The Chinese Mirror

1928-31: "Burning of the Red Lotus Temple"

From such 1960s classics as "A Touch of Zen" and "Come Drink With Me" to such more recent productions as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Hero," swordsman films have for the past few decades been the image of China in the eyes of foreign audiences.  But when Ang Lee was expressing his gratitude for being honored with an Oscar, he should have included on his list of thank-yous a much older movie, from 80 years earlier:  "Huo Shao Hong Lian Si"  《火烧红莲寺》(Burning of the Red Lotus Temple).

While not the first swordsman film, "Burning" was the one that initiated a fervor for the genre among Chinese movie fans, the principal ancestor of the modern works listed in the first paragraph.  The genre itself was an old, established one, deriving from traditional Chinese operas that highlighted the military achievements of legendary Chinese heroes and heroines, both historical and fictional.  But 1928's "Burning" was the starting point for swordsman films as a mania, and all the familiar cliches of the genre, its flying heroes and heroines, seemingly invincible to harm and destroying evildoers with a single stroke, all date from that pioneer effort of eight decades ago.

Suppose that humanity disappeared completely from the planet, and the only evidence remaining that we ever existed was motion pictures.  Some extra-terrestrial archaeologists might conclude from this evidence that at the end of the 1920s, the world's highest form of life had evolved in China – the "girl in red."  I base that judgement based on a comparison with the most prominent Hollywood character types of that time:  the cynical, fast-talking reporter of the screwball comedy; the gun-toting, square-jawed cowboy of Westerns; the tough-talking cops and ill-fated gangsters of detective movies; and the love-obsessed young playboys and wise-cracking flappers of the musical.

[left, Hu Die as the "Girl in Red"]

So what was this "girl in red" like?  Well, just like the heroines in "Burning," she could fly through the clouds and across the treetops, outracing and repelling armed adversaries.  This ability to "fly" clearly set the Chinese girl of 1928 apart from the rest of the world's inhabitants.  At a time when the angels of the West wore pasted-on wings, the Chinese had attained the status of the "flying immortals" pictured in the cave murals at Dunhuang. 

Zhang Ziyi Interview: From Actress to Producer

[This is a translation of the cover article of the July 14, 2009 issue of the Shanghai magazine "The Bund."  It has been posted at the websites of several Chinese entertainment news services, for example, New China Net.  Throughout the translation, the international English release title "Sophie's Revenge" is used, rather than the Chinese title, "Feichang Wanmei" 非常完美.  A literal English translation of the Chinese title would be "Really Perfect," but an acceptable (and I think better) free translation could be "Absolutely Fabulous,"  although it is easy to understand why this was not used.   Comments in brackets [like this] are those of the Chinese Mirror editor, where further clarification was thought desirable.  The interview was conducted for The Bund by staff writer Liu Lifang 刘莉芳]

    In order to accelerate the completion of filming, Zhang Ziyi put in 50-plus workdays of 12-hours or more, but on the set she was always cheerful, singing happy songs like a child.  As Du Yang expressed it, "her cheerful attitude on the set kept everyone else at ease, and that was especially important."
    Du Yang (杜扬) is "Sophie's" general producer.  Before this collaboration, she thought Zhang Ziyi was too great an international megastar to get close to; but now that she knows Zhang, Du speaks of the actress's "little girl" nature, saying "she is especially straightforward, lovable, and very considerate of others."
    Zhang Ziyi is the nucleus of this film, made with an investment of more than 50 million yuan [US$7.5 million/UK£4.5 million/€5.52 million] and a cast of more than 100.  [Update:  in later interviews, Zhang has denied the budget was this high.]  Her acting role is as the main female character Sophie (苏菲) [Sufei].  Sophie is a cartoonist on a mission, namely to win back her boyfriend, a campaign which triggers a series of comical scenes.  This is the first time Zhang has done comedy, and she bears a heavy share of that comedy.   Art director Chen Siqin (陈思勤) revealed that Zhang's character assumes over 20 different images in the film.  One could say that Zhang Ziyi's success or failure in acting out these various images is a factor in the movie's success or failure.  Another aspect is that this is Zhang Ziyi's first assumption of production responsibility.
    Last year, as one of the several producers of "Sophie's Revenge," Zhang Ziyi approached the cultural communications division of Du Yang's Beijing Perfect World Company with young director Yimeng's script, to discuss the company's possible investment in it.  Du Yang needed only two days to decide to invest, saying that everyone at the company agreed she and Zhang should make this Chinese-style "Amelie of Montmarte."

[right, international English release poster for "Sophie's Revenge."  International release date unscheduled as of this posting.]

Wu Wenchao (1907 - ?)

    Actor/director.  Born September 27, 1904 in Shaoxing, Zhejiang.  After graduating from high school in Shanghai, he enrolled in the Mingxing studio film school as an actor, then made his initial screen appearance in 1923's "An Orphan Rescues his Grandfather" in an uncredited bit part.  In the same year he moved over to Dan Duyu's Shanghai Shadow Play Company, appearing in several small roles, again uncredited.  His first credited role, an important one, came in the Shanghai studio's "Cave of the Silken Web," (1927) in which he became the first actor to portray on-screen one of Chinese literature's most beloved characters, The Monkey King.  After that, he worked for a variety of small studios, mostly in secondary villian roles.  In 1929, Wu turned to directing, and after gaining some experience started his own studio in 1937, the Lucky Star Film Company, making five movies in which he acted as well as directed.  Lucky Star folded when the Japanese occupied Shanghai, but Wu continued working for other studios which remained in operation during the war.  In 1950 he moved to Hong Kong and continued his career there, directing over 20  films, the last in 1974. 

Wen Yimin 文逸民 (1890 - 1978)

    Wen Yimin was of Manchu ethnicity, born in Beijing.  He joined the Youlian Film Company in Shanghai in 1925, and became the studio's top director in 1927 when he directed "Heroic Son and Daughter," in which he also co-starred with his  future wife, Fan Xuepeng.  The movie had four sequels, and was one of the major successes of the early swordsman genre that became a mania in China at the end of the 1920s.  In 1934, he and Fan moved to the Tianyi studio, where he directed her in such successes as "Shattered Dream in the Dance Hall" and "Mother."  The couple later split up, and in 1939 he moved to Yihua and in 1943 to Zhonghua, two of Shanghai's wartime studios.  At both of these he continued to both act and direct.  In 1947 he left the Chinese mainland and worked for several studios in Hong Kong.  Wen directed his last film in 1959, but continued acting work in Hong Kong and Taiwan into the early 1970s.  Wen Yimin died in Hong Kong on December 22, 1978.  In a career that spanned five decades, he amassed over 100 credits as a director and actor.

Heroic Son and Daughter (1927-31)

    In our last post, concerning the life and movie career of Fan Xuepeng, one of Chinese cinema's earliest martial arts heroines, we mentioned "Heroic Son and Daughter," the five-part series that brought her fame.  She also mentions the making of the series frequently in her own memoir that was a major source for the article.  Although we cannot view these films today, we do have written plot summaries for four parts, which give us some idea of what these early sword movies were like.  Although the stories were told in series, they were not a "serial," in the sense that one episode ended with a cliffhanger that left the audience in suspense.  Rather, each part was a separate and complete movie in itself. 

[right:  "Bring it on, tough guy":  '13th Sister' confronts a foe]

    One thing that stands out is that despite the title, there seems to have been little "heroic" about the principal male character, the honest scholar-official An Ji, played by Wen Yimin, the films' director (and Fan Xuepeng's later lover and eventual husband).  An Ji sounds much like a male character from the earlier "Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies" romance genre, with a penchant for getting into trouble from which his wife's ingenuity and fighting skills were his only means of escape. 

Chen Kengran (1905-1958): Early Action Film Director

    Chen Kengran (陈铿然) was a native of Chaozhou, Guangdong, and was educated at the Shanghai Youth Association, where he became involved with its theater group as a playwright, then an actor.  In 1925, with startup money borrowed from his father, Chen established the Youlian Film Company, with himself as writer/director in addition to being studio head.  When the May 30th student demonstrations erupted, he dispatched his film crew to record it, later releasing the film as one of China's earliest documentaries.  By 1931 Youlian had produced over 40 feature films, including its most successful effort, "Huangjiang Nüxia," a 13-part series of swordswoman films directed by Chen and starring his actress wife Xu Qinfang in the title role.  In 1936, he joined the Mingxing studio as a director.  During World War II Chen worked for the China Film Company in the wartime capital of Chongqing in a non-filmmaking role, then resumed directing after the war, until failing health forced his retirement in 1954.  He died in 1958.

Xu Qinfang (1909-1985): the 'Huangjiang Heroine'

     Xu Qinfang (徐琴芳) was born in 1909 to a scholarly family in Wujin,  Jiangsu, the daughter of a famous Confucian scholar.  Her father taught her to read Tang poetry at an early age, and while she excelled in school, she was also athletic, fond of horseback riding and able to drive a chariot at high speed.  At the age of 16, her father escorted her from Wujin to Shanghai where she enrolled in the Da Zhonghua studio's film school, but later joined the new Youlian studio, operated by Chen Kengran, who she later married.  After acting in several films for Youlian, she made her first sword film in 1928, writing and acting the lead in "Shuang Jian Xia" 《双剑侠》(Double Sword Heroes), then from 1930-32 she had the title role in a popular 13-part series, "Huangjiang Nüxia," 《荒江女侠》(Huangjiang Heroine) becoming one of the first female stars of Chinese cinema's classic era of martial arts movies.  When the Japanese attacked Shanghai in January, 1932, setting off a two-month conflict, several of the city's film studios were forced out of business, Youlian among them.  So in 1933 Xu Qinfang and Chen Kengran moved to the Mingxing studio, where they continued their movie careers as actress and director, respectively.  Xu's first film for Mingxing was a talkie, "Jian Mei zhi Lu"《健美质路》(An Actress on the Way), in which she co-starred with Zheng Xiaoqiu.     

[right, Xu Qinfang with Zheng Xiaoqiu in 1933 publicity still]

    In 1935, she moved over to the Xinmin studio, and after full scale war with Japan erupted in 1937, she had lead roles in films for Shanghai's handful of wartime studios:  Tianyi, Yihua, Guohua and Huaxin.  She left Shanghai in 1941 and participated in theater work in the unoccupied areas of Guilin and Chengdu, modern plays and Beijing operas which were patriotic and morale-boosting.  In 1949, she resumed her movie career, but after two films returned to the stage, acting in and teaching Beijing opera performing with the Shanghai People's Opera Troupe.  

Xu Qinfang died February 8, 1985.  Not much information is available concerning her early years other than what is given above, but Chinese sources describe her as having been a "heroine" off-screen as well as on from her quick actions during the student demonstrations of 1925.

Fan Xuepeng (1908-1974): Swordswoman "Thirteenth Sister"

    In the long and rich history of martial arts movies, China's gift to world cinema, a characteristic of these films that sets the Chinese language versions apart from the products of Hollywood and other Western film capitals is the profusion of strong leading roles for women.  The women warriors portrayed in recent decades by Cheng Peipei, Brigitte Lin and Michelle Yeoh, as well as the more recent Hong Kong subgenre of "Girls with Guns," had their antecedents in the various schools of China's traditional operas, and the classic Chinese cinema.  The sword genre on screen emerged and flourished in the late 1920s, with a staggering output of these films from Chinese studios of all sizes.  These were not shrinking violets, no damsels in distress, but true heroines, battling male villains on an equal basis.  As we will see from one series we will examine in depth, as often as not the leading men were the ones in distress, with the lady boldly and bravely charging to the rescue.  Each studio had at least one actress it could rely on for these costume epics, but four were dominant:  Fan Xuepeng and Xu Qinfang at the Youlian studio, Wu Lizhu at Yueming, and Xia Peizhen at Mingxing.  In upcoming posts, we will examine the careers of each of these wudan  武旦, although the degree of detail will vary somewhat, dependent on the amount of research material available.  We begin with Fan Xuepeng.