To Live Part Two

After the death of Youqing, To Live jumps another decade into the future, where China is undergoing Mao's Cultural Revolution. We really see how paranoid the people have become of not upsetting Mao, claiming anything suspicious to be counter-revolutionary. Fugui's shadow puppets are supposed to be burned because they represent the culture of Old China; shadow puppets are considered dangerous! The Chinese made sure nothing they thought could cause any harm to Communist China was left unchecked. I was shocked how thorough the Chinese communists were; it was obvious that Mao held the respect of the people. We also know that the Communists are cracking down on any remaining capitalists, another part of Mao's Cultural Revolution. Fugui's old friend Chungseng is charged with being a capitalists, and a threat to the People's Republic of China. It is clear that anything or anyone that might dispute Mao's ideas will be destroyed or killed, making sure that Mao remains in power. However, at the end of the film, we see evidence of how much damage the Cultural Revolution is causing. When Fugui's daughter is so supposed to give birth, all of the doctor's at the hospital have been taken away as they have been accused of being reactionary. When Fugui's daughter's start severely bleeding, the students that are now in charge of the hospital have no idea what to do. Had a doctor been there to help, the mother could have easily been saved. This is a perfect example of how much damage the Cultural Revolution did to Chinese society. One thing that I found interesting online about the movie was when the doctor that was brought to help Fugui's daughter eats to many buns and can't help with the birth. It said that each of the seven buns grew to the size of sevens when he drank water, so it was like he had 49 buns in his stomach. 1949 was the year the People's Republic of China was formed, so its quite interesting that the director or writer was able to sneak that bit of trivia into the movie.