Beneath Two Skies
Documentary · Production: Blinker Filmproduktion / WDR
Synopsis
Based on his best-selling autobiography, this documentary follows Chinese defector Yu Chien Kuan who is an extraordinary guide through an extraordinary period of Chinese History. Not a dissident in the normal sense, but a freedom-loving individualist, Kuan lived through the Japanese and US occupation, the Victory of the Communist Party, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. His escape unintentionally conjures up a political crisis between Russia and the US. Even after he managed to land on his two feet and start a new life in Hamburg Germany, he realizes that the Party is not quite finished with him.
Today the energetic 75 year-old Professor still has a wicked sense of humour and likes to quote Confucius. He is one of the top experts on China, author of many books and his influence is growing.
Although he now spends half his time in China he has never been officially rehabilitated by the Chinese Government. His escape made him a traitor forever. He finally decided to write his autobiography "Mein Leben unter zwei Himmeln" ("My Life beneath two Skies") because he wants to clear his name.
Shanghai February 2008, Chinese New Year. Preparation for a big family fest. While the food is chopped, family members from all parts of China arrive in Shanghai. They are excited but also weary. Too much history was brought back in Kuan’s book.
Yu Chien Kuan, the youngest of 3 children, is born in 1931 in Shangai, the ‘Paris of China’ where European dominance is degrading the Chinese population to second-class citizens. In 1937 the six year-old Kuan has to watch the horrors of the Japanese occupation. As adolescent in 1945 he welcomes the US Marines as liberators only to realize that they didn’t bring freedom. In 1947, during the civil war between the revolutionary Communist Red Army and the government Nationalists he has to watch his father abandon the family to join the Communists.
The young Revolution needs translators. Kuan decides to study Russian in Beijing but instead of language, endless self-criticism sessions start. Even the way he walks it too ‘capitalistic’. Although he marries a women suggested by the Party and tries to fulfil any job assignment given to him, he constantly has to denounce himself as a reactionary element, a deviationist and whatever else is on the political menu that day. Expulsion for countless minuscule offences follow, culminating in his banishment to ‘Chinese Siberia’. He suffers, but he sees himself more often than not as a comic figure and the repressive machinery of the Chinese State as a tangle of absurdities.
During the ‘3 bitter years’ when Mao’s agricultural reform causes 20 million people to starve, Kuan fights side by side with the peasants for survival. Only through the contacts of his influential yet unapproachable father, a high-ranking Party official is he allowed back to Beijing. Realizing the arbitrariness of the system, he looses the little bit of faith he still had in the Party. Trying to settle for a life within the system he stumbles from one misadventure to the next, his big mouth and relaxed habits ensuring disaster at every turn.
In 1967, at the beginning of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, his estranged wife denounces him to the Party. Although her claims are made in a fit of jealous rage and are unjustified, he again faces banishment to ‘Chinese Siberia’, but this time for life.
He develops an escape plan so dangerous and bold that it is impossible to turn back. In 1967 he leaves China in plain sight under false identity with a first class ticket on a plane. But he ends up in an Egyptian prison with China demanding his extradition. This causes an international crisis between Egypt and the US and finally even Russia. The US offers Kuan asylum and as much as he would like to accept, his worries about the implications for his family are stronger and he refuses.
He is sent to West Germany, a place he only associates with the Nazis but to his surprise, there he gets a second chance at life. He meets his German wife Petra, works his way up to university teacher and after his name has reached Academic audiences all over Europe his reputation grows.
He longed for his country and his family but China denies any contact, leaving him with dreaded uncertainty – knowing full well how relentlessly the Chinese government punishes families of defectors. One time he is nearly lured back by Chinese Agents with a forged letter by his dying mother.
Almost ten years after Kuan’s escape, Mao dies in 1976 and under Deng Xiaoping, China starts to slowly open up to the West. Kuan begins to find out how severe the consequences of his escape were. His sister, brother and ex-wife were sent to prison. His ten-year-old son was left out on the street, rejected as the son of a ‘traitor’.
After fourteen years of struggle with the Chinese authorities, Kuan finally receives permission to visit China in 1981. He is overjoyed to return, but he also has to face his family and his guilt.
Shanghai February 2008, the family is reunited again. When they sit down to eat they try to avoid politics at all costs. Kuan can’t understand that his siblings still won’t allow any critical thoughts about the system. After their rehabilitation in 1978 they took back their high-ranking positions within the Party and Kuan’s son has become a rich businessman with many apartments and maids from the countryside who he pays very little.
Looking at China today Kuan sees the miracle of prosperity but also the growing gap between rich and poor, much like it was before the revolution. ‘Was it all worth it?’ he is asked a lot - but his answer is ‘Yes’.