Thousand Pieces of Gold

Poverty and hunger in China in the late 19th century force a family to sell their young daughter. She "Lalu" (Rosalind Chao) is shipped to the USA where she ends up being bought by the landlord of a saloon who intends that she be an additional revenue source for him, and entertainment for his horny customers. She is determined not to become an whore, though, and so now her strength of character is throughly tested until the arrival of well-meaning Chris Cooper's "Bemis" who might just be able to offer her a way out with some dignity. It's a gloriously shot piece of cinema, this - and the love story bubbles along nicely in the latter part once we have established the characterisations. Cooper is adequate, I never found him to be anything more, really - and there is a thought-provoking narrative that shines a light on the habits of certain cultures of using children as little more than bartering chips (especially girls); and of using women as little more than toys as adults. That adds quite considerably to the potency of the theme, and Chao does a good job keeping us focussed on her struggles and defiance. It probably is not a film you will remember for long, but it is well worth a watch as a testimony to tougher times.

A gorgeous and very intelligent movie. Highly unusual to make a western from the Chinese point of view, also to make one from the woman's point of view.

These people do it without sentimentality; there's never a false note in it. Lalu has three strikes against her: an ethnic Mongol in China, a woman in a male culture, a Chinese in America. Yet she can draw on her warrior traditions forb a sense of pride inaccessible to most of her compatriots.

The relationships she gets into seem totally real; at the same time, there is no attempt to cover up the ugly reality of white racism (not that the Chinese men are much better than the Americans).

This is how the old west must have been, and this movie gives us an honest and dramatic portrayal. It deserves to be much better known.

Although I haven't seen this since it was on TV over fifteen years ago, its memory came and struck me again tonight right out of the blue while I was eating dinner. I was so supremely impressed with this at the time I saw it on PBS that I have no trouble now remembering the title immediately, along with the names Rosalind Chao and Chris Cooper, even after all these years. So, I just had to come here now while I'm thinking of it and register my approval.

If this were available on DVD, I'd buy it today. But it seems to me that what America really needs, entertainment-wise, is an American Playhouse anthology on DVD. If The American Film Theatre can put out a fourteen-volume anthology (in three sets), and if we can get "Fifty Years of Janus Films" in one giant collection, why not American Playhouse?

I came across this movie because it has Chris Cooper in it and was just released on DVD in 2020 in a 4K digital restoration. The picture and sound are superb especially when you consider it was filmed 30+ years ago. It was filmed in Montana.

It is based on real people and their mostly factual story. Drought and famine threaten everyone in Northern China and Mongolia in 1880. To survive the dad sells his daughter, presumably into marriage. She is sent by ship and arrives in California where she is again sold and transported to Oregon where many men went to prospect for gold. Presumably to work as a prostitute for the man who bought her even though by that time slavery had been made illegal.

The young lady was headstrong, she did not comply and eventually worked herself into a better position. The movie is of that story and is very well made.

My wife and I watched it on DVD from our public library.

Movie based on the life of Polly Bemis. Polly was sold by her father in China to bandits, and sold again to a brothel, and sold again to a woman that took her to the US to work in a saloon in the West. You learn a little about girls in China and then how Chinese were viewed/treated in the US in the 1871 timeframe.