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Reeling in the years
By Zhao Xu (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-08-17 18:23
 On Oct 1, Tian'anmen Square will be the focal point of China's 60th anniversary celebration, and revelers are sure to jostle for the best position to watch the fireworks overhead. In the same place 52 years ago, Robert Carl Cohen, a 27-year-old psychology student from the United States, stood transfixed by the magical spectacle. "That was the high point of my filming in China," says the veteran documentary filmmaker, who turns 79 next month.
He was referring to the climax of a journey that brought him to the heart of a young country and his own voyage of self-discovery. It began on Aug 21, 1957, when Cohen and 41 other Americans arrived in Beijing after a nine-day, 9,650-km trip on the Trans-Siberian Railway linking China and the Soviet Union. They had been invited by the All-China Federation of Democratic Youth, while attending the 6th World Youth Festival in Moscow that summer. As if going to Moscow was not enough to arouse suspicion for an American at the height of the Cold War, venturing to Beijing effectively violated the US State Department's travel ban, which prohibited any physical contact with an "enemy country". "If I went, I risked having my name placed on a list of subversives and consequently losing my job; if I didn't, I may have regretted it for the rest of my life," says Cohen, whose previous experience of China consisted mainly of a distant view of Madam Chiang Kai-shek, who visited his junior high school in Los Angeles as part of a Kuomintang "money-raising" effort in 1944. The dilemma ended as Cohen boarded the train. Having agreed to film his journey for NBC television, Cohen submerged himself in the sounds and sights of a strange land for the next two months, traveling north to south and filming freely scenes that had not been captured by a Western movie camera since the founding of the People's Republic, nearly 8 years earlier. Asked how he was able to do this, given the degree of political censorship that existed in China then, Cohen said he believes he must have received high-level help. |
