Filmed in the village of "Long Bow" in the northern Chinese province of Shanxi in the early 1980s,
Small Happiness is a beautiful, useful, striking, and memorable film. Filmmaker and narrator Carma Hinton, daughter of China scholar William Hinton who authored two books about the Long Bow village, spent much of her childhood in China. Her long-standing relationship with the people of Long Bow may account for her excellent rapport with the subjects of the film, and their willingness to speak on camera with such warmth, honesty, and candor about painful and important times of their lives.
One of several excellent films about Long Bow, Small Happiness focuses on village women and the vast changes they have experienced in the course of their lives. We meet several charming old women who remember with sadness, anger, grace and humor, the difficulties they faced in their youth when their feet were bound and they had to crawl on their knees in pain to the outhouse, how they met their husbands for the first time on their wedding day, and how they were kept in the house at the beck and call of their mothers-in-law. Applauding changes since the revolution, and criticizing as "old feudals" the husbands, parents, and in-laws who oppressed them, older women tell us how different life is today, and how much easier young women now have it.
Although we learn of many ways in which women's lives have improved--for example, foot binding is no longer practiced, young people have a say in whom they marry, divorce is permitted, and health care is much better--women's tales tell of a situation that is still far from "equal." Filmed during the early stage of decollectivization in Long Bow, we see how men opt for factory work or work in the city and leave much of the agricultural work, housework and tedious and lower paid work to women. Women face a double burden as they are responsible for the household work as well as for work outside the home. With regard to family planning, young women are often in a double bind, caught between state restrictions that promote fewer children and husbands and in-laws who demand at least one son. As one woman tells us, women are sterilized rather than men, because "if a woman's health is ruined, it doesn't matter as much since she stays home anyway." Many villagers still believe that a son is a "big happiness" and a daughter a "small happiness," since daughters move away after marriage and boys remain in the household and maintain the patrilineal line of descent. Decollectivization has further reinscribed the value of boys for rural households, since they are also viewed as an important source of labor.
The film is filled with provocative lines and memorable scenes revolving around marriage, birth, children, and work. At a wedding ceremony we see a young bride reluctantly kowtow with her husband as the names of his kin are read aloud. While making noodles, a middle-aged woman grumbles that when her children are naughty and won't listen to her she tells them "too bad birth control came too late for you!" An older woman tearfully tells us how she was sold to her husband, and of the famine and starvation long ago that led to the infanticide of her newborn son. Another remembers her in-laws criticizing her big feet, teasing "the person hasn't shown up yet, and her two feet have already arrived!" A group of unmarried young women speak of the dismal conditions in the village saw-blade-polishing factory where they work, and they describe subtle means by which they attempt to bring about better conditions. The factory hires women, according to the manager, because "men are too strong and can't sit still for that long. They can't stand the confinement."
Although students are often drawn to the more dramatic images of bound feet, the kowtowing bride, and the topics of infanticide and family planning, the film deals with these topics in such a balanced and sensitive way that we view such practices within a wider historical and cultural context. The film allows viewers to identify important changes that have taken place in Chinese women's lives since the revolution, and to think about the attitudes of different generations of women. Extremely rich, entertaining, and informative, despite the fact that it was filmed over a decade ago, Small Happiness remains a wonderful resource for a wide range of high school or university classes dealing with Chinese culture, Chinese history, world cultures, social studies, gender, kinship, or anthropology.
