China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Road to progress
A film about the lives of expressway workers also reflects the sacrifices and struggles that accompanied China’s reform and opening-up over the past 40 years, Xu Fan reports.
Every time director Miao Yue drove on the Yaxi Expressway, a 240 kilometer road snaking through mountains in Southwest China’s Sichuan province, she marveled at the spectacular views, which gave her the feeling of riding into the clouds.
But she never thought she would be able to stop and photograph the scene, which, according to traffic regulations, would earn her 12 demerit points leading to her driver’s license being suspended.
So it was a big surprise for the filmmaker known for the awardwinning film Hold Your Hands — a poverty alleviation-themed movie — when she got a chance to shoot her new film The Connection on a similar expressway which is still under construction.
Recently, the China Film Administration, the top regulator of the sector, selected nine films — including
The Connection — to mark the 40th anniversary of the launch of reform and opening-up in China.
The Connection focuses on the lives of two generations of expressway workers, who struggled in hazardous weather conditions to boost China’s road infrastructure.
Among the other films chosen are Running to the Spring; Hope of Road; Dr. Huang Danian; Fighting Men of China and The Photographer. Speaking after a promotional event for the nine movies in Beijing recently, Miao says she took up work on The Connection, from the Chengdu-based Emei Film Group, the largest studio in Sichuan, in 2017.
Roads have always been an issue in Sichuan as the region features complex landscapes, including plateaus, basins and mountains. And while these geographical features give the region an edge in the production of tea, silk, besides making it a haven for wild pandas, its lack of connectivity has often hampered its economic development.
The Yaxi Expressway, a section of the Beijing-Kunming highway that cost 20.6 billion yuan ($3.3 billion) and took five years to build, has now linked the province to the country’s north and south since it opened to motorists in April.
To build the expressway which has 270 viaducts and 25 tunnels, engineers and workers had to overcome many geological hazards such as gas eruptions, water spouts and rock falls.
All this inspired Miao, who believes the road represents one of Sichuan’s biggest achievements brought about by the reform policy.
Besides, the huge project spawned a number of human interest stories.
For Miao, a scriptwriter-turneddirector, a good storyteller must be a diligent journalist first.
And she did just that, repeating what she had done with Hold Your
Hands -- a heartwarming story based on the true stories of local villagers’ efforts to reduce poverty in Central China’s Hunan province.
So, she trekked hundreds of kilometers to interview those who were part of the project.
“Work on the Yaxi Expressway was wrapped up six years ago. But I discovered that a majority of the engineers and workers who built the road are now working on the Yakang Expressway,” she says.
Yakang Expressway, one of the most difficult road-construction projects taken up in China, will improve Sichuan’s access to the country’s east and west, with 82 percent of the project comprising viaducts and tunnels.
The expressway, which is estimated to cost 23 billion yuan, is expected to shorten the drive from Chengdu to Kangding from seven hours to four.
In late autumn of 2017, Miao and some of her colleagues took a ride to the incomplete Xingkang suspension bridge over the Luding River, which will be 280 meters long when completed.
Speaking about that experience, Miao, a graduate of Chinese language and literature from Guizhou Normal University, says: “I was shocked to see this magnificent project being built beyond the clouds. All the engineers wore red hard hats, quite matching the color of autumn.”
The bridge, which is expected to need four years to complete, has nearly 1,000 construction workers and around 100 engineers working on it.
To ensure safety, engineers are required to wear red hard hats, workers yellow ones and visitors white.
So, for the first time in her filmmaking career spanning three decades, Miao wore a white hard hat to sit behind the rolling cameras, and her cast and crew of more than 100 members — including lead actor Li Baotian and actress Chen Jin — all wore similar hats.
Li is famous for Zhang Yimou’s Oscar-nominated Ju Dou and French director Philippe Muyl’s The
Nightingale; and Chen recently won the best actress award at the 34th Hundred Flowers Awards in Foshan, Guangdong province, for Hold Your Hands.
Speaking about the shoo, Miao says: “The filming on the construction site of Xingkang Bridge lasted more than 40 days, from June to mid-July this year. And ultimately, we all got used to wearing the hats, even subconsciously putting them on after we had moved to a safer filming site,” says Miao.
Recounting her experience of making the film, Miao says that it is the spirit and sacrifice of construction workers, who are mostly migrant laborers from rural China and have endured the separation from family for years, that touched her the most.
“Their annual leave is only 12 days. And back in the early years they probably spent half of the vacation traveling to get home. They are the unknown heroes of our era,” she says.
The Connection has yet to get a general release date. But for those who may be interested in seeing films reflecting China’s transformation over the past 40 years, Hope of Road — depicting poverty alleviation efforts in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region — is set to open on Thursday; and Fighting Men of China — about the unprecedented expansion of the internet industry — will be released on Dec 18.
They (construction workers) probably spent half of the vacation traveling to get home. They are the unknown heroes of our era. Miao Yue, director