China: A Century of Revolution

One of the sweetest privilige of teaching is the availability of time and resources that are suddenly placed at your disposal. Movies, we can always rent from the Video Shop. But that outstanding documentary you remember watching from years ago? You'll have better luck buying it from Amazon today. Or else, try the library...

Well, still in the grip of my China fever, I've been able to dig up a documentary series I watched and recorded on video cassette way back in 1989. It's now available in DVD of course, and as timely and relevant as ever. It's 6 hours long, but its first 2 hours are mind-blowingly engrossing. Those episodes covered the years from 1911 (the year China became Republic) to 1949 (the year it became Communist). The reason for its appeal is its archival footages, which you marvel as to how BBC got them together in the first place. Some of the images are beyond anything Zhang Yimou or Chen Kaige can conjure up. Like a river full of barges with rigid fan-sails, docking onto a bank, and battalion of soldiers with rifles jumping out from them. Or civilians being executed by a shot through the back of the neck, and then the next... They're still haunting for its immediacy. Even today, 16 years after the series is made, and in spite of the fact that it is a BBC production, I would still rank it as the definitive survey of China's 20th century.
Chup