Christian Bale Wanted To Visit Chinese Humaniterian In Dongshigu Village
Christian Bale decided to visit a humanitarian in Dongshigu village who had to be detained in his house for fifteen months. Christian Bale had travelled from Beijing to visit Chen Guangcheng, a blind human rights campaigner, but was turned away by guards.
Guangcheng has made several campaigns targeting human right violations in China. After being first placed under house arrest in September 2005 and then again imprisoned for damaging property and disrupting traffic in a protest, Bale had told Cnn: 'What I really wanted to do was to meet the man, shake his hand and say what an inspiration he is.' However he was turned away by security guards, with video footage showing the star asking 'Why can I not visit this free man?' with security guards answering, 'Go away!'. Bale and the Cnn crew that he was with were pushed away and then chased by a grey minivan at high speeds for over 40 minutes.
Bale suggests that he didn't want to be a hero by deciding to visit Guangcheng but wanted to raise awareness about humanitarianism: 'This doesn't come naturally to me, this is not what I actually enjoy - it isn't about me. But this was just a situation that said I can't look the other way.' Bale had been in China to promote his new film 'The Flowers of War', a drama about the massacre of Chinese by the Japanese at Nanjing.
