The Limits of Magical Thinking: China in The Last Emperor (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1987) and A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhangke, 2013)
The Last Emperor by Bertolucci
Civilization began in China along the Yellow River and Yangtze and Pearl valleys, thousands of years ago, with its dynastic age—monarchial family rule—beginning with Yu the Great circa 2070 years before the birth of Christ, and the Chinese empire was established with the rule of the Qin dynasty (Qin pronounced Chin) in 221 – 206 B.C., an imperial age that ended with a different dynasty, the Qing emperor, the last emperor, in 1912. China is known for its art and technology—then and now. Once Chinese goods—tea and porcelain and silk—were sold to Britain for silver, and were popular in Britain, but China was not interested in British goods; and the British began to import opium into China, illegally, requesting payment in silver, and fostering mass addiction; and after the Chinese sought to destroy the imported drugs, the British fought back, beginning a military conflict from 1839 to 1842, forcing the Chinese to accept free trade. The leaders of China remember history. China today is known, also, for its large population, its authoritarian government, its monetary power, and its threats to Hong Kong and Taiwan.
The Last Emperor, by Bernardo Bertolucci, is about worlds—first imperial China, then communist China—that most of us cannot even imagine. Few filmmakers could even hope to make such a film. Bernardo Bertolucci (1940 – 2018), the son of poet Attilio Bertolucci, and an assistant director to Pier Paolo Pasolini, made his first feature film, The Grim Reaper, in 1962, and he would go on to make films both intimate and epic, thoughtful and poetic, acquiring a reputation as one of the most gifted—imaginative, passionate—directors of cinema. Bertolucci is known for his vision—for craft, for history and ideas, for sensuality. Some of his important works are The Conformist (1970), about betrayal and fascism; Last Tango in Paris (1972), about grief, desire, and sexual rage; 1900 (1976), about friendship, class, and politics through time; Luna (1979), focused on family, troubled youth, addiction, and confused sexuality; The Last Emperor (1987), a consideration of the personal and political life of a dynastic monarch, as China shifts from imperial reign to communist modernity; The Sheltering Sky (1990), about marriage, spiritual drift, and westerners in North Africa; and Little Buddha (1993), a family drama and a spiritual search, featuring the possible rebirth of a great teacher. (“As much as or probably more than anywhere else, certainly in the advanced capitalist world, Italian filmmaking was identified with leftism, in particular with support for the Communist Party,” wrote David Walsh of the World Socialist Web Site, November 28, 2018, at the time of Bertolucci’s death, heralding Bertolucci’s political commitment and achievement and lamenting his political disillusionment and the supposed decline of his later work.) Some of Bertolucci’s films are about large, public events—and some are about small personal moments. The Last Emperor, for which director Bertolucci (as he states as part of the film’s supplemental commentary) wanted both accuracy and imagination, is a strange and stunning film, a masterpiece.
The Last Emperor: The place is Manchuria, on the Chinese-Russian border, and the time is 1950, amidst a tumultuous period, the end of the twentieth century’s second world war—in which thousands of aircraft, artillery pieces, tanks, and army trucks were used, with an estimated 15 million military persons killed, and for which 38 million civilians died—followed by a cold war, a time of peace between great powers that was also a time of paranoia and propaganda, marked by the competition of commerce, ideas, and power, and the probing of each other’s weaknesses, sometimes resulting in proxy wars among their allies. In Manchuria, soldiers await the arrival of a train, which comes dispatching prisoners, among them Pu Yi, wearing glasses, tie and hat. This is the return of Pu Yi, who was once emperor, to China: he is now a political prisoner, who will be put on trial.
Pu Yi’s book, From Emperor to Citizen (1960), is one of the many books used as reference for the film, including the book Twilight in the Forbidden City (1934) by the British diplomat and Pu Yi tutor Reginald Johnson. Aisin Gioro Pu Yi (1906 – 1967), the last emperor of China, the twelfth emperor of the Qing dynasty to rule China, whose regal name was Xuantong, is an intriguing figure, and his life was unique; a royal personage with little practical power, he was both anachronistic and modern, foolish and tragic. Pu Yi (or Puyi), the final monarch of the Qing dynasty, the Manchu dynasty that began in northeast China in 1636, is played as an adult by actor John Lone. Pu Yi was called to the emperor’s palace when he was only two years and ten months old. Richard Vuu is Pu Yi at 3 years old, Tijger Tsou is Pu Yi at 8 years old, and Wu Tao is Pu Yi at 15 years old. The actor John Lone, born Ng Kwok-leung in Hong Kong, went to the Peking Opera School, where he acquired discipline, and was trained in Chinese theater techniques, movement, dance, and singing. Lone also studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Pasadena. He had appeared in Michael Cimino’s Year of the Dragon (1985), and would appear in David Cronenberg’s M. Butterfly (1993). John Lone brings together East and West, remarked Bertolucci. Lone, as Pu Yi, projects a restrained sensitivity, an intelligence which registers perception but is not fully engaged by passion or politics. He looks like someone who expects the care of others. (John Lone is more handsome than photographs of the actual Pu Yi show him to have been, with a frail almost inbred look, although the Qing dynasty, unlike its predecessors, did not favor marriage among blood relatives.) “John Lone, who plays Pu Yi from age 18 to 62, naturally dominates the picture with his carefully judged, unshowy delineation of a sometimes arrogant, often weak man,” noted Todd McCarthy in Variety (October 7, 1987).
Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor moves among the different periods of Pu Yi’s life. We see what may be the most important fact, in Aisin Gioro Pu Yi’s childhood, when he is summoned to come to the palace compound in Beijing, the imperial city, by the dowager empress Cixi (Lisa Lu): the head of the imperial guard (played by a Chinese director, Chen Kaige) announces the command of the dowager empress Cixi—once a Manchu noblewoman, Yehe Nara Xingzhen (born November 29, 1835, she died November 15, 1908)—for Pu Yi to go to the palace compound, the Forbidden City, which was built in the 15th century (1406 to 1420), and has more than 900 buildings, with temples and parks, and was the center of Chinese governance for 500 years. No one could enter or leave the Forbidden City without the permission of the ruler. This was the first project with the authority to film in the Forbidden City, according to the supplemental film commentary featuring Bertolucci with Mark Peploe and others. Bertolucci says the Forbidden City is a kind of maze, full of signs of the emperor, the son of heaven. Despite the favor of the dowager empress’s summons, Pu Yi’s mother Youlan, Princess Consort Chun (actress Dong Liang), hates to see him go, but relinquishes him; and a wet nurse, Wang Lianshou, goes with him. (Here the wet nurse is called Ar Mo, played by Jade Go). Pu Yi’s father, Zaifeng, Prince Chun, was the late emperor’s brother, and Prince Chun is played by graphic designer and photographer Basil Pao; and the prince presents his son Pu Yi to the dowager empress.
The court is assembled before the reclining dowager empress Cixi (Lisa Lu), a formidable woman of conservative public policies but murderous personal impulses. The emperor Guangxu has died—he had been a reformer whose power had been usurped by Cixi, placing him under house arrest; and Cixi—the elder sister of the late emperor’s mother; and Cixi, once the wife, of the Xianfeng emperor and mother of the Tongzhi emperor—expected to rule as long as Guangxu’s nephew Pu Yi was too young to do so, but she, too, is ill and her death is expected. (Were both Guangxu and Cixi poisoned?) There is a large living turtle in hot water, a turtle representing long life, and some of its water is offered to the empress, who waves it away and dies. Tibetan dancers attend her death (Red Army soldiers, costumed as dancers—Bertolucci finds their dance clumsy).
The pageantry of old power in a new figure: Imperial yellow—the baby Pu Yi’s costuming, and a large hanging curtain. The throne room is full of yellow and gold. The embroidered fabrics seem sumptuous. The public recognizes a new ruler. He is a little boy on a large throne—which is both impressive and absurd. (The photography, shot with a Steadicam, without artificial lighting, is seductive; the cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and the film’s editor Gabriella Cristiani.) Pu Yi is shown a model of the Forbidden City—while he performs his morning ablutions (his butt is wiped by an attendant, his stool smelled for a health diagnosis). Pu Yi is bathed and splashes water on his attendants (eunuchs), saying, “I’m the son of heaven.” Indeed, he is treated as divine. His first of three reigns as emperor will last from 1908 to 1912. The critic of the New York Times, Vincent Canby, remarked that “He was attended by 1,500 eunuchs, the various members of his extended household, their hangers-on and, toward the end, by Reginald Johnston, his faithful and sometimes acerbic British tutor, a Scot with a deep admiration for Chinese civilization and nothing but ridicule for salvation-mongering Christian missionaries” (November 20, 1987). Yet, Vincent Canby found Bertolucci’s lush film limited, “arthritic,” finding “the center of the screen remains dead,” and he speculated that "The Last Emperor, written by Mark Peploe 'with' (as the credits say) Mr. Bertolucci, may have been inhibited by the enormousness of its subject, and even by the apparently enthusiastic support of China, which acted as host to Mr. Bertolucci, his cast and production crew.”
Pu Yi, made emperor as a boy, captured by the Russians near the end of World War II and returned to China in 1950, removed from power and status, attempts suicide in the train station before he is taken to a prison camp for reeducation (apparently, he will be there for ten years)—the suicide attempt is a speculative supposition of the filmmakers, suggesting his isolation and despair. Of course, isolation was not a new thing for Pu Yi. There is a flashback to Prince Chun, Pu Yi’s father Zaifeng, bringing Pu Yi’s brother Pu Chieh, to the palace (Pu Chieh was a consultant for the film). Pu Yi sees his mother Youlan, whom he feels distant from (understandably, after he moved to the palace, seven years went by before he saw her again). The two boys talk, spar, play. (The brother, apparently, would be, in later life, with Pu Yi in prison. The boy Pu Yi tells his brother that the dead emperors’ wives tell him that they are mothers to him, but he rejects that assertion. The imperial women see him take succor at his wet nurse’s breast, and disapprove. (His wet nurse will be sent away.)
Pu Yi tells his brother not to wear imperial yellow—but his brother says that Pu Yi is no longer emperor. There has been, after a decade of agitation and rebellions, a revolution in 1911, making China a republic, with its capital in Nanjing, and someone else is leader (Sun Yat-sen was the provisional president, followed by Yuan Shikai), although the whole country was not unified. Sun Yat-sen, leader of the revolutionary alliance, was a nationalist, someone who advocated national independence and interests, but Yuan Shikai wanted to restore the imperial system with himself as emperor. Yuan Shikai came to an agreement with the Empress Dowager Longyu—Yehe Nara Jingfen, the empress consort of the late Zaitian, Emperor Guangxu—and she signed the “Act of Abdication of the Emperor of the Great Qing.” The new leader, Yuan Shikai as president, is modern, one who drives a car. Pu Yi, to demonstrate power, forces someone to drink ink. (The historical Pu Yi, apparently, devoted a great deal of time to abusing servants, having them flogged or shooting pellets at them.) Pu Yi soon realizes he is a prisoner in a palace. An imperial system that lasted for 2,000 years has ended, as has the 267-year Manchu rule of China. The claim to having the mandate of heaven was first made by the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 years before the common era, before Christ), which succeeded the Shang dynasty (circa 1600–1046 BCE); and now that claim is lost.
“This is a lot of ground to cover in a feature film, and doubly difficult to traverse since even the most basic facts of the history involved are unfamiliar to most Westerners. Unfortunately, screenwriter Mark Peploe, working with Bertolucci from initial work prepared by Enzo Ungari, has not entirely cracked the problem of how to seamlessly integrate necessary documentary data with personal dramatic material,” noted the film industry publication Variety's reviewer Todd McCarthy (October 7, 1997); yet he found the film “constantly absorbing and tremendously interesting” and even thought aspects of it “astonishing.” How many directors could marshal all the forces and materials necessary to put together such a film. Few. One of Bertolucci’s colleagues says it was hard to find Mao-era material (uniforms, badges) while in China. One wonders how much of the difficulty any viewer might have has to do not only with the oddity of the story being told, the complexity of the history, but, more exactly, with the ignorance of most westerners of that history? Yet, in New York magazine, David Denby called the film masterly, “a dream of imperial China” (November 30, 1987); and in Newsweek, David Ansen described the film as an “image binge,” mesmerizing, featuring a life as “artificial and rarefied as an ancient Chinese drama,” a view from inside a gilded cage (November 30, 1987). (The film would win nine awards—Oscars—from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, including for best picture.)
The Last Emperor is not a compendium of strange names and significant dates—it is a sensual and submersive—one feels submerged in the film’s world—and serious portrait of a singular person. In the prison, where Pu Yi is confined, he and the other men are given notebooks in which to write their stories, their confessions. The governor of the prison has a book about Pu Yi, Twilight in the Forbidden City by Reginald Johnston, Pu Yi’s tutor, a Scotsman, an Oxford graduate, and a University of London professor of Chinese. The book is a memoir of anecdotes and observations, including details about Pu Yi’s household and court—so the governor knows something of Pu Yi’s life, as told by Johnston, who had been the last commissioner of a 288 square-mile territory, Weihaiwei, leased by the British, in Shandong province. (“The Orient is an integral part of European material civilization and culture. Orientalism expresses and represents that part culturally and even ideologically as a mode of discourse with supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines, even colonial bureaucracies and colonial styles,” wrote scholar Edward Said, in The Selected Works of Edward Said (1966 – 2006), Vintage Books, 2019; page 68. Edward Said, inspired by Michel Foucault and Antonio Gramsci, examined the energies invested in the study of the Orient, the arts and the knowledge disciplines—philology, history, economics—that contributed to it, the development and changes to the resulting discourse, its defense and transmission in his 1978 book Orientalism.) And, the film The Last Emperor returns us to the 1919 arrival of Reginald Johnston in Pu Yi’s life: There is a street protest by students—soldiers face them, a protest observed by Reginald Johnston, a diplomat and Pu Yi’s new tutor (played by Peter O’Toole, though Bertolucci considered Sean Connery for the part). Johnston teaches English, math, geography, and history. Four actors play Pu Yi—for four stages of life: Lone, Richard Vuu, Tijger Tsou, and Wu Tao is Pu Yi at 15 years old. Pu Yi tells his tutor RJ that he is not allowed to say what he means—and the tutor, who knows Chinese culture and Confucian thought, brings Pu Yi books and magazines. Pu Yi wants to be modern (he will grow to like films as well, and to be a fan of silent film comedian Harold Lloyd, said Bertolucci. Lloyd had worked with Thomas Edison and for the Keystone Film Comedy, before forming his own production company, for which he made talkies). That desire for modernity, often represented by western items, is a bit of an irony considering that China had invented the magnetic compass, gunpowder, printing, paper money, and soccer during the Song dynasty (960 – 1279 AD). China had its own modernity, one shared with the western world.
Pu Yi wants to go out of the Forbidden City, he tells his tutor, who brings Pu Yi a bicycle. (Reginald Johnston, in an exchange of gifts, gets a special hat and movable chair.) What else is there to entertain Pu Yi? Pu Yi, behind a curtain, is touched by a group of boys—a kind of hide and seek game with sensual implications, possible homoerotic. Is his life all atmosphere, all dazzle, all illusion? Pu Yi’s mother dies, a suicide (she swallowed opium), in 1921; and it is said that being insulted and punished by one of the court ladies, dowager consort Duankang, because of Pu Yi’s disobedience led to her suicide—and, again, Pu Yi wants to leave but guards do not allow it. Pu Yi runs onto a roof, worrying the eunuchs. The tutor, Reginald Johnston, while reaching a hand to Pu Yi to help him off the roof, realizes that Pu Yi has bad vision and needs glasses. The court resists but the tutor insists on the glasses. Pu Yi, as well, will cut his hair, wear suits, and become accustomed to western dining, and he will acquire a phonograph and telephone, aspects of his modernity (he liked various mundane western products too, such as aspirin and chewing gum).
One imagines no one could be in a better place position to be a connoisseur of modernism than an emperor, but this was a man surrounded by tradition. Pu Yi did acquire a film projector. What other than Harold Lloyd films might he have seen? One of the early Chinese films— An Unfortunate Couple (1913)— was an American co-production, directed by Zhang Sichuan, who directed subsequent Chinese films— Wronged Ghosts in an Opium Den (1916) and Romance of a Fruit Peddler (1922), according to the Oxford Dictionary of Film Studies (2012). There were Shanghai film companies in 1930s China, making films of traditional Chinese tales as well as metropolitan stories. Some films were political, affirming nationalism— Spring Silkworms (Cheng Bugao, 1933) and The Big Road (Sun Yu, 1935). After the interruption of World War 2 and with the rise of the Chinese Communist Party, what seemed an era of quality work ended, with films becoming more like propaganda—a socialist romanticism—and, eventually, there was even imprisonment of some dissenting artists, state Annette Kuhn and Guy Westwell in the Oxford Dictionary of Film Studies (Oxford University Press, 2012; pages 73 and 74). Mao Zedong, the Chinese Communist Party chairman, had been a power in China, and an influence in Europe and America: according Julia Lovell, the author of Maoism: A Global History, Maoism influenced poets and philosophers, civil—black, feminist, and gay—rights activists and environmentalists, and some terrorists. Chairman Mao died in 1976, and the end of Mao’s rule brought greater freedom for the Chinese in the 1980s and 1990s. (Deng Xiaoping, who followed Mao as China’s leader from December 1978 to November 1989, initiated economic reforms.) China is now one of the world’s most important film markets.
The first generation of Chinese directors were Zhang Shichuan (1890–1954) and Zheng Zhengqiu (1889–1935), with Bu Wanchang, Cheng Bugao, Dan Duyü, Hong Shen, Li Pingqian, Ren Pengnian, Shao Zuiweng, and Sun Yu, and Yang Xiaozhong; and the second generation in the 1930s and 40s were Cai Chusheng, Fei Mu, Sang Hu, Tang Xiaodan, Wu Yonggang, and Zheng Junli. The third generation—Cui Wei, Cheng Yin, Xie Jin, and Wang Ping—were thought of as propagandists, following official communist imperatives. After the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966 – 1976), a period initiated by Mao’s stated intention to renew ideological commitments but leading to chaos and brutality, the fourth generation, during a time of economic reform, attempted a return to aesthetics: Huang Shuqin, Wu Yigong, and Zhang Nuanxin. The fifth generation, mostly graduating from the Beijing Film Academy, were Chen Kaige, Li Shaohong, Tian Zhuangzhuang, Zhang Junzhao, Zhang Yimou, and Wu Ziniu. Bernardo Bertolucci talked about learning about Chinese cinema after the “cultural revolution” (Chinese directors would tell him that The Last Emperor gave them a new model—one that respected Chinese history—rather than the kind of Soviet realism they thought likely for them.)
Various Chinese films of history impress: The 800 (Guan Hu, 2019), a film about a 1937 battle between the Chinese—led by the Kuomintang—against the Japanese, in which the nationalists defended Shanghai’s Sihang warehouse for four days (they would found Taiwan); The Flowers of War (Zhang Yimou, 2011), about refugees in a Nanking church, during the 1937 Chinese-Japanese war, and a massacre; Hero (Zhang Yimou, 2002), about an attempt to unify China’s seven states by one of them, the Qin state, despite attempts to assassinate the Qin king, in this historical martial arts fantasy film; One Second (Zhang Yimou, 2020), set during the cultural revolution, about a prison farm escapee; Raise the Red Lantern (Zhang Yimou, 1991), a 1920s republican China period piece in which an educated young woman from a bankrupt family becomes a wealthy man’s fourth wife; Red Cliff (John Woo, Part 1, 2008, Part 11, 2009), set during the Han dynasty, circa 208 years after the death (A.D.) of Christ, focuses on battle strategy and subterfuge, a manipulated emperor, and a surprisingly resourceful woman; Saving General Yang (Ronny Yu, 2013), a 986 A.D. Song dynasty tale of romance and war; Three Kingdoms (Daniel Lee, 2008), about war, heroism, betrayal, and family, inspired by a classic 14th century Chinese novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms; and The Warlords (Peter Chan, 2007), dramatizing the 1860 Taiping rebellion against the Qing dynasty, in which a militia forms on behalf of the imperial order against the rebels. We do not know which films, other than those of comedian Harold Lloyd, Pu Yi might have liked. Yet, we know the current Chinese government remains discriminating, especially regarding what may make a negative impression in western countries: Zhang Yimou’s One Second, about the cultural revolution, was pulled out of the 2019 Berlin Film Festival. One Second had been inspired by the 2011 Geling Yan novel The Criminal Lu Yanshi, which was previously made into the 2014 film Coming Home, featuring a professor who escapes from a labor camp to see his wife and daughter, but is betrayed to the police by his own daughter. “‘Technical reasons’ has become the default excuse when managers of venues and theatres give way to political arm-twisting,” wrote Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg in Hidden Hand: How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World (Oneworld, 2021; page 196).
Pu Yi, in July 1917, is returned to the throne as emperor by a loyal Qing dynasty loyalist, the warrior Zhang Xun, but for only twelve days. The restoration is opposed with force by the republic’s premier Duan Qirui (three bombs were dropped on the Forbidden City). It is thought that Pu Yi should marry, and he is shown the photographs of available girls and women. His picks one, but she is said to be too young; and he picks another. In 1922, Pu Yi finds a wife, Wan Jung (actress Joan Chen, who was in Little Flower, 1979, and Tai-Pan, 1986). Bertolucci has spoken of what a fine actress Joan Chen is, reconciling both East and West. Pu Yi’s wife Wan Jung (Chen)—also known as Gobulo Wanrong—is a little older than Pu Yi—and she suggests they be a modern couple, an idea that appeals to him. His first choice becomes his second wife (he married both on the same day, taking them together to the red-draped palace of earthly tranquility).
Pu Yi, in the Forbidden City, cuts off his long hair, and tries to gain more control over his household. He carries a weapon to bed for protection; and both his wives come to his bed (and there is an amorous scene that includes giggling). Pu Yi wants an accounting of assets and expenses. He wants to ascertain theft. In order to avoid the accounting Pu Yi requested, the eunuchs burn the storage facility. Pu Yi exiles the eunuchs. Yet, he remains subject to the power of others: Pu Yi, who is in the Forbidden City from 1908 to 1924, is ordered by the military to leave it (by a Christian general, says Bertolucci). Pu Yi (Lone) receives this notice in the film while playing tennis—in tennis whites. The large doors that had kept him in are now open; and the emperor in black (long tunic, skull cap), with dark glasses, leaves with his two wives. He looks elegant. Pu Yi goes to Tientsin, also known as Tianjian, in northeastern China in 1924. He is treated with deference there. Pu Yi becomes something of a playboy (singing along to a piano in public, in Tientsin, 1927).
There was genuine revolutionary fervor in China: a civil war was fought between 1927 and 1936, between the Kuomintang government and the Chinese communist party, the later committed to ideals of communal property, respect and reward for workers, and a classless society. The Japanese, apparently, blamed an attack on a railroad the Japanese owned in Manchuria on Chinese dissidents as grounds for retaliation; and the Japanese, seeking raw materials—coal, iron ore—for its industries, invaded Manchuria in 1931. The Japanese counsel Pu Yi: move to Manchuria. His second wife Wenxiu (or Wen Hsiu), the consort Shu, played by Vivian Wu, does not want to go; she wants her own life. Pu Yi is angered by the leaving of his second wife Wenxiu, the consort Shu, and smashes things. (He had several other concubines Xiang, and Fu, and Li Shuxian. His second wife divorced him in 1931. His last marriage to Li Shuxian, a nurse, was said to be happy.) Meanwhile, Eastern Jewel, also known as Aisin Gioro Xianyu or Yoshiko Kawashima, a Qing dynasty princess reared in Japan, who became a woman pilot and a dynamic spy for the Japanese (here played by Maggie Han), is entangled in the life of Pu Yi and his wife Wan Jung (Joan Chen).
The Last Emperor is a film without a hero—really, it is as much about the forces that form a man’s life, about the circumstances of fate, as it is about anything: history. Pu Yi has a privileged existence, but in his lack of real power he is like many of us. Bertolucci has a gift for allowing us to see this. We might have been bored by Pu Yi’s lack of will, but the situation is too unique, too unusual. Such strange splendor is captivating. Bertolucci’s filmography is remembered for his lavish visions, but his smaller works are worth contemplating too: The Grim Reaper (1962); Before the Revolution (1964); Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man (1981); Stealing Beauty (1996); Besieged (1998); The Dreamers (2003); and, Me and You (2012). Stealing Beauty, written by Susan Minot, focusing on a beautiful young woman and a dying older man, is about life—family, love and sex, and art—and it is about death; and critic Adrian Martin declared, “Bertolucci captures the tender, extremely sexy flux of emotions and moods that run between all his characters, young or old, vibrant or terminally ill, artists or jokers. Personal agonies, marital crises, senility and skeletons in the family closet are dissolved in sudden experiences of frivolity, euphoria and intimacy” (the online Australian site Film Critic, July / August 1996). I recall how central Bertolucci was to certain youthful conversations. A friend, a film student at the New School for Social Research, who took me to certain films by Fellini and Godard, would discuss Bertolucci with me—one of the first films I had seen upon moving to New York was by Bertolucci. Has Bertolucci ever made a more beautiful film than The Last Emperor —or one that more suggests how malleable we can be in the face of power?
Following the Chinese Communist Party’s assumption of national power in 1949, and Pu Yi’s 1950 return to China, Pu Yi was in the Fushun War Criminals Management Centre in Liaoning. All the beautiful colors, all the prestige, is gone from Pu Yi’s life. Pu Yi’s confession is rejected. Confession has a place in law, psychiatry, religion, and politics (as well as art and friendship), but it has an evidentiary and regulation function in institutional disciplines. Confession can be truth, or mere excuse—and lead to freedom or punishment. Pu Yi is yelled at by the interrogator. The written confessions of the budding gardener Pu Yi and his associate contradict. Who is accurate? His servant. “Pu Yi’s ‘re-education,’ or, more accurately, the extraction of his confession, is supervised by a kind of model prison warden, played by the Chinese actor Ying Ruocheng, who happens to be a vice minister of culture in China,” noted New York Times commentator Richard Bernstein (May 8, 1988), a writer more concerned with the politics of the film—did it give a damning picture of communism? —than with aesthetics. (Why are conservatives so very afraid that a film, book, or even music will be an irresistible introduction to communism—or atheism or environmentalism or homosexuality or interracial marriage? If only it were that easy…?) Was the extraction of a confession from the last emperor the ultimate affirmation of communist triumph? Pu Yi, in prison, is still attended by a servant, until the prison governor separates them; and Pu Yi is then put with other former officials (they claim they have been reeducated—he disbelieves it, does not think people change).
Do people change? When I was younger I was interested in Marx and Engels and… Bertolucci and… Plato, Nietzsche, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Anton Chekhov, Henry James, and Rainer Rilke, and…Chinua Achebe, Robert Altman, the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, Central Park, Jimmy Carter, cheesecake, Kathleen Collins, Jacques Derrida, Entre Nous (Kurys, 1983), the Eurhythmics, Michel Foucault, Theophile Gautier (Mademoiselle de Maupin, 1835), Gandhi (Attenborough, 1982), Greta Garbo, Guyanese pepperpot, Nona Hendryx, Alfred Hitchcock, John Irving, Christopher Isherwood, Jesse Jackson, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (Dangerous Liaisons, 1782), the Metropolitan Museum, Joni Mitchell, Toni Morrison, My Beautiful Laundrette (Frears, 1985), Euzhan Palcy, Octavio Paz, Prince, Reds (Beatty, 1981), Adrienne Rich, John Sayles, the Schomburg Center, science fiction, Nina Simone, The Specials, John Steinbeck, Thai food, Peter Weir, and Richard Wright. I had hoped that my writing, and my small gestures of woke activism, would help lead to a freer, more progressive world. Now, I remain fond of some old loves, indifferent to others, and I like and admire Anthony Appiah, James Bay, Anthony Braxton, Brandi Carlile, Stanley Cavell, Teju Cole, Percival Everett, Cesaria Evora, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Renee Fleming, Rhiannon Giddens, Phillip Brian Harper (Abstractionist Aesthetics, 2015), Valerie June, Angelique Kidjo, John Koethe, Leonardo, Male Bisexuality in Current Cinema (Justin Vicari, 2014), Midnight’s Children (Mehta, 2012), Pankaj Mishra, Father John Misty, Angela Merkel, Jessye Norman, Barack Obama, The Obituary of Tunde Johnson (Ali LeRoi, 2019), Yasujirō Ozu, Picasso, Patrice Rankine (Ulysses in Black, 2006), Rembrandt, Shakespeare, Wayne Shorter, Steven Soderbergh, Thomas Wartenberg (Unlikely Couples, 1999), Florence Welch, August Wilson, George Yancy, Z (Costa-Gavras, 1969), and country walks, wild woods, boudin and beignets, pork crackling and pralines. Am I now a defeated rebel or a reborn classicist or a quiet anarchist waiting for an opportunity to explode precedents?
What was Pu Yi’s allegiance, but to maintain the mandate of heaven, inherited as a child? Did Pu Yi collaborate with the Japanese, in a betrayal of China, when he took up resident in a place, Manchuria, that his family long had been associated with? Was he being asked to give up a dream for reality, or to give up one illusion for another? Pu Yi’s wife Wan Jung and the Chinese court advise Pu Yi not to follow the Japanese to Manchuria, but he goes—as Manchuria, or Manchukuo, is his ancestral land and he thinks he can be emperor again there. Pu Yi is declared ruler of Manchukuo in 1932, and named emperor of Manchukuo in 1934. Changchun, an industrial city, is named the capital; and Pu Yi made a bureaucratic building—the tax offices—his palace. In Manchuria, 1934, cars and motorcycles travel to the coronation site. Pu Yi is in traditional dress. This is another theater of the representation of power, but the emperor remains a puppet. (Ryuichi Sakamoto plays the head of the Japanese secret service in China: Masahiko Amakasu, and this man is also a leader in the region’s film industry. The crisscrossing webs of power are strangling.) Who can stand such complexity—the complicity and contradictions? The empress, Pu Yi’s wife Wan Jung (Joan Chen), is disturbed, and at a public gathering, eats flowers; yet she toasts the emperor—and appears seduced by Eastern Jewel (Maggie Han).
Pu Yi, whose edicts have been written by the Japanese, gives a speech in Manchuria, wanting to assert his own values, but Pu Yi is abandoned by his audience. His wife is pregnant, gives birth, and the baby is killed; his wife taken away. (Was the baby his?) Pu Yi will have no heir, no claim on a Chinese throne. When Pu Y’s wife Wan Jung returns, she remains disturbed, spitting, contemptuous. Wan Jung, or Gobulo Wanrong, here played by Joan Chen, for whatever tragedy she suffered, is a footnote in history (her end was hateful, horrifying: abandoned, she was captured by communists and exhibited like a caged animal, dying amid the wastes of her own body). History: December 13, 1937 was the massacre in Nanking, also known as the rape of Nanking—the killing of captured Chinese soldiers and citizens by the imperial Japanese army. December 7, 1941, the bombing of Pearl Harbor. August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped by the Americans on Hiroshima, and three days later on Nagasaki. September 2, 1945, Japan signed an official declaration of surrender. Following the war’s close, Chiang Kai-shek of the Chinese Nationalist Party, and Mao Zedong of the China Communist Party, met nine times in Chongqing to discuss China’s future and its leadership, assisted by American ambassador Patrick Hurley, who did not share the opinion of other American political observers that the communist were more efficient and popular; and although there was an agreement reached between Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong to recognize the nationalists as the ruling party, the civil war resumed, with the communists winning the mainland and Chiang ruling in Taiwan.
Pu Yi leaves, first by train then by plane, but he is stopped at the Shenyang Airport, in Liaoning, China, by enemy soldiers (the Russians?). The Russians had invaded Manchuria August 9, 1945, as it was dominated by Japan, whom the Russians were then fighting with the Allies—the United States, Great Britain—against the Axis powers, Germany, Italy, and Japan. Pu Yi is captured in 1945 by the Russians, who attacked Manchukuo (Manchuria); and he is taken to the Soviet Union, where he will be kept first in a sanitarium in Chita, Siberia, then in a detention camp in Khabarovsk, for five years, although Pu Yi, as defendant, testifies in the 1946 Tokyo war crime trial; and, after being kept in the Soviet Union for years, Pu Yi is returned with 200 other prisoners to Chairman Mao’s China in 1950, where, he faces trial as a war criminal, and from 1950 until 1959 he is given reeducation (reform through labor) in the Fushun War Criminals Management Center in Liaoning Province. His time there is humiliating, humbling. Pu Yi comes to claim responsibility for his government, accepts guilt. He wrote a two-volume biography, From Emperor to Citizen, its narration ending in 1957 (published in 1961 in China). In 1959, Pu Yi is pardoned, freed; and he becomes a citizen of the People’s Republic of China, with Chairman Mao’s approval; and he is a gardener at a botanical garden, then a researcher for a literary institute, and an editor, with the fourth National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Pu Yi lives to see the governor of the jail arrested, paraded through the streets as a traitor, during the cultural revolution—a fact; and the film shows us Pu Yi witnessing that, and attempting to interrupt the parade to defend the governor, which is not a fact, though Pu Yi thought well of the man. The revolution devoured many. Pu Yi would return to the Forbidden City as a visitor; and later he would die of kidney disease, October 17, 1967, and be buried in buried in Hualong Royal Cemetery.
A Touch of Sin by Jia Zhangke
“The Chinese state is not a unified actor; political authority is fragmented. It is fragmented vertically, the sense that decisions made at higher levels are not always implemented at lower levels. Different levels of the political system have different priorities, based on the local context and the interests of local officials. For example, the central leadership has set improving the environment as a key priority. This a nationwide problem, more intense in some areas than others. But in order to address the problem, local leaders have to be willing to meet the pollution targets set by Beijing. However, … local leaders have greater incentives to emphasize economic growth than environmental protection.”
—Bruce J. Dickson, The Party and the People: Chinese Politics in the 21st Century (Princeton Univ Press, 2021), on “Fragmented Authoritarianism,” page 72 and 73
There is crime, sin; but is there justice? A Touch of Sin (2013), by director Jia Zhangke, presents several characters in different locations to illuminate shared stress and struggle; and it is episodic, presenting dynamic yet draining situations in China, featuring people in trouble, with a central figure in one scenario becoming background in another, with corrupt authorities or forces dominating. The dignity and morality of the characters are transgressed—and, hurt, insulted, transgressed, the characters themselves then transgress.
China has resumed its place on the world stage as a great power, after a century of humiliation—from 1839 to the 1940s, with the challenges to the Qing dynasty and the intervention of foreign powers; and China, under the authoritarian Chinese Communist Party, with a mixed economy of both central planning and capitalist enterprises, has known decades of economic growth, eliminating a great deal of poverty, and broadening the country’s international influence. Yet, the liberties of its citizens are circumscribed. As of 2012, the Chinese population was 1,366,560,818, according to the research platform MacroTrends; and, as of 2013 it was 1,376,100,308; and in 2023 the Chinese population is 1,425,671,352. More than a billion people. The People’s Republic of China has 56 recognized ethnic groups: the largest is the Han of 900 million people, and the smallest—just 2,000 people—is the Hezhen in the northeast. Religions include Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Protestantism, and Catholicism. Officially, people have the right to practice or not practice religion. Yet, there are sometimes controversies—government disapproval, government reprisals—for how religion is practiced. Religions must be registered, and some beliefs are seen as mere superstition, according to Human Rights Watch; and sometimes people have been prohibited from having religious services outside a specified building, according to The Party and the People (Bruce J. Dickson, Princeton University Press, 2021). There have been allegations, as well, of mass surveillance, coercive birth control, and family separation, detention, and torture.
I am not sure why it is hard for us to recognize the complexity of other cultures—or the tragedies of other people. Or their gifts and grace. The drive for individual or national survival? Differences of belief, history, or manners? There have been films, for instance, that have broken through our veil of indifference regarding Asia in general, or even China in particular. Yet, China remains a powerful mystery, but that may be because we do not always look hard enough—we do not always read enough, see enough, think enough. We have cultural materials focused on China, but most of us only notice when the alarming news reports are given. Even some of the better journalism is of this ilk: the Public Broadcasting Service’s Frontline program has done several documentaries on China: Battle for Hong Kong (Season 2020, Episode 11, produced by Robin Barnwell and Gesbeen Mohmmad); China Undercover (Season 2020, Episode 18, produced by Robin Barnwell and Gesbeen Mohammad); and China’s Covid Secrets (Season 2021, Episode 9, produced by Jane McMullen). Thus, we learn something about mainland China’s intrusion into Hong Kong, which the British acquired in 1842 and relinquished in 1997, and China’s constriction of Hong Kong liberties, despite agreement to respect the island’s basic law, its legal and judicial practices and its capitalism; and we learn about the Uyghurs, a Turkic ethnic group in northwest China that has faced constraints on their education, language, and religion, subject to incarceration and indoctrination; and about how China might have handled the original coronavirus epidemic more efficiently and its later extreme control of social movements and quickly built hospitals. We could do worse than to pay attention to China’s creative filmmakers.
A Touch of Sin (2013), by director Jia Zhangke, presenting dynamic yet draining situations, featuring characters in trouble, offers views of lives most of us do not get to see, stories inspired by life, which rarely has the smooth shape of artful fiction; but the Hollywood Reporter's critic David Rooney found that “tonal inconsistency, lethargic pacing and a shortage of fresh insight dilute the storytelling efficacy of this quartet of loosely interconnected episodes involving ordinary people pushed over the edge” (May 16, 2013). Sometimes one has to see the work for oneself—the matter is that important.
China produces iron, steel, textiles, electronics, transport vehicles, and agricultural products such as corn, rice, peanuts, nectarines and peaches. One thinks of workers, and one might think of a Chinese computer programmer, factory worker, or farmer. Who are they; and what do they feel? At the beginning of A Touch of Sin , in a desolate landscape, a man carries fruit on a motorcycle—stocky, bearded, Dahai (Jiang Wu); then we see a truck with spilled fruit on the road. Did the man pick up the fruit from the road? There is another man, slimmer, on bike, and beardless, Zhou San or San’er (Wang Baoqiang), stopped by the young men, apparently robbers with hammers, and the bearded robber shoots them. (The Hollywood Reporter writer saw the hammers as axes.) Women are singing, and one of them welcomes the bearded man, Dahai (Jiang Wu), who sits to eat in a restaurant. The bearded man on bike rides into town; and there are police cars, and we hear the sirens. The bearded man gives himself an injection in the belly. Is it diabetic, or something else?
There is a communal meal—at a Shanxi coal mine company—and Dahai (Jiang Wu), a forceful worker seen as a leader by others, while discussing current business—the sale of a coal mine and the acquiring of a vehicle—is told that if he had been born in the war years, he would have been better-positioned, a general by now. Dahai’s mistake, other than the timing of his birth, may be integrity: he wants to report corrupt business practices and bad mine management, possibly to the Central Committee in Beijing. Meanwhile, the police arrive to investigate murder; and they will inspect the workers. Dahai confronts the village chief about the sale of the mine (the chief had promised dividends to the workers); and says that the man should explain that to the discipline commission, that he has gotten private gain from a public property. The chief tells him that he will be a loser all his life.
China mines coal and consumes it. Mining, an old-fashioned industry, contributes to China’s modernity. Coal generates power: the burning of coal turns water into steam, which moves turbines producing electricity. “Coal is a cornerstone of the Chinese economy, representing 77 percent of China’s primary energy production and fueling almost 80 percent of its electricity. Moreover, China is the world’s top coal consumer, accounting for nearly half of global consumption in 2010,” according to a 2012 report—“Understanding China’s Rising Coal Imports”—by Kevin Tu and Sabine Johnson-Reiser for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Coal was being imported from Australia and Indonesia. Why import? Possibly due to the country’s problems with transportation and even safety concerns. More recently, according to a July 16, 2023 Asian Markets report by Muyu Xu for Reuters, “China churned out 390.1 million metric tons of coal last month, up 2.5% from a year earlier and 1.2% from May, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on Monday” and “Daily coal consumption in eight coastal provinces in June surpassed the levels seen over the same period of the past four years, data compiled by the China Coal Transportation and Distribution (CCTD) showed.” (There was more coal use by utilities for air conditioning because of high heat.) There have been more safety inspections, too, of necessity: “Chinese mines are known to be among the deadliest in the world and the country has carried out several rounds of mining safety checks since late February following an accident in Inner Mongolia that killed dozens of people.” Obviously, despite difficulties, great wealth is possible.
During the police inspection of the mine workers in A Touch of Sin , one man runs. The runner is a worker, from Sichuan, and he thought the police had come for him: he was an escaped prisoner, who had killed someone in his hometown, but he is not responsible for the road murder they are investigating.
Dahai (Jiang Wu) sees a man with a pull cart beating the horse he needs to pull his cart, part of the cruelty, the insanity, of the world. Dahai tries to mail a complaint letter at the post office but he does not have the full address; and he thinks the Shanxi postal worker is in league with the corrupt officials when she refuses to take it. (The company boss—Jiao Shengli—has bought a private plane, more evidence of corruption.) Dahai, while traveling, asks an accountant about corruption, but the man gets off the bus to avoid the conversation.
The son of Jia Liankai, the writer-director Jia Zhangke, is a graduate of the Beijing Film Academy, and the dean of Shanxi Film Academy, whose works include Unknown Pleasures (2002), Still Life (2006), 24 City (2008), Mountains May Depart (2015), and Ash is the Purest White (2018); and he is known for work that is theatrical as well as work of critical, gritty, of recognizable realities. Films are not merely about a subject, an exploration of themes, but are a presentation of angles and acts, of colors and movement, of speech, an evocation of experience and events through mechanical techniques: they can reveal to us artistic worlds, spiritual worlds, social worlds. Inspired by Chen Kaige, and influenced by Hou Hsiao-hsien and Yasujiro Ozu, as well as Robert Bresson, Federico Fellini, and Vittorio de Sica, Jia Zhangke’s meditative works are increasingly infused with feelings of objection (anger, disgust) with social matters, using genre—a rebel figure, sudden violence—to dramatize the implications of power and pressure (the violence is often tragic, rather than thrilling), observes Andrew Tracy in Sight and Sound (June 2014). Andrew Tracy wrote that “The spectacularised, individual violence of Jia’s ‘sinners’ is symptom of and reaction to the quieter but far more massive violence of the state-capitalist behemoth that has made the insanely unreal and unjust reality within which the protagonists exist” (June 2014).
“The Fifth Generation directors occupy themselves mostly with spectacle-driven mythic histories laden with pointed social criticisms that jeopardize their standing with the government censors. In contrast, the Sixth Generation filmmakers largely produce their gritty, contemporary realist films well outside of the state system, relying instead on personal or private funding, often through sources outside China,” wrote critic Kevin Lee in his examination of Jia Zhangke’s early work in Senses of Cinema (Great Directors, Issue 25, March 2003). The modern problems of ordinary people, in a nation of great administrative controls, of dominating routines, can be seen in Jia Zhangke’s work, as in A Touch of Sin (2013). In his portrait of the director, writer Kevin Lee declared, “Jia’s importance on the global cinematic stage is inextricably tied to his depiction of contemporary China, if only because Jia’s China reflects global conditions and trends that affect us all.”
In A Touch of Sin , photographed by Yu Lik-wa and edited by Matthieu Laclau and Lin Xudong, mining boss Jiao Shengli and his wife are greeted at the airfield by a welcome committee that features costumed musicians at the plane. Children bring flowers for Jiao and his wife. Dahai (Jiang Wu) asks the boss, Jiao, for sponsorship for a trip to complain about the boss—an audacity that assumes shared principle is more important than personal motives; and the boss, Jiao, says yes but then one of his men hits Dahai in the head repeatedly—and, later, after Dahai’s head is bandaged in the hospital, a Jiao employee comes to give Dahai money for his trouble (sympathy? practical accounting for his hospital bill? a payoff for silence? more corruption?). The money-bringer says, “Case closed.” If Dahai had been able to complain to a higher authority about the boss, would his complaint receive approval or disapproval? How does the Chinese system work? “Political authority is also fragmented horizontally: at every level of the political system, different ministries and agencies have different policy preferences. These bureaucracies act as interest groups, lobbying decision makers to adopt their preferred policies and rescind the ones that harm their interests…Ministries in charge of economic development and oil and gas exploration typically have different preferences than those responsible for the environment,” explained Bruce Dickson in The Party and the People (Princeton University Press, 2021; page 73).
Dahai visits a relative, or so he says, possibly his sister; and he seems to have some special emotional interest in her (although she—who is married—tries to match him with someone else) and she reprimands him for his accusations against officials, one of whom—Jiao—had been a classmate of Dahai. She tells him that his life belongs to him; and that he should stop caring what others think. Yet, Dahai, leaving her, takes a shotgun back with him. (“When Dahai picks up a shotgun in the first section, there’s a pan to the image of a tiger, and you hear a roar, as if Dahai were possessed by the animal, one of the 12 in the Chinese Zodiac,” recalled reviewer Manohla Dargis in the New York Times, October 3, 2013, finding the film a blistering and lyrical tale of moral conviction, noting that while a private plane and Maserati are “shiny totems of the new China, these luxury items are in striking contrast to the village’s forlorn statue of Mao (representative of a fading belief system) and its Buddhist temple (symbol of yet older beliefs), at which Dahai takes a brutal, lonely stand.”
Is Dahai merely a bit player in someone else’s theater? Apparently, Dahai has reached his breaking point. Back in the mining town, Dahai takes out his gun, and visits the accountant, instructing him to write down evidence of theft. Dahai shoots the accountant and his wife. Dahai kills someone else who mocks him for the beating he took; and then he finds the village chief, who now wants to talk and Dahai shoots the chief. And then, Dahai shoots the man cruelly beating his horse—and Jiao sitting in his fancy car, asks, “How can we fix this?” but it is too late and Dahai shoots him. (Police cars come, alarms blaring.) Dahai looks pleased. The violence is at once shocking and darkly funny.
The man who had shot the robbers on the road, Zhou San or San’er (Wang Baoqiang), is on the ferry to Chongqing; and he takes a hired motorbike to an expressway then walks, arriving at a celebration for his mother, and he greets his brother and family. He had sent some money home, to someone—his mother?—who says she does not want his money (because of how he makes his money, stealing, killing). Meanwhile, his older brother had received cash for their mother’s birthday event; and the brother tries to divide proceeds equally after expenses are deducted, but Zhou San forfeits his share to his mother, a gift. (Men play a game while discussing a woman who worked in a salon, contracted HIV. There is an argument, a fight. Fireworks commemorate the Chinese New Year.) San’er, in bed with a woman, talks about buying a new pistol, and he goes to a shop; and he puts on a jacket, disguising himself a marketplace worker, and observes a bank—and shoots and robs a woman leaving the bank with money. He takes off his disguise and leaves town via bike and bus.
Another man, Youliang, arrives by bus in Yichang, where a young woman waits for him; and she, Xiao Yu (Zhao Tao), has hired a car. Youliang is married to someone else, and he says that he failed to talk with his wife about their affair. Youliang says he hinted but did not make a full disclosure. The woman says that she herself, Xiao Yu, wants a baby and he has to choose between her and his wife. At the train station, there is a problem with his bag (a knife is in it, and he gives that to the young woman who is not traveling).
The young woman Xiao Yu (Zhao Tao) returns to work in a sauna; and she is attacked by her lover’s wife and male associate. Xiao Yu takes refuge in a truck advertising holy snakes. Later, after work, walking, she sees a crawling snake. She visits her mother, cleaning vegetables, at an airport construction site. There is a train accident. The young woman gets a ride on the truck that has stalled and been asked to pay an unofficial toll (criminal extortion). At work, later, in the sauna, Xiao Yu, takes a break; and meanwhile the men who extorted the truck driver arrive and asks for a massage, but she explains that she is just a receptionist. The two men harass her, despite her protestations. One hits Xiao Yu with a fistful of money—and she strikes at him with the knife her lover had given her. She is a disrespected person pushed to her limits (she has been treated in a primitive way, and responds primitively). Manohla Dargis surmised in the New York Times (October 3, 2013): “The transformation of Dahai and Xiao Yu is of a piece with the everyday surrealism that Mr. Jia, working with his brilliant cinematographer Yu Likwai, finds in cities, villages and along highways. At the same time, the transformation of these characters into archetypes, like Mr. Jia’s references to Chinese opera, implies there are other stories, forms and beliefs that China can embrace beyond those represented either by a Mao statue or a private plane.”
At the Guangdong clothing factory, a, young man distracts another, and there is an accident (hand cut by a cloth-cutting machine). The company will pay medical fees and the man who caused accident, Xiao Hui (Luo Lanshan), will surrender his own wages to the injured man; but the culprit runs away (cannot afford the sacrifice) and gets another job, in Dongguan at a hotel, the Golden Age, with other young people in suits and uniforms and exotic costumes. Xiao Hui meets a girl he likes, Lianrong (Li Meng), a girl with a three-year old daughter—she acknowledges she’s involved with sex work (the hotel is a high-end brothel); but the young man is shaken when he sees Lianrong (Li Meng) servicing a client. He goes back to his factory friend for job. (His mother calls and chastises him for not sending money—and the injured young man he owes, Chang Ling, finds him; and the boy could hurt him but chooses not to do so.) Xiao Hui, chastened, discouraged, despairs (his violence is turned against himself).
The rage expressed in A Touch of Sin —raged rooted in reports of actual occurrences—creates an implication of accusation that is irrefutable. “In that concluding section, glimpses of tech factories in the international free-enterprise town of Dongguan inevitably conjure associations with the controversial plants where Apple products are manufactured. Jia emphasizes the dehumanizing aspect of these environments by showing a grim worker-housing complex called Oasis of Prosperity. The fact that wealth and influence are accessible only to the privileged few is acknowledged throughout the film with a borderline heavy hand,” observed David Rooney in the Hollywood Reporter (May 16, 2013). Is the artistic hand that heavy, or is political reality heavy? Near the film’s end, a woman applies for job; and there is a glimpse of a theatrical performance—about crime, and sin, testimony before a magistrate. Is there justice? Film reviewer David Walsh (World Socialist Web Site), who had found Jia’s films to be passive treatments of a passive population, said of A Touch of Sin : “It portrays nothing but ultimately futile individual protests against inequality and injustice. For a variety of historical and ideological reasons, the filmmaker finds it inconceivable to imagine the Chinese working population rising up in its own social interest. There continues to be in his films, due largely to problems that are not of his making, the elements of repetition, inertia (even in the midst of violence) and running in place. Much depends upon the further development of the social situation in China” (September 27, 2013). Will there be justice?
In China, President Xi Jinping was elected March 14, 2013, succeeding Hu Jintao, and in 2018 Xi Jinping initiated an anti-corruption campaign. Was this a genuine regard for law and order, or an avenue for getting rid of professional competition, of the politically disloyal? National Public Radio’s Emily Feng reported—in “How China’s Massive Corruption Crackdown Snares Entrepreneurs Around the Country”—a few years ago, March 4, 2021: “President Xi Jinping launched the campaign in 2018 with the slogan 'Saohei chu'e,' meaning ‘sweep away black and eliminate evil.’ After three years, the initiative concluded last year. China’s legislature, which is convening this week, will likely hail the campaign as a smashing success: nearly 40,000 supposed criminal cells and corrupt companies busted, and more than 50,000 Communist Party and government officials punished for abetting them, according to official statistics. Now Beijing is signaling it will continue elements of the campaign.”
The Chinese state remains strong, despite the existence of various businesses and cultural and social organizations that are allowed certain liberties; but activists and political organizations are more rigorously managed and monitored, according to Bruce Dickson (The Party and the People, pages 102 and 103); and “There is a wide range of actions people in China can take to protest. Ranging from low to high levels of confrontation, they include writing and signing petitions, filing lawsuits, strikes and sit-ins, and street protests. Protesters often begin with the less confrontational options and escalate when those actions are unsuccessful” (page 133). How much of what happens within China will retain our attention?
Submitted August 2023
