San

In Shanghai, a schoolgirl in the rain is vainly trying to mend her umbrella, then gives up and rushes head-down across the avenue. When you have an umbrella it’s better to stay under it, rather than beside it, in the middle and not to one side. Here the umbrella is a symbol of the country’s phenomenal growth of wealth, the profi ts of which are supposed to flow down to all of its population, but which actually leave a good many out in the cold, primarily the peasant class, which is the corner stone of traditional society. San recounts this gold rush in five tableaux, that correspond to the “five strata” defined by official sociology: a factory in Guangdong province where male and female workers paid at piece rate, on a round-the-clock production line make umbrellas for a salary of around 800 yuan (80 euro); a shopping mall in Zhejiang province, where a family generously compensated for the sale of their land runs an umbrella shop, while other country girls struggle to earn one yuan (10 centimes) by polishing rich customers’ shoes; a vocational school in Shanghai, where there is a rush to enrol for training that offers no guarantee of work, as the competition is so tough, while families ruin themselves paying the fees; a Popular Liberation Army barracks; and a village in Henan, where an old farmer is facing drought and risks losing his wheat crop: the youngsters now live in town and come back less and less to help with the harvesting, while the cost of seed, pesticides and machinery has become so high, he can no longer make ends meet. (Yann Lardeau)