Gender roles are established (and go against type) very
early in The Story of Qiu Ju. The titular character first appears with her
sister-in-law as they search for medical care for her husband, Qinglai, who has
been injured by the village chief, Wang.
The result of a dispute over the construction of a shed on public land,
Qinglai and Wang’s verbal attacks on each other become personal, the former
mocking the latter on his inability to produce a proper male heir. At this the chief takes great offense and physically
beats Qinglai, a chile farmer, thus incapacitating him by, among other things,
kicking him in the groin. In this manner
Qiu Ju’s husband becomes emasculated, figuratively and nearly-literally, as he
is unable to provide for his family or even save face in what becomes a
prolonged conflict.
One might
argue that much of Qinglai’s emasculation is exacerbated by Qiu Ju’s insistence
on justice, or at least her idea of
justice. After repeated settlements
mediated by the village, district, and city justice systems, Qiu Ju is still
not satisfied with any of their decisions, all of which center on money for her
husband’s medical bills and lost wages at the expense of Wang. What she really wants is an apology from the
village chief, or at least an acknowledgement that he is in the wrong. Qiu Ju’s
active pursuit of justice contrasts sharply with her husband’s increased apathy,
though. He ultimately becomes so tired
of her crusade that he tells her, “Go, and don’t come back!” when she makes her
second trip to the city. While some
interpret her tenacity as characteristically female, albeit in an unflattering,
stereotypical way, Qiu Ju fits the mold of a Nietzschean tragic hero (pre-Socratic), at once demanding
justice but also standing firm in “defiant belief” as an opponent of this
story’s version of the all-powerful: the state.
Qiu Ju has
a “double essence,” a “simultaneously Apolline and Dionysiac nature.” On one hand she demands justice or some
semblance of it, either through an actual apology by Wang or a court statement
declaring his fault. Like the Aeschylean
tendency to justice, however, Qiu Ju’s quest requires a certain amount of
suffering, even the possibility of “limitless suffering,” to accomplish its
ends. Other characters surely question
the benefit-to-harm ratio of her continual struggle for justice. Let’s
move on is the common refrain heard from Wang, Officer Li, and her
husband. Giving up the fight would end
the suffering, at least in the short term, but her fight is not just for Qinglai
and herself; they have a baby on the way.
Aside from all matters related to Wang and Qinglai’s dispute, Qiu Ju is
bringing a child into a world full of suffering; in particular, a poor, rural,
not-far-from-feudal community in which citizens endure hard labor for not much
money in primitive conditions with few resources. She is, in a way, like Prometheus, in her
awareness of life’s inevitable suffering.
Take Goethe’s Prometheus, for example, and substitute Qiu Ju, her
opposition of the state, and her knowledge of the world in which her son or
daughter will live:
“Here I sit, forming men
In my own image,
A race to be like me,
To suffer and to weep,
To know delight and joy
And heed you not,
Like me!”
Life is full of suffering no matter what, but to submit to
an unsatisfying decision would be to falsely believe that justice has been
served.
Like
Prometheus fighting against gods he cannot possibly defeat, Qiu Ju fights
against the all-powerful state. It is
not until she hears of the city’s decision that she realizes whom her enemy
is. From the moment she files the first
complaint to Officer Li until the moment the city’s decision is erroneously
sent to Wang, Qiu Ju considers the state to be an ally, always seemingly
helping her in her plight yet masking their insincerity with a dose of
condescension. Recognition of the
state’s true motives occurs when she discovers the city’s first decision and
decides to continue her fight; she finally takes off her coat in which she has
been bundled from the beginning of the film, thus breaking her long-held, but
increasingly tenuous, red
associations.
Somewhat hesitantly, her
battle now is with the state, represented by the Director, whom she still considers
a “nice man.” Circumstances alter the
opposition in her conflict when Wang saves Qiu Ju and her baby’s lives during a
complicated birth. Grateful and eager to
forgive, Qiu Ju invites Wang to a celebration one month later. Unfortunately, Wang cannot attend because the
police are on their way to arrest him, with new evidence of Qinglai’s injuries
retroactively upgrading the charges against him. When Qiu Ju hears the sirens, she runs and
she runs and she does not stop, but the film does.
Qiu Ju
realizes that Wang is no longer the enemy; he never really was. The state has failed Qiu Ju, as it had many
others who lived through the initial hope and subsequent disappointment of the
Cultural Revolution. In a society that
prides itself on community, Qiu Ju, heroically individualistic, “must suffer
for the fact of [her] individuation.”
Though far different in status from the students who protested at
Tiananmen Square just a few years earlier, she has the same desire: namely, to
be heard. Nietzsche, while possibly
having qualms about the supposed masculine characteristics of the tragic
Dionysiac figure represented in a woman, would be proud of Qiu Ju’s subversive
stubbornness, for he says, “Humanity achieves the best and highest of which it
is capable by committing an offence and must in turn accept the consequences of
this, namely the whole flood of suffering and tribulations which the offended
heavenly powers must in turn visit
upon the human race as it strives nobly toward higher things.”
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