Mr. Chang's Audience

Up the Yangtze, a heart-wrenching documentary directed by Yung Chang, exposes the hardships faced by peasant families living in China.  The film takes place on the Yangtze River, while a cruise ship offers tourists the last opportunity to see “old China” before it is flooded forever because of the Three Gorges Dam. 
Yung Chang particularly follows the life of one teenage girl, Cindy Yu Shui, who was sent to work for the cruise company due to the extreme poverty of her family. The success of this film comes from Chang’s ability to mold the audience and make them sympathize for Cindy’s situation as well as the state of China overall.    

In order to help understand how Chang shapes his audience so well, one can use Jimmie Killingsworth’s “Rhetoric Situations” as a lens. Killingsworth points out the relationship between ethos (the author), pathos (the audience), and logos (logic). 
In Up the Yangtze, Chang places the emphasis on “pathos [involving] the audience, especially the emotions of the audience” therefore creating a persuasive discourse and successfully making his film powerful (Killingsworth 26).  However, in the case of Cindy and her family, it is not difficult to find situations in which the viewers can sympathize. 
For example, Cindy’s brother “was in a meningitis-related coma…Hospital fees and school fee’s combined with school fees put the Yu’s in severe debt”(Chang 1). This forced Cindy to abandon her education and home to work for the cruise line in order to support her family. 
This reveals to viewers an aspect of Chinese culture that effects a large number of people and is occurring partially because of the politics of the country.

China is currently filled with “nationalist fervor” meaning that people view the government’s dam as the best thing for the country and “the small family must sacrifice to help the big family-the nation”(Chang 2). 
By directing this film, Yung Chang is addressing the concept of kairos, “a timeless awareness of the present situation of the audience and the need to act or change”(Killingsworth 26).  By exposing the truth behind the working class of China, it calls the audience to action, action against poverty in rural China as well as the future of the country and where it is heading.