Chinese Portrait
China
Wang Xiaoshuai
CHINESE PORTRAIT investigates the current state of China, taking the audience on a journey to discover the complexity of the country through the path of one family. The film is entirely composed of fixed long shots and is narrated from the personal point of view of established Chinese director WANG Xiaoshuai. Tracing his ancestors’ movements both on his father and mother’s sides, Wang tracks the history of an ordinary Chinese family over the course of the tumultuous last century.
Wang Xiaoshuai is our main character and guide throughout the film. He introduces us to people from all walks of life: from Beijing’s white-collar workers who work tirelessly in the grind of urban life, to rural ethnic minorities who have lived according to the same customs for generations.
We start our journey in Beijing at the center of the city and country, in the square where Chinese family stories and the country’s collective history is deeply mixed: Tiananmen. Whose families haven’t taken a photo at Tiananmen Square? Who is unaware of the historical moments that it represents?
Just outside are the busy streets of Beijing, where locals are jogging, blowing off steam after the long work day. We’ll meet urban office workers, stuck at their desks in front of computer screens and surrounded by phones. Crammed tight into small cubicles, they seem like prisoners of their social condition. Eyes glued to a stock board, market aficionados look as if they are praying to the God of money.
On the corner is old Beijing, where we find ourselves lost in the rubble of recently demolished courtyard houses. These are homes that used to house many generations of a family under one roof. They're also where Wang shot his film BEIJING BICYCLE. We observe old Beijingers, who, as has been their custom for decades, continue to practice the art of bird singing contests with neighbors in new surreal suburbs. Retired, and therefore now excluded from China’s development, they have lost sight of their place in the world and struggle to find a reason to get up in the morning. Leaving the national capital, we get on a train in search of another China, the one that most Chinese people come from…
We go through the countryside of Ningxia where harsh conditions and earthquakes have gradually made it unlivable for most people. The peasants remain stoic on the dry plains trying as they have been for centuries to live off this land, the Chinese land. From the old woman whose back is now permanently hunched, to the young boy who isn’t yet in school but already starting to fend for himself and help to feed his family, to the baby who’s so full of life, so promising that he might be the one—the first one to leave this arid land to move to a better place, maybe even to the city we just left. Miles away, miners are covered in coal. We stop in factories where almost all families have had, at one time or another, to sacrifice their health and time. All equally weary from their arduous work, it’s impossible to tell how old they are, they could be anywhere from 20 to 50 years old. They could also very well be from China a hundred years ago; their working conditions do not seem to have changed from the time of their grandparents’ generation and their fathers before them. Elsewhere we take deep breaths with a Buddhist monk and the Muslims of the Hui minority who pray at the most important temples and mosques in their city…
Standing at the crossroads of China’s current development and the legend of its vanishing past, we reflect on the evolution of Chinese families and reconsider the collective ‘biography’ and 'memoir' of China. The journey continues into others regions like Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Sichuan… Slowly emerging from all these different landscapes, customs, stories and histories is a unique and fascinating picture of China, MY CHINA.
Together the footprints of the two branches of Wang’s family tree covered almost half of China and serve as a symbolic portrait of the journeys of countless Chinese families. Wang’s father’s family originated from Qingdao, a city in eastern Shandong by the seaside. From there, his relatives braved the journey northeast to Dandong where they could see North Korea just across the river. With the advent of the Korean War, they moved all the way south to Hefei, where Wang’s father later met his mother. Wang’s mother’s ancestral home is in Jiaxing, a city between Shanghai and Hangzhou with a rich cultural tradition. Her family moved frequently—first to Shanghai, then to Beijing, later to Nanjing, back to Shanghai again, then to Jiading and Nantong—and finally settled down in Hefei, where after all this change, Wang’s mother encountered his father. Once they had their own family, Wang’s parents left Hefei for the elegant and international Shanghai. Political change and social responsibility forced them to move to the countryside near Guiyang, from where they would later move to the large and busy city of Wuhan. The film follows the director’s familial movements to examine the past and to forge a new path for the future. Reflecting on the relationship between an individual’s identity and his country, Wang Xiaoshuai asks: how do I know my own nation, and who am I as a result of where I come from?
Wang Xiaoshuai is our main character and guide throughout the film. He introduces us to people from all walks of life: from Beijing’s white-collar workers who work tirelessly in the grind of urban life, to rural ethnic minorities who have lived according to the same customs for generations.
We start our journey in Beijing at the center of the city and country, in the square where Chinese family stories and the country’s collective history is deeply mixed: Tiananmen. Whose families haven’t taken a photo at Tiananmen Square? Who is unaware of the historical moments that it represents?
Just outside are the busy streets of Beijing, where locals are jogging, blowing off steam after the long work day. We’ll meet urban office workers, stuck at their desks in front of computer screens and surrounded by phones. Crammed tight into small cubicles, they seem like prisoners of their social condition. Eyes glued to a stock board, market aficionados look as if they are praying to the God of money.
On the corner is old Beijing, where we find ourselves lost in the rubble of recently demolished courtyard houses. These are homes that used to house many generations of a family under one roof. They're also where Wang shot his film BEIJING BICYCLE. We observe old Beijingers, who, as has been their custom for decades, continue to practice the art of bird singing contests with neighbors in new surreal suburbs. Retired, and therefore now excluded from China’s development, they have lost sight of their place in the world and struggle to find a reason to get up in the morning. Leaving the national capital, we get on a train in search of another China, the one that most Chinese people come from…
We go through the countryside of Ningxia where harsh conditions and earthquakes have gradually made it unlivable for most people. The peasants remain stoic on the dry plains trying as they have been for centuries to live off this land, the Chinese land. From the old woman whose back is now permanently hunched, to the young boy who isn’t yet in school but already starting to fend for himself and help to feed his family, to the baby who’s so full of life, so promising that he might be the one—the first one to leave this arid land to move to a better place, maybe even to the city we just left. Miles away, miners are covered in coal. We stop in factories where almost all families have had, at one time or another, to sacrifice their health and time. All equally weary from their arduous work, it’s impossible to tell how old they are, they could be anywhere from 20 to 50 years old. They could also very well be from China a hundred years ago; their working conditions do not seem to have changed from the time of their grandparents’ generation and their fathers before them. Elsewhere we take deep breaths with a Buddhist monk and the Muslims of the Hui minority who pray at the most important temples and mosques in their city…
Standing at the crossroads of China’s current development and the legend of its vanishing past, we reflect on the evolution of Chinese families and reconsider the collective ‘biography’ and 'memoir' of China. The journey continues into others regions like Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Sichuan… Slowly emerging from all these different landscapes, customs, stories and histories is a unique and fascinating picture of China, MY CHINA.
Together the footprints of the two branches of Wang’s family tree covered almost half of China and serve as a symbolic portrait of the journeys of countless Chinese families. Wang’s father’s family originated from Qingdao, a city in eastern Shandong by the seaside. From there, his relatives braved the journey northeast to Dandong where they could see North Korea just across the river. With the advent of the Korean War, they moved all the way south to Hefei, where Wang’s father later met his mother. Wang’s mother’s ancestral home is in Jiaxing, a city between Shanghai and Hangzhou with a rich cultural tradition. Her family moved frequently—first to Shanghai, then to Beijing, later to Nanjing, back to Shanghai again, then to Jiading and Nantong—and finally settled down in Hefei, where after all this change, Wang’s mother encountered his father. Once they had their own family, Wang’s parents left Hefei for the elegant and international Shanghai. Political change and social responsibility forced them to move to the countryside near Guiyang, from where they would later move to the large and busy city of Wuhan. The film follows the director’s familial movements to examine the past and to forge a new path for the future. Reflecting on the relationship between an individual’s identity and his country, Wang Xiaoshuai asks: how do I know my own nation, and who am I as a result of where I come from?
Support:
Festivals and Awards:
Busan 2018, section Wide Angle
Taipei 2018, Golden Horse Film Festival
Hong Kong 2018, Asian Film Festival
Taipei 2018, Golden Horse Film Festival
Hong Kong 2018, Asian Film Festival
World Sales:
Chinese Shadows