Blind Shaft (盲井) toured various international film festivals last year and the debut film of director Li Yang (李楊) won dozen of awards, impressing critics with its broad and powerful themes.
It is different from the work of other so-called fifth-gene-ration filmmakers -- whose works are sometimes criticized for being stereotypical of Chinese filmmakers -- and Li tells the story in an almost documentary style, but with the help of an excellent script to provide a solid plot.
Based on the short novel Shen Mu (神木) by Lao She (老舍), Blind Shaft is a tale of greed and compassion. Two itinerant miners, Song Jinming and Tang Chaoyang risk their lives working under dangerous conditions and develop questionable morals in order to survive.
PHOTO COURTESY OF MATA
The film begins in the dark caves of one of the many illegal Chinese coal mines, where Song and Tang are working with Tang's brother Chaolu, who has just arrived. In the depths of a mineshaft, the two kill Chaolu with a pickax and engineer the collapse of a mine wall to make Chaolu's death look like an accident. Song and Tang then go on to extort money from the mine's management, who are under pressure to cover up the
accident.
After leaving with their hush money, the pair spend their ill-gotten gains on women and song and in time find another potential victim, this time an innocent 16-year-old boy named Yuan Fengming, who has been forced to quit school due to his father's disappearance. Tang agrees to help Yuan find a job at a coal mine, but only under one condition -- he must agree to pretend to be Song's nephew.
The three find another illegal mine where the working conditions are even worse. "Take it or leave it. The only thing that China doesn't have is a shortage of people," the foreman says.
This time, Song and Tang's scheme does not go so well. As the pair befriend Yuan, the boy's simplicity and naivete alters the partners' relationship and there is a surprise ending.
Wang Shuangbao (王雙寶) vividly plays the mean and cold-hearted Tang and Li Yixiang (李易祥) performs admirably in the role of Song, whose conscience is pricked by the goodness of Yuan. As for Wang Baoqiang (王寶強), who plays the role of the young victim, it is such a natural performance that it is hard to believe that he is a first-time actor.
From the last quarter of 2001, research shows that real housing prices nearly tripled (before a 2012 law to enforce housing price registration, researchers tracked a few large real estate firms to estimate housing price behavior). Incomes have not kept pace, though this has not yet led to defaults. Instead, an increasing chunk of household income goes to mortgage payments. This suggests that even if incomes grow, the mortgage squeeze will still make voters feel like their paychecks won’t stretch to cover expenses. The housing price rises in the last two decades are now driving higher rents. The rental market
July 21 to July 27 If the “Taiwan Independence Association” (TIA) incident had happened four years earlier, it probably wouldn’t have caused much of an uproar. But the arrest of four young suspected independence activists in the early hours of May 9, 1991, sparked outrage, with many denouncing it as a return to the White Terror — a time when anyone could be detained for suspected seditious activity. Not only had martial law been lifted in 1987, just days earlier on May 1, the government had abolished the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of National Mobilization for Suppression of the Communist
Fifty-five years ago, a .25-caliber Beretta fired in the revolving door of New York’s Plaza Hotel set Taiwan on an unexpected path to democracy. As Chinese military incursions intensify today, a new documentary, When the Spring Rain Falls (春雨424), revisits that 1970 assassination attempt on then-vice premier Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國). Director Sylvia Feng (馮賢賢) raises the question Taiwan faces under existential threat: “How do we safeguard our fragile democracy and precious freedom?” ASSASSINATION After its retreat to Taiwan in 1949, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime under Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) imposed a ruthless military rule, crushing democratic aspirations and kidnapping dissidents from
Fundamentally, this Saturday’s recall vote on 24 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers is a democratic battle of wills between hardcore supporters of Taiwan sovereignty and the KMT incumbents’ core supporters. The recall campaigners have a key asset: clarity of purpose. Stripped to the core, their mission is to defend Taiwan’s sovereignty and democracy from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). They understand a basic truth, the CCP is — in their own words — at war with Taiwan and Western democracies. Their “unrestricted warfare” campaign to undermine and destroy Taiwan from within is explicit, while simultaneously conducting rehearsals almost daily for invasion,