The Chinese Mirror

《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. 

《Luoyang Bridge》(1928)

    Mingxing.  B&W.  Silent.  9 reels.  Premiered February 5, 1928 at the Palace Theater in Shanghai.  Direction and Screenplay:  Zhang Shichuan, adapted from the classical opera "Number One Scholar Cai Builds the Luoyang Bridge".  Cinematography:  Dong Keyi.  Cast:   Zhu Fei (Cai Xiang), Ruan Lingyu (Wang Yongxu), Huang Junfu (the butcher), Zhou Aixue (Mrs. Cai), Gong Jianong (Cheng Huanwen), Zhao Jingxia (the widow), Wu Jiren (Wan Pengfei), Wang Yingying (Wei Yunjuan), Ye Liangde (Wang Bingzhang), Wang Mengshi (Song Renzong), Xiao Ying (Wang Yong), Li Shifan (Mrs. Wang), Wang Jiting (Xia Dehai), Ding Ziming (Guan Shiyin).

    The Luoyang Bridge, which spans the Luoyang River near the city of Quanzhou, Fujian Province, is one of the great engineering achievements in the history of bridge construction.   Construction began in 1053 A.D. and took fully seven years to complete.  The governor of Quanzhou, Cai Xiang (1012-1067), designed the bridge and supervised its construction.  (Cai Xiang finished first in the year he passed the imperial examinations, which entitled him to the lifetime designation of “Number One Scholar.”)  The film relates a love story against the background of building the bridge.  

[Below are three surviving photos from this film, but the lack of specific plot details makes it difficult to tell exactly what is happening in each scene, although in the one at top left Zhou Aixue (center) appears to be counseling Ruan Lingyu (left) and Zhu Fei (right)] 

The First Docudrama:《Yan Ruisheng》(1921)

    In the summer of 1920, Shanghai was scandalized by a sensational murder, a high-profile case and subsequent trial that was the ongoing topic of conversation in the city's numerous cafes, clubs and teahouses.  Among the various reasons for its notoriety, two stand out:  first, the victim was a high-class prostitute, well known in Shanghai; second, the murderer had been a mid-level manager in a respected foreign firm, a playboy who in Manhattan might have been termed a "prominent young man about town."  There were detailed press reports daily as the case wound its way through the judicial system.  As an indication of the victim Wang Lianying's prominence in society at large, in the winter of 1917 she was chosen in an election the top courtesan in Shanghai, no small honor.   Her principal drawback was her temper:  a gossip columnist about that time described it as "very volatile," and Wang as someone who would immediately break off all relations with anyone who offended or displeased her in any way.

    Yan Ruisheng, the man who plotted the murder, had recently lost his job in a foreign firm.  Contemporary news reports describe him as being age 26, well over 6 feet tall, and a university graduate fluent in English and French.  While still employed, he had acquired a taste for the city's bustling night life, and became a habitué of its race track, casinos and better brothels.  Yan had become acquainted with Wang, like himself someone fond of Shanghai's bustling nightlife, and they were frequently seen dining, wining and making the rounds of the nightclubs together.  Of course, this sort of relationship lasts only as long as the money supporting it, and when Yan's source of income disappeared Wang turned her attentions elsewhere.  Yet in  spite of losing his job at the beginning of 1920, Yan continued his lifestyle much as before, partying as if he were the playboy son of a wealthy family, and trying to recover his fortunes at the track and casinos.  By June of that year, he was hopelessly in debt to gamblers who were pressing him for payment.  He went back to Wang and asked her to loan him the money to cover his debts, which she flatly refused to do.  Bitterly recalling how much he had spent on her during his days of prosperity, Yan became consumed  with hatred and began hatching a scheme to murder his ex-lover for the money. 
                                                                                         (Below:  Yan admires Wang's jewelry)
     His first step was to obtain an automobile, a luxury car he borrowed from an old schoolmate.  From another friend he borrowed some up-front money.  On the day of the murder, dressed in his finest and driving the flashy car, Yan went to see Wang and told her he had come into quite a bit of money and wanted to renew their relationship, starting with a drive into the countryside to enjoy the summer evening.  As she usually did when going out, and as Yan had counted on her doing, Wang wore her best jewelry:  a diamond-inlayed bracelet, two diamond rings, a  diamond-inlayed brooch and a gold watch.  With Wang seated by his side, Yan started out, but he soon spotted two friends by the roadside and invited them to join the couple on their outing.  These two men, Wu Chunfang and Fang Rishan, were prearranged accomplices.  They got into the back seat, and the four drove out of the city.  The four drove to a sparsely-populated suburb of Shanghai, where they stopped by a wheat field.

    By now it had grown dark.  Yan stopped the car and under the pretence of having to light the car's headlights, the three men got out and took some chloroform from a small chest.  The two accomplices pulled Wang from the car and into the wheat field, where Wu held a chloroform-soaked cotton cloth over her nose and mouth, ignoring her pleas for mercy.  Just at this time, a farmer was passing by on the road, so to distract his attention Yan offered to take the man for a ride, which he did.  Meanwhile, Wu had grabbed all of Wang's jewelry, then strangled her.  When Yan returned after dropping off the farmer, the three men stuffed the corpse into the car and drove to a more remote site to dump it.  During this drive, they began dividing the spoils, which caused Yan to take his eyes off the road.  He bumped into a tree, damaging a fender.  When the car's owner demanded an explanation for the damage, Yan realized what he had done and how much evidence there was against him, so he fled Shanghai.  Shortly thereafter, the body was discovered, a warrant was issued for Yan's arrest as the prime suspect, and his photo widely published in newspapers.

    After wandering in panic for a time, Yan Ruisheng was recognized by a policeman at the railway station platform in Xuzhou, not far from the scene of the crime.  He was arrested and returned to Shanghai under guard.  News accounts said that at the time of his arrest, Yan was concealing one of Wang Lianying's diamond rings in his mouth.  His two accomplices had also been apprehended, and after two trials the three men were found guilty and sentenced to be shot.  They were transported to nearby Fort Wusong where the execution was carried out.  The movie's conclusion was most gratifying to Chinese audiences.  The train carrying the condemned trio also carried the official witnesses, and as the film's last intertitle expressed it, "the little train was full upon leaving the city, but there were a few vacant seats coming back."

    Although it was rushed into production, a stage version of the story was very popular with theatergoers and had a six-month run.  This inspired several entrepreneurs to pool their funds and arrange for the Commercial Press to handle the filming.  But instead of just copying the theatrical script, the producers hired a noted dramatist to improve on the script and in some cases do a complete rewrite.  In addition, several of the investors had known Yan well, in some cases were close friends, so they were able to assist with the writing by contributing anecdotes and recollections that were not commonly known.  So the script was richer and more detailed by the time the shooting began.

    In order to make the film as close to actual events as possible, several interesting devices were employed.  First, in a break with previous practice, nonprofessionals were used in the principal roles, rather than stage performers.  The title role of Yan Ruisheng was played by Chen Shouzhi, the lead investor in putting the film together.  Chen was himself an employee of a foreign firm, as Yan had been, and in fact was well acquainted with Yan.  He was said to resemble Yan, and could imitate the latter's mannerisms.  Cast in the role of Wang Lianying was a former prostitute who had married and retired from the profession.  The role of the brutish Wu Chunfa, who had carried out the actual murder, was played by Shao Peng, one of Shanghai's top football players, second accomplice Fang Rishan was played by Ren Pengnian, the film's director, while co-director Xu Xinfu played the lead detective in the case, and, in an interesting case of cross-dressing, another investor Gu Kenfu (who later became a director) played the part of Wang Lianying's mother.

    In addition to film, this case has been adapted for other varieties of presentation, including several forms of stage productions, even cross-talk comedy routines and a musical.  These various adaptations and the many publications discussing it have made it into an almost legendary vehicle for mass consumption.