Yu
Xiuhua has experienced both extremes of contemporary Chinese life. She endured cerebral
palsy, grinding rural, and a loveless arranged marriage to a man twenty years
her senior, before finding her unlikely literary fame and fortune as an
internet poet. Yu became the toast of Beijing, but she is still the same person
she always was. Fan Jian documents Yu as she deals with her overnight success
and lingering family resentments in Still
Tomorrow (trailer
here),
which screens during this year’s Hoc Docs.
Yin
Shiping always thought Yu was lucky he agreed to the marriage her grandmother
Zhou Jinxiang arranged. For nearly twenty years it deceptively appeared to work
on a practical level, largely because Yin was often absent, working seasonally
in Beijing. They managed to have a son together (whom Yu keeps entirely
off-camera), but they were not exactly a lovey-dovey couple. Then, like a bolt
of lightning out of the clear blue sky, Yu’s poetry goes viral, especially the
verse that would become the title of her bestselling debut collection: “Cross
half of China to sleep with you.”
The
obvious sexual connotations are rather bold for today’s Mainland China, but the
themes of separation, alienation, and yearning speak directly to both hardscrabble
migrant workers and frequent flying wage slaves. However, it was her triumph of
adversity story that the Chinese media really embraced—and it is that image which
Yu herself tries so very hard to subvert.
To
his estimable credit, Fan (who brought the excellent My Land to Hot Docs last year) understands Yu is a woman with the
same complicated emotions and desires of any other ordinary individual and not
just some sort of reductive feel-good symbol. Frankly, Yu can be a bit of a
pill in many of the private moments Fan captured, but let’s be honest, she’s
earned the right.
Clearly,
she is also a genuine talent. Even in the stilted syntax of the on-screen
translations, Yu’s imagery is absolutely arresting. Several scholars at a Yu
Xiuhua liken her to Emily Dickinson, which seems rather lazy, because it is so
apt.
