Midterm paper

Misato Nomura English 313 Professor Wexler October 23, 2013 Film and History I believe that Film is the best, easiest, and most popular way to unscramble life and history. People like to watch film because they can find a sympathetic feeling with the main characters or the setting in the film. Namely, film offers a microcosmic real world to audiences to use its own fascination to attract the audiences' attention and arouse their boundless thinking for life, world, love, and philosophy. However, history as the foundation of human life, film can never put aside it away to develop a completely abstract scenario. Historical facts could make a film become more real and more close to the audience's life. The history that appeares in film could help audiences understand and feel the history easier and more directly compared with traditional history books or classes. Film gives a better chance for history to represent itself and history could made audiences have a chance to, through film, rethink their life and world from the past experiences. That is why I believe a historical film is really good to educate and inspire people to what we can get from history for the current reality. Film is a dream construction and history endue with the feasibility to it. I want to make a film about the “Opium War” to display what is my understanding about the relation between film and history. To most in the field of history, The Opium War beginning in 1840 is widely regarded as the beginning of modern Chinese history. Although The Opium War was a military conflict between two countries, it’s overall scale was much larger than this, and can be seen as a collision of two different civilizations and cultures. I believe this historical topic has enough content to make audiences rethink the history, society, international relations, global economics and national security in the current modern world through this film. In this film, there will be one main character and three important minor roles. My main character will be Lin Zexu who was sent by Daoguang emperor as an imperial commissioner to Canton to halt the illegal importation of opium by the British. For this character, I want to choose Chen Baoguo, a Chinese senior actor to play. He has a lot of experience playing governmental characters in his personal performing career. I believe he can perfectly perform the multiple temperaments for this role such as being steadfast, brave, wise and complete loyalty to the emperor. For the other three important minor characters, I want to, through the different social statuses and backgrounds they have, portray the trade conflicts and war between China and Britain in different ways. Pan He was a relative of the leader of the hong merchants. He was sent to Southeast Asia to study English and try to learn how to do business with foreigners from the “Thirteen Factories”. Later on, he became an interpreter between the Chinese and British governments before and during the war. I choose Hong Kong actor Tony Leung to play this role. Tony not only has rich performing experiences but also is able to speak perfect British English which could help him play and interpret the character better. The second minor character is British merchant Lancelot Dent. Dent resided for a period in Canton who dealt primarily in opium. In the film, he is the leader of the opium merchants and against Lin's policies. I think Nicolas Cage could be a good choice. As a famous actor who received many different Awards in his performing career, I have enough confidence in his acting and understanding of this character. The third minor character, William Wilson, is a captain in the British Army. The Opium War is the first war that William attends and he has his own perspective of Chinese troops, Chinese people, and this war. Orlando Bloom is the perfect actor for this role I believe. In “Kingdom of Heaven” and “Pirates of the Caribbean”, he had enough experience to deal with all the challenges that come from a military role in the film. I believe he could felicitously display a young military officer's bravery, nervousness, and contradiction. I want to, through these three minor characters' different values and social backgrounds, reflect the huge collision of two worlds. At the beginning of the film, I want to rewind time back from 1840, the year the Opium War occurred, to 1793. In this year, Sir Mccartney and his huge fleet sailed into Chinese coastal waters. This huge mission was to come to China to attend and congratulate Qianlong emperor's 83rd birthday. Before he left Britain, the King repeatedly emphasized the importance of his mission to China this time. He has to convince Chinese emperor to allow free trade between China and Britain. Additionally, if he and his birthday gift can obtain the emperor's recognition, maybe he can get permission to have a small island to allow British merchants to stay on However, his huge plan was easily destroyed by the Chinese emperor's and officer's attitude. “Westerners seemed to the Chinese of no more consequence than the other outsiders they were accustomed to. They came in ships instead of on horseback, but they were barbarians just the same- hairy barbarians, foreign devils, fan kuei” (Fay 31). In the Chinese Emperor’s eyes, all these Europeans who came from nowhere had come with their hearts full of respect and admiration for the Chinese civilization here. During the meeting, the Qianlong emperor did not really have any interest in what Sir Mccartney said but was upset because he did not kowtow to him. He refused all of Mccartney's requests and wrote a contumelious to the British King. “‘I do not forget’, he wrote King George, ‘the lonely remoteness of your island, cut off from the world by intervening wastes of sea. Nor do I overlook your excusable ignorance of Our Celestial Empire’” (Fay 32). In the late of this year, Sir Mccartney disappointingly left China. Before he left China, he designedly watched the Chinese navy's warships and its equipments. He affirms that one small British fleet could easily destroy the entire Chinese navy. Maybe that day will come soon, that will be the time to finally let the Chinese know who is the real center of the world. Now, the time come moves forward to 1839 in Canton. Lin Zexu and his attendants walk on the busy street in the evening one day during summer. Through the curtains he sees many people laying on the bed. Each of them has an opium pipe and enjoys the pleasant sensation that opium brings to them. In those people, Lin also saw three of them wearing military uniforms. All the opium smokers in this shop looked like “a pathetic and degenerate creature with lank and shrivelled limbs, tottering gait, sallow visage, feeble voice and death-boding glance of eye” (Newman 766). Lin shakes his head and leaves. Half a year ago, he reported to the emperor about how huge of a danger that opium could bring to the Qing empire. In his report, he mentioned that “during 1834-1835 the number of opium chests smuggled into China came to 21,885....Not only did this opium trade harm the Chinese economy by draining off Chinese silver, but it had disastrous effects on the general state of health and morale of the Chinese people”(Guan 18). He said that if the government still did not take any actions to ban opium-smoking and the opium trade, then twenty years later China will not only have no healthy troops to defend for national security but also not have enough money to support a war. From Lin's report, Emperor Daoguang finally realized how dangerous the situation he is facing was. He appointed Lin as the imperial commissioner to Canton to halt the illegal importation of opium. Lin brought troops to encircle the foreign merchants' mansion and notified them that he will cut down the water and food supply until they hand over all the opium they have. British Dent represented all the foreign merchants who want to negotiate with Lin. He tries to bribe Lin but Lin refuses. After a couple of days of being in a stalemate, the foreign merchants finally decide to give up all their opium to Lin to exchange for their freedom. However, Dent started to write a letter to his friend in the British parliament to require the British government to protect the merchants' interests. After Lin came to Canton and started to take over the task of dealing with foreigners, he realized that China already got behind in many areas compared with the West. He is anxious to find someone who knows the outside world to assist him. One day, he hears of the “Thirteen Factories”, the only official merchant organization that is allowed to do business with foreigners, has a young man who knows English and lived in Southeast Asia. He finds the young man who is Pan He and brings him to his own office to study Western culture and society from him. From Pan's mouth, Lin learned of what is a steamship, a machine, and a factory were as well as the world map. During this time, he built new cannons into the Humen fort to defend Canton. In Britain, parliament is arguing if it should or should not send troops to China to protect British interests. Finally, Dent's political contributions and Sir Mccartney's investigation reports from half a century ago pushed the government to decide to declare war on China. It is Captain William's first time to leave home to join the expedition team to China. After almost one year's sail, the British fleet with 20,000 soldiers finally arrived in China and started to attack Canton. The battle of Canton was not that successful. Lin had already prepared and effectively resisted the British navy's attack. However, he does not know that the British fleet quickly sailed to the north and appeared in Dinghai the next day and easily conquered the coastal town. After only two hours, 5000 Chinese soldiers fall in battle. William was the first to orders his team to enter Dinghai and he receives a war medal from the fleet commander. However, he found that the reason the Chinese troops lost was not because they were not brave enough, but the weapons that they had. In the war, he did not find the Chinese troops equipped with enough firearms. Their cannons could only shoot solid shells and its range was too short to reach the British battleships. After conquering Dinghai, the fleet commander decided to sail to Dagu which is the port of Beijing. He want to teach the Chinese a lesson. In Beijing, Emperor Daoguang knew that the British fleet was ready to attack Dagu port and even threatened Beijing's safety. He quickly sent a new imperial commissioner to negotiate with British troops and promise that he will heavily punish Lin. A couple of weeks later, Lin received the emperor's order which repealed his position and punished him to serve in the army at the Northwestern border. After he left, the new commissioner quickly arrested Pan and put him into prison with accusations of being a traitor. Later, his family bribed the governors and saved him. After a lot of bother, he comes to the British fleet to become an interpreter to serve British troops. William tries to avoid killing Chinese civilians but he saw many British soldiers destroying the Chinese city and robbing Chinese people during the war. He is tired of all the crimes but he can not run away from it. On August 1842, the Chinese government Representative and British commander signed the “Treat of Nanking” on the British battleship HMS Cornwallis. In this treaty, Britain successfully opened Chinese doors and also received Hong Kong as a permanent foothold as what Sir Mccartney wished. At the same time, Dent and other opium merchants got six of the twenty-one million silver indemnity as compensation for the famous confiscated chests. At the end of the film, Lin appears at the border and never has a chance to finish his dream, which was to learn from the West to strengthen China. Pan follows the British fleet back to Britain. He wants to know why this small island country could become a world factory and defeated China. Dent comes back to China and he restarts his opium business to sell more opium from India to China and makes a lot of money. William decides to quit the military then go home and marry his girlfriend. However, twenty years later, his son as a new soldier participates in the second opium war in China just like he had in 1840. As a historical and war film, this film's main theme maybe a little bit heavy for audiences. However, I think that it also because it includes too many conflicts and syncretism. Although this conflict finally arose to war between China and Britain and chanced history in this age, it did not block the cultural, social, economic, ideological and scientific exchange and syncretization. If both cultures could respect and understand each other and made a compromise, then maybe Sir Mccartney could achieve the goals that British troops had after the war. If the Chinese government and society could shrewdly perceive the changes of the world, then they may not have had that much of a technological and ideological distance when the war started. Indeed, the history did not offer too many assumptions for us. However, the history really left a huge experience to people who may have the same task that the older generation had. Today, when we are faced upon globalization and many domestic or international problems such as national debts, national security, pollution, global economic crisis and so on. We should have enough confidence to believe that we can deal with these challenges better than the older generation depending on the experiences they leave for us. I believe when nations and countries really start to respect, understand, and trust each other to start complete international cooperation to deal with all these challenges, then we really have a larger chance to create a better future and more glorious history than our older generations left us. That is what we should learn and think from history and film. Works Citeds Fay, Peter Ward. “The Opium War, 1840-1842:barbarians in the Celestial Empire in the early part of the nineteenth century and the war by which they forced her gates ajar.”Chapel Hill:University of North Carolina Press. Print. Guan, Shijie.“Chartism and the First Opium War.”History Workshop. No. 24 (Autumn, 1987):17-31. Published by: Oxford University Press. Print. Newman, R. K. “Opium Smoking in Late Imperial China: A Reconsideration.” Modern Asian Studies. Vol. 29, No. 4 (Oct.,1995):765-794. Published by: Cambridge University Press. Print.