…or perhaps not? You decide.

Somehow, I got stuck into a pair of choice documentaries last night (I really shouldn’t have) over at The National Film Board of Canada’s website, one of which was Shui-bo Wang’s sensational Korea War investigative piece entitled They Chose China (52m 26s).

That last snap there is some iconic stock footage from John Frankenheimer’s 1962 all-time Cold War classic The Manchurian Candidate, with Laurence Harvey playing the brainwashed turncoat Captain Raymond Shaw (yes, that Raymond Shaw, “the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being [you]‘ve ever known in [your] life”). Shaw, caught early on during the hostilities behind enemy lines during the Korean War and mercilessly subjected to radical thought experiments that morphed him into a cold-blooded “sleeper” killer by his cunning Chinese jailers.

I duly recalled Frankenheimer’s masterpiece after watching Wang’s marvelous doc because the two pieces – one clearly fictional, the other, only too astonishingly real – grew out of similar historical beginnings. I’m almost positive at how few of the current so-called “Old China Hands” even aware of the existence of the much-maligned twenty-one former US/UN soldiers who instead opted to remain on the Chinese side of the 38th Parallel

following the cessation of hostilities during the Korean conflict because so much has been done to spike their story over the course of the Cold War’s tense history.

For almost one decadent hour, I sat mesmerized in front of my laptop’s screen while I learned about the brave – some would say mindless — men who protested the actions of what they perceived to be their hostile home government with its chastened United Nations expeditionary force in tow. They instead chose to establish their post-draft lives in Mao’ newly-minted People’s Republic.

Clarence Adams’ story in the film was particularly poignant. Born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, Adams, an African-American, lived the hardscrabble teenaged existence of the discriminated black minority in what was then the postwar South. Denied equal opportunity to higher education and job opportunities in the still officially racially-segregated United States in the wake of WWII, a near-catastrophic brush-in with the long arm of the law had Adams bee lining for the US Army’s recruitment office in Memphis, where he was summarily drafted for service in the rapidly boiling Korean War and promptly shipped out overseas.

Wounded and captured early on, Adams and his fellow POWs were remarkably well-treated during their prisoner-of-war camp internment somewhere in China over the course of almost three years. Having declared the “New China” only 9 months’ previously, Mao ordered that these Western POWs were to be treated as model “comradely” captives, and just so that I don’t spoil anything here, watch the footage for yourselves so you can see the lengths to which their Chinese captors went to make life for the POWs as rich and fulfilling as possible. When the cease-fire was eventually signed in 1953, captives from both sides of the 38th Parallel were transferred over to the present DMZ and given nine weeks to decide which country they’d like be repatriated to. Most opted to return to their home nations, except for twenty-one US GIs who chose to remain behind the “Bamboo Curtain” either for personal ideological reasons (which you’ll soon see) or because they were duly brainwashed by the unrelenting blasts of Chinese socialistic indoctrination, whichever you choose to believe.

While living in China, the conflict long over, Adams married a Chinese woman and raised a family with her, even attending People’s University in Beijing with several of his former POW buddies, gaining university qualifications which would serve him well during the almost 15 years he spent in the PRC. He was to eventually return to the US, but never before, he said, had he experienced the spirit of equality and opportunity he enjoyed while living in Mao’s China.

Whether you’re a fan of the US or a basher of its apparent realpolitik, Wang’s excellently-narrated documentary is going to give you much pause. Let me know what you think.

And in case you’re wondering how I succeed in landing on these delectable little gems, I’d been covering the Shanghai blogosphere during my Prague Monday afternoon and suddenly happened across Kenneth Tan’s Shanghaiist post describing another Shui-bo Wang coming-of-age diary-like masterpiece entitled Sunrise Over Tiananmen Square (29m 25s), a compilation of Wang’s very own meticulously hand-drawn cards detailing the ascendancy of Mao’s PRC and his journey from being a starry-eyed Communist ideologue and fervent acolyte of Mao Zedong Thought. For all you film school majors and cinephiles out there who have a keen appreciation for stellar storytelling technique, Sunrise is that thirty minutes you don’t want to miss.

Here’s to getting even more distracted this week with film!

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