Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows Chen Xing Liang cleaning cars in a car yard. In voice-over he is heard speaking in Chinese, with subtitles given in English, describing aspects of his life in China and his parents’ deaths during the Cultural Revolution. Black-and-white archival footage from this period shows primary school children with toy guns, practising marching and fighting. Chen talks to camera about the Tiananmen Square protests in which he was involved and his decision to come to Australia, and footage from the protests is shown. The soundtrack includes Chinese music and ambient sounds.

Educational value points

• Chen, the subject of this clip, arrived on the far north coast of Australia in a wooden fishing boat, code-named Isabella, on 31 December 1991 with 55 other Chinese nationals. In 10 days they walked about 150 km over inhospitable terrain until the first of the party came across a remote cattle station in the Kimberley. All members of the party were found and later placed in detention while their applications for refugee status were processed.

• The filmmaker encourages the viewer to empathise with Chen’s story through the selection of images and the choice of music. Images of the indoctrination and violence that were a spur to Chen’s decision to leave China are contrasted with the scene of Chen at work and his personal testimony, told to camera with quiet sincerity and in his own language. Slow and mournful Chinese music accompanies Chen’s commentary and contrasts with the violent images and sounds from the Tiananmen Square demonstration.

• Asylum seekers who arrive in Australia by boat without legal authorisation to land, such as Chen, are sometimes referred to in Australia as 'boat people’, a term that passed into common usage in the 1970s when many refugees sought to escape from the refugee camps in South-East Asia that were established after the Vietnam War. In 1989 a second wave of Indo-Chinese boat people arriving in Australia resulted in the establishment of detention centres and the Migration Reform Act 1992, which made detention of asylum seekers mandatory. Since 1999 the majority of boat people have come from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka.

• The event known internationally as the Tiananmen Square massacre and by the Chinese as the June Fourth Movement is depicted in the clip. In April 1989 demonstrations began in Chinese cities calling for economic and political reform and protesting against corruption in the Communist Party. An army crackdown on the students, intellectuals and labour activists who were occupying Tiananmen Square in Beijing began on the night of 3 June, when tanks and infantry were sent to disperse and crush them. International condemnation of the government of the People’s Republic of China followed the incident.

• Following the Chinese Government’s crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protesters in June 1989, the Labor government led by prime minister Bob Hawke allowed 27,000 Chinese students who had been studying in Australia at the time of the incident to remain in the country as permanent residents. In 1998–99, 51 per cent of asylum-seeking boat people in Australia came from the People’s Republic of China.

• Chen’s parents were victims of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–76), initiated by Mao Zedong, his wife, Jiang Qing, and Lin Biao to re-establish Mao’s authority and rekindle revolutionary fervour. Students were encouraged to 'learn from the peasants’ by working on communal farms, and to join the Red Guard, which conducted ideological 'cleansing’ directed at Chinese teachers, intellectuals, local party officials and others classed as 'capitalist roaders’.

• The arrest and interrogation of Tiananmen Square protesters is shown in the clip. Many thousands of protesters were arrested and summarily tried during the 7 months of martial law following 4 June 1989. On release from prison many former student dissidents fled from China, often via Hong Kong, to exile in countries including the USA, Canada and Australia.

• The title of the film from which this clip was taken includes the words 'the long march’, a reference to the epic journey made across China between 1934 and 1935 by the incipient Communist Party and led by, among others, Mao Zedong in an attempt to set up a new base and flee the encircling army of the governing Nationalists.

This clip starts approximately 4 minutes into the documentary.

We see an Australian flag, titles read, 'Two years later’. The shot zooms out to reveal a car yard with balloons and fluorescent signs on the cars. We see Chen Xing Liang wiping one of the cars with a cloth. A phone rings in the background.

Voice over caryard loudspeaker Matthew Young, line 2, please. Matthew, line 2.

Chen Xing Liang Many people think the boat people came here looking for gold. As for me… I had a better life in China than here. Yet I wanted to leave China for Australia.

We see black and white footage of children marching in a circle with toy guns and training, we see children in a classroom and an illustration of children playing and holding up a image of Mao.

Narrator During the Cultural Revolution both my parents were tortured to death because of their political backgrounds. The memory of that has moulded my character. People in life pursue different things in life.

Interview with Chen Xing Liang.

Chen Some look for fame of fortune. Some live for their ideal. I had always hoped that my motherland would be a prosperous, free and democratic country. It was natural for me to take part… in the pro-democracy movement in 1989.

We see footage of the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square. There are flags waving and people with banners and signs.

Chen We were hoping that people would be inspired to recognise… their own worth and to recognise the rights they deserved.

Footage of a burnt out vehicle in the middle of a street with people on the streets running in one direction, there are people on bikes carrying wounded people. We see people in military uniforms escorting civilians to a gaol. In the gaol we see people being admitted and being escorted around by men in uniforms with guns.

Chen I refused to give up on what I wanted in life. My ideals remained with me. At the time I heard people talk about going to Australia.

Interview with Chen.

Chen I forgot about my own safety and joined them on the boat.