It would extremely easy to pass this film as a political propaganda, but it is not. In fact, it is not even so much about communist and nationalist political intrigue, but it is about abolitionism and slavery.
Jingbo people, the minority that resides in Yunnan province of China, was in fact the same people as Kachin people in Burma. Chinese emperors had allowed the Kachin in China to maintain slavery and granted the chieftains imperial titles in exchange of their loyalty, and this had not been changed even during Republic era, after the overthrown of Qing dynasty, ending the two thousand years old feudual system in China. The beneficiaries of such slavery system were extremely few, only those chieftains on top. Majority Kachin who were slaves obviously welcomed the egalitarian ideology of communists and support the abolishment of slavery.
