Photo: Mubi
In the spring of 2013, more than 16,000 rotting pig corpses floated down the Huangpu River, the “Mother River” whose tributaries feed Shanghai’s water supply. Public outrage and an official investigation followed, eventually tracing the pigs to Zhejiang Province, about 60 miles outside the city. The animals had died of a disease called porcine circovirus that officials insisted was not contagious to humans, and a tangle of regulations amid a crackdown on black-market pork had led farmers to dump the remains rather than pay the government fees to dispose of them. The incident highlighted the contrast between Shanghai’s prosperous, ultramodern facade and forgotten rural communities devastated by pollution and neglect the subject of writer-director Cathy Yan’s debut feature,
Dead Pigs review – winding tale of life in cash-crazed Shanghai Peter Bradshaw
A breezily westernised style of Chinese movie is on offer in this 2018 debut feature from Chinese-American film-maker Cathy Yan, who two years later went to Hollywood to direct Birds of Prey, starring Margot Robbie. Dead Pigs is an ensemble dramedy set in Shanghai that satirises – in a distinctly lenient way – the commercialism eating away at China’s heart. It is inspired by a real-life incident in which thousands of dead pigs were found in the city’s Huangpu river, dumped by poverty-stricken farmers who couldn’t pay the disposal fees; the pig symbolism reminded me a tiny bit of Alan Bennett’s A Private Function.