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Up the Yangtze
Directed by
Yung Chang
Not Rated
2007
1h 33m
Documentary
7.5
96%
83%
Add to Watchlist
At the edge of the Yangtze River, not far from the Three Gorges Dam, young men and women take up employment on a cruise ship, where they confront rising waters and a radically changing China.
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Where to Watch Up the Yangtze
Filmzie
Free
Kanopy
Free
Apple TV
Rent $3.99
Buy $8.99
Cast of Up the Yangtze
Campbell Ping He
himself
Jerry Bo Yu Chen
himself
Cindy Shui Yu
herself
Yung Chang
Narrator / Director / Writer
Mila Aung-Thwin
Producer
Germaine Ying Gee Wong
Producer
John Christou
Producer
Up the Yangtze Ratings & Reviews
Darren McKenna
January 16, 2025
A powerful look at the positive and negative effects of the 3 rivers gorge. A look at a peasant family and the effects on his family. A raw look at the stark nature of progress but not for all.
Arizona Republic
Richard Nilsen
The movie never editorializes; it simply presents. It is tragedy, not statistics.
Philadelphia Weekly
Sean Burns
This, the film argues, is the way of the future: One form of poverty-stricken squalor replaced by a tackier, more plasticized life of similarly deadend subservience, all in the guise of economic progress.
Philadelphia Inquirer
Tirdad Derakhshani
Myth and reality, past and present, tradition and progress go head to head in Yung Chang's remarkable documentary about China's longest river, Up the Yangtze.
Seattle Times
John Hartl
The tone is finally one of wistful resignation.
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
Up the Yangtze provides a devastating view of top-down, broad-stroke social programs.
Washington Post
Michael O'Sullivan
There's plenty for the director to focus on. Examining the dam's environmental impact alone would take another whole movie. Instead, [director] Yung trains his lens mainly on the cultural impact.
Chicago Reader
Andrea Gronvall
Visually stunning, this documentary by Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Yung Chang is part travelogue, part social critique of China's economic miracle and the sweeping cultural changes it is forcing in its wake.
HollywoodChicago.com
Adam Fendelman
China is on the world's mind. The once-mysterious communist "enemy" is now the economic friend of all the essential profiteers. Up the Yangtze is a new documentary that expounds upon China in transition.
AV Club
Tasha Robinson
Up The Yangtze goes from sleepily hypnotic to riveting over the course of 90 minutes.
San Francisco Chronicle
G. Allen Johnson
What Chinese Canadian filmmaker Yung Chang achieves in his documentary Up the Yangtze is remarkable.
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
In his masterful and haunting documentary Up the Yangtze, Yung Chang shows the old China drowning helplessly under the weight of the new.
MovieFreak.com
Sara Michelle Fetters
In doing so he photographs a landscape and country going through profound change on an almost unimaginable scale, all of it building to a final scene that's chilling in its Joseph Conrad-like uncertainty.
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
One of the real pluses of Up the Yangtze, aside from its empathy with its subjects, is its striking visual quality.
Entertainment Weekly
Lisa Schwarzbaum
Filmmaker Yung Chang finds a sad and beautiful way to glimpse the big picture of dislocation through an exquisitely poised small study.
Salon.com
Andrew O'Hehir
Yung Chang is a Canadian director whose grandparents came from China, and his witty, lovely and profoundly unsettling documentary Up the Yangtze takes him back to the legendary river of his grandfather's homeland, now transformed beyond recognition.
New York Post
V.A. Musetto
China's public image suffers another blow with Up the Yangtze, a docu mentary by Chinese-Canadian Yung Chang.
New York Times
Stephen Holden
An astonishing documentary of culture clash and the erasure of history amid China's economic miracle.
Observer
Andrew Sarris
Just where is China taking us besides up the Yangtze River? Mr. Yung's film does not even pretend to know, and that is its great strength as it plunges more deeply into the truly unknown.
Slant Magazine
Nick Schager
Chang gracefully juxtaposes the country and the metropolitan to express the knotted-up mixture of anguish, anger, hope, and trepidation of those in the dammed river's wake.
Watch Up the Yangtze Videos
Up The Yangtze
Up The Yangtze
Trailer
Up The Yangtze: Godfather's Song
Up The Yangtze: Godfather's Song
Scene
Up The Yangtze: The Family Sends Yu Shui Away
Up The Yangtze: The Family Sends Yu Shui Away
Scene
Up The Yangtze: The Yu Family Farm Gets Completely Flooded
Up The Yangtze: The Yu Family Farm Gets Completely Flooded
Scene
Up The Yangtze: Chinese Instructions On How To Deal With Westeners
Up The Yangtze: Chinese Instructions On How To Deal With Westeners
Scene
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