Forum Eerste Wereldoorlog

[Tandorini]

"History is nothing but a pack of tricks we play on the dead."
— Voltaire

China first emerged into international affairs on its road to becoming a world power in the First World War. However its emergence is in the forgotten story of an unlikely group of Chinese peasants who were sent to an imperialist war they didn’t understand.

In the years following the 1911 Xinhai revolution in China the country was in a fractious and fragile state. The First World War erupted in 1914 and by 1916 British, French and Chinese states had made agreements to send 140,000 Chinese labourers to the battlefields of Europe. 85,000 of this newly formed Chinese Labour Corps were secretly transported across Canada in locked trains in the largest mass migration in Canadian history. They were then shipped to Europe where thousands died but until recently remained largely unacknowledged. So the question of this unusual journey still remains today: "What were the Chinese doing in Europe in the First World War?"

Zhang Yan, a young Chinese history student from the same Shandong villages as the Chinese labourers in WWI, sets out to answer this question and find out what really happened to the men of the Chinese Labour Corps. Discovering clues from the diary of Chinese interpreter Gu Xingqing, Zhang Yan travels across three continents to reconnect Chinese families to their deceased ancestors and meets with descendants and scholars along the way. Entering a world and history cloaked in politics, racism and misinformation about the Chinese experience in WWI, Zhang Yan must piece together this history in order to restore the collective memory of those in his Shandong community and around the world who have largely forgotten the men who made this journey 100 years ago.

http://rareearthmedia.com/

trailer: https://vimeo.com/139532011

[renny]

Interessant ! ben benieuwd. er is inderdaad weinig over bekend.

[AOK4]

[renny]

Dat is mooi , bedankt voor de tips ! het leuke aan dit boek is dat het vanuit chinees oogpunt is geschreven als ik het goed begrijp, dat geeft weer een heel andere kijk op de gebeurtenissen....

[AOK4]

[renny]

je hebt gelijk oeps... niet goed gelezen duizend maal excuus !