Up theYangtze

I must say that I really enjoyed this documentary. It really opened my eyes to an unfamiliar type of struggle and allowed me to see that every culture of people has their own struggle as individuals and collectively as a culture. I felt so bad for Cindy and her family, I hated that they were so unfortunate and that their struggle was so hard. I felt so terribly bad for Cindy’s family and others in their culture that felt or witnessed to having corrupt government officials that they couldn’t turn to for help during their time of need. I felt horrible also when Cindy told her mother that she wasn’t a good mother when Cindy asked her about walking her to the boat to see her off. I understand why they sent her to work because they were so poor, and they needed the money that she would make, but Cindy sacrificed her education in order help her family survived. Great sacrifices were made by Cindy's family for survival. Cindy sacrificed her education, young adult freedom, and time away from her family. Her parents sacrificed time away from their daughter, and also they had to sacrifice her physical help in order to receive financial help by having her go to work on the boat/ship.

Also the guy that was talking that was working in the shop on the documentary about how the corrupt officials would beat and mistreat the common people and would not offer any type of help. My heart was touched by the tears that he shed from enduring pain and experiencing hopelessness from within their own country. I didn’t completely understand why the Yangtze continued to rise, and also why didn’t anyone do anything to help the people save their homes or offer some sort of relief for the loss of their homes. I can only imagine feeling helpless when your own countries government becomes so extremely selfish with greed that all aide is taken away from common hardworking people.

In addition, I must be honest I didn’t feel bad at all when Jerry got fired from the ship. I really felt as if he didn’t really appreciate the opportunity for growth, independence and responsibility.  In watching this documentary I was reminded that struggle is all around us, and it comes in many ways. Struggle can be due to economic hardship, natural disaster, or family complications, but whatever the struggle, we must do all we can when others won’t do anything.

Now because I have never traveled to China or any of those countries, I now have to try not to place a terministc screen/stereotype in my mind because of what I saw on the documentary. Moreover, it seemed as if Cindy somehow may have lost her voice because she was not able to tell her story of these events in her own words fully. She was narrated by her family quite a bit, and I think because of this it seemed that she lost her identity and power of voice. Can we ever know her story, opinions and the effects of how this truly impacted her from her point of view? (Cindy) She might have wanted us to see this tragedy as a type of triumph personally for her. Will we ever know?