Waves of change in a new ‘China’
Soapy title aside, the documentary “Young and Restless in China” is almost all business, looking at the new, booming, baffling China through the eyes of young Chinese entrepreneurs, trailblazers and less influential players caught up in the maelstrom.
Directed by Sue Williams, this sprawling and at times overwhelming film, shot over four years, follows a group of men and women in their 20s and 30s struggling to find their way in a rapidly changing China. Some of the film’s subjects have returned from decades abroad, others were shaped by the student movement and political turmoil of the early ‘90s, others have come from the country to the city to try to make it on their own.
All of the strivers featured in Williams’ film struggle with angst and dissatisfaction. A sense of dislocation is common among rich and poor alike, exacerbated not just by the population’s new mobility but by Beijing seemingly being rebuilt from the ground up at warp speed. There’s also the ideological vacuum left behind by the country’s communist past and schizophrenic present. The Tiananmen Square massacre inspired public interest lawyer Zhang Jingjing to commit herself to fight for justice in a country where individual rights have long been trampled, whereas the same events convinced hotel owner Xu Weimin to avoid politics. For those returning from exile in the West, like entrepreneurs Lu Dong and Ben Wu, the country is the new if often frustrating and ethically compromising “land of opportunity.” For a young rapper influenced by American culture, a factory worker and a rural migrant worker, opportunity is harder to find.
“Young and Restless in China” is a stunning, sweeping look at a country amid a frenzied if thoroughly compromised process of self-reinvention, but even a little historical context would have gone a long way in grounding the narrative journey of its subjects. Then again, utterly unrecognizable, this brave new China hardly seems grounded. As Lu, who, while building his custom shirt business on the Web, converts to Christianity, remarks: “China is now a country with no beliefs and no role models. All the role models are materialistic.” As Americans, we can relate.
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“Young and Restless in China.” Unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 44 minutes. In English and Mandarin with English subtitles. In limited release.
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