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CM . . . .
Volume V Number 19 . . . . May 21, 1999
A decade will soon have passed since the bloody massacre in Tiananmen
Square. For those of us in the West, it was a most powerful expression of
a people seeking to express their desire for greater freedom. It was also
an event that we witnessed via the distant safety of television, but, for
artist Shui-Bo Wang, it was a happening which he experienced firsthand.
The convoluted path of Shui-Bo's personal and political life which brought
him to that life-changing place forms the subject matter of this video.
At the video's outset, Shui-Bo says that everyone of his generation did a
drawing of the sunrise over Tiananmen Square because the square, capable
of holding a million and a half people, was both the heart and the symbol
of the new China. In Shui-Bo's rendition, sunflowers represented the new
generation of communists while the red sun was the people's great leader,
Mao Tse Tung. In this autobiographical documentary, Shui-Bo uses his
artwork, sometimes in an animated form, plus family and other photographs
to trace both his family's and his own personal connection with communism
in China. Shui-Bo's grandfather, an early member of the Chinese Communist
Party, was so loyal that he divorced his wife from an arranged marriage to
wed a party member. Born in 1960, Shui-Bo recalls the Cultural Revolution
and remembers the local school headmaster's committing suicide after being
denounced by his own daughter. Some years later when China and Russia were
engaged in border disputes, Shui-Bo's own father considered suicide
because he was suspected of being a Russian spy because of his Russian
first name, ironically a name given him to honor Russia for being the
birthplace of communism. Shui-Bo's biggest dream was to meet Mao in person
in Tiananmen Square, but Mao's death cheated him of that opportunity
though, at 16 and a soldier in the People's Army, Shui-Bo saw Mao's
remains in Tiananmen Square. An artist in the army, Shui-Bo created
patriotic posters for propaganda purposes, and, at 20, he joined the
Chinese Communist Party. With his compulsory military service over,
Shui-Bo first attended art school near Tiananmen Square in 1981 and, upon
graduation, was hired to teach at the art school, a place where he
continued to be exposed to liberal Western ideas which he tried to
reconcile with communism. His travels to other parts of China showed him
that the country had not made the economic strides claimed, but Shui-Bo's
loyalty to communism remained steadfast until June 4, 1989, the "darkest
day of my life," when soldiers from the People's Army turned their weapons
on their own people, many of them students from Shui-Bo's school. Some
four months later, a now disillusioned Shui-Bo left China for North
America, but he still hopes that one day he can return to see a "sunrise
over Tiananmen Square."
Amazingly, in less than half an hour, Shui-Bo, through telling his own
personal story, packs in the major happenings in China over the last seven
decades, and he does so in a way which is both engaging and informative.
An excellent video to use in conjunction with William Bell's Forbidden
City.
1999 Academy Award nominee for best Documentary Short Subject.
Highly Recommended.
Dave Jenkinson teaches courses in YA literature at the Faculty of Education, the University of Manitoba.
To comment on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.
Copyright © the Manitoba Library Association.
Reproduction for personal use is permitted only if this copyright notice
is maintained. Any other reproduction is prohibited without
permission.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR THIS ISSUE - MAY 21,
1999.
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