One Saturday morning early last month, a very small group of people gathered in the top floor of Beijing's Scholar Bookstore to view a short film. It was a condensed, 90-minute version of Sisters, a 20-part television documentary which ran on Chinese TV for much of last year.
Sisters, which drew a larger audience than any television drama, is one of the highest-grossing documentaries in Chinese TV history. It follows the lives of two sisters as they struggle to run a hair salon, each raising a young daughter and dealing with distant or dysfunctional men.
Reality shows of this sort have become more popular on Chinese television, although most exposes of lower-middle-class woe are hopelessly lurid. Middle-school students confess from behind frosted glass to the 'unnatural desires' interfering with their schoolwork, and mothers turn tear-streaked faces to the camera and implore their runaway children to come home. By comparison, Sisters looks like a doctoral thesis in sociology.
After the screening, director Li Jinghong and a small entourage relocate to a crawfish dive on a backstreet. Present are several co-workers and crew members, as well as Zhang Hua, one of the film's eponymous sisters. Zhang has decided to swap hairdressing for documentary filmmaking, and her first work is in post-production. Li, who has partaken of an unaccustomed bottle of liquor, is praising Zhang's film to the skies.
'It's a heartbreaking story, just heartbreaking,' he declares. 'The family is a total wreck; every one of them has major psychological problems; and the father is so cold, so remote. He's never even smiled at his children. At the end of the film the daughter turns to her father and says, 'would you smile for me, just once?'' As Li speaks, Zhang is looking at her hands.
'His reply is, 'If I smiled for you now, it would be false. Even these muscles would be false',' says Li. 'Can you believe it? That he could say that? 'Even these muscles would be false.' It's just heartbreaking!' Li repeats the line, pounding the table with feeling. He is a large man with stringy, unkempt hair and ferocious-looking teeth, and he is drawing looks from neighbouring tables.