Out of Phoenix Bridge

Li Hong 1997

What kind of gaze?

"If they would have come in last night, we would all be dead."

The camera witnessing cruel encounters:

Giving voice/Giving pleasure?

In the accounts of rural women workers in contemporary China we can see traces of 'speaking bitterness'. So many of them speak with bitterness and resentment about the ways in which they are looked down upon by urbanites, and the ways in which they are exploited and treated with contempt by their employers. Their discourse, indeed their consciousness of exploitation and injustice is learnt, to some extent, from the Maoist past. But whereas 'speaking bitterness' was once accepted, indeed cultivated by the state, these women's words now seem much more like the more traditional form of public voicing out against, and perhaps a calling to account of, a state and society that treats them with contempt. Thus, judging from their responses, it seemed that many of the women interviewed and filmed understood the process not only as an extraction of information from them, but also as a rare and welcome opportunity for them to tell their story; their version of history.

Jacka, Tamara and Josko Petkovic. “Ethnography and Video: Researching Women in China’s Floating Population.” Intersections (Sept. 1998)

Proximity/Distance of Perspective