The Concrete Revolution

I could not stand until the end of the film, but skipped it halfway due to its repeated scenes and a frustrating feeling growing in me in its obscure messages.

The film is just a mere shot partly about the development philosophy of China, but not that much clear about the young Chinese's view about Chinese culture. By filming the demolition and construction work preparing for Olympics 2008 and superficially depicting the life of local workers on the site, the film team just touched on the surface of the story. I failed to see in the film the question of what culture of China the young Chinese people want to preserve, but got another message that the young Chinese generation also wants to tear down the old China for development but in their way which might not be that different. It is truly reflected in the film that the young Chinese does not know about their culture, their tradition and how to preserve it.

And the shots are of no significance.

I had the fortunate experience to watch this film and talk to the director afterward. Guo Xiaolu is an energetic figure who, unfortunately, seems to be in the minority in China when in comes to ideas of cultural preservation. I recently returned from two months of travels there and the reality is all too similar to the film. Everywhere old buildings are still being destroyed while lip-service is paid to China's cultural heritage. The confounding thing about it is that all sorts of regular Chinese that you will meet on the street will go on about the great history of Chinese culture, and then little is done about it. Everything is subsumed by a maniacal drive towards "development". This means that historical buildings are torn down and rebuilt to accommodate tourists. If they aren't rebuilt in concrete then they will be so over-restored that they may as well have been.

Either way, this film is a good depiction of the architectural atrocity that China seems eager to become. It shows the human element that seems so helpless in the face of a tide of concrete. It is good to keep in mind when watching this film a comment Guo Xiaolu made to me, "The Concrete Revolution has already destroyed more than the Cultural Revolution in China." A good satire of this situation, and complement to this film is _The World_ by Zhang Jiake.