Qing chun ji

Wish I was able to find a higher quality version of this film... watched it in 480p on youtube and it was already shot with a low quality camera, but yet I could not take my eyes off the screen. An absolute feast for the eyes, and the story is heartfelt. Well worth a watch.

I have backpacked China twice and I wish I could have found this China. Not sure it even still exists. The film is like time travel. Utterly fascinating and stirring.

Each shot is like an old chinese painting, from the mountains and rivers to the old dai village, and the girl who plays the main role is utterly charming. 10/10 for a unique and beautiful experience.

She gets from the city to the jungle village. She discovers her beauty, her appeal towards men and her potential to heal. But paradises can't last forever... Great images (as dark as her ignorance), great sounds (leading you to a half-trance) and a refreshing coarse camera-work (to imitate real-life perception).

This is such a gorgeous looking movie, it really deserved a restoration. It also deserves to be better known and more widely seen.

It details the life of A-Chun, a girl in her 20s "sent down" to the deep countryside, a very lush forest area that is beautifully shot, to do manual labour, as many youths and adults were in one of the several sweeping reforms of the Cultural Revolution. Either they had defective backgrounds or they or somebody in the family had committed some act against the party or the ideology or whatever it was, but it was a massive movement mercilessly enforced. The criticism that the movie levels against this is rather mild, but it is there. It focuses mostly on her adaptation to this completely new environment and her growth as an individual through the experiences she has.

At first she feels out of place, judged for being underperforming. The women in the Dai village traditionally carry water and cut wood in the dense forest. She is not used to it. However, she realizes that she is seen as the other in this small community because she was presenting herself as she had been taught to be from her childhood - dress plainly, do not stand out and do not engage with boys. The girls in the village have their own ways, they are very proud of their femininity and actively pursue and respond to advances. It's almost like her entire life here changes as soon as she puts on one of their traditional dresses. Everybody is friendlier. I thought that was a very clever indirect criticism. The local community is clearly shown in a very endearing light. Their attire, their demeanour, their houses up top, the big trees, their community events, their courtship rituals, the harvest festival. A-Chun describes them as mild and kind. The movie itself has ethnographic and documentary value.

Of course as the girl comes into her own she will get male attention and there will be rivalry. That entire plotline reveals again the dichotomy between the Dai proud male and the Beijing communist young man who is unable to openly pursue her. He cannot express it, their upbringing has taught them to forego all that. However, Ren Jia is very upset that their futures are thwarted by being "sent down". He sees no way out but he craves it. He wants to go to university and is upset when she doesn't apply for it. How can she be content with the life of a Dai woman? They can only have fun a little when they're young, then they get married and become old women. As for A-Chun, she is unable to make a decision or scared to. We get an epilogue that shows how rough that entire generation of youths had it.