I saw this last night at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival, and I enjoyed it immensely, not only because I've been to that region of China but also because it points out the upside and downside of China's rush to modernize.

The movie uses the story of a family displaced by the Three Gorges Dam to illustrate some of these contradictions. Teenage Yu Shui wants to go to high school, but her family, displaced from the soon-to-be-submerged city of Fengdu, is living in a shanty and subsisting by growing vegetables and doing day labor. Her illiterate parents believe that their only hope for some economic stability is Yu Shui taking a job on one of the riverboats that offers luxury cruises to foreigners.

She grudgingly agrees--there's no money to pay for high school, which is not free in China. She hates her first job as dishwasher, and the scenes on the boat are surreal. The Chinese employees are all given English names and instructed on how to talk to the foreigners, who are fed a cynical fairy tale version of China.

For example, the foreigners are taken on a shore excursion to see a housing development that is supposed to be for the people displaced by the dam. It looks like an American suburban townhouse development, but we've just seen interviews of villagers complaining that only people who can pay bribes to the corrupt officials get decent property settlements, and that those who complain are beaten by thugs.

Yu Shui's family is one of the unlucky ones. When even their shanty is flooded (we watch it disappear), they move into a concrete box that looks like a garage, with about the same size and comfort. The parents complain that life will be harder, since they'll no longer be able to grow their own vegetables or drink water straight from the (yuck) river.

In 1990, I visited Chongqing, which looked like a pile of old buildings on the banks of the Yangtze. It was decrepit, neglected, and old-fashioned (not in a delightful, charming way, but in a squalid way) compared with what I had seen in other cities of China. In the documentary, one of Yu Shui's coworkers takes her clothes shopping in an upscale shopping district with neon lights and fashionable boutiques. Since the narration says nothing about which city they're in, I searched the images for clues and was astonished to see the characters for "Chongqing" in several of them. What a change in only 18 years.

In the beginning, one of Yu Shui's coworkers, a spoiled rich kid who is eventually fired for his arrogance and smarmy attitude toward the passengers, tells a joke about China's economy:

The Chinese Communist Party chairman and the president of the United States were riding in a chauffeured limousine when they came to the came to an intersection. There was a sign pointing to the right that said, "Capitalism." There was another sign pointing to the left that said, "Socialism."

The Chinese Party chairman turned to the president and said, "Which way should we turn?"

The U.S. president said, "Right, of course."

So the Chinese Party chairman said to the driver, "Go right, but put on the left turn signal."

A lot of people in the theater laughed, as I did. I guess they must be the people who know something about China.