Artists of Yuan Ming Yuan

Several years prior to 1995, some young artists pursuing the freedom of creation came to villages near the Winter Palace in west Beijing suburbs, where there were lakes, woods and the ruins of the palace. They had to sell their paintings or other handcrafts to pay the rent and make a living. And their works were full of rebellion spirit and contradictory to traditional aesthetic standards, which alerted the local authority. First some rumor had it that the authority would drive these artists and their children away from the villages, but finally, though a little surprising, it became a reality in the spring of 1995. This film tells a story of these artists in the 1995 spring and the following winter.

Rural Mountain

This documentary, shot in 1995, is about people working at small coal pits. In Qilian Mountain of Qinghai province, where the altitude is over 3,600 meters with thin air, there are numerous small coal pits in which lingers about 200 miners. They are nearby farmers aged from 17 to 50. Everyday, they have to crawl out from pits of 60 to 70 meters deep just to carry out 30 loads of coal. Every load weights 50 kilograms. A miner’s monthly income is only RMB500, without any safety guarantee. Miners normally suffer from pneumoconiosis after working four or five years in the pits and thus lose their working ability. They usually spend the money on house building, marriage and children’s tuition. If they die in accidents, their family could get a RMB5,000 pension. The author describes their daily work and life, as well as their labouring and lives, in a natural way. This is a record of primitive work, as well as human labouring.