Up the Yangtze
the film's poster
Directed by	Yung Chang
Written by	Yung Chang
Produced by	Mila Aung-Thwin Germaine Ying-Gee Wong John Christou
Starring	Yu "Cindy" Shui Chen "Jerry" Bo Yu
Narrated by	Yung Chang
Cinematography	Wang Shi Qing
Edited by	Hannele Halm
Music by	Olivier Alary
Distributed by	Zeitgeist Films
Release dates	30 September 2007 (2007-09-30) (Vancouver International Film Festival) 8 February 2008 (2008-02-08) (Canada)
Running time	93 minutes
Country	Canada
Languages	English and Mandarin

Up the Yangtze is a 2007 documentary film directed by Chinese-Canadian director Yung Chang. The film focuses on people affected by the building of the Three Gorges Dam across the Yangtze river in Hubei, China. The theme of the film is the transition towards consumer capitalism from a farming, peasant-based economy as China develops its rural areas. The film is a co-production between the National Film Board of Canada and Montreal's EyeSteelFilm with the participation of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, National Geographic Channel, P.O.V., SODEC, and Telefilm. The film is being distributed in the USA by Zeitgeist Films. The United Kingdom distributor is Dogwoof Pictures.^[1]

The setting of the film is a riverboat cruise ship floating up the Yangtze river. Two young people are the focus of the film as they work aboard the ship. One is a sixteen-year-old girl from a particularly poor family living on the banks of the Yangtze near Fengdu, named "Cindy" Yu Shui. She is followed as she leaves her family to work on one of the cruise ships serving wealthy western tourists at the same time as her family is being forced from their home due to the flooding that accompanied the building of the dam. The film shows her acclimatization to the consumer economy of tourism as well as modern technology of the cruise ships, juxtaposed with her family and other older citizens who are displaced from a rural lifestyle to cities where they must pay for the vegetables they used to grow on their own.

The other main subject is a nineteen-year-old boy from a more prosperous family named "Jerry" Chen Bo Yu. Chen Bo Yu shows a different perspective from Yu Shui as he tries to earn cash on the ship as a porter and singer.

The film is rich in detail about ways of life, dreams, and aspirations, and seeks to provide a view into the reality of modern Chinese life.

Up the Yangtze was very well received by film critics, and was described as "astonishing" documentary which "refuses to editorialize" by The New York Times.^[2] It garnered a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 47 reviews,^[3] and a rating of 84 on Metacritic.^[4]

The film appeared on several critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2008. Ella Taylor of LA Weekly named it the 3rd best film of 2008 (along with Still Life),^[5] Rick Groen of The Globe and Mail named it the 7th best film of 2008,^[5] and Liam Lacey of The Globe and Mail named it the 10th best film of 2008.^[5]

After filming concluded, "Cindy" Yu Shui returned home to finish her education while her family worked odd jobs. The filmmaker Yung Chang published letters indicating that Yu Shui's father had serious eye issues that required surgery and a donation fund was set up.^{[citation needed]}

In 2010, Yung gave further updates on the Yu family, indicating that they were doing much better, with an apartment with television and a refrigerator.^[8]

• Bing'ai, a 2007 documentary film about a Chinese woman who refuses to relocate during the building of the Three Gorges Dam

• Official website (archived 2009)
• Up the Yangtze at AllMovie
• Up the Yangtze at Box Office Mojo
• Up the Yangtze at IMDb
• Up the Yangtze at Metacritic
• Up the Yangtze at Rotten Tomatoes
• Watch Up the Yangtze on the NFB website