My Homage to Communist China

I can sufficiently say that I’ve done my part to honor Chinese National Day. To show my support (I’m using that word tentatively) I saw the film of 2009 here in China. A friend had free tickets to check out China’s pride and joy for the 60th anniversary, The Founding of a Republic. The movie is about the foundation of the communist party in China and is more of an ode to Mao than any else.

I mean it is pure propaganda and there were a few times when we, the only two foreigners in the theater, looked at each other with slightly confused faces. We decided before hand that outbursts of “wrong” or the like wouldn’t be appreciated, so we kept relatively quiet. For a movie that the government spent good money to make, it sure could have been a lot more exciting. In a nut shell, the movie is just groups of old Chinese men talking and montages of Mao. But the movie boasts that there are all these famous Chinese actors and actresses. Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Zhang Ziyi, all make their appearances but knew better than to commit to anything more than a five minute appearance. I wish I knew to only stay for five minutes.

Honestly, it was a painful two and half hours and there were points when I almost feel asleep, something I can say that I’ve never done. Now I know why the tickets were free. I’m familiar with Chinese history and I’d bet that I know more than the average American, but I was still hoping to be informed and learn something new from the film (for those of you who don’t know Chinese history, you can get the run-down on Wikipedia). Instead, I left a bit annoyed, I’d dare to say mad. It wasn’t the use of “democracy” by Mao (which I find highly suspect), the terrible direction of the film or even the cliche montages (some that involved close-ups of a single tear running down Mao’s face or him playing in a field of flowers with his daughter and niece). No, I was annoyed because they got America all wrong.

There are a few foreigners in the film, which was kind of a shock to me that these people actually agreed to be in the movie. One is the US ambassador, who happens to speak with a British accent. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize we had Brits serving as ambassadors. The icing on the cake was a scene where the then-presidents’ (Chinese president) wife goes to the USA to try to get the US’s involvement in the civil war. She’s walking through the White House where there’s these US Marines standing on guard. There’s one black and one white marine and the black one proceeds to blatantly check her out. After the white one gets his attention, the checker-outer goes “Damn. He’s really hot.” Oh really? In the 1940’s people spoke like that? I don’t think so. It did get some good laughs from the Chinese audience, but us Americans just bristled.

After a few nods to sleep, I survived this lame movie. It had the potential to be really good, and Chinese history is actually pretty interesting. But the director decided to stay away from any scene that could show true hardship the Chinese faced during this time of civil war and turned it into garbage. And thankfully, it’s not just the Americans who couldn’t stand the movie. I told Ellen I had gone to see it and she looked at me with a little bit of shock and asked if I liked it. I told her it was OK, and she kind of smiled like “I know you’re lying.” She told me she didn’t really like it and that her mom actually fell asleep (her mom and I have a lot in common it seems). She did add that it was a movie every Chinese would probably see, but she didn’t say enjoy.

So I feel that I can say with some confidence that I have done my part to be “patriotic” toward the Chinese this holiday. While I’m still here suffering without Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc., I’ve been a good “lao wai” and done something “Chinese.” I can talk about it with my Chinese friends and impress them with my openness to Chinese film and “pop culture.” But for now, I’m just going to go to McDonalds and think of home over a double cheeseburger and french fries.