As one of the largest nations on the planet, China was well known for its beginnings and foundation which inevitably led to its growth and development. As time progressed, the country slowly started to modernize and adapted many features that would continue on today in present-day China. Advancements in technology, social life, and living conditions had greatly changed and affected the ways people had lived. While there were some positive factors gained from these changes, there were still elements which could be seen as negative. This idea is most prominent in the 2006 Chinese film Still Life directed by Jia Zhangke. The story revolves around a man named Han Sanming who travels to the city of Fengjie in order to find his missing wife and daughter. He joins a demolition crew and is tasked with tearing down the city as it is being flooded by the Three Gorges Dam. With its realistic approach to portraying the world and how it operates, Still Life is an accurate representation of the issues present in contemporary China. The movie covers issues with the dam and the difficulties it creates. It also showcases problems with pollution and the environment that are still occurring in China to this day. Lastly, Still Life also serves as an example and an explanation as to how Chinese in the early 21st century are reluctant to adapt to new changes in life.
	In China, one of the most prominent complications that needs to be addressed are the components of pollution and its multiple effects on the environment. In Still Life, the setting of the movie is the poor, rundown city of Fengjie which suffers due to flooding caused by the Three Gorges Dam. According to James Pennington and Ariel Kastner of World Economic Forum, the nation has been faced with “growing pollution-related challenges” as a result of instances of “industrialization and fast economic expansion”. In fact, data gathered revealed that only 1% of civilians in the country were breathing air that the European Union considered healthy and around 500 million were unable to access safe drinking water whatsoever in 2007 (Pennington, James and Ariel Kastner 2). This is further supported by Bryan Tilt who claims that the air quality in Beijing, the capital of China, “ranged between unhealthy, very unhealthy, and hazardous” (Tilt 31). The movie, which came out only a year before, provides plenty of scenes in which poverty and poor living conditions are present. Such examples include a constantly dirty atmosphere combined with destroyed and ruined territory in which the protagonist, Sanming, is tasked to demolish. During these scenes, the audience can see the construction workers toil away at the debris and rubble, sweating heavily at the arduous duties they have to suffer with. Construction and deconstruction work has always been considered a dangerous job as there are many risks involved; people can be killed by falling objects or struck with diseases due to detritus and other unhygienic conditions. This is no different from Sanming’s responsibilities of his temporary profession. Additionally, one of the demolition scenes that occurred early on in the film had a group of workers wearing gas masks spraying chemicals in the environment. While it is unknown and never explicitly specified what they were releasing, it can be assumed they were at least harmful to organisms and to an extent the surrounding area as they had to protect themselves by equipping masks and protective suits.
	Besides the difficulties that China confronted in regard to the environment, the nation had also suffered as a result of the major dam built in the area. Established in and fully completed in the first decade of the 21st century, the Three Gorges Dam was used as a means to produce hydroelectric energy for the land in a way that was not as expensive or environmentally risky as electrical or carbon sources. It was generally agreed that water would be a much more efficient energy source as it is cleaner than the previous two as well as being renewable (Tilt 33). Moreover, since it is one of the most abundant and necessary resources on the planet, “it is difficult to imagine a more precious resource or one more central to human survival and well-being than water” (Tilt 34).  The major consequence and downside of using the dam however, was the uneven distribution of water that could lead to flooding. As stated by Tilt, northern regions of China are faced with shortages of water while the opposite could be said for the people living in the south (Tilt 37). The Three Gorges Dam is precisely the biggest reason as to why the city of Fengjie in Still Life had been marked for flooding. Many scenes in the movie showcase copious amounts of water, most noticeably on the shores of decaying land (Still Life 27:31 to 27:48 and 1:26:38 to 1:27:04). This is backed up in the reading according to Peter Gleick’s quote:
“China’s water resources are over-allocated, inefficiently used, and grossly polluted by human and industrial wastes, to the point that vast stretches of rivers are dead and dying, lakes are cesspools of waste, groundwater aquifers are over-pumped and unsustainably consumed, uncounted species of aquatic life have been driven to extinction, and direct adverse impacts on both human health and ecosystem health are widespread and growing” (Tilt 36).
As a result of this, it can be considered ironic due to the fact that water, which is considered to be essential for all life on the planet, has caused nothing but constant problems for the characters in the movie.
	Another aspect of the Chinese that Still Life portrays in detail are nostalgic feelings in people which cause them to be slow and hesitant to adapt to modern trends. This is noticeable in the mistress culture commonly found in contemporary Chinese civilization. The basic premise of this idea is that men who have a mistress or partner are much more likely to be relevant and respected in society. According to John Osburg who wrote Anxious Wealth, a man named Mr. Gao faced decline in his life as he failed to maintain an old relationship (Osburg 38). This can be seen as an indicator that having a woman is important. Plenty of entertainment sites also opened up in China to cater to heterosexual males in which hostesses project “an idealized masculinity onto their patrons” (Osburg 40). This correlates in the film through the subplot of a woman named Shen Hong. In the movie, this secondary story focuses on a nurse who searches for her missing husband in Fengjie. Eventually she finds him but also learns that he is having an affair with a wealthy investor (Still Life 1:08:46 to 1:13:48). While it is not explicitly stated whether or not the wealthy investor was a mistress, it is clear to the viewers that this new woman was responsible for her husband’s newfound success, which matches the previously mentioned thoughts of Osburg. Keeping in touch with the theme of nostalgia, Shen Hong’s husband attempts to pursue her back despite having what seems to be a mistress to which he is rejected.
	Besides mistress culture, nostalgic feelings can also be seen in a few other instances of the movie. During the subplot revolving around Shen Hong, she is always seen with a water bottle. Instead of throwing it out, she never gets rid of it and is seen reusing it in plenty of instances (Still Life 53:05 to 58:50 and 1:14:54 to 1:15:18). This implies to the audience that she does not want to let go of something in her life and cannot move on from it. The main character San Hanming is also a nostalgic person as he continues to use the same cigarettes from sixteen years ago. In his discussion with Brother Mark, they believe that they are not suited for the modern world because they are too nostalgic. Sanming mentions that “we can’t forget who we are” which provides even further support for his nostalgia of the old world (Still Life 35:24 to 38:40). The primary plot of the movie is him searching for his lost wife and daughter, both of which he refuses to forget.
	Still Life is a film that features plenty of instances regarding the current issues of China such as problems with its people and also the area they live in. The film depicts the life of Sanming, a middle-aged man who is focused on the past. His experience in the movie results in him encountering pollution, one of the main issues present in China. The environment is in poor condition in the movie, often presented as broken and demolished cities where the living conditions can be assumed to be at a low. The stressful work that Sanming has exacerbates the problem as the working conditions of a construction job are not entirely safe for the average human. The problems with the Three Gorges Dam also worsen the issues with pollution as it has caused flooding for the city of Fengjie. It was not handled carefully and as a result, the dam only provides benefits for some of China’s population. This is noticeable in the film due to the flooding as it is responsible for Sanming’s demolition job. Lastly, the film also discusses the impact that society can have on people, namely their fondness for the past. The characters in the film tend to focus on what was better in the past. Prior to the issues of flooding, Sanming had a family that he cared for and continues to dwell on them in his search for them in the present day. Shen Hong is also guilty of this at first when she tries to locate her husband, who also wants to revive their relationship despite everything he had done. In the end, Still Life manages to explain the issues currently existing in China thanks to its intricate characterization of the cast and the impression of the land that they inhabitant.