Hardly any country has developed as rapidly as China in recent decades, perhaps even in human history. Especially at the beginning of the 1990s, the economic output of the until recently the most populous state of the planet rapidly picked up speed, which of course was also associated with radical changes for hundreds of million people. If the Chinese director Huo Meng in “Living the Land“Looking back at this time, it looks like a look at a lost era. He describes the life of the rural population in a often documentary way, describes their rites and festivals – and already indicates with short break -in of modernity that the development process will no longer be stopped. Whether you see this as positive or there could also be negative consequences is pleasantly open and left to the interpretation of the audience.
Spring 1991, in the east of China: While his parents move south to become a metropolis, part of the Chinese economic miracle in Shenzhen, the ten -year -old Chuang (Wang Shang) is from the widely branched family raised. In rural China, this lives in part as it was after centuries. Life is structured by agriculture, for the harvest there is also free of school, but also the obligation to pay school fees with cereals. Funerals, weddings and other festivals are the only changes in an everyday life that works far from developments in the big cities. But this simple life will soon have been replaced by progress …
His aunt is an important support for Chuang (Wang Shang). But when she gets married, she will have to move to her husband to another village.
Until the death of Mao Zedong, China tried a planned economy in the socialist sense, which led to some catastrophic results and made millions of people die from hunger. Between 1978 and 1989 Deng Xiaoping led the country's fortunes and made first efforts to open China and to connect to international trade. But it was only with his successor Jiang Zemin, who became General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1989, began the rapid economic upswing, which gave China growth rates of an average of more than nine percent for decades and made it the world power that is today.
At the beginning of this era, “Living the Land” is now playing, which tells about the consequences of change in a very careful way. He has to go to work “carefully” because, despite all the economic freedom, China is of course not a democracy. Criticism of the nature of the state and the decisions of the government are therefore not desirable. Like other director in front of him, such as Zhang Yimou in his historical epos “Life!” Or Tian Zhuangzhuang in “The Blue Dragon”, Huo Meng also looks into the past to also tell subliminally about the present.
The unstoppable progress
How much one wants to understand your film as an allegory about the problematic developments that China has become economic in recent decades remains open. If old uncle and aunts are repeatedly buried by Chuang, it can be easily assumed that the old paths, the centuries -old traditions are also buried. And what makes them replace is not necessarily better.
Even if such interpretations occur sometimes, “Living the Land” should never be understood as a nostalgic film. Huo Meng's staging looks far too sober, far too documentary his view of life, the rites and traditions of the rural population. He found fantastic faces for his film, especially older people who mostly do not play, but rather show what they were once years ago: simple farmers, rural residents, probably mostly illiterate.
Recognize a whole life on the faces
In the credits, more than 700 extras are mentioned by name, also a sign of the great authenticity that Huo Meng strives for here. From plowing the field to funeral rituals to food preparation, the life of farmers in China can be traced in detail in the early 1990s. The consequences of the conflict between tradition and modernity, on the other hand, are only indicated, for example when it comes to the conversion of the traditional lunar calendar to the modern solar calendar in the west.
A date, such as March 25th, has been apart for days or weeks, which entails a missed doctor's appointment in the film – and the death of a person. But such dramatic moments are only told in “Living the Land” in the background. They flow into this flow of life, modernity, which sweeps everyone away, whether they want or not.
Conclusion: In his often documentary film “Living the Land”, the Chinese director Huo Meng describes the life of the Chinese rural population in the early 1990s, at the beginning of the economic development that soon became world power. Without becoming nostalgic, but also without a final value judgment, he evokes a lost world, the rites and traditions of which were displaced by unstoppable progress.
We saw “Living the Land” as part of the Berlinale 2025, where he was invited to the official competition.