Up the Yangtze

Image credit: Lixin Fan

Chen Bo Yu, who plays Jerry, in Chongqing City's Liberty Square

The construction of China's massive Three Gorges Dam has forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes — a human up¬heaval almost too gigantic to conceive. Yet filmmaker Yung Chang finds a sad and beautiful way to glimpse the big picture of dislocation through an exquisitely poised small study: He focuses his thoughtful documentary eye on one peasant family whose home is about to be swept away by planned flooding — and whose eldest daughter must abandon dreams of college to work on a cruise ship that offers Western tourists photo ops on the eve of destruction. A