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Her coworker Chen Bo Yu, three years older and far more ambitious, is a slick representative for a new generation of zealous Chinese youth. He speaks scornfully of those who have not been blessed with his urban middle-class advantages. While he already earns more than his whole family, his heartlessness is shocking.

The Yu home is flooded by the rising Yangtze

While Chang's cameras capture the grandeur of the place, the film leaves us with a feeling of claustrophobia, as if we're sailing toward some forbidding future. In the closing shot, a boat seems to be sailing through the gates of hell. It left me gasping for air.

Up the Yangtze opens with this saying from Confucius:

By three methods we may learn wisdom:
First, by reflection, which is noblest;
Second, by imitation, which is easiest;
And third, by experience, which is the bitterest.

Reflection, imitation, and experience. Yung's marvelous movie gives us all an opportunity for reflection. His filmmaking is a work of conscience and artistry, worthy of imitation. And the experience he offers, while at times embittering, shows us how artists can defend the defenseless and speak out for the poor. It also reveals what will happen to the human heart when we seek survival instead of grace, "progress" instead of love.

© 2009 Jeffrey Overstreet subject to licensing agreement with Christianity Today International. All rights reserved. Click for reprint information.

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