Message from ddlugo

[Anonymous]

The film I am reviewing is called "1000 Pieces of Gold." This is an American film released in 1991 staring Chris Cooper and Rosalind Chao, both of whom are excellent. The film is about a Chinese girl who is sold by her father to a marriage broker who sends her to San Francisco where she is sold to Chinese saloonkeeper in a gold mining town. The saloonkeeper wants the girl to work as a prostitute in his saloon, and not as a wife. The girl refuses and ends up a kind of slave to the saloonkeeper. She is eventually lost in a pocker game to the saloonkeeper's white business partner who takes her away from the saloon. At first the girl hates her new white owner, but over time they eventually fall in love.

This summary might sound like a really bad soap-opera, and it certainly could have been. But actually the film is a very good historical drama and shows in great detail the life of Chinese immigrants to California in the later 19th century. I teach 8th grade US history and for me the film provides a really good way to make the Chinese immigrant experience come alive for my students. It has lead to some excellent class discussions about immigration, race prejudice, gender issues and many others topics. The vast majority of my students are Latino who are themselves either immigrants, or the children of immigrants, and the film really hits home with them. The girls are very attracted to Rosalind Chao's character and are particularly impressed by the way she never gives up and constrantly displays a very strong will in the face of some really terrible things that happen to her.

I used the film as the basis for an essay in which students are asked to write a review of the film based on a number of promts I give them, or a comparision of the Chinese immigration experience with that of themselves or their own families. Many of the essays were really good for this project.

BTW, the film is rated PG13 so I don't have too much trouble showing it to my 8th graders, but the content may be a bit too adult for younger students.