To Live: Life Under Mao

During the 1950s, life was very much changing for the people of China. As the movie To Live documents the series of events in perfect fashion, it paints the picture to how extremist the communist party truly were. For Mao it was the beginning of a new revolution and a new system of change and equality, but for the most part the prosperity of the land as a whole. The 'Great Leap Forward' as Mao planned, was going to change the economy, but not gradual growth, rather, the plan needed to materialize within a ridiculous time. The backyard steel campaign as we see in the movie was a good example to Mao's plan. Fugui an average class man and his family are donating their iron utensils, anything they could find to please the country's plan to a mass production of steel. In turn this donation also spurred their interest to as the movie quotes 'liberate Taiwan', they would take all donated iron and make bullets out of them. Later the movie showed us how life was like in a commune, since the communes were set up so that nothing would distract the people from their tiresome commitment of labor, eating halls were set up. The eating halls would reduce the amount of people spending time cooking meals, in the movie you can see that they all sat together, often cramped together with their families. During Mao's rule I get the feeling that life wasn't easy, you had to be selfless, you needed hope that one day your family generation would only live to see the scarifies that were made.