[soft music] - By the early 20th century, film had become the "medium of record."

If an event wasn't filmed, it was as if it never happened.

But in China, it was difficult to first document and then preserve the film record of a country in turmoil.

There was the collapse of the Qing dynasty and the rise and fall of a republic.

The emergence of so-called "war lord" generals, the founding of a second republic, civil war, an invasion that would rage for 14 years, destroying much of China and taking millions of lives.

A renewed civil war and revolution.

All in the span of 50 years.

Now, after decades of research, it is finally possible to see life in China as it actually occurred, to see "China: Frame by Frame."

[soft music tapers] My name is Bill Einreinhoffer, and I doubt you've ever heard of me, despite a 40-plus year career in television.

I started making documentaries back when I was in college, which obviously was a long time ago.

[gentle music] I've spent most of my career behind the camera.

Until now...

When I first arrived in China more than three decades ago, I had no idea I would spend much of my professional career making stories in and about China.

[gentle music continues] I also didn't know I would become a "footage detective," spending countless hours locating rare historic footage.

Yet, that's what happened.

Today America and China have deep, fundamental differences.

In fact, it's no exaggeration to say relations are terrible and threaten to get even worse.

How did we reach this point?

The answer to that question can, in part, be found in historic film footage, much of which was lost, stolen, or at the very least misplaced for decades.

Footage I have been tracking down for more than 30 years.

[music fades] [soft music] These are some of the earliest film images to be shot in China.

[soft music continues] Who are these people?

What are they doing?

Why are they doing it?

Where are they going?

What kind of inner life do they live?

[soft music continues] We don't know.

We will never know.

Foreigners shot most of the footage from this era.

They likely didn't speak or write Chinese and had a limited understanding of the local culture.

Yet it is still possible to recognize authentic elements of Chinese life.

[music fades] - Even if those films sometimes mischaracterize the events, you can find some valuable things in that.

[Chinese music] - [Bill] It was the rare foreign film that captured Chinese life as it was.

Life that ebbed and flowed just as it did in other societies.

Events that mirrored the emotional lives of the Chinese people themselves.

As opposed to what Westerners saw as strange and exotic.

[music] Yet foreigners didn't have a complete monopoly when it came to filmmaking.

[martial music] This is a group of United States Marine Corp pilots flying over the port city of Tianjin in North China during the 1920's.

The subject matter alone makes this footage notable, but so does the cameraman.

We don't know who he is, but he must have been good.

Would the Marines have chosen someone who wasn't proficient to document their exploits?

[mellow music] In China, the period from the mid-19th century until the mid-20th century is known as the 'Century of Humiliation.'

The dangers posed by invasion, occupation, and rebellion were seen as perpetual threats by China's leaders.

- Over its history, China has been invaded from many directions by many people, and this has made it suspicious of foreigners.

Also, China is a country of diverse provinces and ethnic minorities, some of which had rebelled in earlier times.

The Chinese Communist Party is obsessed with the image of a unified China and it represses any thoughts of separatism.

[upbeat music] - [Bill] During the first half of the 20th century, thousands of foreign children, the sons and daughters of business executives, doctors, lawyers, Christian missionaries and others, lived in China.

China, in fact, was their home.

- [Mary] We learned to speak Chinese and we were completely bilingual as children.

If we played with our brothers and sisters, we also had Chinese playmates.

And there were more Chinese around us than there were Americans.

And of course, we ate Chinese food.

And it was just all a part of our life.

- [Pamela] Grandpa was there in the 1890s.

[train track clanging] He started helping put in the railroads in China.

And then, my father got involved with the coal mines in China with a big British-Chinese coal mining consortium, the Kailuan.

I was born over there, in Honan.

[mellow music] - [Bill] Life in China during the first half of the 20th century was harsh.

Poverty, hunger, disease, and an early death awaited many Chinese, even in Shanghai, China's largest, most prosperous city.

- They collect all the dead bodies from the poor people, because it's very cold and they all died because of the cold.

They collect them every day, six o'clock in the morning.

I saw it with my own eyes.

And I saw it also with my own eyes, that's quite a lot, not very few people on the street, try to sell their children and just write a note, "Who can help my kids?

"Who want my kids?"

[soft music] - [Bill] Key to every issue, to every humiliation was the principle of sovereignty.

The Chinese people had little say in, and less control of, events taking place in their own country.

During the early part of the 20th century, most foreigners and Chinese lived in parallel worlds, worlds that seldom mixed.

The difference between those two worlds was stunning.

Yet Ronald Morris and his cousin, Mike, [soft music] lived in both cultures.

- And I remember my grandmother scolding me a couple of times and that, because I wouldn't eat the food that we had.

I preferred the food downstairs with the Chinese, the kids, Now I'd sit down and eat with them, which they graciously gave me.

But my mom, grandmother wound up just giving them extra money for payment for the food.

So really, I love Chinese chow, that's it.

[folk music] - [Bill] 1930s Shanghai was home to a large number of stateless Jewish exiles.

Many had found shelter in China from Russia's Bolshevik Revolution.

Later, refugees from war-torn Europe, fleeing the Holocaust would arrive.

Liliane Willens and her parents lived in a part of Shanghai called the French Concession, an area that decades later, still has a special, even romantic quality.

- Well, the French Concession was the residential section of Shanghai, and it was very much like a French small city out there.

The stores were actually Russian-owned stores.

People spoke Russian in the streets or you spoke English and the Chinese spoke to us in Pidgin English.

The language in Shanghai was British English.

As I always mention it, language always follows trade.

[jive music] - [Bill] In old Shanghai, the Chinese did most of the work, while the foreigners made the money.

[jive music continues] Some amassed absolute fortunes, living lives of luxury, unimaginable back home.

The United States, Great Britain, France, and Japan all maintained a permanent military presence in China.

[bugle call] Men serving in the U.S. Navy's Yangtze Patrol, dubbed China Sailors, could live the good life despite their meager pay.

Many never went home.

[traditional music] - [Narrator] The Whangpoo River filled with junks from Amoy, sampans from Soochow, [traditional music continues] and plenty of sampans for sailors, bound for liberty in Shanghai.

China has its full quota of pretty girls, who combine oriental charm with modern snap.

The result is not hard to look at.

[music continues] - [Bill] It would be a mistake to judge all foreigners living in China harshly.

Many were committed to saving souls and saving lives, like those who served at a Presbyterian mission in a northern Chinese town, then called Weihsien.

[instrumental music continues] In a place of desperate poverty, proper medical care was the difference between life and death.

There were even holidays, which might be called Christmas with Chinese characteristics.

[instrumental music continues] Thomas Dunn was a physician, as well as a leader, in Shanghai's American community.

- He'd been in the Navy in the First World War and just got interested in China and thought he'd just spent a couple of years there before going back to California, which is where he was from.

But he liked it so much that my mother, whom he'd known in college, she came out and they were married in the Philippines and then moved to Shanghai, where he set up practice and was a very, very busy doctor and a very sweet man, so he had a lot of patients, a lot of patients.

[mellow music] - [Bill] Whatever advantages foreigners enjoyed, wealth, status, servants, they still succumbed to the same endemic diseases that killed millions of Chinese.

They ended their days in a special foreigner section of one of Shanghai's largest cemeteries.

Today, their graves are seldom, if ever, visited.

[bugle] So-called newsreels, short films usually shown in theaters, were the only way to actually see the news before the arrival of television.

Often sensational, the newsreels told stories with what today might be called attitude.

[bugle call continues] They also exhibited a kind of casual racism, slurs, insults, paternalism that is astounding by today's standards.

[bugle call ends] - [Newsperson] Arriving in modern steam freighters, the cars are swung into waiting river junks, among the oldest type of boats known to man.

[gentle music] There seems to be no great rush.

The coolies are philosophical about it all.

This isn't the regular assembly line.

The Chinese very courteously insisted on bringing their work out of doors, so we'd be sure they had nothing up their sleeve.

Look, a sale already.

Another satisfied V8 owner.

[suspenseful music] - [Bill] When China's last Imperial dynasty, the Qing dynasty, collapsed in 1911, the country was plunged into chaos.

It saw the rise of what the west termed, "warlords," regional leaders with their own armies, hungry for personal power.

Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Kuomintang, or Nationalist party, didn't live long enough to see it come to power.

His successor, Generalisimo Chiang Kai-shek, participated in a united front effort with China's then small communist party.

One of its members was a former college librarian, named Mao Zedong.

But in 1927, Chiang Kai-shek violently ended the united front, ordering the execution of thousands of communists.

Years later, the communists would take revenge on rural landlords and so-called rich peasants.

In September 1931, the Imperial Japanese army occupied three provinces in northeast China, an area often called Manchuria.

An incident was staged as an excuse for a massive Japanese military invasion.

[suspenseful music] - This is the time that the Japanese were very worried about a number of things, including the sustainability of the Japanese empire.

[engine noise] They were worried about shortages, shortages in oil in other sorts of supplies.

They were also worried about the fact that they have too many people.

They needed new space, especially for their farmers to live.

And they had been competing with China, as well as the Soviet Union for influence in Manchuria, and Manchuria was the most industrialized part of continental East Asia, and so they wanted to move in there.

- [Bill] During January, 1932, the imperial Japanese Navy sent troops ashore in Shanghai, allegedly to protect Japanese economic interests and civilians.

Chiang Kai-shek largely avoided confronting the Japanese troops, who were occupying evermore territory in China, concentrating instead on his communist rivals.

[intense music] Not until he was kidnapped in 1936 and facing death, would he agree to a second united front with a now larger, but still relatively small communist party.

The stage was set for China to finally confront the Japanese invaders.

- [Bill] The arrival of war in Shanghai was sudden and deadly.

- We lived about a half a mile from the railroad, and the Japanese are periodically trying to bomb the railroad.

So as a child, I can remember that awful sound of a plane, you know, diving nowadays, they'd just drop it, but in those days they dove in and we had a porch in our house on the third floor.

We used to have tea in the afternoon and one time we saw this plane was coming and dive bombing and my governess said, come on, we gotta go inside.

But I was dragging my feet and I'd looked up and here I could see the pilot in the plane.

He dropped the bombs on the railroad.

[suspenseful music] - There was a lot of slaughter.

My cousin Mike and I, we were scared to death.

We saw a lot of, [suspenseful music continues] lot of bad, we saw a lot of hunger.

We saw the Chinese wrapped around a tree, eating the bark off the tree.

You know, they were being bayoneted.

Children being bayoneted.

Yeah, it was pretty bad.

- [Bill] China's soldiers were brave, [suspenseful music] but courage alone could not stop Japanese tanks nor the Japanese aircraft that bombed largely defenseless Chinese cities.

When the battle of Shanghai was over, much of the central city, as well as many outlying districts were in ruins.

- When we went there, I was shock to see buildings broken, everything was broken down, shattered, and people in the streets.

So there was a little store and I saw a gleaming white bicycle and I told my father, "I'm going to take it."

He said, "Absolutely not."

Someone owns it, it's owned by someone, and the person could have been killed.

And I think then I realized what death meant.

I was 10 years old.

[drum beats] - [Bill] Chiang Kai-shek unsuccessfully fought a conventional war against the Japanese military.

China's soldiers were often hindered by poor strategy and inferior equipment.

Mao Zedong and the communist forces chose a completely different strategy.

They used what today is commonly called asymmetric warfare.

- Mao's guerrilla warfare is not just, you know, small units taking on, sort of having potshots at Japanese policemen and installations.

No, no, it's much more sophisticated.

It is going into the rear of the Japanese, building up these base areas with new government, new laws, sometimes new currencies, sustaining a red army.

Athru army is it's called at this time, that can operate outside of the base, but also local guerrilla forces, local militia and sort of middle level units that can operate throughout that base area.

- [Bill] It is impossible to overemphasize the impact of Japan's military occupation.

Millions of people fled to Western China.

Every family has a story.

It is how Beijing-based journalist, Melinda Lou's father, met his future wife.

- He and my mother, they actually were both at Ching Hui University because the Japanese occupied Beijing, that university as well as a number of other Chinese universities in a very dramatic and sort of romantic episode, the entire student body, the professors, the laboratories, the books, the libraries, the classrooms, they all try to relocate west to get away from the Japanese.

- [Bill] This footage unseen in America or China for decades, is unique.

[upbeat music] Under the terms of the United Front agreement, the communist party was allowed to maintain a presence in China's wartime capital, then called Chungking.

Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedongs trusted lieutenant, was in overall charge.

[upbeat music continues] Workers wrote, printed and assembled the communist newspaper, Xinhua Daily, an act which could get them arrested or even killed elsewhere in China.

They worked under the watchful gaze of American President Franklin Roosevelt and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

Children attended classes in a school unlike any other in nationalist or Japanese controlled China, a school with a communist course of study.

Security forces cleaned their weapons, preparing for a possible attack, not by Japanese soldiers, but their erstwhile Nationalist allies, just as took place in 1927.

[upbeat music continues] And who knew that revolutionaries enjoyed playing basketball?

[music fades] [oscillating rumble] [soft music] During the 1930s and 1940s, the Imperial Japanese government ceaselessly turned out propaganda films, newsreels and feature films aimed at Japanese, Chinese and global audiences.

Their goal was to paint a picture of an imaginary world that never existed.

It included documentaries about how wonderful life was in the mythical country of Manchukuo, which in fact was the large area in northeast China, Japan invaded in 1931.

[explosions] A Japanese feature film included scenes of selfless Japanese soldiers feeding hungry Chinese refugees, protecting them from murderous Chinese troops.

The exact opposite of what actually happened.

[plane engine] [soft music] English language presentations were aimed at convincing American audiences that only benevolent Japanese rulers could administer a fractious and fractured China.

- [Announcer] Hungry children soon learned that other big children from over the sea would give them some of their rice or even sweets if they asked for it.

[music continues] While long rows of peasants waited basket in hand, old granny would get her cigarette too.

[music fades] - [Bill] What was missing was any discussion of the Japanese military's use of rape, terror, arson, looting and murder, [somber music] even chemical and biological warfare, similar to Nazi atrocities in Europe.

[eerie noise] The conflict traumatized millions of Chinese children, [somber music] who made toys reflecting the world they saw every day, a world at war.

[somber music ends] The Imperial Japanese Navy's attack on America's base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii changed everything.

Now China and the United States were officially allies and American forces could openly attack Japanese military targets, [eerie music] replacing covert operations, like the Flying Tigers.

But American, British, Australian and Dutch civilians living in Japanese-occupied China became enemy nationals.

Entire families were sent to civilian prison camps.

- The food was terrible.

Fish, rice and cabbage, slimy cabbage, rotten fish and rice filled with boll weevils and stones, 'cause it was off of shavings from warehouses and they had to-- Finally, the doctors said, take out the stones, but don't take out the boll weevils because that is, they are cooked and that is protein.

So you learn to eat what you had to eat.

- [Bill] As badly as the Japanese military treated foreigners in the internment camps, it paled in comparison to what the Chinese people experienced.

[eerie music continues] Millions of Chinese, many innocent civilians, would die as a result of tactics that eventually were summarized as "The Three Alls."

Kill all, burn all, loot all.

[eerie music continues] On July 4th, 1943, Independence Day in the United States, American children at one internment camp, joined their parents in singing patriotic songs.

- [Voice cracking] Began to sing the "Star Spangled Banner", [deep breathe] and the Japanese rushed in... [crying] I'm sorry, sorry.

[sobbing] The Japanese rushed in and said, you can't sing that song.

So we were all sent back to our buildings and said, "You can't stay here, no more singing."

And... as I got to the door or my room, I turned, [sobbing] [deep breathes] and you can hear those last strains.

"Home of the brave home of the free."

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

It was just a very emotional thing for me, I apologize.

- There was a rumble that we were going to be executed and some stakes were being driven into the roll call field.

I thought it was a big fat joke.

I had no idea and I didn't find out later on that that was a possibility, but thank goodness we were liberated, otherwise we would've been executed, that's true.

- [Bill] August, 1945, Japanese military forces surrender in China.

[soft music continues] It was sudden, unexpected and complete.

[soft music] In China, leaflets announcing victory were organized into bundles to be dropped by American aircraft over major cities.

[soft music continues] The news literally fell from the sky.

In Shanghai, there was a parade.

With the fighting over, China could finally enjoy the benefits of peace.

The fighting had ended or had it?

[soft music continues] Many Chinese felt it wasn't just Japanese troops who should leave China.

They wanted all foreign military units to exit, including thousands of American troops.

- I always see with my own eyes.

The military ships from America and Britain on the river of Huangpu.

And on the streets, there's always the Navy and the MPs.

I said, "Why?

"The Japanese have left us and why you come here?

"What for?"

Understand me?

Ask me why?

[silence] Because I said this is our fatherland, this is my own land!

We do not need other help.

[gentle music] - [Bill] General George C. Marshall, the recently retired U.S. Army Chief of Staff, was sent to China to negotiate the establishment of a coalition government, incorporating both the nationalists as well as the communists.

According to American newsreels, Marshall was able to do the impossible, brokering as ceasefire between the communists and the nationalists, ending China's civil war.

[gentle music continues] Those newsreels were wrong.

- With the initial support of the Soviets, the Chinese Communist Party gradually gained the ability to wage guerrilla war against the government of Chiang Kai-shek.

After Japan's surrender, the U.S. attempted to reconcile the parties, but Mao's support amongst the peasants had grown and his demand to share power went far beyond what Chiang could accept.

Therefore, China's civil war resumed.

[intense music] - [Bill] The Soviet Union, in the final days of the war, had occupied northeast China, [intense music continues] and besides putting their own imprint on the region, all of the military equipment surrendered by the Japanese was given to the Communist forces.

[intense music continues] On paper, the KMT, the nationalists, looked unbeatable.

In fact, the CPC, the communists, were stronger.

Chiang Kai-shek had lost the faith of the Chinese people.

Since 1937, a scorched earth policy condemned the vast majority of the Chinese people, who could not follow the retreating KMT troops to live in a ruined wasteland.

[music] As many as 900,000 Chinese died in 1938, when Chiang Kai-shek had dikes holding back the Yellow River destroyed, hoping it would stop oncoming Japanese troops.

[somber music] It only delayed them.

By 1946, China was in political and economic chaos.

There was triple digit inflation.

Only the black market merchants seemed to be making money.

[somber music continues] As the months went by, Nationalist forces were repeatedly defeated.

Battered and demoralized, eventually most were in full retreat, often abandoning their heavy weapons and equipment.

Even more critical, it was now clear that Chiang Kai-shek was a terrible general.

His chief opponent, communist General Lin Biao, had been brilliant in the fight against Japanese forces.

- General Lin Biao is one of the greatest commanders of World War II, not just in China, but around the world.

He was a great tactician, a great leader of men obviously, and he would defeat the Nationalists later on during the Civil War in Manchuria.

[upbeat music] And then, I think it's absolutely amazing he took his forces all the way from Manchuria, through China and ended up in Hainan.

- [Bill] In October, 1949, a new country was born, the People's Republic of China.

In the spring of 1972, American President Richard Nixon arrived in China.

[patriotic music] The entire world took notice.

About 20 years later, I arrived in China for the first of many visits.

It wasn't big news.

Much of what I knew about China came from TV news reports and documentaries about what was always called Red China.

[crowd cheering] Often, it was hard to know what was going on, let alone why it was happening.

[soft music] Of course, the CIA wasn't having much luck either.

I had no idea that there wasn't a single Chinese cuisine, but many.

None of which included things like chop suey and fortune cookies.

[soft music] Just like an early 20th Century foreign cameraman, initially I shot footage of anything and anyone, [soft music continues] even when I wasn't quite sure what I was looking at.

But gradually, I began to work it out, or more accurately, the local production people I worked with explained things to me and that is how I truly discovered China.

[soft music] [soft music] [engine revving] In 1989, some places in Beijing seemed much like they are today, [bicycle bell chime] but the people in those places certainly dressed differently.

[chatter] Beijing didn't look like the capital city of a global power.

In fact, it was decidedly low tech.

[traffic noise] There were buses but few cars, yet change was taking place.

The impact of sweeping regulatory changes, collectively known as reform and opening, were just becoming visible.

[smooth music] That included tentative first steps in a gradual shift away from state economic planning [bell chime] towards a more demand-driven consumer-based economy.

[chatter] This woman was selling what was one of China's first truly national brands.

[soft music] Wawa ice cream.

- Wawa ice cream is, it is very special not because of the taste, but also because of the shape.

Wawa ice cream is designed like the Wawa face.

Wawa in Chinese means the baby.

So we could imagine it's like a baby face with a hat on it.

It has the chocolate taste of the hat because it's chocolate, and the vanilla taste of the face, so every kid will like it.

- It was China's then little known space program, not ice cream, that brought me to Beijing in the late 1980s.

At that point, no American TV journalist had been granted access to key space facilities and personnel.

[upbeat music] The roots of China's space program dated back to fears of America and its atomic bombs.

[upbeat music] At one time, China and the Soviet Union were allies, with the Soviets promising to help China.

So in a remote desert area in western China, the Chinese began to build their own rocket research and test facilities.

The test site was created largely with people power, not heavy equipment.

[upbeat music continues] Following the Sino-Soviet split, the Chinese were on their own.

They built what became China's first rocket launch facility.

[upbeat music continues] - [Bill] China's first launch vehicles were modified military rockets.

It was the same approach used by the United States.

[upbeat music] A long march series of rockets continues to power China's space program today.

[upbeat music] The use of satellites to link together the vast Chinese nation was viewed as an essential element in the country's modernization efforts.

Soon people in even the most remote areas could see programs broadcast from China's central television's production facility in Beijing.

China's initial foray into remote sensing satellites involved becoming a participant in America's Landsat program, which uses satellites to monitor critical environmental and developmental trends from space.

[upbeat music] While it is true that some of the images downloaded and processed, such as those of Taiwan, might have potential military applications, in 1989 I was assured the facility was strictly focused on economic applications.

[gentle music] - [Bill] Even in the 1980s, China was already thinking about launching men and women into space.

Although at that point, research was at its most basic levels.

The Institute of Space Medicine and Engineering was charged with the selection in training of what in China are called taikonauts.

The development of a spacesuit and the study of medical issues were already underway, even though no decision had been made about when to send someone into space.

[rocket rumble] - [Bill] While China was reaching out into space, back on Earth, equally surprising changes were taking place.

[machine noise] New private enterprises were emerging.

Often they were led by self-educated executives, who practiced modern business management, [machine noise] a sharp departure from the policies followed in China since 1949.

- After Mao's death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping emerged as China's new leader.

He established reforms to attract foreign businesses and opened China to trade.

He also sent Chinese students abroad to learn the skills that would modernize China.

More importantly, Deng succeeded in changing his people's attitude towards business under a new economic approach, he termed socialism with Chinese characteristics.

The timing was especially ripe because globalism was just beginning.

[engine revving] [upbeat music] - [Bill] Every year, Qingdao a port city in northeast China, holds a festival celebrating their most famous product, Qingdao beer.

[upbeat music] The brand still uses the pre-1949 spelling of the city's name, but one thing that has changed is the way the company is run.

For decades, it was a typical state-owned enterprise.

[clanking] [chatter] - [Bill] It's a Saturday in early 1994, and this scene is being repeated in tens of thousands of shops and stores throughout China.

[crowd chatter] It's an activity perhaps best characterized by that classic American phrase, shop till you drop.

In the decades before, store shelves were often empty.

[crowd chatter] Prior to 1949, only the affluent could afford to shop here.

[crowd chatter] No more.

China's department stores had been liberated.

By the 1990s, an emphasis on market forces supplemented but never totally replaced central planning.

[city street ambience] [children chatter] For many who grew up then, it was a time of optimism in China, [singing in foreign language] it was an era of ambitious dreams.

[singing in foreign language] A new generation was experiencing lives very different from those of their parents and grandparents, who had confronted sacrifice and hunger.

They were also the center of attention, as most families were allowed only one child.

It was during celebrations of Lunar New Year or Spring Festival, as it is called in China, that these generational differences were most apparent.

- When I was a kid because of the one child policy, I am the only child in my family and obviously, I got a lot of attention from my parents and grandparents, which is nice.

They always fed me the great foods, what they like and always asked me to eat this, eat that, the tons of food I've eaten.

So that's why I was like little chubby at that time.

[chuckle] [upbeat music] - [Bill] The 1990s saw the introduction of something entirely new in China, the twin concepts of leisure time and retirement.

[upbeat music] Millions of Chinese now had free time, something unthinkable in the past.

And they had the financial resources necessary to splurge on non-essentials.

[upbeat music continues] Which then became essentials, like a family car.

Shanghai Volkswagen is a joint venture company set up by the Shanghai City government and Volkswagen AG of Germany.

[clanking] In the 1990s, it's main assembly line churned out a model known as the Santana.

[soothing music] And at least in TV commercials, it was emblematic of a new lifestyle.

[soothing music ends] [soft music] Working in China, I found myself playing a wide range of roles.

I covered the news, like a public service campaign, encouraging parents to teach their children how to swim.

[soft music continues] Other times I was the news for reasons that weren't always clear, [soft music] [marching footsteps] but there's certainly were times when I felt very uneasy.

[marching footsteps] The People's Liberation Army Air Force Museum includes exhibits that look similar to its American counterparts, only here America is the enemy.

During the Korean War, American pilots painted red stars on their aircraft for each Chinese plane shot down.

[soft music] The Chinese did the same for each American killed.

[soft music] That has a special meaning to me, given my nephew is an American fighter pilot.

Yet, I also saw former Chinese Air Force pilots training for an entirely new mission, [speaking in foreign language] as commercial airline pilots.

[speaking in foreign language] [upbeat music] These days, there is no shortage of glamour throughout China, [heavy upbeat music] but not everyone gets to go to the party.

[chatter] Millions of migrant workers powered China's economic miracle.

[chatter] They streamed into China's coastal cities, lured by salaries far above anything they could ever earn in the countryside.

But they pay an emotional price for this prosperity.

Many can only go back to their home villages once a year for Spring Festival.

[clanking ] Only then can they briefly see their families.

[traditional Chinese music] On the eve of the Lunar New Year, believers from throughout Shanghai gather at the Lonwa Buddhist temple to make offerings to the temple's deities.

These people are here to burn the first incense of the new year.

Many of these believers are the same people who are helping to power China's economic modernization.

[traditional Chinese music] Like Shanghai itself, they are rooted in history, yet forever changing.

[traditional music ends] [gentle music] - [Bill] Outside, migrants who live in Shanghai but can't afford to enter the temple, offer their own prayers.

[gentle music continues] Inside, those wealthy enough to make large contributions are allowed to ring the sacred temple bell.

[dong] [soft music] China doesn't have a single past, rather there are multiple pasts.

[soft music] Israeli photographer, Dvir Bar-Gal, leads what is probably Shanghai's most unique tour.

He takes visitors to sites associated with a now all but vanished Jewish Shanghai.

Despite the threat posed by the rise of Nazi Germany, nations around the world closed their doors to Jewish refugees.

[soft music] Shanghai was one of the few places where those fleeing the Holocaust were welcomed.

An estimated 20,000 people were given refuge.

[soft music] During what was called the cultural revolution, which occurred from the mid 1960s until the mid 1970s, anything old was considered bad.

[soft music] The headstones and grave markers of foreigners were presumed destroyed, but that turned out not always to be the case.

Slowly, many Jewish grave markers were retrieved.

- When I came to Shanghai five years ago, I heard that antique shop in Shanghai selling Jewish graves and in the Jewish world we really care about our ancestors' grave places and also in the villages, when I went to pick up these headstones, this particular headstone was on the floor in the entry of the house.

While at that time, first time I saw it, the owner did not want to give me this headstone, but then start to convince him, start to explain to him how important it is to bring it back to the city.

Eventually, understood and we became a very good friends.

- [Bill] Most of the foreigners who lived in China left by 1949.

[smooth music] Those who later returned were amazed.

- I was quite taken aback when I finally decided to go there.

There were no more beggars, there was no poverty in the streets.

They may be poorly dressed.

That was 1990, if I have to calculate the date.

And I was quite amazed because when I left China, there was nothing.

Absolutely poverty, beggars, no industry, nothing.

And then when I went back repeatedly, I was taken aback completely.

A hundred story building, the highest I had ever seen was 20 stories in Shanghai.

[chatter] [bricks crumbling] - [Bill] Century old homes and businesses are making way for new development.

[clanking] [engines revving] - [Bill] Even relatively young Chinese men and women sometimes experience a sense of nostalgia, as their hometowns continue changing.

[crowd chatter] In a China where most families didn't have a refrigerator and there weren't any supermarkets, visits to markets like this in the east China city of Wuxi were a daily ritual.

[rooster crowing] These markets still exist of course, but they no longer play a central role in the lives of most city dwellers, [crowd chatter] who value the convenience, uniformity and brand names found at supermarkets.

[crowd chatter] Foreigners, including myself, [car honk] tend to romanticize old China.

[engine revving] The fact is life was incredibly difficult, especially for the vast majority of the Chinese people.

[crowd chatter] There is little romantic about homes lacking central heating, air conditioning, or reliable plumbing.

[beep] Yet residents have an emotional bond with both their neighbors and their neighborhoods.

[crowd chatter] Even among the so-called privileged foreigners, [crowd chatter] many of whom have revisited China, some memories are bittersweet.

[singing] - I can still hear those, those planes, and I can still hear the bombing to this day.

I don't like lightning and thunder.

My husband said, "Why are you so scared of lightning and thunder when you're not scared of anything else?"

We talked about it and finally decided it was just leftover from the war and having, the city was bombed later by the Japanese and just hearing that bombs go off and then the flash of light and the sound still is with me, still to this day.

And I really curl up and I just don't want anything to do with thunder or lightning.

Just don't like it at all.

And it's silly, I know it's silly, but, there it is, can't change it.

- I feel like a man without a country, because China is where I was born.

My nationality, my inheritance was my father being American, I'm an American.

America is my inheritance.

It just doesn't feel like it's my birthplace and yet China is my birthplace, but I'm definitely not a Chinese and this kind of loses me.

My mind thinks that way.

I'm lost, where am I from?

- China is a part of my life.

I was born there the very first time I went back to China after I grew up, when I got to the Beijing airport, I got down on my knees and I kissed the ground because I said, this is my mother, and I kissed my mother and I do miss China because I'm American, but that is part of who Mary Taylor Previte is.

[soft music] - [Bill] The pace and the scale of the dramatic changes China has experienced over the past three decades are nothing short of astounding.

[soft music] [clank] But some things do endure, [clanking] like the hopes and dreams Chinese parents had for their children in the past, [speaks in foreighn language] that continue to thrive today.

[chatter] [soft music] - There was a time in China when it was uncertain if children would even survive until adulthood.

[soft music] Now, many Chinese parents believe their children will be able to enjoy both material success and emotional fulfillment.

[soft music] But there are no guarantees.

[soft music] Just to be clear, I don't claim to be an expert on China.

I don't speak Mandarin.

I can't read the Chinese characters on my own business cards.

And while I have an understanding of China's past, I can't make any predictions about its future.

[soft music] Still, over the course of more than 30 years, I have interviewed countless people in and about China.

Many were kind enough to share their personal stories with me.

When I travel through China, I often have other people's memories in my head.

[soft music] Sadly, many of those people are gone, but their stories live on through me.

And now they live on through you as well.

[soft music continues] Thank you.

[speaks in foreighn language] [soft music continues] [gentle music] [gentle music continues] [gentle music continues] [gentle music continues] [gentle music fades]