It has been 110 years since Titanic sinking. In the movie, the handsome look back of Little Li Zi still lingers in the hearts of many people, but there are still many unsolved mysteries about this century shipwreck.
Of course, many people also believe that the story of Titanic is what rose tells. But few people know that the last person rescued on the Titanic is actually a Chinese, and the movie "HTM1" by Cameron also draws on his experience.
In fact, a total of 6 Chinese people survived the sinking of the Titanic a hundred years ago, but their real experience is much crueler than the movie.
In 1998, director Cameron brought the story of Titanic to the big screen. So far, this is still an epic movie. Although Little Little Little has been destroyed by time and Rose is no longer the noble noble girl, every time the movie is re-released, it will set off a wave of enthusiasm, and many people born in the 1990s and 200s are loyal fans of this old movie.
In reality, there are many explorations and revelations about the Titanic for a hundred years, but no one can completely uncover its mysterious veil. No matter how superb the technology is, it cannot restore the various forms of sentient beings on the ship back then. From first class to third class cabin, there is a huge gap between the rich and the poor.
movie focuses on the luxury of the upper class and the hero and female protagonist breaking through the worldly love, as well as the appearance of sentient beings in the face of disaster, but the movie is too freehand after all.
So there will be a captain who is ready to die, a gentleman who keeps a decent gentleman, a band who plays hymns, an old couple who go to the underworld, a male protagonist who leaves the chance to live for his lover, and the heart of the ocean that will always sink to the sea.
movie exquisite shooting techniques, grand scene arrangement, and sing love while restoring disasters. Cameron deserves to be a master director. However, 24 years later, he once again explores the story behind Titanic as the producer of the documentary " Six People ". In the documentary, Cameron revealed for the first time that the inspiration for rose lying on the door panel in the movie was a Chinese survivor.
In 2012, the Titanic sank for a hundred years, and the movie re-released an extended version, playing one of the deleted clips. After the Titanic completely sank, everyone gradually lost their lives in the cold sea water. The search and rescue boats passed through the frozen corpse and finally rescued a Chinese man on a door panel. The prototype of this shot is the survivor - Fang Rongshan.
2015 Tom Fong received a letter in a mailbox that had been abandoned for a long time. The other party claimed that he had seen a post he had posted. The article mentioned that among the survivors of the Titanic, there was a man named Fanglang, his father Fang Rongshan, so the other party hoped to visit him in person. Tom Fong hurriedly replied to the email and left his contact information.
Contact Tom Fong's filming team was the filming team of the documentary "Six People". Since they obtained evidence that there were 6 Chinese survivors of the Titanic, they have been trying to search for information about these people. After countless failures and disappointments, this post by Tom Fong lit up new hopes, and some of the evidence they brought also made many stories about his father in Tom Fong's childhood memory form a closed loop.
Tom Fong remembers that when he was about eight years old, his father once told him a story. He said that he had experienced a shipwreck and fell into the cold sea. At the critical moment, he tied himself to a corpse, then climbed onto a door panel and persisted until the rescue ship arrived.
Tom Fong always thought that his father told him about his experiences in living in China. Until many years later, he and his cousin visited an exhibition called "House of Rocks". In front of the Titanic theme exhibition, his cousin suddenly said to him, "Your father has boarded this ship!" Tom Fong was shocked at the time and then asked his mother again, but his mother had no idea.
Finally, through Tom Fong, the "Six People" team found Fang Rongshan's hometown, Taishan, Guangzhou, and met many of his relatives and friends here, and obtained more stories and evidence. This information restored Fang Rongshan's wandering life.
1912, Fang Rongshan boarded the Titanic as a sailor at the Port of Southampton in the UK. The elder brother, who was a few years older than him, said he would take them to the United States to make a career. In fact, there were five Chinese on the giant ship besides the three of them.
They can only afford the cheapest third-class cabin, so they are regarded as ordinary sailors in terms of boarding information, but Fang Rongshan is a very face-saving person. Even though he lives in a poor life, he insists on wearing a suit and tie. Although he lives in a low-class cabin, he goes to the United States to pursue his dreams.
However, he never expected that four days later, he would be awakened by a violent impact in his sleep by a violent impact. Fang Rongshan and his friends hurriedly picked up their luggage to find a way to escape. The sea water quickly poured into the cabin, the hull began to tilt violently, and there were screams of despair everywhere. They and the other five Chinese crew members stumbled to the deck. At this time, most of the passengers were already concentrated at the bow and the stern had begun to sink.
They were lucky enough to meet a folding lifeboat on the deck that was about to go into the water. Fortunately, because there were almost no one at the stern, the lifeboat was not full. The five Chinese ship workers running in front successfully boarded the ship, but Fang Rongshan and the other two partners missed the opportunity to escape because they were one step late.
stern of the boat began to sink rapidly, Fang Rongshan and his two friends fell into the cold sea water, and he watched as the two friends disappeared.
The strong desire to survive prompted him to overcome his fear and despair. He grabbed a corpse beside him as a float and tried hard to paddle to a floating door panel. Finally, he climbed up, his whole body was frozen to the point of no intuition, and was forced to support him with tenacious willpower.
At this time, the Titanic had completely sunk, and countless frozen corpses were floating on the sea. Fang Rongshan didn't know how long he could hold on.
Finally, a glimmer of light slowly approached in the distance. It was Rowe who directed the No. 14 search and rescue boat to return to find the survivor, and Fang Rongshan was the one lying on the wooden board.
He was sent to Capacia , and with all the survivors carrying huge sorrow, embarked on another journey of return. Later, in his letter to his family, he used a lilac poem to describe this experience of escaping from death. "The sky is high and the sea is wide and the waves are wide. A stick saves me. How many brothers have you together, wipe your tears and smile."
However, unfortunately, Fang Rongshan and the other five Chinese names were terminated on the Capacia rescue list. Four days later, Capacia was anchored at Port 54, New York, USA. The survivors finally escaped the terrifying sea. They got off the ship registration information, but the list did not have the names of these 6 Chinese, and their lives were still tortuous and cruel.
Fang Rongshan and five other Chinese survivors were blocked from the dock by the Chinese Exclusion Act. They could only continue to float on the sea. Previously, they only received basic assistance and some simple food on the Capasia. They did not have the chance to see a doctor. They were sent to other cruise ships without even having a mouthful of hot rice to continue working as laborers.
Not only that, the day after the Titanic sank, survivors have not recovered from the horror of death. Major media and newspapers around the world can't wait to start long reports and seize a positive publicity point, that is, in a critical moment, rescuers insist on letting women and children get on the lifeboat first, and many noble men even took the initiative to give up their escape opportunities.
If there is positive publicity, there must be negative examples. In the eyes of white people with nostrils, the Chinese have become the best targets. So a report called "The Chinese on the Titanic" came out of nostrils. He wrote that some Chinese were hiding at the bottom of the lifeboat in advance, and some were dressed up as women.
These reports have caused 8 Chinese passengers, including Fang Rongshan, to be in vain. But they didn't know this and didn't have the energy to argue. Two of them had been buried at the bottom of the sea, and the other six were scattered all over the world. Fang Rongshan failed to realize his American dream. The suits, shirts and tie on the luggage lost order were not useful. He drifted at the sea for eight years, worked as a sailor on multiple cruise ships, and did not have the chance to land until 1920.
At this time, he is no longer a survivor of a shipwreck but a Chinese crew member. This identity gives him many convenient conditions. For example, he can go to Chinatown and hide his identity and stay for a short time, but he must quickly find an agent to get an identity for inspection. If he is really unfortunately found, he may be deported, or sent to a small island that specializes in taking in illegal Chinese immigrants to fend for himself.
So from that day on, he was no longer the fanglang on the Titanic. He used his real name Fang Rongshan, but he did not stay in New York for too long. Then he moved to Chicago , settled down in the Chinese community and made a living by working.
Later, Fang Rongshan also tried to do business and opened a laundry with others, but it went bankrupt not long after, and returned to working. During this period, he lived in the United States as an illegal immigrant and was committed to helping many people who had the same experience as him.
When Fang Rongshan was in the United States, he kept in touch with his family of Taishan and would do his best to send money back to help them.
In 1943, the United States abolished the Chinese Exclusion Act, but did not open the naturalization policy for old immigrants like Fang Rongshan. Later, Fang Rongshan successfully obtained American citizenship through some methods and married a wife 40 years younger than him. After the marriage, his wife gave birth to two sons, but the marriage did not last long. After the divorce, his wife took away two sons.
But Fang Rongshan never mentioned to his wife that he had boarded the Titanic, and even told his son that he simply told him about escaping from death. He would only briefly reveal a few words to his brothers in his hometown.
is so cautious because he has been lingering in fear by his former illegal immigration status and the newspaper reports that Chinese passengers secretly squeezed into lifeboats.
American discrimination against Chinese left a heavy shadow in Fang Rongshan's heart. In his memory, his father once had an argument with the landlord while renting a house because the American called him a "yellow dog". His father angrily punched the American in the face.
In Tom Fong's impression, his father always wears a suit and tie, a very clean and gentleman old man, has nothing to do with whether he is rich or not.
In fact, Fang Rongshan is the only survivor with a basically complete information chain that the Six-Person team can find. The information of the other five people is impossible to determine at all. The names they registered at that time were Lee Bing, Chang Chip, Ah Lam, Ling Hee, Choong Foo, Len Lam, Lee Ling. Referring to Fang Rongshan's repeated renaming experience, we can guess that the owners of these names may have also changed their names many times, but one thing is certain, they all bear the infamous for a hundred years like Fang Rongshan.
From some fragmentary information, researchers can only confirm that some of them were infected with pneumonia and died when they were very young. Some were lucky to open a cafe later but no news after going to Canada. Some people returned to Hong Kong and changed their names and lived again. Some people could not even find any words about him. Compared with these forgotten names, Fang Rongshan seemed to be relatively lucky.
Regarding how these six Chinese survivors escaped, the "Six" team made them a name a hundred years later. The researchers restored the folding lifeboat they were riding at the time and found that even in the dark, six people could be discovered at a glance, so they could not hide at the bottom of the ship in advance.
Later, they learned from a survivor who was a child back then that there were Chinese passengers on the ship at that time. They were wearing long gowns and braids. Such outfits were easily mistaken for women, so there was no situation where they dressed as women on board the ship.
In addition, there was a passenger on the No. 14 lifeboat with an impression of Rongshan. He said that the Chinese man saw that he could not row the paddle after getting on the boat, so he snatched it and paddled hard, like a hero.
There are also survivors who confirmed that the lifeboat at the stern was indeed not full of people, and there were indeed empty seats before they were launched, so the six Chinese passengers were very likely to have just been lucky enough to board the ship.
Many years later, the nobles in the first class will still regard their surviving experience as a miracle. However, for Chinese survivors who were displaced due to Asian discrimination, the experience on the Titanic seemed to have become less important. After all, most of their life experiences after that were much crueler than the shipwreck.
