Diaspora Up the Yangtze

Up the Yangtze is a documentary directed by Chinese- Canadian director Yung Chang. The film was inspired after he went on a Yangtze farewell cruise with his family in 2002. He wanted to capture the effect that the Three Gorges Damn has had on the nearby residents of the Yangtze River. Many families have been forced to move due to the flood that the development of the dam has caused around the area. A lot of these families were also forced to give into the cruise ship industry due to the financial situations that most of them were in due to moving and losing their jobs.

I think if I had to choose one of the concepts that we have discussed in our class this semester that depicts the situation going on in the film, it would be diaspora. Diaspora is the displacement of a group of people from a certain geographical area. Originally, the term was used to refer to Jews and their dispersion outside their homeland. In this case, of the movie, it is referring to Chinese diaspora. Historically, diaspora has been known to cause the mass dispersion of a population in an involuntary manner. So many of the times people were forced to move against their own will due to the rules of their government or because of a natural occurrence.

Some instances of diaspora in history include the expulsion of the Jews from Israel, the exile of the Messenians from Sparta, the transportation of enslaved Africans to the New World for the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, the movement of southern Chinese during the coolie trade and so forth. In Up the Yangtze, the Chinese residents of the Yangtze River were put in a difficult situation were forced to involuntarily move. The country’s selfish development of the dam puts many families in an uncomfortable situation in which they have to leave behind their homeland and oftentimes their loved ones if they are called to the workforce, which is what happens in the movie.