In this episode of “Red China” host Chet Huntley traces the consolidation of power by Mao Tse-tung and China’s Communist Party then gives an inside look at the country following the slowing (or collapse) of the “Great Leap Forward” courtesy of footage from Swiss photographer Fernand Gigon. Part 2 focuses on the footage Gigon captured during his 1961 visit and begins with Chet Huntley addressing the camera. Then the episode cuts to a Chinese delegation in Canada walking with Canadian officials. Footage shows rural China from the window of a train. Gigon sits on a bed in what appears to be a hotel room and discusses filming in China and how he had to smuggle his film out of the country (01:32). The episode shows Gigon’s footage, starting with shots of Canton (Guangzhou) and the hotel where Gigon stayed (02:11), followed by footage of the Pearl River, men rowing boats, and people pulling wagons loaded with wood, sacks, or cargo boxes along Canton’s streets. People stand on a sidewalk and read the People’s Party newspaper (03:09). A soldier stands amid a group of civilians. Children look through propaganda comic books (03:43). Men unload baskets of cucumbers in Canton (04:10). A man sits above the river, presumably on a sampan, eating a meal. There are more shots of the boats and what Gigon calls the “Sampan people.” At a Sampan community (most likely a Tanka community), children learn the Chinese alphabet (05:12). Due to a shortage of school buildings, some children learn outdoors. Women lift a heavy drum up a steep ramp (06:11). People stretch iron bars in a street. Footage shows people turning a hand-powered mill, and sailboats moving on the river. Gigon then shares his footage from Peking (Beijing), starting with footage taken while driving down the Avenue of Long Peace, also known as Eternal Peace Street or Chang’an Avenue (07:25). People wait in food queues. Chinese walk down a street (08:10), including women with bound feet. Men haul freight and pig iron on bicycles. Students in uniforms march into a park (09:57), where they sit for a lecture party doctrine. Young children of the Party’s upper echelons do exercises as part of their elite preschool (10:42). Men and women practice Tai chi (11:18). Supporters walk in rain (12:15), demonstrating the strength of the government during a visit by Ghana’s President Kwame Nkrumah. A man works a small vegetable plot in the middle of Peking (13:42), which is apparently private property. Gigon then shares his footage from rural communes near Wuhan. At the first commune, peasants work out in a field (15:15), apparently staged by the government; this is followed by people cultivating dry soil that is not staged. An ox turns an irrigation wheel (16:37). Additional footage shows a man plowing a field with an ox-drawn plow, another man stacking melons (17:30), and women spraying insecticide on crops in a field. The episode cuts back to Gigon, who sits in the room and gives his overall assessment of his visit to China and the real state of the Chinese people (19:05). Huntley then addresses the camera about the end of the “Great Leap Forward.” The episode concludes with footage of soldiers marching (21:58), people turning a massive wheel for a pump or mill, and people moving snow on the side of a mountain as they build a road or railway (presumably to Tibet).
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
