Engaging and poetic observations about the effect of progress on human lives. By ROSEANNE LIANG.

GIVEN the Great Wall and the more recent Olympics, it’s hard not to see that China likes to deal in superlatives. The Three Gorges Dam is the largest hydro-electric project in the world, designed to harness the unpredictable Yangtze River for the good of the estimated 440 million people who live on its banks. The forced relocation of 2 million people seems a small price to pay for such progress, especially as the government is committed to compensating them with payouts and shiny-new accommodation – according to the government sanctioned tourist guides, anyway.

Following the path of the “farewell tour” boat cruises, Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Yung Chang humanises the impossible-to-comprehend numbers with his cast of polite and sometimes patronising Western tourists, well-starched smiling cruise staff, and two young staff recruits – spoilt uber-capitalist-in-training “Jerry” Chen Bo Yu, and impoverished middle-school graduate, “Cindy” Yu Shui. Largely abandoning a traditional narrative structure, Chang adds to the protagonists’ stories a pastiche of riveting observations – the tearful and heartbreaking lament of a soon-to-be-relocated shopkeeper who has been denied a fair payout due to local corruption; a staff training session where recruits are urged not to talk about ‘any issues of depth or seriousness’ with their guests; the Upstairs, Downstairs contrast between rich European tourists toasting their vacations in opulent dining rooms and Yu Shui below decks, overwhelmed by the humiliation of a dish-washing tutorial, her dreams for high school education shattered.

Chang’s personal engagement in this six-year labour of love is evidenced on-screen through a writerly voiceover about his grandfather and the interwoven theme of a disappearing ‘old China’. What the film loses in occasionally distracting allegory, it gains in spades with the sheer weight of the relationship between Yu Shui and her illiterate ‘peasant’-class parents, which takes centre stage once the show-boating Chen Bo Yu is dismissed from the boat for his self-centred attitude. Here, Chang’s personal investment with his subjects pays an emotional mother-lode. Honouring him with their trust, one could sometimes mistake this documentary for a cinematic drama with performances worthy of an Oscar. In one particularly memorable sequence, painfully aware of her eldest daughter’s unhappiness at having to give up further education for a job to support the family, Yu Shui’s mother hunches on her makeshift stool in their shack on the river’s edge. Tears stream down her face, and she says “You think we want to exploit you? What kind of parents would we be if we had another choice?”. With these words, a parent’s heart-wrenching shame is laid bare – for not being able to provide for the children they love. We begin to believe that such a difficult decision is a blessing in disguise – when Yu Shui begins to gain rank on the boat, her parents can afford to take a trip to see the great dam for themselves. While Yu Shui might grimace and sulk at the country-bumpkin comments from her parents, the bittersweet poignancy of her true feelings are revealed as the boat pulls away, and she refuses to leave the window until they are out of sight. In the shadow of one of China’s greatest triumphs, it is enduring humanity – both of the filmmaker, and the family who came to call him ‘big brother’ – that outclasses it.