Plot Summary
George Hogg (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) is a young British journalist from Hertfordshire in England. In 1938, during the early days of the Japanese occupation of China, he sneaks into Nanjing, China, by pretending to be a Red Cross aid worker. Arriving in Nanjing, Hogg witnesses and photographs the poverty, ruins, and corpses on the streets. He proceeds to write a daily journal about his findings when he is interrupted by the sounds from outside. Upon peering outside the window, Hogg witnesses Japanese soldiers round up Chinese refugees and proceed to massacre the group. He anxiously takes photos of this event by the window. Later on at night,Hogg is captured by the Japanese while photographing them committing atrocities. He is about to be executed when Chen Hansheng (Chow Yun-fat), a Chinese communist resistance fighter, saves him. While hiding in the rubble with Hansheng, Hogg witnesses the execution of two of his colleagues by the Japanese. Overwhelmed by shock, he inadvertently reveals their presence. A firefight ensues, and Hogg is wounded. He wakes up to Lee Pearson, (Radha Mitchell), checking on his wounds and discovers he has been brought to a rebel camp. With nowhere to go for now, Hansheng tells Hogg, on Lee's suggestion, to rest at an orphanage housing 56 young boys and only an aged grandmother to take care of them. However, on the night of arrival, he is called out by one of the boys to a strange location and is savagely attacked with sticks by the orphans. Thankfully, Lee arrives just in time and threatens to abandon the boys, leaving them without medical supplies or food. Lee explains to Hogg that she runs the orphanage and drops by from time to time with supplies.
The next day, at Lee's insistence, Hogg helps her to convince the boys that the treatment of lice by flea powder does not hurt. Lee's demonstration of the treatment on a naked Hoggs in the middle of the courtyard manages to convince the boys and they all promptly accept treatment. However, Lee asks Hogg to take care of the boys and states that she will be leaving for two months from March to May. Lee also leaves Hogg and the orphans with a donkey. However, Hogg replies that he has no intention to stay at the orphanage, but instead go to the front lines to write and spread the word about the war. As Hogg is leaving, he spots the grandmother looking down at Hogg and reflects on his short memory at the orphanage. Reluctantly, he returns to take care of the children. Over the course of the next few days Hogg gains the boys' respect by repairing the lighting, cleaning up the old school (which is the orphanage), and being their teacher. However, as for food, the grandmother had previously shown Hogg with a handful of maggot-infested rice, that there was close to nothing to feed the boys.
Hogg makes a trip to town with one of the boys to seek a wellknown and wealthy lady, Mrs. Wang,(Michelle Yeoh), with a business deal in mind. Hogg proposes to Mrs. Wang that he can provide her with vegetables if she supplies him with food and seeds for now. Mrs. Wang tests Hogg to see if he had the skill and knowledge to do so by asking him to identify certain seeds. Hogg passes the test easily and returns with the boy to the orphanage leading his donkey full of food and seeds. He starts to plow the land beside the orphanage and with the help of one of the orphans, successfully grows a flourishing vegetable garden along with beautiful and tall stalks of sunflowers.
Fleeing from the nationalists who want to conscript the boys into their army to fight the Japanese, they make a three-month journey across the snow-bound Liu Pan Shan mountains to safety on the edge of the Mongolian desert, the first 900 km on foot. To their relief, for the last part of the journey they are supplied with four trucks.
At the destination they are supplied with a building that they turn into a new orphanage. In 1945 Hogg dies of tetanus. This was foreshadowed by Lee, when she had described the horrors of the disease to him earlier.
The film features the Rape of Nanking and the SankÅ Sakusen, and ends with a few brief interview snippets with some of the surviving orphans.
Read more about this topic: The Children Of Huang Shi
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