River Elegy

River Elegy (Chinese: 河殇; Pinyin: Héshāng) was a six-part documentary shown on China Central Television in 1988 that announced the death of traditional Chinese civilization. The series was strongly supported by the Communist Party leader Zhao Ziyang. It was subsequently denounced by the Communist Party of China and cited as a source of the 1989 Tiannamen Square Massacre. Zhao was consequently ousted and the documentary's scriptwriter, Su Xiaokang, became a wanted man and went into exile to Hong Kong.

Synopsis

The film asserted that the Ming Dynasty's ban on maritime activities alluded to the building of the Great Wall by China's first emperor Ying Zheng. China's land-based civilization was defeated by maritime civilizations backed by modern sciences, and was further challenged with the problem of life and death ever since the latter half of the 19th century, landmarked by the Opium War.

Controversy

River Elegy caused immense controversy in Mainland China due to its negative portrayal of Chinese culture. Rob Gifford, a National Public Radio journalist, said that the film used images and interviews to state that the concept of "the Chinese being a wonderful ancient people with a wonderful ancient culture was a big sham, and that the entire population needed to change." Gifford said that the film's most significant point was its attack on the Yellow River, a river which was a significant element of China's historical development and which symbolizes ancient Chinese culture. Using the ancient Chinese saying that "a dipperful of Yellow River water is seven-tenths mud," the authors of the film use the river's silt and sediment as a metaphor for Confucian traditions and the significance of the traditions which the authors believe caused China to stagnate. The authors hoped that Chinese traditional culture would end and be replaced by Western culture. The film symbolizes Chinese thinking with the "yellowness" of the Yellow River and Western thinking with the "blueness" of the ocean. The film also criticized the Great Wall, saying that it "can only represent an isolationist, conservative, and incompetent defense," the imperial dragon on the Great Wall, calling it "cruel and violent," and other Chinese symbols. The ending of River Elegy symbolized the authors' dreams with the idea of the waters of the Yellow River emptying out of the river and mixing with the ocean. Gifford said that River Elegy reveals the thoughts of young intellectuals post-Mao Zedong and pre-Tiananmen Square and the freedoms that appeared around 1988.

Gifford said that while the film did not openly criticize the Communist Party of China; instead it contained "not-so-subtle" attacks on Chinese imperial traditions that therefore would also criticize the contemporary political system. Conservatives in Mainland China attacked the film.

After the events of Tiananmen Square some of the staff members of River Elegy were arrested and others fled Mainland China. Two of the main writers who escaped to the United States became evangelical Christians.

See Also

• Su Xiakang and Wang Luxiang, Deathsong of the River: A Reader's Guide to the Chinese TV Series Heshang, Ithaca, NY: East Asia Program, Cornell University, 1991. ISBN 0-93965-754-6