Not One Less

13-year old Wei (Wei Minzhi) has just shown up at a poor, remote and barren Chinese farming village on the foothills of a mountain. She is there to substitute teach in the local primary school for one month. Nobody--including us, the audience of "Not One Less"--expects much. Our expectations are diminished on two levels. We consider it unlikely that an untrained youngster could educate a roomful of unruly students just a few years younger than herself. Also, we consider it unlikely that a feature film based on such a situation and using a non-professional cast can entertain. Director Zhang Yimou, best known for ambitious period dramas like "Raise the Red Lantern," takes such modest material and transforms it into a powerful neo-realist story that evokes the larger drama unfolding in Chinese society.

"Not One Less," second cousin to other recent neo-realist works such as the Brazilian "Central Station" and the American "La Ciudad," is an advocate for the victims of the global economic transformation some call "neoliberalism." Poor rural folk, who are losers in the free-market lottery society, have to eke out a living on the margins of bustling urban centers. Their only hope is to find a way to crack into the successful inner circle of the city folk. The neo-realist genre of today questions whether such a pursuit is really worth it.

The movie's title derives from an informal contract between the school's regular teacher and Wei. After he returns from his one month leave of absence, she will be paid 57 yuan. But only if every student is still in attendance. Not only is he parsimonious with the wage contract, he also doles out supplies with an eye-dropper. He counts out 26 pieces of chalk, one for each day of the month excluding Sundays. Since the one room school is falling apart at the seams, we understand that the teacher has no alternative. As we might expect, a form of "TINA" has found its way into the nooks and crannies of Chinese socialist society. If a poor farming village can not provide commodities for the world market, why would we expect a classroom to reflect anything different from the surrounding poverty?

As he spells out her duties, it is clear that she is barely up to the task. Since she doesn't know the first thing about teaching, the best she can do is copy lessons from the teacher's textbook on the blackboard--making sure not to exceed her chalk ration for that day. After she has finished transcribing the words, the students will then dutifully enter them into their composition books. He reminds her that since the chalk is so precious, she should be careful not to waste it. She should write large enough so that the students can see the characters on the board, but not too large. Pointing to the barnyard outside the schoolroom, he says that the size of a donkey turd is just about right. Wei asks the teacher when she should dismiss the students each day. Since there is no clock in the schoolroom, he explains that the day ends when the setting sun falls upon a pole at one end of the room. What if it is overcast? Then send them home early.

For the first few days, as we might expect, chaos rules in the classroom. After Wei has finished transcribing a lesson on the board, she closes the door on the students like a jailer and sits on the front stoop playing with her fingers. Only when they begin to run wild, she goes back into the schoolroom and tries to restore order.

The most disruptive student is Zhang (Zhang Huike), a boy who enjoys being the class clown and defying Wei. What he does not realize is that Wei is as strong-willed as him and will not allow him to have his way. The relationship between these two characters shapes the narrative of the film, especially when Zhang is forced to leave school and go to the city to find work. Although he has made things rough for her in the classroom, she needs to track him down in the city and bring him back to the school because of the "not one less" contract. But it is not just money that motivates her. She understands that a young child on his own has little chance of survival in the city.

Getting to the city is no easy task since she lacks the money for bus fare. Her students have now begun to rally around her and pledge to help raise the necessary funds. Accompanied by them like the Pied Piper, she marches off to a nearby brick factory the village where they hope to make some money moving bricks from one place to another. The wages, as you would expect, are meager. This scene evokes the scene in "La Ciudad," where Latino workers spend an entire day in the rubble of demolished buildings cleaning bricks. As in "La Ciudad" there is a struggle to get a sufficient wage. Wei and the students bicker with the factory owner after their job is done--done without his knowledge or permission in fact--to get him to fork over the yuans necessary to pay her bus fare.

Haggling over money is a persistent theme throughout the film and the director Zhang leaves no doubt as to his disgust with the cash nexus overtaking China. It is difficult to think of another film in recent history which features so many scenes involving struggles over fees, wages, prices and debts. It is reminiscent in some ways of a Balzac novel, which inevitably depicts the denizens of Paris involved in similar haggling. 19th century Paris, like the cities being transformed in China today, are battlegrounds over the most universal of commodities: money.

When Wei arrives in the city, she begins her search in the railroad station. Like the "Central Station" in the Brazilian film, this central station is filled with the poor and the displaced. It is used as a bedroom and bathroom for people who have no other place to go. It is also a magnet for youngsters who are either begging or stealing to survive. Wei's search begins here but she soon ends up walking up and down the streets of the city, appearing as forlorn and as displaced as the Latinos in "La Ciudad." Her encounters with the impatient and money-driven urban dwellers do not deter her, however. This young woman who will not cry uncle symbolizes the peasant roots of the Chinese revolution, which the director Zhang has not lost sight of. Even when she forgets the words to the militant Maoist Chinese national anthem, there is no question as to her class instincts.

Reviewers of "Not One Less" have dwelled on what is considered an artificial happy ending, which they view as a token to government pressure. To make a film that was uncompromisingly bleak, they argue, is impossible in today's China where the hostile economic forces being depicted in the film have official government sanction.

This is a facile view as one might expect from critics in an imperialist country that is responsible for the economic contradictions that forced China to retreat from socialism in the first place. When a major Hollywood studio bankrolls a film like "La Ciudad," then these critics might have stronger grounds for such sanctimonious criticisms. In the meantime, there is much that socialists can take heart from in "Not One Less." It is a sign that the embers of social justice have not been extinguished in China. For as long as directors like Zhang Yimou are given a platform in China, there is evidence that the revolutionary spirit has not been vanquished.