SHANGHAI ZHUAN QI

Shanghai, a port city and fast-changing metropolis, has hosted all kinds of people – revolutionaries, capitalists, politicians, soldiers, artists, and gangsters. Shanghai has also witnessed revolutions, assassinations, love stories. After the Chinese Communists’ victory in 1949, thousands of Shanghaiers left for Hongkong and Taipei. To leave meant being separated from home for thirty years; to stay meant suffering through the Cultural Revolution and China’s other political disasters. Eighteen people from these three cities – Shanghai, Hongkong and Taipei – recall their lives in Shanghai. Their personal experiences, like eighteen chapters of a novel, tell stories of Shanghai lives from the 1930’s to 2010.
A complicated lexicon of historical terms is inscribed on Shanghai’s history: from “colony” in the 19th century to “revolutionary” in the 20th; from 1949’s “liberation” through the Cultural Revolution of the 60’s to 1978’s “reform” and Pudong’s “opening up” in 1990. What I care about, however, is what lies behind these abstract terms: the individuals buffeted by politics, and details of their lives forgotten by time. (Jia Zhangke)