Avatar vs. The Ding Zi Hu

Well if it could flood here, it probably should. It has rained everyday for the last week and a half. It seems like the rainy season here lasts 365 days/year. The town is filthy, grimy, and muddy. Cars are covered in yuck and there doesn’t seem to be any desire to wash a car because it’ll get yucked up again in one day – so nobody bothers to try. I’m getting VERY tired of waking up, looking out the window, and “yup, it’s still raining.” Sure will be nice to see the sun again (it still exists – doesn’t it?); but that looks to have to wait until this next Saturday when I get home and can wake up to everybody’s sunny smiling faces and Sam’s Short Course State Meet and Basketball, and the Winter Olympics and whatever else is going on in the outside world. I’ve called ahead and ordered Sun.

Other than that lamenting, we are progressing in our manufacturing efforts.. Some machines are still arriving. Some are still being installed. And some are beginning to cut steel and start checking out NC programs and going through startup runoff processes. Folks are beginning to get a bit excited that we are pretty close to actually running (even if only on test pieces). Me? Excited, yes, and a bit nervous as there are far too many IT systems not up and running as fully as they should be which has immediate negative consequences on my responsible areas (funny how an M.E. who made a career out of Process Engineering who now applies those skills to Quality Systems can find himself sucked into the CS world through some unexpected cruel twist of fate – nothing against all you IT guys, of course).

But moving on … I did see the movie Avatar last week.
A friend had it on DVD. I really enjoyed it. The computer graphics were awesome, the music solid, and the story was terrific. I also enjoyed the sly flashback humor tossed in with Sigourney Weaver as the Alien Expert. But of course more so than that was the other movie images it conjures up as you watch. Images harking back to scenes from “The Lord of the Rings”, “Dances with Wolves”, and “A Man Called Horse” (the 1960-70 era Richard Harris classic) all screamed at you throughout the film.
Good vs. Bad.
Light vs. Dark.
Us vs. Them.
Certainly anyone should go see it even if CG animation and Sci-Fi genre isn’t on your own particular Bucket List.
But I bring it up here as the result of a discussion with some of our Chinese Team about the movie. It has been a HUGE success in China showing in 3D IMAX theatres (up in Changsha, not in Xiangtan – IMAX in Xiangtan?; yeah, right) and people have been waiting in line for hours to see it and recall how I have described for you many times how well the Chinese like to stand in lines; its right up there with root canal – and dentistry is not a high priority here either.

But competing with “Avatar” is a Chinese Produced, Chinese made film “Confucius”. It’s a very high budget, “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon” type of film that was supposed to be the big entrance of Chinese Produced Movies coming into their own onto the World’s Stage – and Avatar is absolutely crushing it. So naturally, there has been a subtle movement to reduce the number of theatres playing Avatar and increase those showing Confucius so as to make Confucius look better (part of that ‘saving face’ thing, I guess).
So typical.

However, as my friends were explaining, the Avatar movie has been given the nickname of “Ding Zi Hu” (people-who-won’t move). This is in reference to the policy of the Chinese Government to simply uproot entire neighborhoods or even villages and forcing them to move elsewhere because the land will be used for some new construction albeit infrastructure improvements, newer housing, or industrial development. Just like in Avatar.
To help you understand better, as part of the Revolution, land ownership belonged entirely to the State. However, that grew somewhat impractical as the country began to open in the 80’s, so residents are allowed to purchase Land Use Rights. These Rights allow someone to use the property as their own for some predetermined length of time (usually 50 – 75 years) after which the property reverts back to the State and you have buy new Land Use Rights all over again. No passing of land from generation to generation here. Of course, since this policy has only been in existence for about 25-30 years, nobody has run to the end of their lease, and my friends really don’t know how the process will work to re-purchase.

But this is where it gets interesting. Let’s assume the State decides a new highway is going to be built through your town and will run right through your Apartment building. Your Land Use Right is rescinded and you have to move. Just like that. Sure, you get some compensation from the state, but most likely your land was selected because it was old (and cheap) and any newer housing is very expensive so I fyou can’t afford to move, you may decide NOT to move, at least just yet anyway, and fight it out with the bureaucrat in court. You will lose because housing is your responsibility and it’s not the State’s fault (or problem) that you chose to live where they now want an interstate. I guess this is the same as our Imminent Domain, its just that we think our process is somewhat more equitable and we generally give a pretty fair shake to those effected and we generally take much longer to settle everything so residents have more time to prepare and we generally have more options for affordable housing. But you get the idea.

So the theme of Avatar where the bad guys (Humans) in trying to force a population (the Wadi’s) to move from their land so the humans can extract some super important mineral from the ground, seems to have struck a chord of familiarity and dissention with the Chinese public relative to the forced moves they sometimes have to endure as Ding Zi Hu’s .

What I find more interesting is that while the population seems to have found a common ground between their experiences and the movie, the government is also taking note of both the Ding Zi Hu idea and the fact that the Hollywood blockbuster is interfering with their own Movie blockbuster and is (allegedly) trying to play cover up by minimizing the available Avatar movie outlets.

The Wadi’s won their battle (duh, it’s Hollywood – no spoiler there). But I can only imagine when the day is coming that the Chinese populace will decide its time to fight theirs.