Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Steel reshapes the Yangtze long before it reaches a bridge, a high-rise, or a factory gate. At Shagang near Shanghai, ore arrives by ship, scrap moves in by barge, and furnaces turn both into new steel. The film follows the material system behind China’s steel expansion, from imported raw materials and recycled metal to the industrial sites and construction projects built on constant demand.
At the center of that system is a striking transfer: an entire steel plant was dismantled in Dortmund, shipped to China, and put back into operation at Shagang. Along the Yangtze, the boom reaches far beyond the factory floor, to bridge construction, migrant labor, rising scrap prices, and people like Pei, who fishes metal from Shanghai’s waterways with a magnet and sells it on. This is a film about how steel remakes a landscape, and about the unequal lives carried inside that transformation.
Documentary: Splendour of the Earth – Iron in China
Director: Claus Wischmann
Production: RBB (2004)
#steel #china #yangtze #shagang #shanghai #scrapmetal #ironore #bridgeconstruction
Steel reshapes the Yangtze long before it reaches a bridge, a high-rise, or a factory gate. At Shagang near Shanghai, ore arrives by ship, scrap moves in by barge, and furnaces turn both into new steel. The film follows the material system behind China’s steel expansion, from imported raw materials and recycled metal to the industrial sites and construction projects built on constant demand.
At the center of that system is a striking transfer: an entire steel plant was dismantled in Dortmund, shipped to China, and put back into operation at Shagang. Along the Yangtze, the boom reaches far beyond the factory floor, to bridge construction, migrant labor, rising scrap prices, and people like Pei, who fishes metal from Shanghai’s waterways with a magnet and sells it on. This is a film about how steel remakes a landscape, and about the unequal lives carried inside that transformation.
Documentary: Splendour of the Earth – Iron in China
Director: Claus Wischmann
Production: RBB (2004)
#steel #china #yangtze #shagang #shanghai #scrapmetal #ironore #bridgeconstruction
