River Elegy

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River Elegy (Chinese: 河殇; Pinyin: Héshāng) was an early Chinese TV series co-authored by Su Xiaokang, shown in China Central Television in the late 1980s. The six-part documentary announcing the death of traditional Chinese civilization was extremely controversial. Su became a wanted man after the Tiannamen Square Massacre and went into exile.

The film asserted that the Ming Dynasty's ban on maritime activities alluded to the building of the Great Wall by China's first emperor Ying Zheng. China's land-based civilization was defeated by maritime civilizations backed by modern sciences, and was further challenged with the problem of life and death ever since the latter half of the 19th century, landmarked by the Opium War.

[edit] Resource

Deathsong of the river: a reader's guide to the Chinese TV series Heshang by Su Xiaokang and Wang Luxiang; introduced, translated, and annotated by Richard W. Bodman and Pin P. Wan (Ithaca, N.Y. : East Asia Program, Cornell University, 1991)