Plastic China documentary focuses on human impact of imported waste
Wang Jiuliang’s Plastic China follows the lives of two families who struggle to survive in a wasteland of refuse shipped from overseas, taking a micro approach to expose the larger problems at play
Many Hongkongers will be familiar with the environmental effects of industrialisation on the mainland. But this 2016 documentary by director Wang Jiuliang, which is set in a small factory that reprocesses imported plastics, takes an up-close-and-personal look at the situation rather than a broad investigative view.
Plastic China’s portrait of a migrant worker and his family, and the factory’s ambitious owner, is touching and saddening, and puts a human face on the problems caused by China’s rush to embrace capitalism. The film also provides rare insight into what it’s like to work at the bottom end of a booming economy.
Wang is something of a social activist when it comes to waste and pollution. His 2011 film, Beijing Besieged by Waste, was the result of a three-year odyssey documenting unregulated landfills on the outskirts of the capital. Plastic China is the result of an 18-month sojourn at a plastics recycling factory in Shandong province, during which Wang lived, and even worked, alongside the factory boss and his sole employee.
The film is engaging in that its situation is embedded with drama. Yi Jie, the young daughter of the worker, spends her days sorting the plastic that’s been shipped from abroad, which is then shredded and reprocessed for recycling. Intelligent and creative, Yi Jie learns about the world through the items she discovers in the mountains of rubbish that form her daily workload. In one heartbreaking scene, she finds a computer mouse and constructs a machine from cardboard to go with it.