Aftershock

An American friend of mine told me about a Chinese movie available on Netflix "Aftershock", and said that he could not finish it because it was quite tragic. I looked it up and realized that I had heard about it before. It was made by the mainstream Chinese director Feng Xiaogang about the 1976 earthquake in Tangshan, China. In fact, I still vaguely remember it, as it affected Beijing as well. I recall being carried downstairs in the middle of the night. My mom told me that the buildings were shaking so hard that it was almost impossible to walk down the stairs. I suppose that were the tremors any bigger, the buildings would have collapsed and none of us would have survived.

Feng Xiaogang's real-life wife Xu Fan played a mother that lost her husband in the earthquake. She also had to choose between her twins when the rescue workers told her that only one of them could be saved from underneath some rubble. She finally picked the son, a decision that haunted her for the rest of her life. She kept saying to her son that only after you lost something do you understand what loss is like. It sounds simple, but it rings so true.

My mom just left to go back to Beijing after a two-month stay here. This time, I was really sad to see her go. While we have always been close, it has not been without heated arguments between the two of us. However, on this recent visit, we got along fabulously well, partly because we both got to appreciate having each other, and ignoring each other's imperfections. I also see a lot of my mom in myself, ranging from simple habits to personality traits, even though fundamentally we are really different people.

Indeed, we do not need any disasters leading to tragic loss to understand the importance of having something or someone. The movie might have been too stereotypical of a tearjerker, but the message is nonetheless valuable.