River Elegy is a 6 episode Chinese documentary about the Yellow River in China and the culture behind it filmed in around 1987-1988. It is still available on YouTube but English subtitles are probably not easy to find. I started looking for it after I read something online about how open-minded this documentary is 25 years ago comparing to China these days. I was genuinely shocked when I watched it and I realized there was a time in Chinese history before 4th Jun 1989 that China used to have so much hope.
The narration was the stereotypical communist tone but what it delivered was nothing but. It called for much more social and economical liberty than anything you could imagine broadcasting on any Chinese TV channel now. It correctly identified communism as the obstruction to greater succeed of China and admitted openly that cultural revolution and the "great leap forward" were both big mistakes made by the government. It called for science and conscience in terms of deciding China's future. I could not have said it better.
There are certain things you do need to say about the government to enable a show to be publicly broadcast on CCTV (China's largest national television broadcaster, controlled by the Communist government of course), especially in the 80s not long after Mao's death and the end of cultural revolution. There are a few places in the show where propaganda just seeps through, and not anywhere in the show did they mention the Communist Party is part of the problem (no one would expect them to though being on a government-controlled media). At that stage though, China was really willing to adopt capitalism (well at least the economic aspects), and was ready for a change. It was the Tiamanmen massacre that changed its path for good.
One thing is clear, we have not seen anything like that coming out after the Tiananmen massacre and I don't believe we will as long as China is still controlled by the one and only almighty Communist Party.
