I Wish I Knew

China | 119 minutes | 2010 | Documentary | Shanghainese and Mandarin Chinese | English Subtitles | PG
中国 | 119 分钟 | 2010 | 纪录片 | 上海话和普通话 | 英文字幕 | PG

Shanghai, a fast-changing metropolis, a port city where people come and go. Shanghai has hosted all kinds of people – revolutionaries, capitalists, politicians, soldiers, artists, and gangsters. Shanghai has also hosted revolutions, assassinations, love stories. After the Chinese Communists’ victory in 1949, thousands of Shanghaiers left for Hong Kong and Taiwan. To leave meant being separated from home for thirty years; to stay meant suffering through the Cultural Revolution and China’s other political disasters. Eighteen people from these three cities – Shanghai, Taipei and Hong Kong – recall their lives in Shanghai. Their personal experiences, like eighteen chapters of a novel, tell stories of Shanghai lives from the 1930s to 2010. An eternally wandering soul returns to Shanghai and, walking along the banks of the Huangpu River, awakens to all the changes the city has undergone.