The film Up the Yangtze is a very powerful film that explores the changes in China as change for the sake of progress comes into play. The film focuses on a girl and a boy from very different backgrounds. Yu Shui is fresh out of school with aspirations of higher education and is instead sent to work on a tourist cruise ship. The other focus is on Chen Bo Yu, a teenager who grew up with a much more luxurious style than Yu. Although we never see Chen's house, we can infer this form from the fact that we first find him buying drinks for his friends at a karaoke bar. Compared to Yu's family's shack on the riverbank, Yu lives a luxurious life. Two teenagers with two different backgrounds have been chosen to represent the changes in China within this documentary and we will explore why. The narrator of this documentary has mentioned several times how the China his grandfather once knew no longer exists. This could be caused by a normal change or rapid increase in water, but the effect is the same. If his grandfather returned to China today, there's a good chance he wouldn't recognize the place he once called home. I believe this is one of the reasons why they chose Yu and his family as the subject of this film. They demonstrate a lot of the old ways of China and much less of the new than I believe Chen's family would be. Yu's father could also be a representation of what it means for people representing China to clash with the younger generation. We could see how unhappy the young girl was when she was denied higher education and was instead sent to work. On the other hand, the boy is more like the new China with different values ​​than the ones Yu possesses. It would have been more difficult to compare these two... middle of paper... all people, "smiled, slept, had sex and had children, cried and, in the end, died." While this is true, the real differences between them cannot be explored in a world of forced smiles and censored conversations. I found it funny that they showed the side of their culture that consisted of flashy clothes and songs that tell you how easy it is to learn Chinese while the crew just smiled. Some of their families live in shabby huts on the riverbank, are beaten when they don't leave, and one shopkeeper even says that it is difficult to be an ordinary person in China. Where is that part of their culture? Below deck, in the heart of the crew. Ultimately, this is a beautiful documentary about a changing culture and the divide between older members of the old China losing touch with the new, which in many cases may be their children.