Capturing an epic journey

Helen Fitzwilliam finds the topic of Chinese workers in World War I like a mythical story, similar to the journey of the Greek king Odysseus in Homer's heroic poems.

"Here they go on a journey thousands of miles away and they encounter money, dangers and horrors, and yet they come away with the most extraordinary experience. I felt very emotionally attached to this story," Fitzwilliam said.

Fitzwilliam, an independent filmmaker, has produced a 10-minute documentary about the story, which was commissioned by London think tank Chatham House. To accompany the film, she also wrote an article for The World Today, Chatham House's in-house publication.

Helen Fitzwilliam, an independent filmmaker, has produced a 10-minute  documentary about Chinese workers in World War I. CECILY LIU / CHINA DAILY

The project took Fitzwilliam to Ypres, where the In Flanders Fields Museum held an exhibition in 2010 about Chinese workers in World War I. She also interviewed scholars and descendants of the Chinese workers to find out the truth.

About 140,000 Chinese workers were sent to the Western Front to help with the Allied war effort during World War I. They dug trenches, uploaded military cargo in the docks, worked in railway yards and factories and collected corpses for burial. More than 2,000 died doing the work.

Most of the Chinese workers accepted the job voluntarily as a way to make money, but Fitzwilliam said she still feels there is an extraordinary aspect of their decision.

"Coming out of rural Shandong, they had no idea how long the journey or how dangerous it would be-being in this strange environment, seeing all this industrial violence, as people who hadn't even seen a tractor before," Fitzwilliam said.

One descendant of a Chinese worker Fitzwilliam interviewed is Gerald Chang, whose father married a French woman. The family stayed in France.

Encountering Chang has been an emotional experience for Fitzwilliam, as she believes Chang's late father could have opened a window to the truth of Chinese workers in World War I, but chose not to talk in depth about his experience.

"Chang's father didn't want to talk about it in great detail to his children. All he said was that you had to be incredibly resilient mentally and physically," Fitzwilliam said.

She said Chang wished he had asked his father more, but with Chang's father's death it seemed that a potential channel for truth and information was forever lost.

"This is incredibly frustrating because Chang's father played a key role in this process, and he didn't ask any questions," Fitzwilliam said.

Fitzwilliam's research also brought her in touch with Chinese scholars who were students after World War I and came into contact with the Chinese workers.

One of them is James Yen, who devised a simplified vocabulary to teach the workers how to read and write in Mandarin, laying the groundwork for educational methods that were widely used on his return to China. Another is Sun Gan, who later established a school for girls in rural Shandong.

Fitzwilliam realized that these segments of history are not well-known to Chinese people when she met some Chinese students and teachers during a Tomb Sweeping Ceremony just outside a cemetery in Ypres, where some Chinese workers are buried.

Fitzwilliam asked the students if they knew the story, and they did not. But they were all inspired by it. "They were inspired by the story of Chinese workers and they said they want the story to be better known in China," Fitzwilliam said.

She believes the unveiling of this piece of history can greatly impact China's understanding of its own history. For example, it will allow Chinese people to better understand the roots of the poor relationship between China and Japan.

After World War I, German concessions of Shandong were handed to Tokyo despite China's hope to have it returned to Chinese sovereignty. Seen in the light of China's great contribution to the Allied war effort, this episode fueled antagonism between China and Japan.

She said the episode of Chinese participation in World War I also bears geopolitical significance as it shows a young republic flexing its muscles and influence on the global geopolitical stage. "They might not have won it at Versailles, but it was there," she said.

She said the significance of this historical episode are now attracting attention from Europe as people are realizing that China was supporting it during World War I.

"China is the rising superpower. People are saying, 'Good heavens, we hadn't known that China was involved in World War I'. So they are seeing that China was with us," she said.

Fitzwilliam said the research process of the film was difficult particularly because she could not speak Mandarin, and she had to piece together her understanding of history through translated documents.

"I would have liked to know more records that are being uncovered. Any documentary maker would want to go through eyewitness records," she said.

She hopes to dig deeper into the story and potentially produce a longer documentary, and one in Mandarin.

The more information she found, the more she felt interested in this story of the Chinese workers.

One episode she felt fascinated by was a hospital where some of the Chinese workers stayed. The hospital had Chinese doctors and nurses to look after the patients, and each ward had a canary-its songs helped soothe the patients' pains.

But many of the Chinese patients lost their sanity because of their suffering, and Fitzwilliam has been very keen to look into their experience.

"I want to see reports by doctors and medical records to see if it's homesickness or loneliness. One letter was particularly moving. It talked about the sheer noise of the war," she said.

Although it is common for most people who have encountered a war to experience shell shock, she wanted to know the point at which the Chinese workers could not mentally handle the pressure any more.

"They were taken to this environment, and suddenly accelerated to an era of brutality. It would have been fascinating to find out more about that," Fitzwilliam said.

(China Daily 07/17/2014 page6)