All language subtitles for 02. Parte Seconda

From Beijing, we travel south by train
for three days

and arrive in Henan province.

Its name means "south of the river",

the Yellow River in the central part
of China.

This is Linxian district.

The Chinese do not try to conceal
the rural poverty of this province.

Henan is the place where the first Chinese state
was established 2500 years ago.

It is the capital of wheat and maize,
the principal grain of China.

But, most importantly, Henan is also
the first region where, in 1958,

agricultural communes were introduced
in place of the cooperatives.

Every commune is divided into production brigades.
And every brigade is divided into squads.

Every worker receives a small
annual monetary salary

and a share of grain sufficient
to his needs.

Also the children.

The elderly, who cannot work anymore,
are provided with housing, food, garments,

medical aid and coverage of the burial costs.

The pride of this district is
the Red Flag Canal.

It is 1500km long and
was constructed with bare hands.

The water of Chanhe river was thus brought
to this side of the mountains.

The people who live here like to say that,
before, water was more rare than petroleum.

30,000 workers known as the Heroes of Linxian

spent 10 years excavating
through the granite.

17,000,000 cubic meters of rocks
had to be removed.

The dam, the diversion canal and the reservoir
were then constructed.

All with very primitive instruments.

Today, Linxian is celebrated
as the First Pinnacle of Socialism.

The house and the agricultural instruments
are the only private property.

Everything else belongs to the state.

We requested to visit a small village.
Ta Zai Tuan, 1628 inhabitants.

All the public facilities are
in this courtyard:

farming equipment and grain storage,
the mill and the tailor shop.

The same courtyard hosts
the Revolutionary Committee

that supervises the workers
at the village.

Today, they hold a meeting.

The nine members of the committee
join after work at a cup of tea.

The chairman is called Ma Yongqi.
He is 34,

has received a middle school education,
and is of peasant backgrounds.

They read a few sayings by Mao, which are
made into the starting point of the discussion.

It's May, and the seeding season is over.
The commune must now prepare for the autumn.

One of the members remarks
that the ideological work

should be put above all other issues.

Once the political discussion is over, they proceed
talking about plowing, mowing and sifting the seeds.

After the meeting,
the chairman and the vice-chairman

leave to pay a visit
to one of the village families.

This is the village school.

Since the time of the Maoist Revolution,
the population has doubled.

Very few people left for the cities, and those
had to be approved by the entire village.

They've finally come
to the family expecting them.

Today, there are no serious questions
to be discussed.

But, when necessary, the committee
can put to use all its power.

They've told us they can approve divorces,

but added that the occasion is rare,
as the commune workers do not divorce often,

because they usually do not quarrel.

Today, they discuss cultivation and harvesting,

a tractor that needs to be purchased,
barley and beans.

The bedroom. In winter,
fire is kindled in these cavities.

The bricks ignite and maintain
the heat all night long.

The pains and sentiments are nearly
invisible in China.

They are concealed behind
propriety and restraint.

We ask if we could see a funeral, but the response
is that those occasions are too personal.

China is a country without cemeteries.

The state recommends cremation. But in the
rural areas, the dead are still often buried

The tomb location needs to be approved,
but the permissions are not hard to obtain.

A strange crowd of people catches our sight
in another part of the Linxian district.

We ask our guides to stop the car,
but they pretend they don't understand us.

So we jump out of the car and insist on shooting.

They respond: "If you really want to do it,
you can. But it doesn't make us happy..."

So, we've filmed this, as you can see.

This is one of the rare private markets,

where the peasants trade their own products:

vegetables from a small garden,
a pig, a straw hat, a hoe blade.

A single exception from the collectivism
of the entire territory.

The authorities disapprove of it, and think about it
as a marginal phenomenon, nothing to speak of.

We're now entering a village in the mountains
without any advance warning.

It seems abandoned and deserted.

The first thing to draw our attention
is an inscription on the wall.

Once it's translated we discover,
to our surprise,

that, written in perfect Chinese,

it protests the invasion of Indian troops
into the Chinese territory.

The governor of the village is reluctant
to give us the permission to enter.

He keeps striding in front of us now,
vexed.

The walls of the buildings are
covered with fanciful inscriptions.

For example, "May the Red Sun keep rising
for a thousand years!"

"Oppose individualism, criticize revisionism!"

or "May we wish Chairman Mao to live forever!"

These Chinese have never seen a Westerner.

They come to the doorways:
amazed, a bit scared and curious.

They can't resist the temptation
to stare at us.

We go on with filming.

But, soon, we realize that it's us
who are peculiar and foreign.

For the people to the other side of the camera,
we're completely unknown

and perhaps a bit ridiculous.

A hard blow against our
European arrogance!

For one fourth of the earth's population,
we're so unfamiliar that it fills us with awe.

Our big eyes, curly hair,
big long noses,

pale skin, extravagant gestures,
outlandish costumes...

They are taken aback, but very courteous.

Afraid to offend us by fleeing,

they come out and stand still
in front of the camera,

often motionless and as if petrified.

During our brief digression into
the highland,

we've witnessed a gallery
of astounded faces,

but we've never noticed any expression
of hostility.

The governor wants everything to be
captured properly.

He explains to the villagers
who we are and what we want.

During the time of our stay,

he forces out of sight the elderly men and women,
especially those wearing shabby clothes.

We continue travelling south
and arrive in the drainage areas of Yangtze.

This river is the principal source of water
for the irrigation in central China.

This agricultural commune is on
the outskirts of Suzhou city.

The experiment of agricultural communes continues
through surges of enthusiasm and disappointment.

And these work units are presently
the foundation of the Chinese rural economy.

China lives along its rivers and channels.

The origins of both political centralization
and collectivism

lie in the historical need to build
and maintain the network of clams and channels,

so precious, yet so vulnerable.

The Chinese historians see it as a sign
of the imminent decline of a dynasty,

when the emperors start treating
irrigation with negligence.

We arrive in Suzhou almost by chance,
and discover a city of remarkable beauty

covered with a patchwork of channels,

not too different from the remote times
when they were constructed.

Of course, Suzhou reminds us of Venice.

It has a long history and has been
often ruled by militant sovereigns.

A thousand years ago, the silk produced
in Suzhou was the most sought-after in China.

When Marco Polo arrived here, he was struck
by the advances of civilization.

Back then, the city was already using paper money,
producing brocade,

it excelled in literature and medicine,

and had "6000 bridges, so tall
that a boat could pass underneath,

or maybe even two boats together."

Today it's a city of industry, commerce
and laborious life.

Like in the other Chinese cities,

the elderly people attempt to regulate traffic
and maintain order at their own discretion.

This is the best restaurant in town.

For a few yuan,
you can get broad noodles and flatbreads.

The broad noodles, served in soy sauce,
are the prototype of fettuccine.

It's hard to accept the idea
that the Chinese have invented everything,

including the fettuccine.

Suzhou is most famous for its parks.

The rich Mandarins and the court officials

built these gardens to spend here
their years of retirement.

They are labyrinths of stones, streams,
water lilies and small temples.

They continue to please the eyes of the generation
that has separated from the aristocratic life,

the intellectual discourse,
the nostalgic feelings for nature.

Every window, every rock
has some significance.

And so does the name of the gardens:

the Gardens of Harmony,
or the Gardens of the Humble Administrators.

It's not easy to enter
a Buddhist temple in China.

They are closed or do not allow
public admission,

and are not often desecrated
and transformed into factories.

It's hard to believe that the religious sentiments
have disappeared completely in a country

that has been dominated for hundreds of years

by the thoughts and ideas of
Buddha and Confucius,

and where the Emperor was worshipped
as a divine being.

Today, this West Garden Temple in Suzhou

is visited as a museum of the past
preserved as a curiosity.

500 statues.
All of them representing Buddha

in his various fantastic and
symbolic incarnations.

The same deity depicted through
the different stages of life.

An example of a personality cult
from the former times.

Once, Nanjing was a corrupt capital

that hosted the glorious Ming Emperors.

Now it's an industrial and commercial center

that has played an important role in
the Civil War and the Communist Revolution.

This district in the ancient center
of Nanjing

used to be a lair of petty crimes
and prostitution.

There is a medical center in the district,
neat and efficient.

It has to rely, however,
on herbal medicine and acupuncture,

which are the common resorts
of the needy medicine.

These are medical plants.
They can cure flu, cough, fever,

malaria, high blood pressure,
skin and liver diseases.

There are not many historical monuments
that have survived in Nanjing.

A few gardens, a few restored pagodas.

The Palaces of the Southern Dynasties and
the temples have all decayed into ruins.

The monument that Nanjing is most proud of
is made of iron.

It's a bridge across Yangtze, 6km long.

The construction has taken 8 years
and involved 5000 workers.

The bridge is a magnificent accomplishment.
It has connected the banks of the river

that, until recently, used to separate
the north and south of China.

We're at the central square dedicated
to the people of Nanjing,

filming the mundane daily activities.

Nanjing takes a lot of pride
in its schools.

Every district has a kindergarten
supervised by a revolutionary committee.

China is a country of the young.
Half of its population is less than 20.

But it's the children who are
in the focus of everybody's attention.

Since the early age, they absorb
the values of collectivism.

They are quiet, obedient
and not at all capricious.

Since childhood, the basis for education
is the thoughts and sayings by Mao,

his language, examples of his gestures.

"I am a golden sunflower",
says one of the songs,

and continues: "a sunflower turning after
the Red Sun of the Revolution."