RIPPLES by Benoit Lelievre offers a cogent interpretation of their lifes by some women who have spent several years in Yiwu City in the Zhejiang Province of China settling there coming from the landlocked Xinjiang autonomous Uyghur province where Uyghurs and Han Chinese live together.
Also popular as a foreign tourist destination it has lately drawn international media attention to its cotton industry boycott by some Western countries. These women migrated to Yiwu from distant Xinjiang areas to establish themselves there. They share in this short documentary their success stories but also concerns prompted by the decline of cotton sales from China which accounts for 85% of all cotton grown in China and 25% of global cotton exports. From their stories viewers learn that these women have become part of a comfortable middle class and that their achievements were due to hard work. Aman Shaban, a business woman, spent an unsettling summer, but ships discounted cloth merchandise do needy individuals. She learns from her cotton growing father that cotton mills have closed and that he hardly makes money because prices have dropped from 2020 on the beginning of the boycott. A restaurant owner started impoverished in Yiwu 7years ago and as a widow could give her three children an education leading to professions. She was able to develop her business even though her husband died. Working as a health coach Guli Bexremu speaks about misconceptions about Xinjiang by fellow students in her studies but added that there were no visible tensions between the Han and the Uyghur groups in Yiwu, Aman Shaban had the same.
Radio and television news stress foreign countries’ role in accusing China of employing Uyghurs as slave laborers in the cotton fields, a claim rejected by the women listening to them. Their interpretation is backed up by film clips documenting highly mechanized cotton farming with few visible workers. What also transpired in a comment is the widely spread Chinese opinion that the false assessment of their country is spread by the United States and other Western countries but few Asian ones. This assessment is a defensive reaction to China’s rapid rise as a global competitive power.
Ripples is an appealing short film because it reveals the everyday private and work life of these women and their concerns in a convincing way.
Claus mueller
10.11.2021 | Ripples's blog