine: Construction is everywhere in China. Also, Western influence affects many, especially among the wealthy (just count the number of Audis in Beijing).
Mao shows up again and again throughout my video. Many people say that North Korea nowadays was a lot like China was during Mao’s rule–very isolationist, omnipotent government. Despite China’s epic transformation, Mao’s portrait is still hung everywhere, and his face is still on the cover of every single bill handled in China.
China is a very complicated place. There’s poverty–peasants write characters on the sidewalk to demonstrate talent for money. I’ve passed by many mutilated peasants who drag themselves from place to touristy place. (The other day I saw a man in Sanlitun who had no body below his belly button.) There’s constant construction. Cranes, cranes, cranes, everywhere, cranes. There’s national pride and the issue of face–the vendor who didn’t want to crack an egg wrong in front of me. There are people who boast the morality of Mao (the heavily edited, positive version) which shows a deeper, nationwide dissatisfaction with the way strangers treat strangers here. Capitalism has brought wealth but also a wider gap between the haves and have-nots. There are contradictions–they built the museum on the “War to Aid Korea and Resist U.S. Aggression,” keeping anti-U.S. history lessons around despite the incredible importance of the current China-U.S. economic relationship.
But there is always change, and hope that change means progress. That is why I end the video with the lantern floating upward. As with North Korea: Perhaps one day North Korea will look like China. Right now that doesn’t look likely, as the situation appears to be a case of “Like grandfather, like grandson.” That said, we still cannot predict what sort of leader Kim Jong-un will become.
On the Great Wall I unexpectedly ran into the group of North Koreans whom had a white man among their group, chatting with them animatedly in Korean. They walked and he appeared to be showing them around, though I cannot say for sure. Something like this (a foreigner walking in China with North Koreans) even five years ago would seem unthinkable.
There is always change. Now, whether or not this change translates into progress is a decision made by forces outside of our control…
Editor’s Note: I deleted the project from my iMovie, but there are a few small changes I would make:
1) Trucks driving from NK to China (empty or not, I do not know for sure);
2) I would reword “often construct Western shops which are seen as progress” to “construct Western shops which are becoming more and more prevalent.”
