Reviews

Han Zhang

On Jia Zhangke

The earliest trips I remember taking were to my maternal grandparents’ house. It was the mid-’90s; I couldn’t have been more than 3 or 4 years old. My parents and I lived in an apartment in Nanjing, the provincial capital. Grandpa and Grandma lived in a small town north of where the Yangtze River meets the Pacific Ocean. They had a yard that wrapped around their one-story house. Using their bathroom was stressful — it was located behind the main house, and to get there I had to pass a chicken coop. I found the feathered and beaked things, which roamed around anxiously, a little menacing. There was a lanky tree in front of the house where the family cat often took refuge to escape my zealous efforts to capture it. During the New Year holiday, neighbors and relatives crowded around a large table for a feast lubricated by liquor and laughter. A low coal-burning stove stood by the door, topped by a large aluminum pot with steaming food, radiating warmth. On one such occasion, I got up from my seat without anyone noticing and walked the perimeter of the room behind the guests. There was barely any space. As I approached the door, I lost my balance and sat directly on the pot. A big fuss ensued. I was carried to a bed where long johns had to be carefully peeled off my legs.

For years this funny little episode lay dormant in some dark valley of my mind. It’s a memory that has no obvious consequence or value. I don’t remember the pain and claim no trauma from it. It’s the kind of detail from life that doesn’t contribute to the GDP and carries no significance in geopolitics. I’m now a grown woman with a job in New York City. The adults in that room have aged, put on weight, struggled with cholesterol and blood pressure, settled into retirement. Grandpa died six years ago. The memory jolted into wakefulness only when I attended a screening of Jia Zhangke’s 2024 film Caught by the Tides,his tenth feature.

Jia, one of China’s most acclaimed directors, has been exploring the physical and emotional residue of contemporary China’s many rapid transformations for nearly three decades. Beginning in the late 1990s, he developed a cinematic language indebted to auteurs like Antonioni and Ozu, and radically forthright about the dusty provincial spaces, gritty towns, and small cities where globalization was beginning to take hold.