Journey to Beijing

Ostensibly a documentary about a four-month charity walk from Hong Kong to Beijing, which was timed to reach its destination on the eve of Hong Kong's reversion to Chinese sovereignty, Chan's film is in fact a wide ranging 'essay' on the narrowing - or is it? - gap between Hong Kong and the 'mother country'. Part of the film does focus on the walkers, examining their motives and their reactions to the experience, and on the people they meet on the road, but there are frequent sidetracks: for instance, a sequence examining the progress of the gay rights movement in Hong Kong and questioning its future prospects. Facing up to the inevitable sense of anti-climax which followed the hand over, Chan cuts to the heart of Hong Kong's conflicting feelings about its own way forward, and clears away all the evasions and half-truths of the full-on media coverage of the hand over itself.