Kay Kay - our new film airs globally on Al Jazeera

Kay Kay - our new film airs globally on Al Jazeera

Tuesday 6th November 2012

As China's 18th Party Congress convenes in Beijing to select its next generation of leaders, Al Jazeera English's Witness strand will premiere a groundbreaking new film from tve tracking the country's momentous epoch of transformation through one girl's story.

Bright, ambitious and educated, 20-year old Kay Kay lives in the booming southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. She's typical of the new generation of middle class, Chinese only' children who've benefited not just from China's economic miracle', but also from the single-minded dedication of hard working parents. tve's been filming Kay Kay since she was a baby in 1992 in a unique personal narrative with the backdrop of China's meteoric rise on the global stage.

Kay Kay: the Girl from Guangzhou will be broadcast in Al Jazeera's Witness strand at the following times: (all times GMT)

Wednesday Nov 7: 20.00;

Thursday Nov 8: 12.00;

Friday Nov 9: 01.00;

Saturday Nov 10: 06.00;

Sunday Nov 11: 20.00;

Monday Nov 12: 12.00;

Tuesday Nov13: 01.00.

To view the film online visit Al Jazeera Witness.

Now in her first year at university, Kay Kay says her goal is to go into banking, and repay her parents for their investment in her education. But she knows it won't be an easy road and, perhaps in common with China's new rulers, she has no illusions about the problems ahead, for both China and her own generation.

Award-winning director Bruno Sorrentino has been filming Kay Kay and her parents for tve since 1992 - throughout what's turned out to be a time of profound social, economic and political transformation as China stakes its claim again as a world superpower.

Without China's one child policy now widely recognized as one of the engines of its astonishing growth life might have been very different for Kay Kay and her family. She's had to learn to be independent from a young age. I'm a single child and there are so many things I never had - sisters or brothers who I could ask to help me with things ... so I need to stand on my own feet more than others.

When Kay Kay was born In 1992, Guangzhou was a polluted industrial city. Her father worked in a filthy, Dickensian-looking paper mill, staying away from home during the week because it was impossible to make the long journey to work through the city's congested traffic.

By the millennium, when Kay Kay was eight, the family's fortunes were improving - in pace with Guanghzhou's rapid growth. New developments were springing up everywhere as paddy fields on the outskirts of town disappeared under concrete and steel. Kay Kay and her parents moved into a new apartment - and could splash out a motorbike. But the new luxuries came at a price: Kay Kay's parents had to spend long hours at work, often leaving her on her own.

Even now that she's grown up and at university, her parents continue to invest in their daughter's future, spending one third of their income on her fees and living expenses. Soon she'll be joining China's vast pool of human talent and economic productivity - part of the new generation that could make China the most powerful nation on Earth. But Kay Kay has her own reservations about the inherent problems of the recent rapid economic development.

We shouldn't be careless about the future and only bother ourselves with today this is what I worry about the most because the environment is deteriorating. If we destroy Nature, then Nature will punish us. I hope the environment can improve and that the climate doesn't warm up too quickly. If people start to worry about it and are pushed, then they will make things better. This is very important. OK!

LINK:	http://tve.org/news/kay-kay-new-film-airs-globally-on-al-jazeera/index...
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