Along the Banks of the Yangtze — Season 1, Episode 5: Leisure in China
Documentary • 44 min • 1 season, 6 episodes • ★ 8.2/10
Episode synopsis
Leisure in China is a public and massive thing. Whether it's Mahjong tournaments, acrobatics or street dance, everything happens in the central squares in the cities, and preferably with lots of people at the same time. For a talent to risk the leap from the city square to a professional career in the entertainment industry is not all that easy in China. It's a step that requires a great deal of sacrifice. Competition is keen and success is definitely not guaranteed. Ruben dives into the world of acrobatics, where young talents are submitted to a strict training regime, far away from their parents. He meets dancer Bi Gang, who teaches dance to thousands of people in the main square in Chongqing every week, and he visits the Dwarf Empire amusement park, which is run by little people who, in regular Chinese society, did not have any chance of living a normal life, and have created their own community in the park.
About Along the Banks of the Yangtze
A six-part series in which photographer Ruben Terlou travels from Shanghai, the most westernized part of China, to the much more traditional Tibetan city of Shangri-La. Through the stories of people he meets along the 6,300-kilometre river, Ruben discovers the real China, forty years after Mao’s death.