Does the film Huang tudi (Yellow Earth) offer a critique of the Communist revolution? If so where and how?

Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou’s Yellow Earth is a meaningful and controversial film that highlights the young and old, realist and idealist, as well as the ideal utopia and bounded bureaucracies – touching on the notion of fate. Set in early 1939 in China, Yellow Earth follows the story of Gu Qing, a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) soldier sent out among the peasants in Northern Shaanxi to collect folksongs, to which the Communists intend to rewrite new lyrics to help inspire soldiers and peasant followers to fight the Japanese invasion and work towards the revolution. Gu Qing comes across a village holding a wedding procession and is invited to join the feast. He stays at a peasant’s home, and meets a father with a daughter (Cuiqiao) and a son (Hanhan).

There are several significant scenes in the film that suggests the filmmaker’s potential critique of the Communist revolution (CR). The film begins with a magnificent panning view of the vast and mountainous landscape. As with many nationalistic films, landscape plays a very important role, as it indirectly depicts the village peasants as slaves to the land, and a sense of hopelessness that comes with working the land. The several slow scenes focused on the horizon and landscape also represent the notion of an ‘unchanging China’, and it’s backwardness with it’s social and political margins. The film has many scenes depicting the natural surroundings and connection with the peasants, as illustrated in the scenes where Cuiqiao is seen continually making the trip from her home to the Yellow River to get water everyday. Although this chore would be one that the whole village is active in, the camera only focuses on Cuiqiao. The walk is symbolic of the tie that Cuiqiao and the other villagers have to the land. This notion is reiterated by the filmmaker’s use of long, wide shots of her coming across the land – initially, the only thing visible is the rolling hills with a small foot path, but eventually the viewers see a small red spot (Cuiqiao) in between two buckets of water. Instead of zooming in on Cuiqiao, the camera remains impersonal, allowing her to walk farther into the shot, as if being swallowed by the landscape.

The whole film is based around the peasant lifestyle and many shots focusing on the wide landscape. Aside from providing focus and depth of the film’s storyline, it also highlighted the fact that many rural areas in China were neglected during the CR. The long shots of the endless rolling mountains indicate the large geographical size of China, as the film is only focusing on one village and only one element of China.
Over the course of Gu Qing’s stay, he learns that the folk lyrics in the village epitomise not happiness or encouragement, but rather the suffering and ill-fate they have under the ‘peasant rule’. This is subtly highlighted with Gu Qing’s reaction after asking the father’s age, as he appears much older than in his late forties – which reflects his premature ageing due to poverty and harsh living conditions (Von Kowallis). Such is also exemplified with Cuiqiao’s sad lyrics about her own fate:

In the sixth month the ice in the River hasn’t thawed,
It’s my own father who dragged me to the wedding board.

Of all the five grains, the bean is the roundest,
Of all the people, daughters are the saddest.

Up in the sky pigeons fly, one with the other,
The only dear one that I long for is my mother.

Cuiqiao sings this melancholy tune whilst drawing water from the river with her buckets. The sun is setting, creating the illusion of an even more yellow tinge to the river. The song describes the oppression young girls faced with forced marriages and their ‘fate’ in having to serve their father, brother, husband, and in the future, her son. The iconic still from the film is of Cuiqiao peeking at the wedding ceremony, with the words ‘San Cong Si De 三从四德‘ written behind her. Her expression is solemn, as later we find out that she too will be forced to marry. San Cong Si De epitomises the notion of the traditional female virtues in China at the time, which Cuiqiao is tied to.
In the very male oriented and traditional values of the village, Gu Qing presented himself as a catalyst for change in the eyes of Hanhan and more particularly, Cui qiao. Both Hanhan and Cuiqiao are attracted to the promises of the CR for a better life; especially intriguing to Cuiqiao are the promises of better equality for women – that women under the CR can learn to read, write, and even fight. This is reflected in the scene when Cuiqiao notices Gu Qing’s ability to sew his own clothes. She tells him she is impressed by his ability, to which he replies that women in the South (Communist camp) cut their hair, and become soldiers to fight against the Japanese, just like men.

Hanhan’s character in the film appears to be subtly comical, as well as rather silent and expressionless throughout the majority of the film. As Hanhan got more acquainted with Gu Qing, he also got more verbal. This reflects Hanhan’s possible oppression of being unable to voice his own opinions, as well as suggesting his character being overwhelmed by his living condition and social boundaries. He appears to be a caring brother to Cuiqiao, but is helpless in verbally aiding his sister’s pre-prescribed life of forced marriage and duties as a female. Hanhan’s character becomes closer to Gu Qing, allowing him to open up – We see scenes of Hanhan and Gu Qing being playful and laughing with each other, which is a relationship Hanhan does not have with his own father. This could highlight the filmmaker’s intention of associating Hanhan’s hope for change with the CR. The film as a whole also uses a lot of pregnant pauses, with the close up of the characters expressions, and slow panning scenes across landscapes. These silences help dramatise scenes, which help the audience absorb the emotional and visual aspects of the storyline.

Much of the film’s critique of the Communist Revolution is based largely on both Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou’s upbringing and background during the time. Zhang Yimou was deprived of the possibility to acquire social recognition during his younger years, due to the fact that his father and two of his uncles had been officers in Chiang Kaishek’s Nationalist army. Along with his entire family, Zhang suffered long years of social and political discrimination and punishments. Barred from entering the Red Guards, he worked in an agricultural production brigade during the Cultural Revolution (Chong, Woei Lien, 2003). Similarly, Chen Kaige was also the victim of his “bad class background”, as his father, a well-known film director, had been labelled a “Rightist” in 1957 and was the victim of renewed attacks during the CR. In order to prove himself to the Communist establishment, Chen Kaige actively participated in Red Guard activity, even to the point of disavowing his father during a “criticism” session, and he followed Mao’s call to undertake “revolutionary work” in the countryside. He worked on a rubber plantation in Yunnan Province for three years, finally joining the army in order to escape from this hard and miserable work. However, instead of earning him political recognition, all these experiences left Chen with great doubts about the political regime (Chong, Woei Lien, 2003).

The scene that had the strongest suggestion of its critique of the CR was Gu Qing’s inability to take Cuiqiao along with him because ‘we public officers have rules, we have to get the leader’s approval’. This scene produced a great sense of irony of Gu Qing’s verbal promotion of the Communist liberation, as he is essentially unable to bring any immediate change for Cuiqiao due to the underlying bounded bureaucratic nature of the CR. It presents the patriarchal aspect of the revolution as still essentially socially and politically marginalised. His answer simply highlighted the reality of Communism in China, which started out as a utopian ideal and unfortunately ended up as a bureaucratic dictatorship oppressing the peasants.

Gu Qing promises Cuiqiao that he will return, and sets off back to the Communist camp in the South. The scene later cuts to Gu Qing watching a celebratory drum-dancing ceremony at the camp, welcoming the new recruits. His expression seems serious and possibly regretful, reiterating the ironic restriction to the Communist liberation, and his failure to help Cuiqiao. The scene then shifts to Cuiqiao’s wedding ceremony, which entails a forceful and bitter mood setting; clearly juxtaposing the gleeful scenes at the Communist camp. The camera then focuses on Cuiqiao in a seemingly empty room, dressed in traditional red clothing, and a red cloth covering her face. She sits meekly in the middle of the room, as the camera slowly zooms in to her face. A dark, large hand reaches out to unveil Cuiqiao’s face, revealing her fearful and paralysed expression. The filmmaker’s created emphasis on this scene by not revealing her husband’s face, instead focusing on Cuiqiao’s expression. This depersonalises the audience from the husband, allowing the viewer to grasp the entirety of Cuiqiao’s horror as a victim of her ‘fate’. It also indirectly reiterates the inability of the CR in saving her from her ill fate, as Gu Qing did not return to Shaanxi in time to stop the marriage from happening.

Since Cuiqiao is assumingly living with her husband after her marriage, the scene shifts to Hanhan now upholding Cuiqiao’s previous chore of making trips to get water from the Yellow River. While he is drawing water from the river, Cuiqiao appears, seemingly more solemn than before. She tells Hanhan that she is suffering, and is going to cross the Yellow River to join the army, thus bids him to take care of their father. She then hands him a pair of hand-sewn shoe soles to give to Gu Qing upon his return, while Hanhan gives his sister the sewing kit with a red star on it that Gu Qing gave him (Barme & Minford, 1989).

The suspected drowning of Cuiqiao depicted a strong symbolic meaning of her tragic fate: Cuiqiao being punished by patriarchy for going against the peasant rule (by leaving her marriage), for dismissing the Communist hierarchy (by leaving to join the army without consent), and for challenging nature’s rule - by crossing the Yellow River when the currents were at their strongest (Yau, 1987). The film did not explicitly depict Cuiqiao’s death, but instead symbolised the sinking of the sewing kit that Hanhan had given her, as an indication of her drowning. The scene also produces a metaphor of the power of nature – the Yellow River – as it will take much more than one person to ‘go against the current’ and survive against their bureaucratic fate. The fact that she decided to flee when the river current was at its strongest may also suggest nature’s disapproval of her choice to go against her ‘fate’. The many other times she took trips to the river for water, the river was calm and peaceful.

In the final scene, Gu Qing returns to the village, however is met by a severe draught, with Cuiqiao’s home seemingly abandoned. The setting them shifts to the local peasants clad in leaves, and performing a traditional shamanistic rite to the Dragon King, in hopes of bringing rain to their bare land. It seems that nature has abandoned the peasants, however the CR has also failed in saving them from starvation and poverty. This is symbolically presented as Hanhan sees a mirage of Gu Qing just over the peak of a hill, and tries to push his way uphill towards him. He is however unsuccessful, as he gets blocked by the surge of the peasants madly running in the opposite direction as part of the ritual (Von Kowallis). This scene was particularly powerful in terms of it’s symbolic reflection of the filmmaker’s critique on the Revolution, with Gu Qing representing Communism, and Hanhan representing the people of China who fell under the wrong side of the social margin. Hanhan fights with all his might to get through the crowd, however is eventually engulfed by it – symbolising that Hanhan’s yearn for the idealistic change that the CR proposes, is not within their reach in reality. This scene is further dramatised with the use of slow motion close ups of Hanhan fighting his way through the crowd, and repeated footage of Gu Qing’s distant figure just over the peak of the hill. The drowning of Cuiqiao in the Yellow River and the drought of the land could also suggest the sense that nature gives life to all things, but can also destroy all things – the tragic result of the forces of societal margins. The film ends with the camera panning over the Yellow River towards the horizon, with Cuiqiao’s voice singing ‘The Communist Party shall save us all’. Her voice echoes like a spirit in the sky, as if taunting the audience. The strength in irony and tragedy further reiterate the failure of the Revolution, which yet again, is not explicitly said, however strongly suggested.

Overall, Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou’s Yellow Earth brought great depth for analysis, and a broader understanding of the challenges rural China faced, as well as the underlying gaps of the CR promises. The film tactfully suggested that the Revolution did not succeed due to its defeat by its own bureaucratic structure, which failed to change lives of many rural areas in China, thus proposing many idealistic promises that were not met in reality. As Chen Kaige explained, their theme of the film revolved around ‘concealment’, where the true message of the film was never explicitly defined or preached, but instead suggested some strong scenes that allowed audiences and critics alike to openly analyse and justify in their own terms.

References

Barme, G. & Minford, J. (1989), ‘Yellow Earth: an Unwelcoming Guest’, Seeds of Fire: Chinese Voices of Conscience (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books), pp. 251-269.
Source: Course Reader

Chong, Woei Lien (2003), ‘Nature and the Healing of Trauma: Early Films by Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige’, Critique Internationale, pp. 48-58.
Source: http://mclc.osu.edu/rc/pubs/chong2.pdf

Von Kowallis, I.E. ‘Huang ti di (Yellow Earth) (1984) – Summary’, pp. 1-3.
Source: Course Reader

Yau, Esther C.M. (1987), ‘Yellow Earth: Western Analysis and a Non-Western Text’, Vol. 41(2), pp. 22-33.