China Videos - The Documentary Network

Rent-a-Foreigner in China

Documentary.net staff — Mon, 08 Jun 2015 17:45:42 +0000

In this short documentary, housing developers in China hire ordinary foreigners to pose as celebrities, boosting flagging property sales. In China, it’s hard to find a city that has not built ambitious new districts on its rural periphery. But overbuilding has led to ghost towns: Towering rows of luxury apartments sit completely empty, especially in smaller cities in China’s hinterlands. The lifeless streets seem to contradict official claims that these new developments will become booming, globalized cities. In this Op-Doc video, David Borenstein profiles one interesting solution: the rent-a-foreigner industry. In provincial West China, David filmed specialty firms that collect groups of foreigners whom they rent out to attend events. Clients can select from a menu of skin colors and nationalities; whites are the most desirable and expensive. The most frequent customers are real estate companies. They believe that filling their remote buildings with foreign faces, even for a day, suggests that the area is “international,” a buzzword in provincial areas that often translates to “buy.” The operation usually works by recruiting a few of the thousands of ordinary expatriates in China, and paying them to play whatever role the client feels will best convey its building’s desirability. Musicians and models — often amateurs billed as “famous” — are the most popular personas. But while making this video we also encountered Westerners posing as businessmen, athletes, diplomats and some simply as city residents.

Under the Dome – Investigating China’s Smog (Censored in China) CC available

Documentary.net staff — Tue, 10 Mar 2015 18:45:49 +0000

Former celebrity TV anchor Chai Jing quit her job after her baby daughter was born with a lung tumor, and after a year of rigorous investigation, launched this 1 hour 40 minute documentary about China’s smog: what is smog? Where does it come from? What do we do from here? "In Beijing in 2014, I could only take her out when the air was good," she says during a presentation to a studio audience that appears in the documentary. "There were 175 polluted days last year. That means that for half of the year, I had no choice but to keep her at home, shut in like a prisoner." Chai used $160,000 of her own money and one year to make Under The Dome, the same title as a Stephen King novel. Some scenes in the film are shocking, including a visit to a hospital operating room, where viewers see the damage China's polluted air can do to a person's lungs. Chai asks some tough questions about the politics and economics behind the smog, but often with a gentle, funny tone. She talks to a local environmental official so powerless to enforce the country's laws that he admits, "I don't want to open my mouth because I'm afraid you'll see that I'm toothless."

City of Imagination: Kowloon Walled City 20 Years Later

Documentary.net staff — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 17:09:26 +0000

The Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong was once the densest place on earth, a virtually lawless labyrinth of crime, grime, commerce and hope. This documentary tracks its colorful legacy and brings the place alive 20 years later.

China’s Web Junkies – Internet Addiction Documentary

Documentary.net staff — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 15:26:51 +0000

Compulsive Internet use has been categorized as a mental health issue in many countries, including the United States, but China was among the first to label “Internet addiction” a clinical disorder. In this Op-Doc video, we show the inner workings of a rehabilitation center where Chinese teenagers are “deprogrammed.” The Internet Addiction Treatment Center, in Daxing, a suburb of Beijing, was established in 2004. It was one of the first of its kind – and there are now hundreds of treatment programs throughout China and South Korea. (The first inpatient Internet addiction program in the United States recently opened in Pennsylvania.) The program featured in this video admits teenagers, usually male, whose parents typically take them there against their will. Once inside, the children are kept behind bars and guarded by soldiers. Treatment, which often lasts three to four months, includes medication and therapy, and sometimes includes parents. Patients undergo military-inspired physical training, and their sleep and diet are carefully regulated. These techniques (some of which are also used in China to treat other behavioral disorders) are intended to help the patients reconnect with reality. Yet after four months of filming in this center (for our documentary “Web Junkie”), some vital questions remained: Are the children being accurately evaluated? And is the treatment effective? In many cases, it seemed parents were blaming the Internet for complex social and behavioral issues that may defy such interventions. (For example, we noticed that some patients experienced difficult family relationships, social introversion and a lack of friends in the physical world.) Tao Ran, the center’s director, claims a 70 percent success rate. If that’s true, perhaps China’s treatment model is something other nations should embrace, however disturbing it may seem to outsiders. There is still no real global consensus among experts about what constitutes addiction to the Internet, and whether the concept even exists, particularly in a strict medical sense. What is clear is that this issue is not confined to China. With millions (if not billions) glued to screens and electronic devices, the overuse of technology is becoming a universal, transnational concern. While treatment methods may vary, one way or another, we will need to find effective ways to moderate our use of technology and provide help to those who need it. This video is part of a series produced by independent filmmakers who have received support from the nonprofit Sundance Institute. New York Times.

Chongqing – China’s Secret Metropolis

Documentary.net staff — Mon, 05 Aug 2013 17:24:10 +0000

This film is an introduction to the world's fastest growing city, a place that welcomes 1300 new citizens every day and whose economy grew by 16% last year. China is undergoing the fastest and most extensive industrial revolution in history, and Chongqing is its epicenter. This first ever English language feature length documentary about Chongqing was filmed on location between February and June 2013.

Maid in Hong Kong

Documentary.net staff — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 08:43:10 +0000

Hong Kong's maids say they're treated like second class citizens by controversially being denied permanent residency. They keep many of Hong Kong’s households moving, but the city’s maids say they’re being treated like second class citizens. Around 300,000 come from other Asian countries, including the Philippines, but Hong Kong’s immigration laws specifically forbid them from getting permanent residency. The government and its vocal supporters fear the influx of new residents and their families would overwhelm the already packed city. Now, the issue is at the centre of a heated legal battle, with the Mission for Migrant Workers vocally campaigning for the underclass of domestic workers. Adrian Brown meets some of the maids desperate for a better life and the hardline campaigners determined to stop them staying.

China’s Ghost Cities

Documentary.net staff — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 15:30:25 +0000

Vast cities are being built across China at a rate of ten a year, but they remain almost uninhabited ghost towns. It's estimated there are 64 million empty apartments. It’s all part of the government’s efforts to keep the economy booming, and there are many people who would love to move in, but it’s simply too expensive for most. Video journalist Adrian Brown wanders through malls of vacant shops, and roads lined with empty apartment buildings… 64 million apartments are said to be empty across the country and one of the few shop owners says he once didn’t sell anything for four or five days. So are the efforts to boost the economy going to end up having the opposite effect and creating a financial crisis for China?

Tortured Beauties – Models in China

Documentary.net staff — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 17:01:09 +0000

Modern China is working hard to give itself a new image. And now a frightening new craze for Western-style beauty is driving a nationwide boom in dangerous and drastic cosmetic surgery procedures. "Until recently, communist ideals valued natural beauty. Today, other things are considered beautiful", explains fashion photographer Zheng Chen. At just 19, young model Ai Xiao Qi has found success in China's fashion world. But she isn't under any illusions about the painful cause of her popularity: "when you're in front of cameras, your face must have a strong profile". A strong profile: the new Chinese euphemism for surgically-enhanced Western features. In a bid to be as tall as Westerners, Chinese girls are even undergoing gruesome procedures to break and extend their legs. After a botched surgery, tour guide Qi Lixia ended up horribly disfigured. "The doctors tried to re-assure me. But my nose was completely deformed." But such is the pressure on young girls that she's prepared to go under the knife again: "Looking good helps me in my job". As this mantra becomes more widely accepted, the message to young girls is clear: it's what's on the outside that counts.

Never Say Die – The Secret of the World’s Oldest People

Documentary.net staff — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 16:12:31 +0000

China's remote Bama County is home to a significant number of the worlds oldest people but what is the secret of a long and happy life? Today this remains the eternal unanswered question. "I don't have any secret of living a long life. You need to be a good person with a balanced mind", says Huang Xu Ping who is currently 113. According to locals, the abundance of "sunshine, clean air and water", is reason for their longevity. But with more and more tourists coming to see them could the trappings of the modern world end their old way of life?

Beijing Silvermine – Thomas Sauvin

Documentary.net staff — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 20:55:07 +0000

Beijing Silvermine is a unique photographic portrait of the capital and the life of its inhabitants following the Cultural Revolution. It covers a period of 20 years, from 1985, namely when silver film started being used massively in China, to 2005, when digital photography started taking over. These 20 years are those of China's economic opening, when people started prospering, travelling, consuming, having fun. Film by Emiland Guillerme

Kay Kay: The Girl from Guangzhou

Documentary.net staff — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 10:22:10 +0000

Kay Kay is the face of modern-day China - a bright, educated and ambitious 20-year-old living in the booming southern city of Guangzhou. She represents a new generation of middle class Chinese 'only' children, benefiting from China's economic growth as well as the single-minded dedication of her factory-worker parents. This unique film has followed her for her whole life, filming her and her family every year since her birth in 1992. It gives a rare, personal narrative to the decades of transformation that China has undergone. From her childhood and school days through to her university life where she struggles to get to grips with China's economic imperatives in the face of environmental issues. Kay Kay is a charming, engaging guide to modern China, its people and the country's recent economic boom.

China: The Orient Excess

Documentary.net staff — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 23:28:42 +0000

Three decades of economic liberalisation have radically changed the face of China. With the number of Chinese billionaires increasing rapidly (it now has almost as many as the US and is closing in on the top spot), the communist ideals of the past seem to have faded beyond recognition. "You can never have enough money. Money helps me fulfill my dreams", says Li Chao, for whom expensive hobbies like motor racing are no longer out of reach. He thinks nothing of splashing out hundreds of thousands of dollars on glamorous supercars and is unapologetic about his growing wealth. After all, he says, he has earned it. Li represents a new generation of pioneering 'red capitalists', many of them the children of Communist Party officials. Flamboyant, accustomed to success and able to spend more money in one luxury evening in Shanghai or Beijing than others can earn in a year, they are fast becoming the embodiment of the modern Chinese dream. Others, like the real estate developer Wang Dafu, were born into poverty, but have been equally able to build vast fortunes in a country with growth rates that other nations can only dream of. "When I started working I sometimes couldn't afford a beer and a bowl of noodles,” he says. Now, with his personal wealth estimated at two-thirds of a billion dollars, he could spend the equivalent of 10,000 bowls of noodles on the interior design of his yacht and barely dent his bank account. It is not surprising that with more and more people splashing the cash, the Chinese auto market is now the largest in the world, its luxury goods market is huge and its art market is booming. This is life - albeit for a privileged minority - in the new China and it is one focused on what many observers now see as an increasingly hollow slogan: "Socialism with Chinese characteristics". Yet those who run the country clearly do not appreciate the irony. Take the incomes of the members of the People's Congress, the official parliament, which meets once a year. The 70 richest members collectively have assets worth over $85bn. This compares favourably to the relatively meagre $5.5bn available to the 70 richest members of Congress in Washington DC. Yet Wu Renbao, the former party boss of Huaxi, sees no contradiction. “Whatever the ideology - the main thing is that we become rich together," he says. In other words, everyone has an equal opportunity to benefit; all they have to do is work hard. But not everyone is happy. Economist Zhang Hongliang is an unreconstructed leftist, who warns that China’s leadership may come to rue its love affair with profit. "Directors of companies shouldn’t be party secretaries. It should be the proletariat providing the secretaries and the directors representing the capitalists. When a person takes on those two roles, one thing is clear: the Communist Party is nothing but a capitalist party through and through," Zhang says. This revealing film from Jörg Winter and ORF looks at some of the possible consequences of China’s growing love affair with money and wonders what has happened to the Marxist principles that the nation once paid homage to.

Photographer Patrick Brown Documenting Asia’s Illegal Animal Trade

Documentary.net staff — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 22:34:49 +0000

We visited photographer Patrick Brown to talk about his forthcoming book, Trading to Extinction, which documents the illegal trade of endangered animals in Asia. We then travel with Brown to Guangzhou, China, where he finishes his decade-long project. Support the book and find out more about Patrick Brown's project by visiting his Emphas.is page here: http://bit.ly/Trading_to_Extinction Photos courtesy of Patrick Brown / Panos Pictures.

China: Broken Dreams

Documentary.net staff — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 22:34:20 +0000

Many young Chinese are losing faith in China's economic miracle. Although the nation's economy has expanded to more than $7 trillion and is poised to overtake the US in the next decade as the world's largest, fewer Chinese feel they are sharing in the prosperity. A sense of disillusionment is spreading, particularly among the post-1980 generation, who are well-educated and mobile but still struggle to find profitable jobs. Signs that the economy is slowing only add to the malaise. The Chinese government predicts the economy will grow by 7.5 per cent in 2012, down from 9.2 per cent last year, which would be the slowest growth rate since 1990. Economists say this could mean the loss of two million jobs. At the same time a record number of new graduates are looking for work. Some 25 million Chinese will be on the job hunt this year. Even those who find work are frequently disappointed. Surveys show that young Chinese office workers in big cities are widely unhappy. Most complain of a feeling of insecurity. After two decades of economic reform, per capita GDP has risen 13-fold, and average salaries in major cities are on par with those in many developed countries. The post-80s generation, the first to come of age in this era of opportunity, has been raised on a belief that if one can do well in school, graduate from a good university and work hard on his or her career, one can enjoy a measure of success. Instead, many find themselves squeezed by skyrocketing housing costs, rising prices for basic necessities and family pressures. As a large percentage of the post-80s generation are only children, they alone will be expected to provide for their parents and older relatives. As many as three million young Chinese professionals toil in slum-like conditions in cramped housing on the outskirts of big cities. They are known as 'ant tribes,' a term coined by scholar Lian Si, China's foremost researcher on post-80s graduates. "They share every similarity with ants," writes Lian. "They live in colonies in cramped areas. They're intelligent and hardworking, yet anonymous and underpaid." Li Zhirui from China's northeast is one of them. Home is an eight square metre space outside Beijing that costs 500 Chinese yuan per month, a quarter of his salary. He dreams of one day buying an apartment, but with average real estate prices in the capital soaring to more than 20,000 yuan per square metre, he could be in for a very long wait. He has already lost his fiancée, who dumped him when he refused to buy a second-hand car and an engagement ring. The experiences of Li and other 'ant tribes' resonate strongly with young Chinese and have spawned a popular song and a TV series called Struggle of the Ant Tribe. But for some despair takes over. Suicide has become the biggest cause of death for Chinese between 15 and 34 years of age. In a recent trend, some young graduates are deciding to flee the big cities and instead seek opportunity in smaller cities and towns. But there, too, they are frustrated, as they discover that good diplomas - and even ability - do not open doors. Local networks and family background do. Leading Chinese sociologist Guo Yuhua calls this phenomenon of young Chinese "escaping and returning" an example of widespread disappointment that is spreading across China. She says people are bitter when they see their social status languishing in contrast to the "rise of a great and powerful nation". "People are discovering that society's resources and opportunities are increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few. People in the middle and lower strata of society are becoming increasingly marginalised and are finding that improving their lives is getting harder," she says. She warns this imbalance could lead to "the rich getting richer and the poor poorer, the strong permanently strong and the weak permanently weak .... The biggest harm may not be in the gap between rich and poor itself, but the deterioration of the overall societal ecosystem."

China’s Race for Gold

Documentary.net staff — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 17:30:33 +0000

China is home to some of the world's best athletes. At the Beijing Olympics, the country topped the medals table, winning 100 medals in 25 sports, including 51 golds. And they are widely expected to do well at the 2012 London Games. Each year, young talent - some just five years old - are singled out by scouts and placed in special state-run academies where they are groomed to become future champions. Some, like basketball star Yao Ming, eventually achieve success. Others are not so fortunate. Zhang Shangwu, a former gold medalist at the World University Games survives by begging on the streets of Beijing. Zhang once had a promising career as a gymnast but was forced to retire a decade ago because of an injury to his achilles tendon. With his Olympic dreams dashed, Zhang attempted to study and find alternative employment, only to be rebuffed time and again because of his lack of paper qualifications. The young man turned to petty theft, spent time in prison, and is today homeless and penniless. Zhang is not alone. Retired Chinese athletes regularly complain that they suffer from injuries and unemployment, as the government frequently neglects their scholastic education and ignores their injuries while taking a sizable cut of their earnings in the name of national pride. Some athletes also say they faced abuse, exploitation and official interference during the course of their careers. But now, there are calls for change.