Hacker Cinema
To Live
活着
1994 · Film · 133 min
Directed by Zhang Yimou
Married couple Fugui and Jiazhen endure tumultuous events in mid-20th century mainland China as their personal fortunes move from wealthy landownership to peasantry.
2 positive2 neutralfrom 4 commenters
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4 comments on Hacker News
China's movies have peaked in the 90s. Take a director like Zhang Yimou, he hasn't made any decent movies in the las 15 years because of state censorship. None of his best movies could be directed today: To live, Ju Dou, The Story of Qiu Ju or Raise the Red Lantern. The same with Chen Kaige or any of the great directors in Mainland China. Even a relatively recent movie like Beijing bicycle would not be possible today.
Even if a lot of those movies were banned in China on release, there were much less consequences for a director of a banned movie than nowadays.
Not during the opium wars period but I love a movie called To Live. It's about a family's struggles with adjusting for the insanity of the cultural revolution. Lots of dark humor and I was super impressed by the scope of it. The familys world comes crashing down multiple times as the civil war breaks out and the revolution really kicks off. The movie, director and lead actress got banned from making movies for a few years too so you know it's good.
Some films have a little more overt cultural significance than others.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Live_%281994_film%29
> The film was banned in mainland China by the Chinese State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television due to its critical portrayal of various policies and campaigns of the Communist government. In addition, Zhang [Yimou] was banned from filmmaking for two years.
I agree that it's a ridiculous question, but don't attribute that to the test being "geared towards second language learners". It's geared towards the priorities of US language teachers, which are heavily slanted towards "cultural appreciation" rather than actually getting students to know the language they're appreciating so much.
Judging by your comment, you are also a native speaker of English. Is that true? It's pretty unusual for someone who only left China as an adult.
another disadvantage for homeowner:
in unstable countries, the new government that replace its old one will try to steal the land from owners
if the new gov is democratic, it only honors those who can show certificate on ownership (even the ones granted from old foreign govt -- the countries that gain independence from colonial in ww2 show this trend)
if the new gov is communist, it will simply take the land (worse, the big owners will be labeled capitalist and shot to dead -- happened in china, see the movie 'to live' by zhang yi mou for ref)
those are best and worst case, of course, america is far too remote from civil war or foreign invasion
the renters can just walk away; however, the old money will be of no value ... so it's better to diversify to foreign currencies or precious metal ... or tools
my grandparents actually buried a minivan when the japanese invaded us. once the new govt is set, they resumed the transportation business. it could be more optimal than currencies/metal because ... after a war, the survivor is the only pioneer, no competition -- sufficiently a monopoly by event