Kapiolani
Community College Horizons 2001
Kapiolani
Community College
Horizons 2001
A foreign movie is a portal into a world of novelty in speech, customs, clothes and ideas. It is an unpredictable place, but with themes that have universal appeal. My quest for a good foreign movie led me to Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl. It was adamantly recommended by friends; came with high critical acclaim, having won 12 awards; and was banned in China.
We are told in the beginning of the movie that between 1967 and 1976 a program was implemented in China with hopes of lessening the social and economic disparity between the city and country people. During this time over 7 1/2 million students were transferred from their homes into rural areas where they were to mingle with the country folk.
A blooming young girl, Xiu Xiu, is one of the many who leaves her happy village in Chengdu, in 1975, to fulfill such obligations. Before she leaves we are given a touching glimpse of her warm social life. Her family is not rich, but makes up for it with love. Her father works, sewing on a foot-peddled machine. He steals patches of cloth from work to make shirts for his two girls. This is a simple family. The mother reprimands Xiu Xiu, the elder sister, for being wasteful with the bar of soap. As she steps into a miniature tub just big enough to squat in, her slender curves hint that she must be several years older than she looks, perhaps 16, not 12. The mother introduces Xiu Xiu to rags which are to be used for her period and then to be washed and dried in the sun. Already the movie is distinct from anything American, where talk of menstruation is not worthy of mention in mainstream American cinema. Here, it is pertinent to the fact that Xiu Xiu is becoming a woman. At least one young boy has taken notice and is so enchanted by Mu Xiu that he stands below her window at night, gazing upward, radiant, innocent, love struck. Lively background music has an ethnic flare with whiny, high-pitched tonal voices singing as bells chime intermittently. It is a sound I do not find particularly appealing, but I do appreciate the foreign flavor.
Once at the camp the girls will be further distributed to more remote areas. This introductory camp finds hundreds of young people gathered at an outdoor “walk-in movie theater. They stand or sit huddled closely together. The screen plays depressing images of war and sad voices sing, crying out, and the audience sings too, slow and mournfully, The viewer at home is propelled into the action, our hearts stirred, tears caught in the throat. We feel the same sadness over war, the injustice, the atrocity.
A boy gropes Xiu Xiu in the dark, but she’s a spunky and vivacious fighter and reprimands him in no uncertain terms. Thus begins a long dreary saga, stark and morbid. Xiu Xiu is sent away to the mountains under the wing of a Tibetan man who is “different.” He lost his manhood to the slice of a knife while a prisoner of war. Now he is a loner, a nomad, who lives in a tent and cares for horses. Xiu Xiu is to learn the skills so she can lead a troop of girls. The landscape is serene and gorgeous, but lonely, like Xiu Xiu. We see endless stretches of lush meadow, blue skies and green mountains, but imbued with a certain grimness.
A strained relationship between Xiu Xiu and the eunuch, Lao Jin, turns amiable when Lao Jin builds Xiu Xiu a crude bath out of a stretch of tarp. He prefers the rain. Xiu Xiu languishes in the bath but demands that Lao Jin avert his eyes lest they rot. When three men ride by on horses, he shoots his rifle to scare them away. He cares for Xiu Xiu like she’s a forest princess. She is really a spoiled city girl. He, the weathered, rugged loner, pampers her and cooks for her. She is the new meaning in his otherwise barren life. She is a jewel in the wilderness, a budding flower amidst the bunches of purple, white, blue and yellow flowers in the field.
Soon this jewel is no longer a secret. Lao Jin’s nice singing voice, endearing ways, and campfires under star lit skies do not suffice for his physical shortcomings. A young peddler arrives one day, shattering her dreams of going home with news that the program has been disbanded, that the wealthy girls have returned home, but that he has the power to pull strings with the authorities and send her home. She complies with his crafty advances.
A new fire consumes her and finds her wasting away in anticipation of his return. Soon another peddler comes calling Ñ and another and another. Each takes with them a piece of her hope, her beauty, her happiness, her sanity. She fools herself that her body is her passport home. One scene finds Lao Jin plundering a bird nest of its eggs while a ruffian plunders Xiu Xiu back at the tent. Lao Jin faithfully serves her while she services every other man. Her fierce modesty has been replaced by a brazen carelessness, climaxing in a scene where Lao Jin simmers with pain as Xiu Xiu is bent over, being unabashedly ravaged and without pleasure. Lao Jin, in a sort of passive revenge burns the criminal’s shoe in the fire. He struggles with his physical and emotional lack of balls.
We are usually spared such desolate heartbreak in American movies. We might cry in a movie like Thin Red Line, but we are usually left with a spark of realization, or some redeeming characteristic. Nothing but depression sets in as frisky, confident Xiu Xiu becomes a living ghostÑsad, forlorn, mangy and ... pregnant! Her eyes are sad and desperate and so is Lao Jin. Nurses in what is now a veritable ghost town perfunctorily relieve the situation. After all, she was the fifth girl that day in the same predicament. To the nurses Xiu Xiu is the culpable party who would, “screw a horse and anything else that comes along,” which is proven when a three-toed man limps in to be pleasured within minutes of her bloody ordeal.
Back at the tent, a new glimmer of hope lights up Xiu Xiu’s eyes. She asks Lao Jin to shoot her toes off in order to disqualify her from work so she can go home. She tries to bribe him with the only power she knowsÑsexual advances, but he would sooner do it for love. Through it all he has loved her in his own quiet way.
Xiu Xiu stands amidst the vast, snowy plains and moody bruised skies as a lady’s voice sings, whispery, haunting. Xiu Xiu smiles contentedly as Lao Jin raises the rifle to her heart and frees her from her burden of life. Lao Jin was, after all, the one she could always count on. The bath he constructed becomes her sepulcher. A last shot rings out, he joins her. So ends the story of two lonely souls, lost in the wilderness of life.
The story of Xiu Xiu is a story of young love, sexual awakening,
coming of age, disenchantment, idealism and communistic principles gone awry.
The movie is less the story of the girl named Xiu Xiu than a commentary on ideas
that fare better in the world of thought than when applied to reality. To compare
and contrast Xiu Xiu with American films would be futile. The universal themes
of love, sex, hope and despair are prevalent, but the underlying iron grip of
communism and its resultant oppression is so foreign a topic to those of us
who are fortunate enough to live in relative freedom, prosperity and a land
rich with opportunity.
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