Recent
revelations of toxic tear gas dispersed throughout Hong Kong and the network of
concentration camps imprisoning hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs from East
Turkistan prove the Chinese Communist Party is dangerous to human health. AIDS
activist Liu Ximei knew that years ago. She was one of the thousands of Henan
peasants who contracted the disease through tainted transfusion blood. However,
she was not willing to meekly accept the substandard treatment grudgingly
provided by state clinics. She organized patients, but that consequently made
her a target, as viewers can see in Ai Weiwei’s Stay Home (written, lensed, and edited by Chen Shuo), which
predates Andy Cohen & Gaylen Ross’s more complete documentary Ximei, but it still nicely compliments
their film, which opens today in New York.
Hip
New Yorkers may have already seen Stay
Home, because the 2013 film played on a loop during Teacher Ai’s retrospective
at the Brooklyn Museum. It is also readily available on YouTube and Vimeo, if
you do not live on the Chinese side of the CCP’s Great Firewall.
Stay
Home is
somewhat less structured and more fly-on-the-wall in the manner it documents
the day-to-day health challenges Liu must endure. It also covers a shorter time-span,
ending before she becomes a legit couple with her roommate, a fellow AIDS
patient. We also witness worse acts of harassment in the newer documentary,
because the Henan cadres had the good sense to be on their best behavior when
Ai Weiwei showed up with a camera crew. In contrast, Cohen and company do their
best to stay undercover. Nevertheless, the apparatchiks’ hostility and resentment
for Liu still comes through clearly.
Even
with the Cohen-Ross film now opening, Ai’s Stay Home would still be a
significant cinematic expose. It first brought Liu to the attention of the
world and vividly captures the circumstances of her life. Teacher Ai’s closing
titles also make an important point, explaining how China’s notorious One Child
policy contributed to Liu’s tribulations.
Stay
Home is
a snapshot in time. Things are very different for Ai Weiwei since it was
filmed, somewhat different for Liu, and not at all different for thousands of
Henan peasants struggling with social scorn and a scandalously low level of
care. Stay Home is recommended as an easily streamable introduction to
Liu and the Henan AIDS transfusion tragedy, while Cohen & Ross’s Ximei (executive
produced by Ai himself) is very highly recommended as a profile in
courage and an indictment of the CCP’s callous contempt for human life.
