Saturday, January 17, 2015

A Hollow Victory?

China still has a grip on us. Liz and the girls continue to have Chinese lessons, we keep in touch with friends there and we like to keep abreast of news. Tonight Liz and I watched The Story of Qiu Ju, an early Zhang Yimou film (1992, between Raise the Red Lantern and To Live). 
It's an unassuming drama, set in a poor village in Shaanxi province, about a fight for justice after a farmer is beaten up by the village chief. Gong Li (Zhang's then muse and partner) plays Qiu Ju who takes on the police and court bureaucrats and there's an interesting ending. The village chief helps save her and her baby's lives during childbirth, but at the party which follows he is finally convicted of wrongdoing and taken away by police. The moral being: be careful what you wish for?

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