Award winner Ruby Tang doesn’t seem content to rest on her laurels after winning an Academy Award for her short film The Blood of Yingzhou. It looks like she is continuing to shed light on some of the more troubling problems facing China today with a couple of projects sure to get people’s attention. We get the scoop today thanks to the caves of Yahoo that face the Ghangzhou:
Documentary maker Ruby Yang is laying bare some of China’s thorniest issues — HIV/AIDS, tobacco and the ravages of smoking, homosexuality and the environment. She’s doing much of it with the full support of state organizations in China, where censorship remains fierce and authorities are noted more for clamping down on sensitive domestic issues than for exposing them to the world.
Next up is a documentary on gay life and the pressures created by China’s one-child policy. “There’s a lot of pressure to produce an heir,” Yang says. “Many gay men are married and live a double life. They lie to their parents, lie to their wives.”
I have seen a few documentaries lately on the pollution problems in China; and the diagnosis isn’t good. People are getting cancer at an alarming rate and the ground some people live on, is literally killing them. China is an economic superpower and may rule the world one day; and that is fine with me. However the human rights violations that are currently taking place in the name of progress, are unacceptable.
China’s one child policy is one that I have supported, overpopulation is the greatest problem we face as inhabitants of earth, and it is only getting worse. China has tried to curb their population by only allowing a couple to have one child which works on paper – but has opened up another set of serious problems altogether. In rural areas female children are often killed in hope of a man child for reasons of culture and finance. Many men now have no hope of finding a mate, and this is a lonely life of sorrow and slavery to the local prostitute.
The pressure on people to have children has always been great. In a place where Grandparents are only able to have one – I imagine it is even greater. The pressure on Gay men and women is something that never entered my mind – but I can certainly understand how much pressure is on them to conform and present a child to their parents as beloved grandchildren.
Ruby Yang is doing all sorts of public service commercials with celebrities, TV spots and full on documentaries. She is like a Chinese David Suzuki; the hardest working man in Canada (and probably the greatest Canadian to ever live). I think it is great that Ruby is putting her skills to use for the common good, even the Government of China has to admire her communist spirit on this one.
