The family of Jia Qingyun, a farmer whose ancestors came to Guandong Province, returned to their hometown of Shandong Province with their three children due to the difficulties of life in the Northeast, and settled on the seaside of the town. However, facing the land where their ancestors had lived, they did not have land of their own. Nor did they have a household registration or a house. They can only face the sea and tenaciously start life again. Director Hu Jie records their hardships and their hopes for life.
The tradition of matchmaking is still prevalent in northern rural areas today. This film records the story of Yang Xiuting, a matchmaker living in Guan County, Shandong Province. It describes how, due to economic reforms, rural people went to cities to find work. Subsequently, young people began to choose their own spouses. Thus, the ancient profession of matchmaker not only faces challenges, but also encounters new problems.
Luo Xiaojia, a young Yunnan Yi girl was trafficked to the plains of Shandong at the age of 17 and forced to marry a young farmer in the area. The film documents her family life in the unfamiliar Shandong countryside and her longing for home. In her tenth year in Shandong, she finally fights for the opportunity to return home. After a 4,000-kilometer journey, she returns to her hometown of Yunnan and sees her mother, whom she misses day and night. However, she struggles with conflicting emotions, and returns to Shandong with a mountain song that her mother sings for her. This movie reflects the sad fate of trafficked women in China and the social psychology that follows these tragedies.
The Great Famine in China in the 1960s was a rare famine in human history. From 1958 to 1962, according to incomplete statistics, 36 million people died of starvation in China; due to starvation the birthrate is estimated to have dropped to around 40 million. The number of people who died of starvation and the lowered birthrate due to starvation totaled more than 70 million, which is not only the largest number of deaths among all the disasters that occurred in China's history, but also the most painful and unprecedented tragedy in the history of mankind today. Was this a natural disaster or a man-made disaster? Officials deliberately covered it up and tried to minimize it, forbid any public discussion or expression about it. Yang Jisheng, a senior reporter of Xinhua News Agency, personally experienced the death of his father in the famine. Since then, he has devoted his heart and soul to this story. He has spent several years on it, running through a dozen or so provinces where the disaster was the most serious, and personally checking countless archives and records, both public and secret. He has interviewed the people involved and checked the evidence over and over again. Thus, he felt confident that he could, with the heart of the historical pen and the conscience of the news reporter, make a number of drafts, and truly recapture this tragic history of the human race and analyze the causes of this tragedy with a large amount of facts and data. With a wealth of facts and figures, he identifies the main cause of the famine as the totalitarian system. This is a book carries the collective memory of many ordinary Chinese people, and is a tombstone for the 36 million victims.
This book is published by Tiandi Books in Hong Kong. The English version of <i>Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962 </i> was translated by American author Stacy Mosher and can be purchased <a href= "https://www.amazon.com/Tombstone-Great-Chinese-Famine-1958-1962/dp/0374533997">here</a>.
