Up the Yangtze (Canada, 2007) April 24, 2008

'Up The Yangtze' is a quietly powerful testament about how the Chinese government's adoption of capitalist mass production techniques, while continuing to profess socialist ideals, is creating massive technological projects with side effects that ride roughshod over people's lives. China, hungry for electrical power to drive its expanding economy, undertook in the 1990s a gargantuan engineering project to dam up the Yangtze River. Alas the area along the river bank flooded by the dam was home to over one million people. The movie focuses on the Yu family as they watch the dam waters slowly rise towards the point that will engulf their home, and their small farm. Director Yung Chang discusses his film 'Up the Yangtze.'