China screens anti-war film as reminder to treasure peace

Sixty-five years ago, Li Shulan witnessed the cruelty of her daughter being slaughtered by Japanese invaders in her hometown. A few months later, she adopted a Japanese girl left behind by the invading troops.

Li, now 81, gave the girl a Chinese name, 'Tian Lihua,' and also a nickname, 'Laishun', which means "all things go well." She raised the girl as her own daughter until 1981 when Laishun returned to her birth country, Japan.

Based on the true story of Li and her adopted daughter, the film, "Department of Dance", was previewed Monday in China's Northeast Normal University, and struck deep into the hearts of older people who lived through the war, as well as the younger generation born decades after the war.

The film, staffed by university students from its creation to shooting, is scheduled to be released to the public in September. It was also the first film adapted from college students' original dancing performances.

As the leading lady said at the end of the film, "Hatred begets hatred with no end while love begets love with families formed," Li said she very much missed her adopted daughter.

"I heard she got sick and had a rough time in Japan. It is my biggest wish in my life to see her again," Li said with tears in her eyes during an interview with Xinhua on Tuesday.

The film was trying to make the public realize the torment of wars and the great value of peace, said young people who performed in the film or watched the film.

Wang Yu, a 26-year-old student who played a supporting role in the film, said she could not imagine how painful her life could be if she were born during war time.

"I should have been very angry and helpless if my family had been hurt that way. Thinking of that makes me cherish my current life more, the peaceful and happy life," Wang said.

"The film called for the spirit of peace. I understand that the war hurt both Chinese and Japanese people," said Zhu Ziwei, a 19-year-old college girl.

Li Shulan's story was a small, yet heart-wrenching fraction of the outcome of Japan's invasion of China back in the 1930s and 1940s. The anti-aggression war broke out on July 7, 1937 on the outskirts of Beijing and ended on Aug. 15, 1945, when Japan announced its surrender to the world.

More than 35 million Chinese people were killed or injured during the war against invading Japanese troops, along with a direct economic loss of more than 100 billion U.S. dollars.

Despite expanding political and economic exchanges between China and Japan over the past decades, the eight-year warfare remains a sore point in China-Japan relations, and lingers on movie and TV screens even 65 years after the hard-won victory by the Chinese.

The series, Little Soldier Chang Ka-tse based on the namesake film in 1963, has been screened on China Central Television. The series, aired to entertain children at home for the summer holiday, tell the story of Chang Ka-tse who joined in the fight against Japanese invaders after his grandmother was killed.

Noticeably, the film "Department of Dance" and some other productions depicting the war have tried to deviate from traditional angles of brutal Japanese invaders and determined Chinese fighters.

In the film "City of Life and Death" directed by Lu Chuan and screened last year, it depicted the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese troops, one of the worst holocausts in human history, from the eyes of a Japanese soldier. The soldier, named Kakokawa, joined the Imperial Japanese Army out of loyalty to the Japanese emperor but experienced shock and pain in the war and ended up committing suicide in Nanjing.

Source:Xinhua