Coastside Film Society to screen a documentary about how modernization is affecting Chinese culture

Missing Home -The Last Days of Beijing Hutongs

Fri, Aug 1st at 7:30
Coastside Senior Housing
925 Main Street
Half Moon Bay, CA
Admission: $5

Hutongs, which date to the Yuan Dynasty (1206-1341), have long been regarded as the heart and soul of Beijing. These ancient communities chock-a-block with family homes and crammed with countless small shops and restaurants are now disappearing at a prodigious rate as Beijing modernizes.

Weimin Zhang grew up in a Hutong. She remembers it as a wonderful world where all the adults treated all the neighborhood kids as members of an extended family. She left to attend the Beijing Film Academy and to get her masters at Ohio University.

While Zhang was away becoming a famous director the government tore down her Hutong home to make way for a modern high rise. It was a shock that got her to start work on a documentary about the Hutong way of life. Can China balance the preservation of culturally & historically significant traditions and sites, while building a global city? That’s the real topic of this film.

Director Weimin Zhang has recently taken a post at the Film School at San Francisco State and will attend the screening and take questions from the audience about her movie, her memories of growing up in her Hutong home and to discuss with us the effect that modernization is having on the Chinese people.

More info at Coastside Film Society