The Great Wall Is a Great Wall

The movie is a good concept with amateur / poor execution. But the scenes -- on the street, in the hotongs, courtyards, and streets of Beijing are just amazing. Beijing today is an amazing metropolis, and in this movie, in 1986, it has more the feeling of an overgrown village. you get somewhat unintentional glimpses of poverty and poorly maintained infrastructure -- Beijing in 2006 is far more cosmopolitan in places, with both much greater energy and wealth than you will see here and also more filth and poverty. The cultural notes are mostly still relevant, though the rampant capitalism, scheming and vitality of today's BJ make for a very different city. the Beijing of this movie is as lost as the "LA" of Chinatown (the movie) circa 1930's..... so as history and culture lesson the movie is a 10. 'the world of Susie Wong' works as both history and movie; this one is just good history!

The first American movie filmed in Mainland China presents a mild but occasionally diverting clash of cultures following the reunion in Peking of a thoroughly westernized Chinese-American family from San Francisco with their Old World relatives. The comedy catalogues the bewilderment of host and guest alike when confronted by peculiar foreign customs, with the best laughs coming from the People's republic point of view: students singing 'Papa Rawdi' (Pavarotti) and reciting, in unique pidgin, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address; an old man coping with the electric blanket presented as a gift by his American brother-in-law; the question of whether or not everyone in the United States has VD. The Western perspective is less interesting only because it's more familiar (football, rock 'n' roll, and so forth) but everyone benefits from the mutual exposure, including the audience.

there are some really good constructive criticism for China and these includes problems that are common in the contemporary Chinese society, such as cutting in in front other people in the line of waiting and disrespect to privacy. Economic progress alone is not enough to make a modern society and this is the greatest contribution of this movie behind its stories.