The Chinese Mirror

《Suicide Pact》(1930)

    This 1930 short is notable in Chinese movie history for two reasons.  First, it was the first film Ruan Lingyu made for the Lianhua studio, for which she was the premiere leading lady the rest of her career.  Ironically, while Ruan became the leading tragedienne of China's silent era, her first effort for Lianhua was a comedy.  Second, it was the first directing credit for Zhu Shilin, who went on to a long and outstanding career as a director and writer for studios in both Shanghai and Hong Kong, in the latter case primarily with the Shaw Brothers.

Zisha Hetong (1930) 自杀合同 (Suicide Pact)

    Lianhua.  B&W.  Silent.  3 reels.  Direction:  Zhu Shilin.  Screenplay:  Sun Yu.  Cinematography:  Huang Shaofen.  Cast:  Ruan Lingyu (the young wife), Liu Jiqun (the young man).  Also:  Chen Yanyan, Li Beihai. 

[Before they learn it comes with conditions, a young couple rejoices at the news of his legacy.  Ruan Lingyu, left, and Liu Jiqun.]

    A young man's wealthy father dies, leaving his son a legacy of 100,000 yuan, but it comes with conditions:  the heir also receives a photograph of the father's hated enemy, along with a demand the son track down and kill him.  The son is a meek, nonviolent sort, incapable of taking a life, but when his wife urges him to just take the money and forget the matter, his sense of filial duty prevents him from doing that.  So when he decides to do nothing, the wife (who had only married him for his potential fortune) despises him even more.  His elderly servant suggests that if the young man cannot carry out the killing himself, he should hire someone to do it, and the servant takes it upon himself to find someone.  The servant finds three people who have all attempted suicide, and feel they have nothing left to live for:  a disgraced army officer, a homeless vagrant, and a woman embittered by a broken romance.  The young man signs a contract with the three, agreeing to given them the entire inheritance when they have eliminated his father's enemy.  He wants to be involved as little as possible, so he leaves to let them work out a plan, but upon his return the next day he finds his house deserted except for the elderly servant.  It turns out the three had spent the night partying with his wife, then taken all the household funds, the jilted woman and the vagrant running away together while his wife had eloped with the officer.  

[When a dashing officer shows interest in her, a frustrated young wife (Ruan Lingyu) begins to think she might possibly do better.]  

    In despair at losing everything he has, and incapable of carrying out the act that would gain his legacy, the young man decides to end it all.  He sends his servant to buy a large quantity of poison, which comes back wrapped in newspaper.  When the young man opens the parcel, he comes across a newspaper item announcing that his father's hated enemy has died a natural death, and the young man is overjoyed.  

《Peach Blossom Lake》(1930)

    Although location filming away from the Shanghai studios was not unknown in the 1920s, by 1930 the more prosperous studios had the capacity to budget for it.  This was one of the Mingxing studio's first location films, and shooting some scenes at a famous Chinese scenic spot added to its attraction for audiences, giving them a travelogue as well as a story.

Taohua Hu (1930) 桃花胡 (Peach Blossom Lake)

    Mingxing.  B&W.  Silent.  2 parts, 10 reels each.  Part I premiered October 9, 1930 at the Palace Theater in Shanghai.  Direction and Screenplay:  Zheng Zhengqiu.  Cinematography:  Yan Hemian.  Assistant Director:  Cai Chusheng.  Cast:  Hu Die (Yi Daixue), Zheng Xiaoqiu (Wen Daben/Gao De), Wang Xianzhai (Naide), Xia Peizhen (Wang Dagu), Huang Junfu (Tian Liu), Cai Chusheng (Li Hua).

[A pair of assassins attack and fatally beat the wrong man. Huang Junfu, left, and Zheng Xiaoqiu, center]    

    Seriously ill and realizing the end is near, prosperous county official Wen Lianshi summons his lawyer to make out his will.  The resulting document stipulates that Wen's estate go to his nephew Daben, who left home some years earlier, and if the nephew cannot be located, all will go to his niece Yi Daixue.  This disappoints Lianshi's other nephew Lai Naide, for he badly wants the inheritance to make up the serious financial losses he has encurred.  Daben is located in Russia, where he has been working as a surveyor and rooming with his sworn brother and business partner,  a young man named Gao De.  On the eve of the heir's return to China, Naide sends assassins to kill him, but the killers are misled by the strong physical resemblance between the two friends,  and mortally wound Gao De instead.  Before dying in his friend's arms, Gao De tells Daben that he (Daben) had been the actual target.  Seeing the danger he is in, Daben switches identities with the dead man and returns to China under the deceased's name.  He travels to Peach Blossom Lake, where he sets up a campsite and pretends to be doing surveying work there.

[lower right, Daben (Zheng Xiaoqiu) shows the girl he rescued (Hu Die) some outdoor survival skills]

    Meanwhile, thinking the primary heir is out of the way, Naide begins the process of divorcing his wife in order to marry Daixue, now the heiress-apparent.  He also orders his thugs to kidnap the girl and keep her in isolation until the divorce is final, after which he plans to force her into marriage.  But on route to the place where she is to be imprisoned, the abductors' car breaks down, and the girl's cries for help are heard by Daben, who intervenes to rescue her and drive off the thugs.  As the young man and woman talk, Daben realizes his friend's murder and her kidnapping are related. As they spend more time together, the young couple gradually fall in love.  Meanwhile, Naide's chief henchman Tian Liu plans to flee before he can be arrested for the girl's abduction, and goes to his boss demanding money so he can get away.  The two men quarrel, and in a rage Naide kills Tian Liu, after which he dumps the body in Peach Blossom Lake.  But he is seen by a young man named Li Hua, the lover of Wang Dagu, a girl who tends the landscape around the lake.  He keeps this information to himself, thinking he might use it to blackmail Naide.

    When Tian Liu's body is discovered, the word spreads rapidly that a strange man (Daben) lives by the lake, and suspicion immediately falls on him.  Daben is falsely accused, and since he is supposed to be dead, he is considered a villainous imposter.  But when Li Hua tells his girlfriend what he knows, she persuades him to drop his blackmailing plans and come forward with the truth.  He does, and Naide is arrested for the murder.  Daben is able to prove his identity as the true heir, and he and Daixue make marriage plans.  

[right, Peach Blossom Lake today, probably largely unchanged from how it looked then]

《A Couple Forever》(1930)

Bai Jie Yuanyang (1930) 百劫鸳鸯 (A Couple Forever)
alternate English title:  (The Bitterness of a Marriage)

    Qingtian.  B&W.  Silent.  Genres:  Action/Adventure, Romance.  Direction:  Chen Tian.  Cinematography:  Xu Shouyu, Wang Shizhen.  Principal cast:  Liang Saizhen, Chen Fei.

    While the film is no longer extant, and with very few documents left which tell us anything about it, the one surviving piece of information about this movie does fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge.

[left, poster for 《A Couple Forever》; click on image to view full size] 

    The Qingtian (Blue Sky) Film Company was very short-lived, making just this one movie before ceasing operations.  Chinese sources, which usually furnish considerable detail about who founded and funded Shanghai's classic era studios, say virtually nothing about this one.  In fact, there is little information about its sole production to be found in any of the standard references, other than the movie's title, its director and the two cast members listed above.  But I recently came across the image reproduced at left, which appears to be a theatrical poster  for the movie, and it provides additional information.  Under the name of the studio and film title, the top two lines, we see that Liang Saizhen is given top billing, followed by seven names in smaller print, with Chen Fei given second billing among these.  This is followed by the statement that the film includes "a cast of eight major stars," although Liang Saizhen and Chen Fei are the only two for which I found any other credits.  Director Chen Tian is credited at right in the poster, and in the lower right-hand corner is its most solid bit of new information, with cinematography credits given to Xu Shouyu and Wang Shizhen.  But a clue to possible further information about the film is the illustration:  the uniformed hero striking down an adversary, as the damsel in distress stands behind him on horseback (not recommended for any but the most experienced of trick riders).  This implies that while standard Chinese references list《A Couple Forever》as a romance, probably a conclusion drawn from the film's title, the iillustration indicates it was an action/adventure or martial arts film.  Also, Chen Tian in the late 1920s had been a mainstay director for the Huaju studio of Zhang Huimin and Wu Suxin, specializing in the action genre, while Chen Fei and Liang Saizhen were often second in billing to Zhang and Wu as the Huaju studio's principal male and female leads, respectively.

    So one might conclude that the Qingtian studio and this, its sole production, were unsuccessful attempts to break away and emulate the Huaju studio's success in what was already a genre declining in public taste.  But without additional information, that has to remain conjecture. 

《Yang Naiwu》(1930): a Manchu dynasty docudrama

[left, an advertisement for the 1963 Shaw Brothers studio production, featuring Li Li-Hua and Kwan Shan as the ill-fated and ill-used lovers of the title]

    This was the first screen dramatization of a famous legal case commonly referred to as "Yang Naiwu and Xiao Baicai," a notorious case of injustice in the waning years of the Qing (Manchu) dynasty.  It is listed by Chinese historians as one of the four great criminal cases of the last imperial dynasty, and regarded as symbolic of the corruption that contributed greatly to the once-powerful dynasty's eventual fall.  The case has been dramatized in several other forms, particularly operatic productions but also in several Hong Kong and Singapore film versions.  In addition to "Yang Naiwu," these subsequent versions used the English titles "The Adulteress," "Yang Naiwu and Little Cabbage" and "The Scholar and the Serving Maid."

Yang Naiwu (1930) I-III 杨乃武 (Yang Naiwu, pts.1-3)

    Tianyi.  B&W.  Silent.  27 reels total.  Direction and Screenplay:  Qiu Qixiang.  Cinematography:  Zhou Shimu.  Art design:  Wu Yonggang, Maxu Weibang.  Cast:  Chen Yumei (Bi Xiugu), Sun Min (Yang Naiwu), Zhang Zhenduo, Lu Jianfen.

    Although she came from obscurity, Bi Xiugu (1855-1930) became a legendary figure in Chinese drama and fiction.  A native of Yuhang County in Zhejiang Province, she was an attractive girl who often wore a green dress with a white apron, which gained her the nickname "Xiao Baicai" (Little Cabbage) after the green and white Chinese vegetable known in the West as "Bok Choy" (Cantonese for "Baicai").  She gained a reputation in her teens as a seductive woman without a high degree of moral scruples.  In 1872 she married a man from her county named Ge Pilian (? - 1873), a humble worker in a bean curd factory, work which often kept him away from home working long hours, although he was often in ill health.  The neglected young wife's charms and easy virtue gained her numerous handsome and wealthier admirers, among them a young man named Yang Naiwu (1841-1914), a scholar who had already earned a reputation for his skill at writing legal documents.  Yang had a wife, but planned to make Bi Xiugu his concubine when he passed his degree exams, which would entitle him to an official position at the provincial level.  

    But Bi Xiugu had other influential admirers, including the son of Liu Xitong, the county magistrate, as well as the county's official scribe, and a constable, relatively low in rank but still possessed of the power that comes with police authority.  So when Yang Naiwu received his degree in 1873 and sought Bi Xiugu as his concubine, the woman's other suitors were outraged.  At this time, her overworked and sickly husband had fallen ill, and was bedridden.  Bi asked Yang to examine her husband, and after doing so he gave the woman some fruits stuffed with raw opium, saying by eating them the sick man would soon recover.  But when Ge Pilian ate them, he immediately began to secrete black fluid from his nose and mouth and died.  His mother demanded the authorities investigate, believing he had been poisoned.

    County magistrate Liu Xitong examined the corpse and also had his son conduct a private investigation.  After consulting the county physician, the scribe and the constable, Liu imprisoned the two and charged them with murder.  He also ordered the coroner to alter the death report to say the deceased had "bleeding from all seven apertures in the head," and moreover pressured the local medicine shop to give false testimony that Yang Naiwu had bought arsenic there.

    So Yang and Bi were convicted with tampered evidence and false witnesses.  Both were sentenced to death by beheading.  But as usual in capital convictions, the case was sent to the next level of government - the prefecture - and then to the provincial governor.  When neither found any problem with the decision, Yang's wife Yang Mei appealed on the basis of the accused having confessed under torture.  Meanwhile, details of the case were leaking, leading to public indignation.  One after another of Zhejiang province's gentry and officials began speaking out.

    At last, the Empress Dowager Ci Xi personally intervened and ordered two officials in the Ministry of Justice in the imperial capital to assume charge of the case.  These men ordered that the two accused and the evidence against them be brought to the capital for a new trial to be held jointly by the Ministry and two other judicial bodies.  In January, 1877 the two accused, the witnesses, and Ge Pilian's coffin finally reached the capital and the trial began.  The coffin was opened for an autopsy which concluded the death was not caused by arsenic, but by an illness, most likely cholera.  Employees from the medicine shop confessed that the county magistrate had pressured them to perjure themselves.  Now, with all previous evidence and testimony discredited, the imperial authorities probed further and in January 1878 the verdict was reversed and Yang Naiwu and Bi Xiugu acquitted.  Subsequent investigation of everyone involved (more than 300 officials at various levels of government) resulted in dismissal or banishment into exile for over 30 of them, and over 150 receiving reprimands that meant their careers would see no further promotions in rank.

    Abandoning all his earlier dreams of an official career, Yang Naiwu returned home and joined his father's sericulture business, producing silkworms.  He died in September, 1914.

    After her release, Bi Xiugu returned home, but was so disillusioned by the experience (she had been subjected to brutal torture while in detention) she turned her back on the world and became a Buddhist nun, spending the rest of her life in repentance.  She died in 1930. 

《A Romantic Girl》(1930)

Langman Nüzi (1930) 浪漫女子 (A Romantic Girl)

    Mingxing.  B&W.  Silent.  10 reels.  Direction:  Cheng Bugao.  Screenplay:  Zheng Zhengqiu.  Cinematography:  Zhou Ke.  Sets:  Dong Tianya.  Assistant director:  Ye Liangde.  Cast:  Xuan Jinglin (Miss Wang), Gong Jianong (young man at pharmacy), Huang Junfu (Miss Wang's brother), Zhao Jingxia (Miss Wang's sister-in-law), Gao Zhanfei (college student), Wang Weixin (cartoonist), Wang Mengshi (middle aged politician), Tan Zhiyuan (retired warlord), Wang Xianzhai (kissing young man), Gao Lihen (doctor), Tang Jie (first businessman), Wang Jiting (second businessman), Ye Liangde (third businessman), Gu Youmin (fourth businessman), Xiao Ying (entertainment troupe leader), Wang Yiman (female dancer), Zhu Xiuying (strange woman).

    After Miss Wang arrives in the big city she finds she loves its bustling pace and numerous attractions.  Her most ardent pursuits are the latest fashions and romance.  Her elder brother hopes she will marry into a wealthy and powerful family and settle down, a realistic possibility since she frequently socializes with young people in business circles.  But the young man who falls for her is a clerk in a pharmacy.  Since she believes he will never be able to support her in the manner she desires, she rejects his proposal.  After this, Miss Wang meets and wants to marry a college student, but the student's family betrothed him years earlier.  Miss Wang wants to marry a cartoonist, but he only wants to be friends since he already has a wife. 

[unlucky in love once more, Miss Wang (Xuan Jinglin) is consoled by her brother (Huang Junfu)]

    After this rejection Miss Wang becomes a playgirl, a nightclub habitué and the darling of a succession of philandering businessmen.  At last she begins dating a politician.  It looks like she has finally found true love, but it turns out he is a married man looking for a young mistress, a revelation that causes her to have a nervous breakdown, for which she is hospitalized.  When a fire breaks out in the hospital, the young pharmacy clerk rushes in to help rescue her and other patients, without fearing for his own life.  After this, Miss Wang comes to realize what is most important in life, and she accepts the young man's offer of marriage.
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Note:    When a film is no longer extant, and film histories do not discuss it in any detail, it is sometimes difficult to categorize the film by genre:  for example, the plot synopsis may indicate it was a romance, but was that love story presented in a serious way or might it have been a comedy?  This lost 1930 film, although the surviving written sources show clearly it was the story of one starry-eyed and romantic girl's search for true love, do not tell us how the plot unfolded.  But it reminds me of some more modern Hollywood films on the same subject, for example《What a Way to Go!》a 1964 black comedy which also describes, hilariously, a young woman's odyssey through a succession of different lovers on her way to finding her ideal match.  So I have categorized this as a comedy, although I'm going on instinct and past experience here.  If anyone has evidence to the contrary, send me an email with your documentation, and I will be happy to correct it. 

《Hall of the Broken Zither》(1930)

Suiqin Lou (1930) 碎琴楼 (Hall of the Broken Zither)

    Mingxing.  B&W.  Silent.  10 reels.  Premiered March 20, 1930 at the Palace Theater in Shanghai.  Direction and Program notes:  Zheng Zhengqiu.  Screenplay:  Zhang Yan, based on the novel of the same title by He Zou (1884-1927).  Assistant Director:  Cai Chusheng.  Cinematography:  Yan Hemian.  Cast:  Hu Die, Xia Peizhen, Zheng Xiaoqiu, Huang Junfu, Wang Xianzhai, Tan Zhiyuan, Zhao Jingxia, Gao Qianping, Xiao Ying, Gao Lihen.

[left, Hu Die as the filial daughter]    

    A tragic love story, with the familiar theme of two young people who fall in love but are stymied by parental opposition, in this case her father's.  The filial daughter bows to his dictates and stays home to care for her widowed father, and in the end nurses him through his last, fatal illness.  On his deathbed the father realizes his error in denying her the happiness she should have had, but his final remorse comes too late.

[right, Hu Die and Xia Peizhen] 

[left, poet/novelist He Zou]

     While this movie would seem to be a trivial contribution to cinema history, it does have some significance in Chinese literary history.  He Zou 何诹, the author of the original work adapted for this film, was a poet, not a writer of fiction.  His misfortune was to come along toward the end of the Qing (Manchu) dynasty, at a time when poetry alone could no longer sustain a career.  As a result, He Zou struggled to survive, and at last succumbed to illness at the age of 43. Ironically, in spite of poetry being his literary specialty, the 32-chapter novel on which this film was based is considered his masterpiece. 

《A Woman's Heart》(1930)

Furen Xin (1930) 妇人心 (A Woman’s Heart)

    Da Zhonghua Baihe.  B&W.  Silent.  Premiered in Shanghai, exact date and venue unknown.  Principal cast:  Ruan Lingyu, Zheng Chaoren.

[left, Ruan Lingyu in《A Woman's Heart》]                                                                    
    Very little is known about this lost film, in fact none of the published filmographies of Ruan Lingyu list it. Besides the little information given above, the only things that still exist concerning the film are its program notes (which were found  by a researcher in Singapore) and three still photos. Two of the photos are of a flirtaceous Ruan with handsome young Caucasian men wearing what appear to be the uniform of British army officers.  

 

                     [right and below, Ruan with unidentified actors]

     The interracial romantic context is noteworthy, because it would have been strictly taboo in American movies of the time, a racial bias that severely limited the Hollywood careers of Asian-American talents, notably Anna Mae Wong.
 

《The Pearl Cap》(1930)

Zhenzhu Guan (1930) 珍珠冠 (The Pearl Cap)

    Da Zhonghua Baihe.  B&W.  Silent.  Premiered February 17, 1930 at the Palace Theater in Shanghai.  Direction and Screenplay:  Zhu Shouju.  Cinematography:  Zhou Shimu.  Principal cast:  Ruan Lingyu, Zhuang Jiaona, Zheng Jiduo, Zheng Yisheng, Wu Yixiao, Zhang Fufeng.

    The "Pearl Cap" is an expensive piece of jewelry.  Master thief Lu Bin draws up an elaborate scheme to steal it, but in the course of carrying out his plan he falls in love.  After a complicated series of events, he at last abandons his quest for the jewelry and wins the lady.  

[click on image to view full size]

《Nine Dragons Mountain》(1930)

Jiu Long Shan I, II (1930) 九龙山, 上,下 (Nine Dragons Mountain, pts. 1,2)

Episode titles: 
I:   Dapo Jiu Long Shan 大破九龙山 (Capturing Nine Dragon Mountain)
II:  Huoshao Jiu Long Shan 火烧九龙山 (Burning Nine Dragon Mountain)

     Dazhonghua Baihe.  B&W.  Silent.  Direction and Screenplay:  Zhu Shouju.  Cinematography:  Zhou Shimu.  Principal cast:  Ruan Lingyu, Zheng Jiduo [i.e Cheng Ki-tak], Huang Yunyin [i.e. Huang Naishuang].

    A bandit gang runs rampant on Nine Dragons Mountain until a people's hero forges a marvelous sword and beheads the bandits' chieftain.  A crony of the slain chief seeks revenge by setting a trap for the hero, but falls into his own trap.

[click on image to view full size] 

 

 

 

 

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《Virtuous Mother From a Brothel》(1930)

[left, Xuan Jinglin]  

    While she continued to be one of the Mingxing studio's top talents, by the end of the 1920s Xuan Jinglin's film career was almost fully on the path to character roles, a path that  began with 1926's《He Wants a Baby》, in which she successfully portrayed a woman in early middle age, in spite of the actress herself being only 19 at the time.  In this 1930 film, Xuan at age 23 again drew on her own, earlier experience as a brothel inmate to give a believable performance as a long-suffering but virtuous prostitute.  Her young adult daughter was portrayed by Xia Peizhen, co-star of the landmark martial arts fantasy series《Burning of Red Lotus Temple》(1928-31), and only two years younger than Xuan.   The basic theme of《Virtuous Mother》, that of a single mother selling herself in order to get her child an education, would be done again a few years later in《Goddess》(1934), the near-unanimous choice of Chinese film historians as the greatest achievement of their country's silent era. 

[right, Xia Peizhen.  Click on image to view full size.]

Changmen Xian Mu (1930) 倡门贤母 (Virtuous Mother from a Brothel)

    Mingxing.  Silent.  10 reels.  Direction:  Cheng Bugao.  Cinematography:  Zhou Ke.  Principal cast:  Xuan Jinglin (Li Shaoying - Xiao Feng's mother), Xia Peizhen (Han Xiaofeng).

    To get money for alcohol, a drunk named Han Fu surreptitiously sells his daughter Xiaofeng.  This evil action results in his wife Li Shaoying being sent to jail on trumped-up charges.  Upon her release, Shaoying finds that her husband has drunk himself to death.  She locates and reunites with Xiaofeng, who wants very much to go to school.  In order to raise the necessary funds, Shaoying, herself lacking skills or education, becomes a prostitute.  Xiaofeng is an outstanding student, and very happy.  But when the school administration learns that Xiaofeng is a prostitute's daughter, they expel the girl.  Xiaofeng blames her mother for this turn of events, so she runs away and gets a job in a factory.  Shaoying misses her daughter terribly, and at last her spirits are so low the distraught mother jumps into a river to commit suicide.  She is rescued, and placed in a hospital where she cries day and night for her daughter.  A newspaper learns of the event, and carries an article about it.  Xiaofeng's fellow factory workers read the story and condemn the daughter for abandoning the mother who had sacrificed so much for her.  Xiaofeng wakes up to the reality of what has happened and rushes to the hospital.  Mother and daughter are reunited once more.