Back to School: Tell the World

How do you explain to your kids a family decision to boycott Disney’s Mulan? You could show them Frontline: China Undercover or this horrifying report from Australian ABC’s Four Corners. According to both sources, Beijing’s network of work camps and detention centers throughout Xinjiang (or East Turkestan) represents the largest systemic incarceration of a religious group since the Holocaust. Shockingly, it has now been revealed Mulan director Nikki Caro filmed extensively throughout the oppressed region. If you want to understand the extent and severity of Beijing’s campaign against Muslim Turkic minorities, watch Tell the World, directed and hosted by Sophie McNeill, which is available on Prime.

Tell the World is logically somewhat more Australian-centric than the Frontline report, because the country is home to a relatively large exiled Uyghur community and several Australian universities have collaborated on facial recognition software that racially profiles and tracks Turkic minorities (viewers are advised to watch Red Flags for more on that story). Sadly, nearly every ethnic Uyghur family is a broken home, because nearly every one of them has a family member who has disappeared or is being held incommunicado in a prison camp.

For all practical purposes, every Uyghur is a prisoner, in one way or another. According to MacNeill: “A UN panel says ‘the region resembles a massive internment camp.’” Beyond those who are confined in outright concentration camps (euphemistically called “re-education camps”), there are those working as involuntary laborers in factories and work camps. The children of these prisoners are consigned to orphanages, where they are brainwashed to reject their cultural and religious heritage. That is cultural genocide, plain and simple.

McNeill talks to several Uyghur Australians, whose stories are utterly devastating. However, the program is not simply anecdotal in nature. She also talks to researchers like Adrian Zenz, who has uncovered the vast scale of the oppression in Xinjiang by sleuthing through publicly available CCP government documents. He has found construction bids incorporating watchtowers, surveillance cameras, barbed wire, and containment walls. He also discovered purchases orders for bulk shipments of cattle prods. In addition, McNeill’s experts use satellite photography to document the systematic destruction of mosques.

This is some excellent reporting. Based on Tell the World and Red Flags, it seems safe to say Four Corners puts American network news magazines to shame. It is hard to image Caro and her cast and crew didn’t observe all the barbed wire around their shooting locations. The absence of mosques in a traditionally Muslim region should have also aroused their suspicions. However, there is no way they could have missed the apartheid-like system that forces Turkic minorities to endure regular sidewalk checkpoints, while Han Chinese are allowed freedom of movement.

Boycott Disney’s Mulan, Watch the Shaw Brothers’ Lady General Hua Mulan Instead

Please do not spend money to watch Disney’s Mulan. It is not me whose asking. It is the brave young Hong Kong democracy activists, whose very lives are now threatened by Beijing’s draconian “National Security” Law. First star Crystal Liu publicly sided with the abusive HK police and against the activists defending the principles of “One Country Two Systems.” Then co-star Donnie Yen celebrated the imposition of the harsh law now being widely used to crack-down on Hong Kongers who advocate the ideals of a liberal civil society. That is unacceptable and so is Disney’s deafening silence regarding their comments, so their Mulan is unacceptable. However, if you want to revisit the story of Mulan in a film you (most likely) haven’t seen, try Yueh Feng’s Shaw Brothers-produced Lady General Hua Mulan (which like many Shaw Bros. films is easily findable online, if you look).

The Shaw Brothers’ Mulan is not just another retelling of Mulan’s story. It combines the folktale with traditional Mandarin-language Huangmei opera, which was growing in HK popularity at the time, due to a mid-1960s surge of immigration from the Mainland region. It is all singing, all the time, because when the principles and secondary leads are not communicating through song, the unseen chorus handles exposition and chronicles the march of time.

Hua Mulan is indeed Hua Mulan, so she takes her ailing, aged father’s place when her family receives their draft notice. In fact, she is keen to serve, because she has trained for years with the spear. Her skills are so sharp, she wins the new recruits’ tournament, bringing her to the attention of General Li. They will serve together for years, fighting to beat back the Mongol invasion, but only her cousin Hua Ming knows her true gender and helps cover for her. Apparently, the pre-Tang Imperial Army admirably respected the personal space of enlisted grunts and junior officers. Of course, Hua could fight, so presumably allowances could be made.

Hua Mulan is a perfect subject for the Shaw Bros. studio, because her heroic story was compatible for the audiences of both their budding operatic films and their established martial arts historicals. Wisely, they cast Huangmei star Ivy Ling Po, who dubbed her own arias. She has the pipes and the action chops. Yet, she also manages to be both boyish and weirdly saucy and coquettish at times. As a result, we can suspend disbelief, even though she never remotely looks like a man, while buying into her chemistry with Chin Han’s handsome Gen. Li.

Surprisingly, the action sequences are less consistent. The tournament sparring and Hua’s proving-herself bout with her father are nicely choreographed, but the grand battle scene is a bit muddled. Nevertheless, the long marching armies and colorful, fur-trimmed costumes give the film a suitably epic vibe.

Right now, Hong Kongers are afraid to exercise the rights of free speech, free press, and free assembly that we take for granted. Beijing’s puppet government has rounded up known critics, forcing young leaders like Nathan Law to seek sanctuary abroad. After her arrest, his colleague Agnes Chow has been hailed as “Hong Kong’s real Mulan.” Even identifying with Hong Kong’s local culture (demonized “localism”) is dangerous under the current repressive climate.