China Sky by Pearl Buck

I could feel Pearl Buck's admiration for the Chinese people as she describes them as being stoic, courageous, and eternally optimistic - which reminded me of the film 活着 (I think "To Live" in English) by Zhang Yimou - despite their daily bombardment by the Japanese in the fictional town of Chenli.

Buck is not too kind to the new, "modern" Chinese like Dr. Chung, who works in the same hospital as American doctors Gray and Sara. Dr. Chung colludes with Japanese captive and hospital patient Yasuda for his own personal benefits, and is used as a contrast to highlight a type of Chinese patriotism on the part of Gray and Sara, who love and are devoted to the Chinese inhabitants in Chenli. Maybe Buck, who was American but was born and grew up in China, was expressing her own Chinese patriotism through Gray and Sara, (I think it is significant that Sara ends up adopting an unwanted Chinese baby girl), a situation where Buck cannot but be a foreigner.

I definitely did not enjoy it as much as The Good Earth, and Buck's Christian moralizing (I guess she is Christian) makes it a bit off putting at times. However, the relationship between Dr. Chung and Yasuda is interesting; usually in Korean films about Japanese colonialization Koreans are all patriots while the Japanese are all evil. I would like to see more of these complex relationships in Korean cinema.
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