Yellow Earth: Unchanging

Chen Kaige’s iconic film Yellow Earth begins in much the same way as it ends, not in content but rather in thought. A lone man dressed in the garb of a Communist soldier making his way through rolling hills of China's rural countryside foreshadows one of the dramatic themes of the film: human beings, no matter they be farmer or Communist soldier, make little difference on the timeless landscape. The yellow earth, old and ancient as it is, follows its own creed, one that is impervious to the schemes of man and relegates humanity into primitive worshipers of the weather.

The year is 1939 and the Nationalist Party and the Chinese Communist Party have formed a temporary truce in favor of focusing their efforts on defending against the invading Japanese forces. In the middle of this is a small village in central Shaanxi province where Gu Qing, a member of the CCP’s Eight Route Army, is assigned to collect local folk songs and rewrite the lyrics with hopes of boosting morale. In accordance with CCP mentality, Gu Qing is also there to be educated in the ways of the common people as well.

Following an opening scene of scrolling written Chinese emulating ancient script, vast panoramic shots of the landscape calls attention to the longevity of Chinese culture. As the Gu Qing whips out a notepad to take notes on the wistful folk song crooning in the background, he looks out to the distance to see the long train of a wedding party, trumpets blaring the passage of a festive red carriage. It is an interesting and deliberate choice to begin the film with a wedding; after all, one will be hard-pressed to find anything more traditional and filled with age-old traditions than a wedding, with the tossing of salt before the bride and the chanting of blessings paving the way for the bride and groom to bow before the altar. Gu Qing looks decidedly out of place as he sits down to eat with the villagers. His clothing is too immaculate and clean cut, his figure too tall and broad among a sea of turbaned and weathered men. In that Gu Qing represents the progressive nature of the CCP, there is an element of this that suggests that the modernizing efforts of the CCP are radically out of touch with the reality of the vast majority of the rural population.

The only character in the village that seems interested in the Eight Route Army is Cui Qiao, a young girl fated to marry an old man for the sake of her wedding dowry. She, like many of the youth who comprise of Mao’s Red Guard further on in the century, is filled with fervor for the ideals set up by the Party. Yet, it seems a bitter condemnation for the elusiveness and illusiveness of such zeal that this single-minded determination to join the Party ends up being the medium for Cui Qiao’s—as I think it can be surmised—untimely death.

The film ends in cynically ironic tilt against the Communist government. The crops have died and the earth is dry and so the villagers turn to primitive means: a rain dance to appease the deities above to send rain to revive their land. For all its power in the major cities and its influence, the CCP is incapable of stopping the very people it hails as the pure agricultural class from participating in a traditional act of earth-worship that the CCP’s upper echelon would shudder at its superstitious baseness. For all the focus on progressiveness and modernity, for the villagers, it is the earth that holds them at its mercy. In the end, it is Cui Qiao’s little brother that proves to be the lone figure pushing against the tide of fig-leaf adorned villagers intent on following primeval ways as he tries to call out for Gu Qing, a sign of modernity forsaking the village as he leaves.

So it shows that the government cannot change the old ways so easily as putting new lyrics to old tunes.