Documentary looks at China’s close links with Cambodia
When late Cambodian king Norodom Sihanouk’s late son Norodom Naradipo studied at Beijing No 25 Middle School, he was curious about how ancient Chinese referred to his motherland.
After Niu Chongyang, his history teacher, told him it was Zhen La (Khmer) in Mandarin, the boy felt more confused because zhen la can also mean “really spice” in Chinese.
This anecdote alongside dozens of less well-known stories will feature in an upcoming documentary series The Road to Friendship between China and Cambodia (Zhong Jian Youyi Zhi Lu), which will air on CCTV-4, one of China Central Television’s Chinese international channels.
The five-episode documentary, which has been produced to mark the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries, recreates many historical moments from the 1950s through the 1990s.
Most of the content centers on Sihanouk, a key figure in Cambodian politics for more than six decades, and looks at his contributions, his friendships with Chinese leaders, as well as his life in exile in China.
Unlike most documentaries that employ a chronological order to narrate the stories, the production begins with the 1970s and moves to the 1950s in the second episode, with the third one about Sihanouk’s friendship with former premier Zhou En’lai and the fourth about his return to China in 1979.
The year 1970 marked a turning point for Sihanouk, says director Li Yun, adding that during his visit to Moscow on March 18, 1970, then-Cambodian prime minister Lon Nol and his followers staged a coup to overthrow Sihanouk, causing Sihanouk to head to China.
“We obtained a video recording of his departure from an airport in Moscow for Beijing.
“In the past, Chinese TV programs have broadcast just a few minutes of this, but we got the original version which runs for more than 20 minutes,” says Li.
To accurately portray history, the crew interviewed a number of people who were part of the story, including She Chunshu, a retired official who worked as a translator for Sihanouk for a long time, and Fu Xuezhang, the former Chinese ambassador to Cambodia.
Fu recalls that the staff of the Chinese embassy in Cambodia were confined to the embassy, which was monitored by a local military force sent by Nol after China refused to recognize his regime.
She, who was 29 at the time, was recruited to work for a Chinese government office that looked after Sihanouk and his family after the coup.
He recalls that Zhou gave Sihanouk a warm welcome when he arrived in Beijing after being overthrown in the coup.
But Sihanouk’s friendship with Zhou can be traced back to the 1955 Bandung Conference, a large-scale international meeting to unite Asian and African countries.
After private meetings with Zhou at the Bandung Conference, Sihanouk visited China twice, paving the way for the two countries to establish diplomatic relations in 1958.
Among the many stories told in the documentary is one about Sihanouk and his wife Monineath paying their first state visit to China in February in 1956.
When they arrived they didn’t have winter clothes. So, Zhou asked some local tailors to quickly make outfits for them, which Sihanouk cherished and wore every winter while he was in China.
While the first four episodes look back at Sihanouk and his close connections with China, the fifth episode focuses on the more recent past.
And it talks of 1992, when China sent peacekeeping personnel to Cambodia following the call of Boutros BoutrosGhali, the then secretary-general of the United Nations.
Li, the director of the TV documentary, says Ma Jidong, a team leader of a military engineering unit of the Chinese peacekeeping force, told him the temperature there was more than 40 C. It was a very harsh environment for Chinese soldiers, who contributed a lot to the friendship between China and Cambodia.