Just perfect...

Best movie ever!

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Chinese Canadian filmmaker Yung Chang joins a cruise up the Yangtze River carrying Canadian tourists. The river settlements are set to be flooded by The Three Gorges Dam. The tour shows the orderly move but the film also shows some of the locals struggling. Along with the ghost cities, the Yu family is about to be flooded from the river shore where they squeeze out a living growing food. The daughter Yu Shui wants to continue her education but the family has no money. She gets a job on the cruise and given the English name Cindy. She suffers home sickness. Another new worker Chen Bo Yu is given the name Jerry. He's a higher placed peasant who sees the cruise as a cash cow. The two new workers strike different paths culminating in a surprise ending.This is a nice slice of life. The best thing that a documentary like this can do is to bring a different world to the audience. It shows our common humanity while keeping the individual personal stories. The two young people are very compelling and their changing world is fascinating. This is a movie at a personal level against a backdrop of an important time of change in China.

Economic miracle or environmental disaster, the Three Gorges Dam in China has been the source of considerable debate. This movie ignores all of that and explores the social implications of the project. From the peasant farmer who wants to understand electricity but doesn't to the brash young capitalist giddy with new money from free-spending western tourists, the film poignantly documents the upheaval that has been going on in China over the last decade. One has to wonder how much change China can handle. The twenty-first century has been called the Chinese century as the twentieth century was the American century. However, as I write this there is a global recession that has even slowed Chinese growth. Yet there is concern that change is coming too quickly for China anyway. As always, time will tell. In the meantime we have this film to remind us of what is at stake.

Saw it after seeing the bill board of a spectacular image of row boats in a steep and narrow gorge, and thinking it was going to be a beautifully-landscaped documentary, was looking forward for it with great expectations. Turned out to be a dud: it was slow, with many almost-still images. On the other hand, it was interesting to see the personalities of the workers on the ship. But the scenes of the shack along the river, the carrying of furniture and belongings, and the river rising, were just to "classic" documentary style, and just too boring (leave those for public television). I guess, what I am trying to say, when making a documentary, think about addressing an audience of 17-year old. Put some jazzy stuff in it, move it a bit, make it more dynamic. Ironically, this documentary's audience, the mid-aged good-feeling fellas in their mid-50's, is the same population profile that fits the Canadian and American tourists to the boats as shown in the documentary. Maybe they should give copies of this documentary to the tourists...

I would consider this to be a perfect documentary for its technique and narration.The movie's account of the massive three-gorges project is quite detailed. But without letting viewers loose attention to its subject, the movie takes us through the history of China, the paradoxes of its "modern" path of development and even the myths and goddesses associated with the river. The movie aptly exposes and questions the "tourist" nature of our own interests in the vast orient unveiled to us. The satire in the film (which may not be all non-fictional) is sharp and quite funny. Overall, the story telling is so fluid that it may feel to be a fictional account altogether.Like any other documentary this is a movie replete with the accounts of lives of the people associated with the project. However this movie accomplishes much more by reevaluating our own ideas of economic development; by showing us the two sides of it – fulfillment of a dream of progress and loss of an environment that constitutes the being.Lastly, owing not just to the country of landscapic beauty that china is, there are some captivating shots in the movie that stay in memory long after the movie is over.