Langs de oevers van de Yangtze

- Season 1

(2016)

Shanghai is flooded by immigrants. The world's largest harbor city house almost 10 million newcomers who all want to see their dream of financial success become reality.

Love and happiness do not come easily in China. If you're not in a relation by age thirty, you have a serious problem. How do Chinese people find a partner?

Fourty years after his death, Mao is still immensely popular. After all, he was the founder of the People's Republic. Ruben meets China's most famous Mao impersonator.

Ruben gets to visit the inside of China's proudest engineering achievement, the Three Gorges Dam. Ninety villages and thirteen cities disappeared below water.

Ruben arrives in China's third most populous, fast-growing city, Chongqing. Having enjoyed mobile street artists, he visits the nationally-recruiting boarding circus school an contemplates the efforts required from potential artists from childhood. He also meets a handsome street dance instructor, who was long shunned by his family for refusing to accept a safe arranged career as most kids do. Finally he visits a two hours driving far theme park, the 'dwarfs empire' for height-impaired outcasts who can't even use superior diplomas in the regular society.

China is becoming more modern every day and even remote areas are becoming more and more developed. How do minorities such as the Miao and the Tibetans see these changes?