Chinese tourists go to the Bosnian capital looking for relics of the story told in a Yugoslavian propaganda movie that was very popular in China.
by Marco Respinti
What do crowds of Chinese people in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, do in the “baščaršija,” the charming heart of the historical city? This is something it takes a while to ascertain—but it is very interesting.
Located on north bank of the river Miljacka, the “baščaršija” is Sarajevo’s old bazaar, dating to 15th century when Ottoman Bosnian general Isa-Beg Ishaković (1439–1470) founded the city. At its center lies the “sebilj,” an Ottoman-style wooden fountain (“sebil”), which became the symbol of the city. It comprises gems such as the monumental Gazi Husrev-beg Mosque, the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral Church of the Nativity of the Theotokos, the Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, and the Jewish Museum of Bosnia. There are also several traditional places where one can taste the preparation and flavor of Bosnian coffee. In the many intricated small allies, shops are divided between two groups. Some sell tacky things for tourists. Others still retain the traditional art of the owners’ grandparents or ancestors in carving bronze, toasting coffee, and knitting wools. But you will discover it at your own expense.
In Sarajevo, Chinese tourists would not particularly emerge from the rest of the international population visiting the city—if it was not for the fact that they take hundreds pictures of the most improbable of all locations of the “baščaršija,” cheering and hurrahing. Sometimes, they even avoid really attractive landmarks to concentrate on details of seemingly no importance, even on trees obscuring nice minarets and facades. I was there staring at them. Their behavior would have remained a mystery if not for one American in my group of three strolling visitors on a sunny and warm Sunday. She in fact could speak fluent Mandarin. She approached one Chinese young tourist out of one of those many groups and asked what it was all about.
The answer came quite excitedly. “This is for Walter!” A lost friend? Someone important? we wondered. No, it is “Walter Defends Sarajevo,” or at least this is how the title of a film from former Yugoslavia was translated into English. Originally entitled “Valter brani Sarajevo” in Serbo-Croatian, it was directed in 1972 by Bosnian Hajrudin Krvavac (1926–1992), whose specialty in the 1960s and 1970s were propaganda films. This is the “epic” story of “Valter.” the nom-de-guerre of a Communist partisan who defends Sarajevo fighting against the German Nazi troops for the glory of socialism.
Why do the Chinese love it? Because in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) it has been popular for generations, and virtually everyone saw it. It all goes back to the historic visit of US president Richard M. Nixon (1913–1994) to the PRC in 1972. It was the heart of the bloody Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), but the West decided to try to open a breach in the Bamboo Curtain and give the PRC a chance, after having accepted it in the UN the previous year, kicking out the Republic of China (Taiwan). Most probably, it was just the beginning of a capitulation of the West to Red China that, in different forms, still goes on, as well as the way by which, through Western money, Red China was able to survive the historical defeat of Communism that crushed the Soviet Union. On the other hand, that line of credit opened a small window in the totalitarian society of China.
That small window let some West in, for example, Communist Yugoslavia’s propaganda. Yugoslavia was a Communist society… with “Yugoslav characteristics.” It was not pro-Soviet Union, it was not pro-China, it was not pro-West. It egregiously fulfilled the mission of feeding the old lie of a “third way” between the free world in the West and the red blocs in the East, leading many countries and people as a new Pied Piper of Hamelin into another Communist camp “with peculiar characteristics.” As to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which made millions suffer in the horrific years of Mao Zedong (1893–1976), it was as much West as it could be allowed. The “new window of opportunity” could endure only another form of Communism. The propaganda of Red Yugoslavia was the only measure of “liberty” that the Chinese citizens could enjoy.
“Walter Defends Sarajevo” was one of the few selected movies that the Maoist regime permitted. It was promptly subtitled in Mandarin and imposed on moviegoers. Chinese people even enjoyed it, and even some dissidents I spoke with confirmed the story. After all, it was the “heroic” adventure of a “patriot” giving all for his city. Propaganda is a bitter medicine. You receive the cure for your illnesses from the doctor that inoculates it under your skin, and from a needle that carefully touches important nerves of the human mind and spirit.
Mission accomplished, then. Sarajevo is remembered by today’s Chinese people only for a B-movie of propaganda that shaped their imagination, once more filling the thirsty throats of unaware or uninformed innocent people with tainted water. Shops in “baščaršija” sell all sort of paraphernalia to the Chinese in search of “Walter’s relics,” and the socialist lie lives on.
The owner of one traditional shop in the “baščaršija” I visited told me, half in English half in an a fairly good Italian, that his is one of the oldest shops in town. The artisan from whom he learned his profession of carving bronze was his grandfather—featured in “Walter Defends Sarajevo”. In his shop, he displays a short video of his grandpa from the movie in a continuous loop on a personal computer, advertised by words written in Mandarin.
It attracts flocks of Chinese visiting Sarajevo. They forget they are in the martyr town of a national-communist folly “with Serbian characteristics,” whose perpetrators were found guilty of genocide by the same judge who has indicted the PRC for genocides against the Uyghurs and Falun Gong practitioners, Sir Geoffrey Nice. The PRC, and the Russian Federation, were great supporters of those Serbian butchers. And no, Walter didn’t save Sarajevo.
