The documentary The Six: The Untold Story of RMS Titanic's Chinese Passengers has opened across Chinese mainland since April 16. As one of the deadliest disasters in maritime history, RMS Titanic, then the largest ship in the world, collided with an iceberg during its maiden voyage from Southampton in England to New York, causing the death of more than 1,500 lives of the overall more than 2,220 passengers and crew on board. Eight Chinese passengers boarded the British liner on a single ticket listing all their names for the third class, a common practice for the cheapest cabin, and six of them survived the tragic sinking. Fang Lang, also named Fang Wing Sun, a Chinese man who was perhaps the last survivor rescued by the returning No 14 Lifeboat, inspired James Cameron to create the iconic scene of his blockbuster Titanic, in which Leonardo Di Caprio, who starred as Jack, leaves the chances of survival to Kate Winslet's Rose by pushing his beloved onto a floating door. Arthur Jones, the documentary's director, says he heard the Chinese survivors' story from his decades-long friend Steven Schwankert for the first time in 2015. The Shanghai-based British filmmaker felt very surprised and was more shocked to find few of his Chinese friends knew it. "We knew two of the eight Chinese passengers died, but nobody talked about the six survivors. Most of the Titanic survivors have their stories, but those six seemed to completely disappear," says the director, 47, who has lived in China since 1996. The Six marks his second cooperative documentary with Schwankert, a New Jersey-born American researcher and historian, after their 2013 feature The Poseidon Project, about the search of a sunken British submarine. "I grew up near the ocean. I've always held an interest in maritime history, ships and shipwrecks since I was a little kid," says Schwankert, who traveled to China in the late 1980s. Stumbling upon Titanic's passenger list and gathering a few clues, Schwankert realized that he could turn his private interest in China and the sea to make a new project, for which he, alongside Jones, took five years to travel over 20 cities and interviewed over 100 people as well as read 1,000 archives and historic works. Through a sizable amount of investigating and conducting experiments to recreate some rescue moments of the fatal night, the crew pieced together the whole picture of the six survivors, respectively Lee Bing, Fang Lang, Chang Chip, Ah Lam, Chung Foo, and Ling Hee. Unlike other survivors who were treated in hospitals or transferred to hotels, the six Chinese passengers who escaped the disaster were barred from entering the US because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, notoriously known for using Chinese laborers as scapegoats for the US' economic woes. All the sailors boarded the Titanic to work jobs, but the six survivors were reassigned from a freighter docked in New York bound for Cuba by the company who purchased the ticket for them. Considering that the average survival rate for third class male passengers is less than 20 percent, Schwankert says he believes the 75 percent survival rate of Chinese passengers is attributed to their experience as sailors.
"They had a particular understanding of what was happening on the ship. As sailors they would know that the best thing to do is to get near the lifeboats early. We think they got onto the deck and took their opportunity when the boats were almost leaving," echoes Jones, the director. With thorough research and experiments that range from building a full-size lifeboat and using a 3D software to simulate the escape route, the documentary dispels the rumors that claimed the Chinese survivors donned women's dresses to hide as stowaways in the lifeboats. "All of those rumors are very unfair. The one thing we should remember about Titanic is that there were spaces on all of the lifeboats. Some of the lifeboats from Titanic were not even half full. Is it wrong to try to survive?" says Jones. However, the most thought-provoking part of the documentary is not just what happened to the Chinese passengers on the Titanic's tragic night, but their poignant life paths as early-generation immigrants struggling against discrimination and racism, as well as fears that they might be forced to lose everything they had strived for. "Nobody ever claimed them. Nobody ever talked about them…There is a deep psychological wound that the generation suffered which is not just about 'can I survive?' or money. There's something else that sits inside their heart or minds," says Jones. The director says most Chinese immigrant laborers didn't get married, with their families ending with them. The most highlighted survivor in the documentary is Fang Lang, who didn't tell his Titanic survival story to his children or wife for some difficult reasons. For the duo creators, their retelling of Titanic from the Chinese perspective has its distinctive meanings. "Every generation after Titanic kind of uses Titanic as a way to talk about society," say Jones. Giving the instances that Titanic stories were retold to explore moral values, the difference between women and men and the class discrimination, Jones says they hope to look at Titanic from a fresh perspective that tells "how society deals with issues of ethnicity and nationality and how that affects people's lives". 记者：徐帆
