Documentary Film Mulberry Child Moves Mothers and Daughters to Tears

Susan Morgan Cooper, the director of Mulberry Child, revealed some details and anecdotes about the making of the documentary. “As a film maker, I’ve always been drawn to oppressed and displaced people,” she told Asian Fortune.

“The first challenge in making the film Mulberry Child was its sub­ject, Jian Ping. Having grown up un­der the oppression of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Jian had learned that personal feelings were not important and should be hidden at all times. Unfortunately, a documentary film director’s job is to expose emotions. Without that exposition, there is no film. So Jian and I worked hard together and over time built a trust. . . a place in which she felt safe to be vulnerable.”

“My second challenge was that I didn’t want to make a film about distant history. I wanted to make a personal story. A story that traced the emotional disconnect between Jian and her daughter in the present back to Jian’s traumatic childhood growing up under Mao in China. Yet Jian had only a few faded photographs of her family. So I resorted to something frowned upon by documentary purists: I filmed a number of re-enactments. I felt that the hybrid of documentary and narrative film would help the audience engage in the personal story and better understand that dark period in Chinese history,” Cooper said.

In creating the documentary, Cooper used an unusual approach: She did not use professional actors, but tried to scout for talent in vari­ous Los Angeles locations—a grocery store, a Chinese restaurant, a school playground.

“I’d ask the checkers at my local grocery store, ‘Are you Chinese?’ Once they said ‘yes,’ there was no escape,” Cooper remembered. “One night, I went to my favorite Chinese restaurant in Hollywood and said to the owner, ‘Tony, I need six Red Guards.’ He opened the doors to the kitchen and said, ‘Susan, choose them.’”

“In Chinatown, I’d jump out of a moving car and chase old ladies down the street looking for someone to portray Nainai, the grandmother. The ladies always proved to be too Americanized, too modern, some with streaks in their hair. Eventually, we found Yang Juan Xue, a sweet, eighty-year-old lady who embodied Nainai’s kind spirit. Thankfully, she wore dentures and could remove her teeth. . . for the real Nainai had no teeth,” Cooper recalled.

Interestingly, the actress who portrayed Nainai had actually experienced the Cultural Revolution herself, and her daughter would translate her stories to Cooper as Yang spoke no English, only Manda­rin. Cooper found her so convincing in her role as Nainai that she joked that Helen Mirren could not have done a better job playing Jian’s frail and tender grandmother.

Just like finding the right fit for the role of Nainai, finding an actress to portray Jian as a child also proved to be quite an adven­ture. “We searched the playgrounds of The L.A. Unified School District looking for children who would resemble little Jian. I screen tested about 14 little girls, all adorable, and still could not find my Jian. My executive producer, Ellis Goodman, would call up patiently each Mon­day and ask, ‘Have you found her yet?’ Then, one weekend, six-year-old Jody [Choi] showed up with a beaming smile and tons of charis­ma,” Cooper said.

She also told Asian Fortune that Jian’s father was played by a doctor from Santa Barbara, while Christine Chiang, a Mandarin-speaking news anchor from Los Angeles, landed the role of Jian’s mother.

Cooper said that she, Jian, Lisa, the cinematographer, Quyen Tran, and Cooper’s daughter, Alexandra, the still photographer, traveled to­gether to various locations in China to film. “We traveled extensively. The well-known journalist Peter Arnett had told me about The Cultural Rev­olution Museum in Shantou in the south. When we arrived though, we were the only visitors. The Chinese apparently aren’t yet ready to revisit that period of history,” the director remembered.

“In Changchun, the reunion with Jian’s family was a big surprise for everyone. I sent Quyen, the cine­matographer, into their apartment with Jian, while I stayed in the car. I wanted the family not be distract­ed so they would react normally. I think that reunion speaks volumes,” Cooper said.

Another stop was an area north of Baicheng, to which they sped in an old camper. There, they found a mud village which resembled the one to which Nainai and Jian had been exiled. Cooper asked a wom­an’s permission to go up on her roof because she wanted to film red scarves floating across the sky. “It involved a lot of takes and a lot of scarf throwing. The woman thought it was great fun, but when herband came home on a scooter, and saw two foreigners madly tossing flags off his roof, he thought we were all absolutely crazy.”

Cooper also revealed where she thought Mulberry Child’s potential lay. “I think I saw the potential of the film as a universal message to immigrants. America is a country of immigrants who have overcome great adversity to give themselves and their children a better life. All too often, children of immigrants, growing up as Americans, know nothing of the struggles their parents, or their ancestors, have endured so that they themselves can have freedom of speech, a good edu­cation, and a comfortable life. This film has opened up that discussion,” she said.

“The film also resonates as a mother-daughter relationship with all its complexity. Jian and Lisa worked hard to express their emo­tions honestly. Their reward has been that mothers and daughters in the audience have thanked them, often in tears, for exposing that honesty,” Cooper said.

Mulberry Child received numer­ous awards, among them the Best of the Fest award at the Palm Springs International Film Festival and the Jury Award for Writing at the Nash­ville Film Festival. The late Roger Ebert gave the movie three and a half stars. The documentary has been shown in commercial theaters in Chicago, New York City, and Los Angeles.

Many Asians and non-Asians have responded positively to the film as first-generation immigrant parents in the U.S. are trying to reach out to their Americanized children across the generational and cultural divide. “I’m always deeply moved when people from different ethnic backgrounds resonate with our life stories,” Jian said, citing the example of an Italian father who thanked her for sharing her story and said he faced the same challenges raising his chil­dren in the U.S. He told Jian that he wanted his children to under­stand and appreciate their Italian heritage.

“A Jewish mother in her fifties identified with Lisa. She said she is a second-generation immigrant, and she struggled with her mother for years the way Lisa struggled with me,” Jian told Asian Fortune. “She said she fully understands how difficult it is for Lisa,” Jian said, admitting that she was completely surprised by this response. “We are in the same age group and I thought she’d be more on my side. Her statement compelled me to start looking at things from Lisa’s perspective.”

“It’s beautiful to see [how] a personal story with a universal theme can spark resonance with so many people of different ethnic backgrounds. It’s very touching, magical, and humbling. I have nev­er dreamed of being able to connect with so many people at the same time.”