Global Chinese Ministries Newsletter - May 2008

Edited by Tony Lambert, OMF Director for China Research

Leap of Faith

Mainland cinema is never short of stories about the poor. Acclaimed director Zhang Yimou won his first international award with Red Sorghum, the story of a young woman’s life at a sorghum distillery; and Jia Zhangke is remembered for depicting hard-working migrant workers in Still Life.

But one thing sets Gan Xiao’er apart from other Mainland Chinese filmakers: he is a Christian, and he makes films inspired by his religious beliefs. After his wrenching account of spiritual salvation in a farming village in southern China in his 2003 debut, The Only Sons, he has gone further in his second and latest film, Raised from Dust, the tale of Xiaoli, a rural Christian woman.

As a poverty stricken farmer, Xiaoli is burdened not only by the mounting hospital bills of her sick husband, but also pressure to pay tuition fees for their nine-year-old daughter. She chooses to give up treating her husband, despite her Christian faith. Set in a Christian community in a village in Henan, it is the first Chinese film about Christians on the Mainland.

“No Chinese films have dealt with the spiritual lives of farmers … but I’m not willing to make a film about a farmer without any spiritual activity because it’s not the way he is in real life,” the 37-year-old director says.

Making a film about Christians is difficult, even dangerous, on the Mainland. There are perhaps 130 million Christians in the country, a number that has surged in recent years [EDITOR’S NOTE: Even including Catholics, this is a very high estimate. The real figure for Protestants may be 50-80 million.], but Christianity is still a taboo subject. The government suppresses religion as it fears challenges to its supremacy. In 2006, filmmaker Wu Hao was jailed for five months for shooting a film about underground churches, and a strict censorship regime means it is almost impossible to get official approval to make films about Chinese Christians.

Gan’s film was made without permits, shot in 2005 in his hometown of Xin Village in Henan, where more than 10 percent of the population is Christian. His parents are both teachers and devout Christians. Their guanxi (personal network) helped Gan a lot. Dozens of his father’s former pupils are local officials and his mother has good connections with the church.

“I had thought of going to a poorer place to shoot,” says Gan. “The poor material life would give more prominence to the spiritual life of my characters. But I’d never have such resources elsewhere.”

The story of Xiaoli and her dying husband was inspired by the experience of Gan’s parents. His father suffered from liver disease for 17 years and his mother was always very supportive. Like the couple in the film, they often prayed and sang hymns together.

“My dad’s situation got so bad in the end that he couldn’t eat or urinate,” Gan recalls. “Then, one night, my mom said a prayer for him: ‘Dear Father, if his mission in the world is accomplished, please take him away. I entrust him to you.’”

Those words, uttered shortly before his father’s death in 1997, motivated Gan to convert to Christianity. “I decided on my belief at that moment,” he says. “My mother’s words were so considerate and said with such profound love that I had never heard before.”

Her words inspired him to make Xiaoli stop prolonging her husband’s life in the film, a controversial choice among his Christian friends. Although his village friends understood Xiaoli’s choice and praised him for accurately reflecting the dilemma of rural Christians, many of his fellow church members from large cities couldn’t accept it. “They felt it was inappropriate for me to make a film on this subject. But I believe Xiaoli made this choice not only because of financial pressure, but also because of her confidence in God’s salvation,” he says.

In contrast to the reports of religious repression in the foreign media, Christians are free to observe their faith in Raised from Dust. And although he says confrontation between official churches and house churches is still a problem in many parts of the country, Gan says he doesn’t come across it in his home village, and that an even bigger problem lies within the Christian community itself.

“The house churches and the official churches can’t forgive each other. But in my village this problem is not severe, as most people go to the official church. I don’t like to emphasize the confrontation of the two types of churches, because they’re actually the same in essence. There shouldn’t be those frictions.”

So far, the film has been shown only at a few private screenings on the Mainland. To take it to a wider audience, last summer Gan went to seven churches in Henan, including the one where they shot the film, to screen it and make a documentary about viewers’ reactions. “Most of them were not satisfied, saying there were not enough religious activities in the film, such as praying and singing hymns. Basically, what they want is a gospel film,” he said.

But Gan is not interested in preaching. “The most important thing is whether a person has something to hope for from inside. I think a religion, whether it is Christianity, Islam or another faith, has a major role because it gives us such hope. I would rather take a humanistic approach than a Christian one, because it can reach both Christian and non-Christian audiences,” he says.

With two feature films under his belt, Gan is planning five more with his production company, Seventh Seal Film Workshop, whose name pays homage to both the book of Revelation and his favorite director, Ingmar Bergman. He is still seeking funds to make them.

“My dream is to direct seven feature films that form a set of Seven Seals. All of them would deal with the spiritual lives of Chinese people. If God wants me to leave this world, I hope it will be after the Seven Seals are completed.”

Raised from the Dust was screened on January 25-26 at the Hong Kong Arts Center.

[This remarkable article was published originally in the main English-language newspaper in Hong Kong, the South China Morning Post, on January 17, 2008. We do not agree with Gan’s comments about humanism, but otherwise this is a significant breakthrough.]

PLOTS AND PROTESTS

On March 7 the top official in Xinjiang announced that China had foiled an attempt by Uyghur terrorists to bring down a domestic passenger flight from Urumqi to Beijing. One, a woman, had taken cans of gas into a restroom, where she remained until passengers and crew noticed the smell and took action. The same day Xinjiang leaders said they had, in January, broken up a terrorist plot in Urumqi to sabotage the Olympic Games in Beijing this August. On January 27 police killed two members of the banned East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), allegedly linked to al-Qaeda, and arrested 15 others. ETIM was labeled by the United Nations in 2002 as a terrorist group.

On March 14 the Tibetan capital Lhasa erupted in violence as security forces used measures to quell the biggest protests against Chinese rule in two decades. More than 100 Buddhist monks started the protests and were joined by some 900 other people. Hospitals have been overwhelmed by the number of victims. The protests spread to other Tibetan areas of China, including Xiahe in Gansu province, where monks led a protest rally of 4,000 people (AFP, 14 March 2008). At least 13 people have been killed, and possibly many more (BBC, 17 March 2008).

The Chinese authorities have said any plots will be nipped in the bud as Beijing faces escalating pressures to guard against terrorism in the run-up to the summer Olympics.

The nation is stepping-up security measures to restrain all destabilizing factors which, aside from Islamic terrorists, include advocates for human rights and an independent Tibet (South China Morning Post, 10 March 2008).

The terrorist plots and Tibetan protests seriously damage Beijing’s desire to hold a smooth, incident-free Olympics. Security is likely to be even tighter in the few remaining months until August when the Games open.

Copyright 2008 OMF International