A luxury cruise boat motors up the Yangtze – navigating the mythic waterway known in China simply as “the river.” See it while you can. The Yangtze is about to be transformed by the biggest hydroelectric dam in history. At the river’s edge – a young woman says goodbye to her family as the floodwaters rise towards their small homestead.

The Three Gorges Dam – contested symbol of the Chinese economic miracle – provides the epic backdrop for Up the Yangtze, a dramatic feature documentary on life inside the 21st century Chinese dream. Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Yung Chang crafts a moving depiction of peasant life, a powerful narrative of contemporary China, and a disquieting glimpse into a future that awaits us all.

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Up the Yangtze trailer

Interview with Director Yung Chang

A Conversation with Director Yung Chang

What inspired you to make Up the Yangtze?

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.