All in the span of 50 years. Now, after decades of research, it is finally possible to see life in china as it actually occurred, to see china frame by frame. [soft music tapers] my name is bill einreinhoffer, and i doubt youve ever heard of me, despite a 40plus year career in television. I started making documentaries back when i was in college, which obviously was a long time ago. [gentle music] ive spent most of my career behind the camera. Until now. When i first arrived in china more than three decades ago, i had no idea i would spend much of my professional career making stories in and about china. [gentle music continues] i also didnt know i would become a footage detective, spending countless hours locating rare historic footage. Yet, thats what happened. Today america and china have deep, fundamental differences. In fact, its no exaggeration to say relations are terrible and threaten to get even worse. How did we reach this point . The answer to that question can, in part, be found in historic film footage, much of which was lost, stolen, or at the very least misplaced for decades. Footage i have been tracking down for more than 30 years. [music fades] [soft music] these are some of the earliest film images to be shot in china. [soft music continues] who are these people . What are they doing . Why are they doing it . Where are they going . What kind of inner life do they live . [soft music continues] we dont know. We will never know. Foreigners shot most of the footage from this era. They likely didnt speak or write chinese and had a limited understanding of the local culture. Yet it is still possible to recognize authentic elements of chinese life. [music fades] even if those films sometimes mischaracterize the events, you can find some valuable things in that. [chinese music] [bill] it was the rare foreign film that captured chinese life as it was. Life that ebbed and flowed just as it did in other societies. Events that mirrored the emotional lives of the Chinese People themselves. As opposed to what westerners saw as strange and exotic. [music] yet foreigners didnt have a complete monopoly when it came to filmmaking. [martial music] this is a group of United States marine corp pilots flying over the port city of tianjin in north china during the 1920s. The subject matter alone makes this footage notable, but so does the cameraman. We dont know who he is, but he must have been good. Would the marines have chosen someone who wasnt proficient to document their exploits . [mellow music] in china, the period from the mid19th century until the mid20th century is known as the century of humiliation. the dangers posed by invasion, occupation, and rebellion were seen as perpetual threats by chinas leaders. Over its history, china has been invaded from many directions by many people, and this has made it suspicious of foreigners. Also, china is a country of diverse provinces and ethnic minorities, some of which had rebelled in earlier times. The Chinese Communist party is obsessed with the image of a unified china and it represses any thoughts of separatism. [upbeat music] [bill] during the first half of the 20th century, thousands of foreign children, the sons and daughters of business executives, doctors, lawyers, christian missionaries and others, lived in china. China, in fact, was their home. [mary] we learned to speak chinese and we were completely bilingual as children. If we played with our brothers and sisters, we also had chinese playmates. And there were more chinese around us than there were americans. And of course, we ate chinese food. And it was just all a part of our life. [pamela] grandpa was there in the 1890s. [train track clanging] he started helping put in the railroads in china. And then, my father got involved with the coal mines in china with a big britishchinese coal mining consortium, the kailuan. I was born over there, in honan. [mellow music] [bill] life in china during the first half of the 20th century was harsh. Poverty, hunger, disease, and an early death awaited many chinese, even in shanghai, chinas largest, most prosperous city. They collect all the dead bodies from the poor people, because its very cold and they all died because of the cold. They collect them every day, six oclock in the morning. I saw it with my own eyes. And i saw it also with my own eyes, thats quite a lot, not very few people on the street, try to sell their children and just write a note, who can help my kids . Who want my kids . [soft music] [bill] key to every issue, to every humiliation was the principle of sovereignty. The Chinese People had little say in, and less control of, events taking place in their own country. During the early part of the 20th century, most foreigners and chinese lived in parallel worlds, worlds that seldom mixed. The difference between those two worlds was stunning. Yet Ronald Morris and his cousin, mike, [soft music] lived in both cultures. And i remember my grandmother scolding me a couple of times and that, because i wouldnt eat the food that we had. I preferred the food downstairs with the chinese, the kids, now id sit down and eat with them, which they graciously gave me. But my mom, grandmother wound up just giving them extra money for payment for the food. So really, i love chinese chow, thats it. [folk music] [bill] 1930s shanghai was home to a large number of stateless jewish exiles. Many had found shelter in china from russias bolshevik revolution. Later, refugees from wartorn europe, fleeing the holocaust would arrive. Liliane willens and her parents lived in a part of shanghai called the french concession, an area that decades later, still has a special, even romantic quality. Well, the french concession was the residential section of shanghai, and it was very much like a french small city out there. The stores were actually russianowned stores. People spoke russian in the streets or you spoke english and the chinese spoke to us in pidgin english. The language in shanghai was british english. As i always mention it, language always follows trade. [jive music] [bill] in old shanghai, the chinese did most of the work, while the foreigners made the money. [jive music continues] some amassed absolute fortunes, living lives of luxury, unimaginable back home. The United States, great britain, france, and japan all maintained a Permanent Military presence in china. [bugle call] men serving in the u. S. Navys yangtze patrol, dubbed china sailors, could live the good life despite their meager pay. Many never went home. [traditional music] [narrator] the Whangpoo River filled with junks from amoy, sampans from soochow, [traditional music continues] and plenty of sampans for sailors, bound for liberty in shanghai. China has its full quota of pretty girls, who combine oriental charm with modern snap. The result is not hard to look at. [music continues] [bill] it would be a mistake to judge all foreigners living in china harshly. Many were committed to saving souls and saving lives, like those who served at a Presbyterian Mission in a northern chinese town, then called weihsien. [instrumental music continues] in a place of desperate poverty, proper medical care was the difference between life and death. There were even holidays, which might be called christmas with chinese characteristics. [instrumental music continues] thomas dunn was a physician, as well as a leader, in shanghais american community. Hed been in the navy in the First World War and just got interested in china and thought hed just spent a couple of years there before going back to california, which is where he was from. But he liked it so much that my mother, whom hed known in college, she came out and they were married in the philippines and then moved to shanghai, where he set up practice and was a very, very busy doctor and a very sweet man, so he had a lot of patients, a lot of patients. [mellow music] [bill] whatever advantages foreigners enjoyed, wealth, status, servants, they still succumbed to the same endemic diseases that killed millions of chinese. They ended their days in a special foreigner section of one of shanghais largest cemeteries. Today, their graves are seldom, if ever, visited. [bugle] socalled newsreels, short films usually shown in theaters, were the only way to actually see the news before the arrival of television. Often sensational, the newsreels told stories with what today might be called attitude. [bugle call continues] they also exhibited a kind of casual racism, slurs, insults, paternalism that is astounding by todays standards. [bugle call ends] [newsperson] arriving in modern steam freighters, the cars are swung into waiting river junks, among the oldest type of boats known to man. [gentle music] there seems to be no great rush. The coolies are philosophical about it all. This isnt the regular assembly line. The chinese very courteously insisted on bringing their work out of doors, so wed be sure they had nothing up their sleeve. Look, a sale already. Another satisfied v8 owner. [suspenseful music] [bill] when chinas last imperial dynasty, the qing dynasty, collapsed in 1911, the country was plunged into chaos. It saw the rise of what the west termed, warlords, regional leaders with their own armies, hungry for personal power. Sun yatsen, the founder of the kuomintang, or nationalist party, didnt live long enough to see it come to power. His successor, generalisimo Chiang Kaishek, participated in a united front effort with chinas then small communist party. One of its members was a former college librarian, named mao zedong. But in 1927, Chiang Kaishek violently ended the united front, ordering the execution of thousands of communists. Years later, the communists would take revenge on rural landlords and socalled rich peasants. In september 1931, the Imperial Japanese army occupied three provinces in northeast china, an area often called manchuria. An incident was staged as an excuse for a massive Japanese Military invasion. [suspenseful music] this is the time that the japanese were very worried about a number of things, including the sustainability of the japanese empire. [engine noise] they were worried about shortages, shortages in oil in other sorts of supplies. They were also worried about the fact that they have too many people. They needed new space, especially for their farmers to live. And they had been competing with china, as well as the soviet union for influence in manchuria, and manchuria was the most industrialized part of continental east asia, and so they wanted to move in there. [bill] during january, 1932, the Imperial Japanese navy sent troops ashore in shanghai, allegedly to protect japanese economic interests and civilians. Chiang kaishek largely avoided confronting the japanese troops, who were occupying evermore territory in china, concentrating instead on his communist rivals. [intense music] not until he was kidnapped in 1936 and facing death, would he agree to a second united front with a now larger, but still relatively small communist party. The stage was set for china to finally confront the japanese invaders. [bill] the arrival of war in shanghai was sudden and deadly. We lived about a half a mile from the railroad, and the japanese are periodically trying to bomb the railroad. So as a child, i can remember that awful sound of a plane, you know, diving nowadays, theyd just drop it, but in those days they dove in and we had a porch in our house on the third floor. We used to have tea in the afternoon and one time we saw this plane was coming and dive bombing and my governess said, come on, we gotta go inside. But i was dragging my feet and id looked up and here i could see the pilot in the plane. He dropped the bombs on the railroad. [suspenseful music] there was a lot of slaughter. My cousin mike and i, we were scared to death. We saw a lot of, [suspenseful music continues] lot of bad, we saw a lot of hunger. We saw the chinese wrapped around a tree, eating the bark off the tree. You know, they were being bayoneted. Children being bayoneted. Yeah, it was pretty bad. [bill] chinas soldiers were brave, [suspenseful music] but courage alone could not stop japanese tanks nor the japanese aircraft that bombed largely defenseless chinese cities. When the battle of shanghai was over, much of the central city, as well as many outlying districts were in ruins. When we went there, i was shock to see buildings broken, everything was broken down, shattered, and people in the streets. So there was a little store and i saw a gleaming white bicycle and i told my father, im going to take it. He said, absolutely not. Someone owns it, its owned by someone, and the person could have been killed. And i think then i realized what death meant. I was 10 years old. [drum beats] [bill] Chiang Kaishek unsuccessfully fought a conventional war against the Japanese Military. Chinas soldiers were often hindered by poor strategy and inferior equipment. Mao zedong and the communist forces chose a completely different strategy. They used what today is commonly called asymmetric warfare. Maos guerrilla warfare is not just, you know, small units taking on, sort of having potshots at japanese policemen and installations. No, no, its much more sophisticated. It is going into the rear of the japanese, building up these base areas with new government, new laws, sometimes new currencies, sustaining a red army. Athru army is its called at this time, that can operate outside of the base, but also local guerrilla forces, local militia and sort of middle level units that can operate throughout that base area. [bill] it is impossible to overemphasize the impact of japans military occupation. Millions of people fled to western china. Every family has a story. It is how beijingbased journalist, melinda lous father, met his future wife. He and my mother, they actually were both at ching hui university because the japanese occupied beijing, that university as well as a number of other chinese universities in a very dramatic and sort of romantic episode, the entire student body, the professors, the laboratories, the books, the libraries, the classrooms, they all try to relocate west to get away from the japanese. [bill] this footage unseen in america or china for decades, is unique. [upbeat music] under the terms of the united front agreement, the communist party was allowed to maintain a presence in chinas wartime capital, then called chungking. Zhou enlai, mao zedongâ– s trusted lieutenant, was in overall charge. [upbeat music continues] workers wrote, printed and assembled the communist newspaper, xinhua daily, an act which could get them arrested or even killed elsewhere in china. They worked under the watchful gaze of american president Franklin Roosevelt and soviet dictator joseph stalin. Children attended classes in a school unlike any other in nationalist or japanese controlled china, a school with a communist course of study. Security forces cleaned their weapons, preparing for a possible attack, not by japanese soldiers, but their erstwhile nationalist allies, just as took place in 1927. [upbeat music continues] and who knew that revolutionaries enjoyed playing basketball . [music fades] [oscillating rumble] [soft music] during the 1930s and 1940s, the Imperial Japanese government ceaselessly turned out propaganda films, newsreels and feature films aimed at japanese, chinese and global audiences. Their goal was to paint a picture of an imaginary world that never existed. It included documentaries about how wonderful life was in the mythical country of manchukuo, which in fact was the large area in northeast china, japan invaded in 1931. [explosions] a japanese feature film included scenes of selfless japanese soldiers feeding hungry chinese refugees, protecting them from murderous chinese troops. The exact opposite of what actually happened. [plane engine] [soft music] english language presentations were aimed at convincing american audiences that only benevolent japanese rulers could administer a fractious and fractured china. [announcer] hungry children soon learned that other big children from over the sea would give them some of their rice or even sweets if they asked for it. [music continues] while long rows of peasants waited basket in hand, old granny would get her cigarette too. [music fades] [bill] what was missing was any discussion of the Japanese Militarys use of rape, terror, arson, looting and murder, [somber music] even chemical and biological warfare, similar to nazi atrocities in europe. [eerie noise] the conflict traumatized millions of chinese children, [somber music] who made toys reflecting the world they saw every day, a world at war. [somber music ends] the Imperial Japanese navys attack on americas base at pearl harbor, hawaii changed everything. Now china and the United States were officially allies and American Forces could openly attack Japanese Military targets, [eerie music] replacing covert operations, like the flying tigers. But american, british, australian and dutch civilians living in japaneseoccupied china became enemy nationals. Entire families were sent to civilian prison camps. The food was terrible. Fish, rice and cabbage, slimy cabbage, rotten fish and rice filled with boll weevils and stones, cause it was off of shavings from warehouses and they had to finally, the doctors said, take out the stones, but dont take out the boll weevils because that is, they are cooked and that is protein. So you learn to eat what you had to eat. [bill] as badly as the Japanese Military treated foreigners in the internment camps, it paled in comparison to what the Chinese People experienced. [eerie music continues] millions of chinese, many innocent civilians, would die as a result of tactics that eventually were summarized as the three alls. Kill all, burn all, loot all. [eerie music continues] on july 4th, 1943, Independence Day in the United States, American Children at one internment camp, joined their parents in singing patriotic songs. [voice cracking] began to sing the star spangled banner, [deep breathe] and the japanese rushed in. [crying] im sorry, sorry. [sobbing] the japanese rushed in and said, you cant sing that song. So we were all sent back to our buildings and said, you cant stay here, no more singing. And. As i got to the door or my room, i turned, [sobbing] [deep breathes] and you can hear those last strains. Home of the brave home of the free. Im sorry, im sorry. It was just a very emotional thing for me, i apologize. There was a rumble that we were going to be executed and some stakes were being driven into the roll call field. I thought it was a big fat joke. I had no idea and i didnt find out later on that that was a possibility, but thank goodness we were liberated, otherwise we wouldve been executed, thats true. [bill] august, 1945, Japanese Military forces surrender in china. [soft music continues] it was sudden, unexpected and complete. [soft music] in china, leaflets announcing victory were organized into bundles to be dropped by american aircraft over major cities. [soft music continues] the news literally fell from the sky. In shanghai, there was a parade. With the fighting over, china could finally enjoy the benefits of peace. The fighting had ended or had it . [soft music continues] many chinese felt it wasnt just japanese troops who should leave china. They wanted all Foreign Military units to exit, including thousands of american troops. I always see with my own eyes. The military ships from america and britain on the river of huangpu. And on the streets, theres always the navy and the mps. I said, why . The japanese have left us and why you come here . What for . Understand me . Ask me why . [silence] because i said this is our fatherland, this is my own land we do not need other help. [gentle music] [bill] general george c. Marshall, the recently retired u. S. Army chief of staff, was sent to china to negotiate the establishment of a coalition government, incorporating both the nationalists as well as the communists. According to american newsreels, marshall was able to do the impossible, brokering as ceasefire between the communists and the nationalists, ending chinas civil war. [gentle music continues] those newsreels were wrong. With the initial support of the soviets, the Chinese Communist party gradually gained the ability to wage guerrilla war against the government of Chiang Kaishek. After japans surrender, the u. S. Attempted to reconcile the parties, but maos support amongst the peasants had grown and his demand to share power went far beyond what chiang could accept. Therefore, chinas civil war resumed. [intense music] [bill] the soviet union, in the final days of the war, had occupied northeast china, [intense music continues] and besides putting their own imprint on the region, all of the military equipment surrendered by the japanese was given to the communist forces. [intense music continues] on paper, the kmt, the nationalists, looked unbeatable. In fact, the cpc, the communists, were stronger. Chiang kaishek had lost the faith of the Chinese People. Since 1937, a scorched earth policy condemned the vast majority of the Chinese People, who could not follow the retreating kmt troops to live in a ruined wasteland. [music] as many as 900,000 chinese died in 1938, when Chiang Kaishek had dikes holding back the yellow river destroyed, hoping it would stop oncoming japanese troops. [somber music] it only delayed them. By 1946, china was in political and economic chaos. There was triple digit inflation. Only the black market merchants seemed to be making money. [somber music continues] as the months went by, nationalist forces were repeatedly defeated. Battered and demoralized, eventually most were in full retreat, often abandoning their heavy weapons and equipment. Even more critical, it was now clear that Chiang Kaishek was a terrible general. His chief opponent, communist general lin biao, had been brilliant in the fight against japanese forces. General lin biao is one of the greatest commanders of world war ii, not just in china, but around the world. He was a great tactician, a great leader of men obviously,