Anth230: Anthropology of East Asia

"To Live" and "Morning Sun"

I found both “To Live” and “Morning Sun” interesting, and watching them both in tandem was very helpful in that it provided us with an easy method to contrast the two different movies and their respective messages. In addition to the contrasting movies, I thought that organizing the movie by time frames (each time frame = 1 decade) corresponding to different plots and stages in the life of Fugui and his family was a nice touch and helped to keep the events in Fugui’s life cleanly associated with a historical time frame. On a different note, I found Fugui’s need to assure his neighbors of his political likeness put his family in a sad state. When his son dumps food on the head of his sister’s tormentor, the bully’s father accuses him of what amounts to a crime against the state. That scene reminded me of a sort of reverse McCarthy trial. In contrast to the US McCarthy Trials where citizens were accused of being communists, this scene portrayed Fugui as being a non-communist, and resulted in the beating of Youquing, to prove his loyalty to communism. This scene also leads me to wonder if that was all it would take, the flimsy accusations of another, to put Fugui in trouble with the party? -Ben