A few years later, the documentary "China Gate" directed by Wang Yang took us to Huining County, Gansu Province, a well-known top-ranked county in the northwest college entrance examination, and let us see how Huining No.1 Middle School, which brings together poor rural children from all directions, will pass the college entrance examination in the hope of extricating itself from economic difficulties and turning over the class, and exert layers of pressure on these students who study hard day and night. In fact, China Gate pays more attention to this issue. It not only records the children of Gansu farmers who have completely lost their youth and only recited them day and night, but also turns to Beijing to interview those foreign university graduates who are crowded in Tangjialing area like slums and can only work as temporary workers on the streets. In addition, the film continues to take us to Shanghai to witness the unhappy growth experience of an urban middle-class girl who was forced to learn piano since she was a child, and a group of young parents with babies who can't walk yet, and to participate in the expensive English training course of preschool classes of "advanced early education institutions" to make children "smart" earlier.
On the one hand, I agree with Zhang Xianmin's aversion to the college entrance examination. The "Chinese dream" of success, turning over and getting ahead through the narrow entrance of college entrance examination is a serial nightmare, which is not only applicable to Chinese mainland, but also spread to the whole China society. The modern version of the imperial examination mechanism, as well as the feudal value and social control he continued to strengthen, is firmly consolidating this perfect and closed system of reading, entering higher schools and college entrance examination. Now, the thinking of changing the fate through the college entrance examination can also be linked with the argument that "China's rise" can change the fate of the country: the poor class will go to the economically developed city life by entering the university, and China, with "faster, higher and stronger" as the guiding principle of economic construction, will make the national economic development the only value and ideology, and become the absolute direction for rural urban youth to pursue themselves and self-significance.
In "China Gate", a young man from rural Beijing said firmly, "I don't think I'm stupid, but I'm hardworking enough. I believe I will be fine in the future, so I decided to stay in Beijing. " Young people holding such a "Chinese dream" are as respectable and sad as those immigrants holding the "American dream". They think that metropolis is full of opportunities, and as long as they are willing to work hard, they will get ahead one day. They can't see that the structural exploitation of the capital market in the United States or China today has made most of the hard-working workers at the bottom never turn over, and they can only turn around or even disappear in the class society.
Interestingly, director Wang Yang revealed a more complex and open view of the college entrance examination in this film and in his exposition of his works. The film does clearly show the different pressures of rural and urban teenagers, but he believes that the nightmare of life brought by the college entrance examination is accompanied by the hope and possibility it provides for rural children. Therefore, under the director's reminder, perhaps we should temporarily take away the instant reading effect of "these children are being oppressed by the new imperial examination" and think about the dialectical significance of "college entrance examination" and "Chinese dream"; If China's economic reform of "letting some people get rich first" has brought various problems such as capitalism and widening gap between the rich and the poor, but many possibilities (including future political reform) can also occur from it, then, by the same logic, we can't expect that among those who want to change their personal destiny through the college entrance examination, a small number of people will get the opportunity to reflect on themselves and eventually become the team that will change China's destiny in the future.
Suddenly thought of a young friend who is currently working in Guangzhou media, officially from the youth near Jiayuguan, Gansu. I admire this good friend very much. She won the college entrance examination, entered Peking University and came to study and work in the city. However, he established a profound self-reflection ability very early, and was able to critically look at various problems of himself and the country, and began to have an influence that cannot be ignored in the work of print media. The rural children who poured into Huining No.1 Middle School at 5: 30 in the morning and began to recite "China Gate" probably have many seeds that really change the future of China, which are worth our expectation in the predicament.
(Excerpted from "Now or Never" cnex Documentary Film Festival)