A Young Patriot

When he began his latest film, Chinese documentarian Du Haibin intended to investigate the psychology of patriotism with a study of Zhao Chantong, a 19-year-old Maoist zealot hailing from the northern city of Pingyao. Instead, the filmmaker’s intimate portrait of five tumultuous years in the young man’s life is an insightful and fascinating insider’s glimpse of a rapidly changing China. In the beginning, young Zhao’s fervent nationalism is so energetic that he marches around town in a Red Army uniform, singing and waving the Chinese flag, to the amusement of locals. But after a few years of school in the Sichuan capital Chengdu, the hard armor of his patriotism begins to crack. As a scene in a Mao-themed restaurant reveals, the long past era of the Cultural Revolution now has a kitschy appeal as China marches forward with one-party capitalism. When a government-sponsored reclamation project threatens the well being of Zhao’s elderly grandparents. Zhao’s bitterness and sense of betrayal grow, along with the gradual and demoralizing realization that he and his family are being left behind in the new Asian century. Haibin’s film makes personal an era of radical and unprecedented transformation.—Gustavus Kundahl