Luo Ye Gui Gen

"Luo Ye Gui Gen" is a new Chinese movie that Zhao Benshan stars in. I feel that it is a movie that Americans should see, but I know most will not. Then name means something like, "Fallen leaves return to the root." It was a humorous movie about a migrant worker returning home with his friend. Well actually, his friend didn't do much during the movie. He was dead.

In the movie Zhao's friend died while the two were drinking together after work. Zhao had promised his friend that if he ever died away from home, he would take his body back to be buried in his hometown. Zhao took the body, and he boarded a bus to go to his friend's hometown. Of course, it would be impossible to openly carry a dead body around with you, so Zhao pretends that his friend is drunk so that people will not be alarmed. The trouble begins when the people on the bus discover that Zhao's friend is actually a dead man and not a drunk man. Disgusted and frightened, they force Zhao and his friend (of course) to get off of the bus. Zhao has many adventures and trials as he tries to get his friend's body back to be buried in his hometown.

The reason that I think Americans should see this movie is that it depicts the lives of normal modern Chinese people. The biggest movie that has come out of China was probably “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” That was a good movie but it was about the upper classes in the distant past. The other big movies that might have gotten wide international viewings, such as “Hero,” “The Banquet” and “The Curse of the Golden Flower,” were all about the upper classes in the distant past. Because of this, Americans that see just these movies from China get an unbalanced and perhaps a hackneyed view of China.

“Lu Ye Gui Gen” shows normal things that you encounter in China today. Here are a few things that made me smile because they mirrored real life here. While Benshan is riding on the bus, it stops on the side of the road. Then the driver stands up and says, “Men on the right, women on the left.” All of the people then filed out of the bus and relieved themselves. There was no outhouse where the bus stopped, just forest. This exact scenario has never happened when I was riding a bus, but if you lived here for a while, maybe this scene would make you smile too.

Another thing that it showed was people’s relationships towards their laoxiang (to others who come from the same region). Benshan is a Northeasterner. One night as he is walking through a town, he hears a hair parlor worker speaking in the Northeastern dialect. Because of this he goes in to her hair parlor and trusts her, telling her his whole story about how he is trying to get the friend’s body back to his hometown. She believes him, and helps him by putting makeup on the face of the body.

Another scene showed the existence of and the fight against the black market in China. Benshan goes to give blood at an official blood center in order to get some money. But because he had had a disease, he was ineligible to give blood. As he left the blood donation center, a man walks up to him quietly and offers him 500 RMB for some blood. Benshan follows the person into a dark building and waits his turn to give blood. Just then, the police raid the blood center and take the operators to jail.

I wish this movie could be exported to America. It would do the Americans well to see a movie about common people in modern China. It is an amusing and lighthearted movie, despite the fact that the movie is about a dead guy.