What is your heritage? How much did you grow up knowing about China? When did you first visit China?

I'm Chinese Canadian, born in Oshawa, Ontario. Growing up, I was always interested in China...such a fascinating and complex country. I hope the complexities and nuances come across in Up the Yangtze. I first visited China in 1997 and have lived and traveled the country ever since.


How did the idea come about to make the film? What made the concept 'stick' with you to the point of developing it into a feature-length production? Was it easy to find support for the project right away?

The idea was born in 2002, when I went on one of the so-called “Farewell” cruises along the Yangtze with my parents and grandfather. The aim is to offer tourists the chance to visit the area before it is flooded by the Three Gorges Dam. It's very surreal. Traveling from Canada to China was in itself an emotional experience. We got off this 13-hour flight to Beijing, and then took a flight to Chongqing - the largest municipality in the world. They call it the new Hong Kong. It's where the cruise begins.

The whole sensory experience was overwhelming. The moment you get off the bus, you're surrounded by coolies carrying these heavy loads - tourists' luggage. So I got this idea of making a movie about tourists on this Yangtze cruise boat - a kind of Gosford Park idea that shows the social hierarchy, the lives above and below the decks. And I realized that the people working on the boat were all from the Yangtze area, and that many of their families were affected by the dam.

The other aspect was this sense of apocalyptic journey - something out of Heart of Darkness. It's a strange landscape of chaos and decay - like the photos of Edward Burtynsky. It's very ghostlike along the river - hazy and grey and difficult to see long distances. Then we visited the Ghost City itself - Fengdu - famous in Chinese mythology as the site of the Gates of Hell. In my mind, the Three Gorges Dam became the Gates of Hell. There were so many metaphorical layers to explore, so I just went with this idea of a surreal journey up the Yangtze.

Being Chinese-Canadian, growing up hearing my grandfather's stories of the old China, was also one of my motivations. It added a personal layer to the project- but the story I wanted to tell was a bigger one about what's happening in China now.

I started developing it in 2003, and it took time to figure out the right direction. I first pitched the film at the 2003 Planet in Focus International Film Festival in Toronto where it won the award for best pitch. From there, I approached Mila Aung-Thwin and Daniel Cross, a former professor, at EyeSteelFilm (ESF). They had just begun production on two projects about China, so I thought it would be a good fit. The National Film Board of Canada came onboard as co-producers. Germaine Ying Gee Wong, my producer at the NFB, produced my first film Earth to Mouth. ESF got support from SOCEC and the CBC for the project, and then we pitched it at the Banff TV Festival in 2004, and again at the Documentary Forum at the 2006 Hot Docs Fest, with CBC as our broadcaster. We received most of our support at that event. It was a slow but fruitful development process - I shot two demo reels, one in 2004 and another in 2005. I got a deeper sense of the issues and found my two main characters. I filmed lots of people who aren't in the final film, from cruise boat workers to village protesters. Then we went back to China in 2006 and shot our principal photography between May and December. Post-production took place from December 2006 to July 2007.


How much of this film did you take on yourself? What were your roles in production?

I was writer, director, and also cinematographer. We were a very small Chinese crew so we ended up performing multiple tasks. The film took about 4 years to put together from inception to completion. I was introduced to Wang Shi Qing, my cinematographer, through my producers at EyeSteelFilm who worked with him on a doc they made called Chairman George. He's a graduate of the Beijing Film Academy. Wang came on board for a development shoot in 2005 in Chongqing. We immediately clicked. We both share a love for Taiwanese cinema like Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Edward Yang and Chinese filmmakers like Jia Zhang-Ke and Li Yang...so with this common ground, it was very clear the type of pacing and aesthetic I was going for. I introduced Wang to films by Herzog and Altman and we watched Apocalypse Now and Bicycle Thief. He showed me a short film he made called SARS in Beijing which was absolutely incredible with a gutsy, instinctual shooting style.

I had a motto: CINEMA NOT DOCUMENTARY. In the end, he shot about 70% of the film. I shot about 30%. Wang's patience and technique taught me a lot during the course of production. Initially I was very hesitant to pick up the camera and shoot alone but when Wang wasn't available I had no choice but to channel his skill. I filmed scenes like Yu’s father on the cliff and the old Christian lady. I also I ended up shooting the entire climax of the movie - the final moving and flooding scene - but you don't notice it. To this day, I affectionately call Wang, "Teacher Wang". We plan to work together again in the near future.


What was your biggest misconception going in, about what it would be like to film a doc in China? How did you think you would be received abroad vs. how you were received?

I first went on the cruise in 2002 with my parents and grandfather. We were greeted by a marching band playing "Yankee Doodle Dandy". At that point, I knew I had to make a film about the Farewell Cruise. It felt like the LOVE BOAT meets APOCALYPSE NOW - a perfect microcosm to explore modern China. Being a Canadian of Chinese descent, I was able to see both the Western and Eastern perspectives. In many ways, the film compliments my own duality in dealing with how I perceive China and how the West perceives China and vice versa. I don't think a non-Chinese would be able to make this type of film. Being Chinese allowed me to disappear and be accepted into the environment. On the boat and amongst tourists, I was able to see the irony and humor of the surreal journey.

When Wang and I were shooting the scene where the new employees learn about Western etiquette and not to compare Canada and the United States, I had a smile on my face the entire time but Wang was very diligent and took it very seriously. There was another scene, that didn't make it into the film, where tourists were asking a relocated migrant if she liked her new home through an interpreter. The migrant was answering very emphatically that she hated her new home and that she would much rather live in her ancestral home. But the interpreter translated to the Western tourists that the migrant was VERY HAPPY with her new house. I think only someone like myself would be able to capture those contrasts.

I worked only with a Chinese crew. That was very important in capturing such an intimate and emotional human drama. Sometimes it was a challenge to communicate my point-of-view. My crew and I had constant debates about what I was making and if it was an anti-China film and why was I so intent on filming peasants? Shouldn't I show the world positive aspects of China? Many Chinese also regard peasants as uneducated and backwater, the equivalent to "rednecks". I later found out that Wang himself was from a very poor family. I could only assure my crew that by exploring both the story of the peasants and the story of the cruise boat would we be able to see a reflection of contemporary China.

I think it's healthy to feel nervous and anxious when in production. It keeps you sharp and is part of the process of discovery. We were very careful not to have any run-ins with authorities. But the media has a lot of power in China. We would turn-up in villages with our camera and people would run up to us thinking we were from the local TV station, desperate to tell us of their problems with local officials, etc. Mostly, though, I followed the approach of many Chinese filmmakers which is to simply shoot under-the-radar.

There is a great tradition of documentary filmmaking in China by master filmmakers and I just did what they do. I would never endanger my crew but used their judgment to assess the safety of a situation. If they were willing to use hidden cameras and shoot riots, then so was I. I think it's also a testament to the growing confidence of the people in voicing their discontent in the face of authorities. There was a reported 70000 riots and protests in 2004. I can only assume, as we get closer to the Beijing Olympics, that the number has increased.


What is your past as a filmmaker? Did you always aspire to make films? Did you expect to be making documentaries in particular?

I realized I wanted to become a filmmaker or have something to do with the arts, when I was in high school. I was too shy to join the theatre department and too afraid to tell my parents. Eventually I got into photography and joined the film club. I started making elaborate, ambitious documentaries and experimental films with analog video. An English teacher showed us early video art by Colin Campbell, Midi Onodera and General Idea. My first documentary was simply titled "Jazz" and had almost an 8 minute intro on a black leader using the first track from Tony William's Live in Tokyo album. Pretty bad. Lesson learned: Never edit your own films.

I have made a short fiction film called "The Fish Market" and a medium-length documentary called "Earth to Mouth." Even though I attended film school, I am still learning about filmmaking - the process never ends. Case in point: The executive producer of my film, Daniel Cross, was also my first year professor at film school. I think filmmaking is very much a self-learning process. It's about being open to everything and not just watching movies. Reading, traveling, walking. Read "Herzog on Herzog"; Elia Kazan's "A Life"; Nicholas Ray's "I Was Interrupted"; and Tarkovsky's "Sculpting in Time."


What was the stand-out moment for you during production?

It took a long time to figure out the right way to tell the story. I had so many elements I wanted to explore that the film went through a long development process. Luckily I had great passionate producers from EyeSteelFilm who believed in the project. The National Film Board of Canada came on board as co-producers. It took 4 years to finance the film. I went on numerous research trips but after each trip I'd come back with a stronger demo and a better grasp of the film. Eventually through pitching forums like Hot Docs' TDF, we secured pre-sales to National Geographic, PBS POV, CBC, Radio Canada, and ZDF.

There were many challenges during the making of the movie. I had permission to shoot on a cruise ship, but we were constantly dealing with concerns from the company that we were making much more than a "promotional video." In fact, majority of the film was shot in 2006, but because it was such a long research process that spanned over three years, it's no wonder that the cruise line started getting curious. It was a constant threat that the Chinese boss wanted to shut us down. Luckily though, the American bosses were very accommodating and understanding. I had to use ping-pong diplomacy.

The other major challenge was working with a Chinese crew. I look Chinese and understand aspects of the culture, but there are lots of things that I didn't immediately grasp and my language skills are not 100 percent. Because of the local dialect, often I would have to speak through my crew. And the logistics of shooting are very different there - you can't shoot with location permits, it just doesn't work that way, so having a Chinese crew helped to deal with those cultural adjustments. And they could also gauge what was safe to shoot in the Chinese environment. They were gutsy - willing to carry hidden cameras if necessary.

Working with them allowed me to see both the Chinese and Western perspectives of the story, and I was constantly negotiating the two. The question came up as to whether I was making an anti-China film. So I had to reassure them that this was not my aim, that I was trying to tell a complex human story. As open-minded filmmakers, they listened to my perspective and were helpful in executing my vision. And they had their own blind spots. My DP, for example, was initially reluctant to film a peasant family. It's a class thing there, where peasants are looked down upon as uncultured, and Yu's family are at the bottom of the social hierarchy. But by the end, he saw the value in telling the Yu family story. I later learned that he himself was from a poor family but had managed to get into the prestigious Beijing Film Academy.


What was the stand-out moment for you since the film's completion?

Certainly, it's been a real honour to share the film with audiences throughout the world at IDFA, VIFF, TIFF and Sundance. I'm looking forward to future film festivals as well. I'll never forget one woman, a recent immigrant from China, who saw the film. Afterwards, she tried to express how she felt about the movie but couldn't speak. She was in tears. At another screening, a mother of an adopted Chinese daughter told me her child was from Fengdu, where Yu Shui is from. That was also a very emotional moment. It's been amazing to have this film resonate with an audience, to have people come up to me with comments and questions means that the movie has struck a core.


Since the film opened you have been working with a charity to help the family who is followed in this film. Can you please explain how this came about, how it continues and how First Weekend Club Members and their friends can help further this initiative.

Since completing the film, I went back to China in August to show Up The Yangtze to the Yu family. Yu Shui later wrote me an email explaining that she was now able to see her destiny. She decided to leave the boat and finish high school. EyeSteelFilm helped to pay for her tuition. I've since begun a fund through a great site called GiveMeaning (http://www.givemeaning.com/project/yufam) to help the Yu family for the next 5 years to cover medical/health, food and supplies as well as to pay for the children's school education. Most importantly, I found out that Mr. Yu desperately requires an eye operation or he will not be able to find employment. We've managed to raise a bit of money through the site. Audiences can leave a movie feeling moved to action and this fund is a great way for people to channel the hardship chronicled in the film into something positive.


What is your take about the responsibility that comes with being an artist, and moreover with one whose work is in the spotlight, which allows them a chance to make an impression on the world around them?

Our mandate at EyeSteelFilm is that film is a tool for social change. It has the power to break-down stereotypes, reveal deeper truths and move people to action. I think the key to good filmmaking is to never set-out to find answers or have concrete conclusions. The best type of filmmaking leaves you asking more questions.


What was the most surprising audience reaction?

It's been great to share the film with a real film-going audience. They are very engaged and deeply reactive and emotional upon seeing my film. Of course, there's always the odd question. Someone in Amsterdam asked me if the Chinese Government made me put the dialogue of the father talking about the Great Famine into the film because "we all know the Great Famine never happened." There was much booing and hissing in the audience upon that comment.


What is next for you?! Another documentary? How do you hope to grow as an artist? What types of work would you like to do?

I am currently working on a documentary/fiction hybrid about the Tiananmen Square Massacre - no holds barred, all strings-pulled depiction of that tragic day as it unfolds in real-time.

Success as a filmmaker is defined by experiencing failure. You should never feel successful. You have to make films that you are not happy with. In that way you will always keep busy, have a rigid work ethic and never stop creating in the constant craving to hone your craft. My personal goal as a filmmaker is to continue challenging myself by making difficult, controversial films.


DREAM FILM/DREAM CREW (in no particular order)

- Werner Herzog - Script Supervisor
- John Cassavetes - Director
- Robert Altman - Editor
- Christopher Doyle / Ellen Kuras - Cinematographer
- Walter Murch - Sound
- Billy Wilder - Writer
- Bernard Herrmann - Composer

And, of course, Up the Yangtze’s:

Writer: Yung Chang
Director: Yung Chang
DP: Wang Shi Qing
Producer: Mila Aung-Thwin, John Christou, Germaine Ying-Gee Wong
Actors: Cindy Yu Shui, Jerry Chen Bo Yu
Genre: Feature Documentary