Li Yang is an underground film-maker, literally and figuratively. His debut feature, Blind Shaft, plays out in the subterranean world of China's privately owned coal mines: Li hoisted a handheld camera through tunnels that honeycomb the remote Shanxi province. He used "back-door connections" with local bureaucrats to gain access to the mines, bribing owners and dodging outraged foremen. But because Blind Shaft bypassed the wider authorities and was shot without government permission, it officially does not exist within China. The film is banned and its director is regarded as an outcast.He says of the miners,
They had a good sense of humour, and a sort of magnanimous view of the world in general. There is a word we have in China called 'renming'認命. It means being sanguine. Accepting one's fate.
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