CHINESE NATIONAL CINEMA What does it mean to be ‘Chinese’? This controversial question has sparked off a never-ending process of image-making in Chinese and Chinese-speaking communities throughout the twentieth century. This introduction to Chinese national cinema, written for scholars and students by a leading critic, covers three ‘Chinas’: mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. It traces the formation, negotiation and problematization of the national on the Chinese screen over ninety years. Historical and comparative perspectives bring out the parallel developments in the three Chinas, while critical analysis explores thematic and stylistic changes over time. As well as exploring artistic achievements and ideological debates, Chinese National Cinema also emphasizes industry research and market analysis. The author concludes that despite the rigid censorship systems and the pressures on filmmakers, Chinese national cinema has never succeeded in projecting a single unified picture, but rather portrays many Chinas. Yingjin Zhang is Professor of Chinese, Comparative Literature, and Cultural Studies at the University of California-San Diego. His publications include Screening China (2002) and Routledge’s Encyclopedia of Chinese Film (1998) which he co-authored and edited with Zhiwei Xiao. NATIONAL CINEMAS SERIES Series Editor: Susan Hayward AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL CINEMA Tom O’Regan BRITISH NATIONAL CINEMA Sarah Street CANADIAN NATIONAL CINEMA Chris Gittings CHINESE NATIONAL CINEMA Yingjin Zhang FRENCH NATIONAL CINEMA Susan Hayward GERMAN NATIONAL CINEMA Sabine Hake ITALIAN NATIONAL CINEMA 1896–1996 Pierre Sorlin NORDIC NATIONAL CINEMAS Tytti Soila, Astrid Söderbergh Widding and Gunnar Iversen SPANISH NATIONAL CINEMA Núria Triana-Toribio Forthcoming titles: MEXICAN NATIONAL CINEMA Andrea Noble SOUTH AFRICAN NATIONAL CINEMA Jacqueline Maingard CHINESE NATIONAL CINEMA Yingjin Zhang First published 2004 by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. © 2004 Yingjin Zhang All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Every effort has been made to ensure that the advice and information in this book is true and accurate at the time of going to press. However, neither the publisher nor the author can accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made. In the case of drug administration, any medical procedure or the use of technical equipment mentioned within this book, you are strongly advised to consult the manufacturer’s guidelines. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Zhang, Yingjin. Chinese national cinema / Yingjin Zhang. – 1st ed. p. cm. – (National cinemas) Includes bibliographical references and index. (paperback: alk. paper) 1. Motion pictures – China – History. 2. Motion pictures – Taiwan – History. I. Title. II. Series: National cinemas series. PN1993.5.C4Z49 2004 791.43′0951 – dc22 2003023574 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0-203-64583-9 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-67420-0 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–415–17289–6 (hbk) ISBN 0–415–17290–X (pbk) TO SU, MIMI AND ALEX FOR LOVE, HOPE AND FUN WE HAVE SHARED TOGETHER CONTENTS List of illustrations List of tables Acknowledgments List of abbreviations ix xi xii xiv 1 Introduction: National cinema and China 2 Cinema and national traditions, 1896–1929 1 13 Introduction: early cinema 13 Cinema as attractions, 1896–1921 16 Cinema as narration, 1922–6 22 Cinema and speculations, 1927–9 37 Critical issues: arts, artists and artistic theory 51 Conclusion: a growing sense of nationalism 57 3 Cinema and the nation-people, 1930–49 58 Introduction: a ‘golden age’ period 58 Prewar cinema, 1930–7 59 Wartime cinema, 1937–45 83 Postwar cinema, 1946–9 95 Critical issues: cinema and modernity 104 Conclusion: in the name of the nation-people 111 4 Cinematic reinvention of the national in Taiwan, 1896–1978 Introduction: a maturing industry 113 Difficult postwar transition, 1945–54 114 Two competing cinemas, 1955–69 125 vii 113 CONTENTS Political and industrial restructuring, 1970–8 142 Conclusion: cinematic reinvention of the national 147 5 Cinematic revival of the regional in Hong Kong, 1945–78 150 Introduction 150 From Shanghai to Hong Kong, 1945–55 151 Competing studios, 1956–65 163 Reinventing genres, 1966–78 173 Conclusion: toward regional imagination 185 6 Cinema and the nation-state in the PRC, 1949–78 189 Introduction: socialist cinema of the PRC 189 The nationalization of cinema, 1949–52 190 Toward socialist realism, 1953–65 199 The Cultural Revolution and beyond, 1966–78 216 Conclusion: ideology and subjectivity 223 7 Cinema and national/regional cultures, 1979–89 225 Introduction: new waves in three Chinas 225 The PRC: humanism, the avant-garde and commercialism 226 New Taiwan Cinema: re-imaging the national 240 The Hong Kong new waves: genre, history, identity 249 Conclusion: history, culture and nationhood 256 8 Cinema and the transnational imaginary, 1990–2002 259 Introduction: transnational Chinese cinemas 259 Hong Kong: of the global and the local 260 Taiwan: art cinema beyond borders 271 The PRC: post-socialist cinema 281 Conclusion: art, capital and politics in the age of the WTO 292 Notes Bibliography Subject index Name index Film index 297 308 323 325 327 viii ILLUSTRATIONS All illustrations are courtesy of the China Film Archive, Beijing 1.1 2.1 2.2 Zhang Yimou: an auteur from China’s fifth generation Laborer’s Love (1922): the earliest extant feature in China Lonely Orchid (1926): an adaptation of Bao Tianxiao’s novel, an example of butterfly fiction 2.3 A poster for Dream of the Red Chamber (1927): calligraphy by Bao Tianxiao 2.4 Hollywood in Shanghai: billboards outside the Peking Theater 2.5 Chinese filmmaking in the 1920s: fixed cameras and exaggerated acting 3.1 The Plunder of Peach and Plum (1934): the advent of sound and leftist ideology 3.2 Hu Die: movie queen of the 1930s 3.3 Street Angel (1937): a classic leftist film featuring Zhou Xuan (right) 3.4 Ruan Lingyu (left): a tragic silent movie star in City Night (1933) 3.5 Confucius (1940): a historical film from the ‘orphan island’ period 3.6 Paradise on Orphan Island (1939): the emergence of Mandarin film in Hong Kong 3.7 The Sky Rider (1940): wartime filmmaking in Chongqing 3.8 Long Live the Mistress! (1947): an entertaining comedy, with a script by Eileen Chang 3.9 Spring River Flows East (1947): a popular postwar epic tear-jerker 3.10 Crows and Sparrows (1949): on the eve of a new society, with Zhao Dan (right) 3.11 Spring in a Small Town (1948): a critically acclaimed art film classic, directed by Fei Mu 3.12 Mise-en-scene of urban modernity: interior design in Heng Niang (1931) 4.1 A poster for Oyster Girl (1964): an example of Taiwan’s healthy realism in film ix 8 25 29 44 49 52 69 77 78 82 87 92 93 97 98 102 103 107 136 I L L U S T R AT I O N S 4.2 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.9 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 8.1 8.2 The Love Eterne (1963): a popular Hong Kong opera movie in Taiwan Zhuangzi Tests His Wife (1913): a Hong Kong short feature, with Li Minwei Sorrows of the Forbidden City (1948): postwar Mandarin cinema in Hong Kong Sun, Moon and Star (1962): female stars dominating the Hong Kong screen Fist of Fury (1972): Bruce Lee and the worldwide gongfu craze The White-Haired Girl (1950): staging class struggle and sexual oppression The White-Haired Girl (1972): revolutionary ballet performance on celluloid Song of Youth (1959): intellectuals and Communist revolution New Year’s Sacrifice (1957): Xia Yan’s adaptation of a story by Lu Xun, featuring Bai Yang Five Golden Flowers (1959): romance and exoticism exhibited as national solidarity Guerrillas on the Plain (1955): war film as propaganda and entertainment It’s My Day Off (1959): altruism as a rewarding socialist virtue Lin Zexu (1959): a historical lesson of the Opium War, featuring Zhao Dan Stage Sisters (1965): Xie Jin’s humanism and political melodrama A Girl from Hunan (1986): a fascination with female sexuality and regional culture Sacrificed Youth (1985): exploring feminine beauty and female consciousness One and Eight (1984): realism and symbolism in Zhang Yimou’s cinematography Taipei Story (1985): urban alienation and the rise of New Taiwan Cinema City of Sadness (1989): rewriting history in post-martial law Taiwan Red Cherry (1995): commercial packaging of art and memory In the Heat of the Sun (1995): nostalgia for the Cultural Revolution x 137 152 159 167 179 194 195 204 207 209 211 212 213 215 232 234 236 245 246 283 285 TABLES 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 3.1 3.2 3.3 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 5.1 5.2 5.3 6.1 6.2 8.1 8.2 Approximate value of Chinese currencies, 1920s–90s Sample ticket prices in China, 1890s–1940s Salary comparison in China, 1910s–30s Production costs per film in China, 1920s–40s Film sales and rental prices, 1920s–60s Salary comparison in Hong Kong, 1930s–90s Production costs per film in Hong Kong, 1920s–90s Film exhibition in major cities in China, 1927–48 Sample ticket prices in Taiwan, 1900s–90s Production costs and revenues per film in Taiwan, 1929–2002 Movie theaters and annual attendance in Taiwan, 1941–94 Annual feature production in Taiwan, 1949–2002 Salary comparison in Taiwan, 1950s–80s Theaters, attendance and population in Hong Kong, 1926–96 Annual number of feature productions in Hong Kong, 1913–2002 Sample ticket prices in Hong Kong, 1904–99 Select exhibition statistics in the PRC, 1949–2002 Annual feature production in the PRC, 1949–2002 Comparison of box-office revenues in Hong Kong, 1991–2002 Selected production costs in the PRC, 1959–2002 xi 15 16 30 45 46 64–5 90 99 115 118 120–1 129–30 132 154 155–6 170 192 196–7 261 283 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The planning of this book began in 1996 when I was working on Encyclopedia of Chinese Film (Routledge, 1998) and Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai, 1922–1943 (Stanford, 1999). Since then I have moved from the Midwest to the Pacific Coast of the US. I would like to acknowledge major institutional support I received during these years: to the University of California (UC) at San Diego for a faculty fellowship from the Center for the Humanities, course reduction from the Department of Literature, and research and travel grants from the Division of Arts and Humanities, the Academic Senate, as well as the UC Pacific Rim Research Program in 2001–3; to the Pacific Cultural Foundation, Taiwan, for a research grant in 1999–2000; to the National Endowment for the Humanities for a summer faculty stipend in 1999; to Indiana University at Bloomington for an Outstanding Junior Faculty Award in 1996–7, a sabbatical leave in the autumn of 1999, and a summer faculty fellowship in 2000. The archival research was undertaken on both sides of the Pacific. I specifically thank the Chinese Taipei Film Archive (Taiwan) and the Hong Kong Film Archive for granting generous access in 1999–2003. Thanks are also due to the centers for Chinese or East Asian studies at the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, as well as the Harvard-Yenching Library for library travel grants in 1996–9. For encouragement and support I am grateful to my colleagues and friends Dudley Andrew, Ru-Shou Robert Chen, Cheng Jihua, David Desser, Michael Curtin, Eugene Chen Eoyang, Joseph Esherick, Yi-Tsi Mei Feuweuerker, Wendy Larson, Perry Link, Lisa Lowe, Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu, Paul Pickowicz, Stanley Rosen, Julian Stringer, David Der-Wei Wang, Jing Wang, Zhiwei Xiao and Zhang Longxi. I presented parts of the book in earlier drafts at the University of Southern California, Indiana University, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the University of Maryland, Yale University, as well as the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Lyon, France, the City University of Hong Kong, and the Hong Kong Baptist University in 2000–3, and I remain appreciative to my hosts at these institutions. My thanks also to Zhu Tianwei of the China Film Archive (Beijing) for supplying photographs; to Paul Pickowicz for sharing his rare collection of early Chinese films; to Qin Liyan for timely xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS research assistance in 2003; to Rebecca Barden and Susan Hayward for their confidence and patience; to four initial Routledge reviewers for endorsing the project years ago and four final reviewers for their comments, questions and suggestions, especially to Peter Rist for being so meticulous; and to Routledge’s London staff – Lesley Riddle in particular – for seeing this book through reviewing, shortening (by 27,700 words), copy-editing, marketing, production and distribution. This book is dedicated to my loving family: to Su for the twentieth anniversary of our marriage, to Mimi for her marvelous achievements in college education and to Alex for his growing appreciation of the power of images and words. xiii ABBREVIATIONS b/w CCP CMPC dir. GIO HKFA HKIFF KMT MP&GI NFCC PLA PRC RMB ROC ZDC ZDX ZDYYZ ZDZ black and white Chinese Communist Party Central Motion Picture Company (Taiwan) director Government Information Office (Taiwan) Hong Kong Film Archive Hong Kong International Film Festival Kuomingtang (the Nationalist Party in China and Taiwan) Motion Picture & General Investment (Hong Kong) National Film Censorship Committee (KMT, China) People’s Liberation Army (China) People’s Republic of China (mainland China) Reminbi (PRC currency in yuan) Republic of China (Taiwan) Zhongguo dianying chubanshe (China Film Press, Beijing) Zhongguo dianyingjia xiehui (China Film Association, Beijing) Zhongguo dianying yishu yanjiu zhongxin (China Film Art Research Center, Beijing) Zhongguo dianying ziliao guan (China Film Archive, Beijing) xiv 1 INTRODUCTION National cinema and China ‘NATIONAL’ CINEMA At the start of the new millennium, the publication of another volume on national cinema may seem ironic for several reasons. First, in the age of globalization, operations of multinational corporations have increasingly criss-crossed and sometimes entirely obscured or bypassed national borders, while local, regional and transnational forces continue to undermine the legitimacy of any nationstate (Miyoshi 1993). Second, in response to the sweeping power of the ‘global popular’ (During 1997), media and cultural studies have looked to postcoloniality, postmodernity and transnationality for new conceptual frameworks, and any focus on a single national cinema appears rather narrow or even dated. Third, in the wake of new technological development, cinema itself is said to have entered its ‘late’ stage, and the current academic interest in early cinema and late cinema thus place in an unfavorable light a project that considers the entire history of a national cinema. Admittedly, in regard to China, the national cinema paradigm seems utterly inadequate. China today consists of three territories: (1) The People’s Republic of China (PRC) ruled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the mainland; (2) Hong Kong, formerly a British colony but since July 1997 a special administrative region of the PRC; (3) The Republic of China (ROC) controlled for decades by the Nationalists (KMT) but since 2000 ruled by the independenceminded Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in Taiwan. The history of these territories further complicates the ‘national’ situation. The identification of mainland China as ‘Communist’ can only date back to 1949, the end of the KMT rule there. Similarly, the KMT control of Taiwan started only in 1945, at the end of half a century of Japanese occupation of the island (also known as ‘Formosa’, a term originated by Portuguese seafarers). For some, the history of the separation of film industries in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan ‘has formed quite distinctive national cinemas within each territory’ (Yeh 1998: 74). Such territorial concerns have occasioned a similar designation of national cinema status for Hong Kong and Taiwan. As Stephen Crofts notes, ‘In Hong Kong, the national cinema outsells Hollywood by a factor of four to one’ (1993: 55–6); Douglas Kellner 1 INTRODUCTION believes that ‘the New Taiwan Cinema has produced an impressive succession of films comprising a distinctive national cinema’ (1998: 101). A closer scrutiny of Crofts’ typology of national cinemas can help us locate its inadequacy vis-à-vis China. In 1993, he distinguished the following seven varieties (51–7). The first is European-model art cinema, characterized by art-house exhibition, state subsidy, a cultural mode of production, psychological characterization, narrational ambiguity and objective verisimilitude. The second is Third Cinema, distinct from the author’s cinema and marked by its political oppositionality. The third is Third World and European commercial cinema, populist in nature and reliant on such genres as the thriller, comedy and soft-core pornography. The fourth are cinemas that ignore Hollywood, such as those in Hong Kong and India, with large domestic markets and stable export markets. The fifth are cinemas that imitate Hollywood, as in several Anglophone countries, but with limited success. The sixth are totalitarian cinemas, as in fascist Germany and Italy, Communist China and the former Soviet bloc. The seventh are regional or ethnic cinemas, produced by ethnic or linguistic minorities, as in Quebec, Canada. In 1998, Crofts revised his typology and offered eight varieties along with a chart to illustrate them by way of a vertical axis defined by such terms as ‘industrial’, ‘cultural’, ‘political’ and a horizontal axis reflecting the mode of production as regulated or controlled by the state. The newly added variety is United States cinema (including its medium-budget ‘independent’ films), and the list goes in a new sequence according to each cinema’s relative place in relation to different modes of production: (1) United States cinema; (2) Asian commercial successes; (3) other entertainment cinemas in Europe and the Third World; (4) totalitarian cinemas; (5) art cinemas; (6) international co-productions; (7) Third Cinemas; and (8) sub-state cinemas (Crofts 1998: 389–90). Crofts’ inclusion of the United States notwithstanding, his proposal – based on his conviction that nations and states have been drifting apart in recent decades – ‘to write of states and nation-state cinemas rather than nations and national cinemas’ (1998: 386) deserves careful evaluation in the case of Chinese cinema. Although he does not mention Taiwan, it is worthwhile contemplating where Crofts may place Taiwan in his chart of national cinemas. The first possibility is to treat Taiwan as an example of ‘Asian commercial successes’. This was indeed the case when Taiwan cinema did well domestically and in Southeast Asia in the 1960s (Lent 1990: 65; F. Lu 1998: 125–78). But this ‘commercial mode’ of production that ignores Hollywood is no longer in practice in Taiwan, for the sheer absence of a stable domestic market invalidates any attempt to construct a national cinema ‘industry’ in Taiwan nowadays. The second possibility is to treat Taiwan as an example of ‘art cinema’, which makes sense to a certain extent as Taiwan films have continued to win prestigious awards at international film festivals since the late 1980s. But a troubling question is that many such awardwinning films are international co-productions and thus transnational in nature, and once again the national here becomes problematic. The third possibility is to 2 INTRODUCTION treat Taiwan cinema as a kind of ‘totalitarian cinema’, which is true for the majority of propaganda or ‘policy films’ (zhengce pian) from the state-run studios in the 1960s and 1970s (R. Huang 1994b). Yet, after the disintegration of the studio system, this ‘political mode’ of production is now a distant memory. The fourth possibility is to treat Taiwan films as an example of ‘Third Cinema’, distinguished by a radical oppositionality to the state on the one hand and to cultural and economic imperialism on the other. Buddha Bless America (Taiping tianguo, dir. Wu Nien-chen [Wu Nianzhen], 1996) is just one of very few such examples, which problematizes identity and identification in the era of postcoloniality (T. Lu 2002: 191–205). Like Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China also challenge Crofts’ paradigm. Although he explicitly qualifies Hong Kong as a ‘nation-state cinema’, how could Crofts ever explain that up to July 1997 Hong Kong remained a British colony and specifically lacked nation-state status? Further, how would he reconcile the fact that even after Hong Kong officially became a special administrative region of China in July 1997, the Taiwan government still classified Hong Kong films as ‘guopian’ (literally, ‘national films’)?1 Similarly, Crofts solicits more questions when he twice mentions China’s fifth generation in his 1993 typology. First, it is a kind of ‘exile’ filmmaking (included under Third Cinema) boosted by international funding but often ‘banned’ at home; second, it is ‘political art cinema’ peripheral to the core production of totalitarian cinema (1993: 54–7). Indeed, fifth generation films prove difficult to be pigeonholed in Crofts’ typology because of a fundamental mutation. This group started as the statesubsidized production of an ideologically subversive ‘art cinema’ in the mid1980s and has mutated to the internationally (or intra-nationally) funded co-production of ‘ethnographic cinema’ of ‘authentic’ Chinese culture and history since the early 1990s (Y. Zhang 2002: 220–51). Furthermore, where should we place the ‘underground’ filmmaking of China’s sixth generation in the national cinema paradigm? Many of these films are not so much ‘banned’ in China as considered ‘illegal’ by the authorities because they did not wait for official approval for exhibition at international film festivals (Cui 2001). Ironically, the rumored ‘banned’ status often adds to the political capital of these films, which often win sympathy, prizes and future financial backing in the West and are acclaimed as ‘truthful’ depictions of contemporary Chinese life (Y. Zhang 2004). Obviously, Chinese cinema does not sit easily in Crofts’, or any national cinema paradigm, although I should clarify that the Chinese case as elaborated here is not meant to deny the validity of national cinema in many other countries. Here, I am tempted to follow Tom O’Regan and declare that Chinese cinema, like Australian cinema, ‘is a messy affair’, not the least because Chinese cinema is ‘fundamentally dispersed’ (1996: 2) – historically, politically, territorially, culturally, ethnically and linguistically. The messy state of Chinese cinema means that the question of the ‘national’ will not go away if we substitute ‘national cinema’ with ‘nation-state cinema’. Indeed, the association with the nation-state is precisely what makes the term ‘Chinese cinema’ problematic. 3 INTRODUCTION ‘Chinese’ cinema Recently, the very term ‘Chinese’ has been put under intense interrogation, if not always ‘under erasure’ (Chow 1998: 24). Is ‘Chinese’ in ‘Chinese cinema’ meant as an ethnic, cultural, linguistic, political or territorial marker? If so, ‘Chinese cinema’ itself turns out to be a problematic designation. In ethnic terms, mainland China consists of the majority Han people and fifty-six officially classified national minorities, while Taiwan claims a long history of aboriginal peoples (shandi ren, literally ‘mountain folks’), and Hong Kong has a multiracial, multi-ethnic population. In cultural terms, although most Chinese may choose to identify themselves with a civilization thousands of years old, in reality they are aware of regional differences such as those existing between northerners and southerners in the mainland, or mainlanders (waisheng ren) and islanders in Taiwan. Perhaps the most striking difference is the widespread, diverse, often mutually unintelligible dialects all over China. Thus, in linguistic terms, Mandarin cinema (guoyu pian) stands in opposition to Cantonese cinema in Hong Kong and to Taiwanese-dialect film (Taiyu pian) in Taiwan. In political terms, furthermore, ideological and institutional differences in the governments of mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan after 1949 have left indelible marks on film productions from what are often referred to as three Chinas. The problematic nature of ‘Chinese’ as a signifier should suffice to demythify ‘Chineseness’ as a pre-given, monolithic and immutable essence. The question to be pursued further is whether we are content with speaking of Chineseness in the plural, as so many kinds of Chinese cinemas and their corresponding Chinesenesses. For Rey Chow, ‘the problem of Chineseness is . . . not likely to be resolved simply by way of the act of pluralizing’, and ‘the poststructuralist theoretical move of splitting and multiplying a monolithic identity (such as China and Chinese) from within . . . is by itself inadequate as a method of reading’ (1998: 24). Chow’s warning of the theoretical inadequacy of pluralization notwithstanding, what we have seen since the mid-1990s is the apparent consensus that films from all three Chinas may be covered under the umbrella term ‘Chinese cinema(s)’, with or without the plural form. The point at issue here is not that ‘Chinese’ will ever be an adequate marker. After all, critics like Yueh-yu Yeh (1998) can suggest no better term to replace ‘Chinese cinema’ than ‘Chinese-language cinema’ (huayu dianying or Zhongwen dianying). Anxiety about the equation of ‘Chinese cinema’ to ‘Zhongguo dianying’ (literally, ‘cinema of the Chinese nation-state’) finds a better articulation in Xiaobing Tang’s explication of the term ‘Chinese literature’ (2000: 347): The history and vitality of Taiwan and Hong Kong literatures in the twentieth century . . . make an ever more compelling case that by ‘modern Chinese literature’ we understand not a narrow nation-state institution . . . nor just one geopolitically bounded literary production, but rather a vast literature written in modern Chinese and interacting with long and 4 INTRODUCTION uneven literary and cultural traditions – regional as much as national . . . ‘Chinese literature’ should be usefully broadened to mean ‘Zhongwen wenxue’ (literature in Chinese) and replace a narrowing ‘Zhongguo wenxue’ (literature of China, or even, of the Chinese nation-state). Ideally, like ‘literature in Chinese’, ‘Chinese-language cinema’ should be a broader term than ‘Chinese cinema’ as the former may include Chinese-language films directed by the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia, West Europe and North America. However, ‘Chinese-language cinema’ may also be a narrower term because it is misleading to assume that what binds Chinese cinema together are its common linguistic features. A casual look at Chinese subtitles in many Hong Kong films since the 1980s would convince one that their intentionally hybridized linguistic practice – one that mixes standard written Chinese with invented characters to match spoken Cantonese – is meant precisely to highlight their regional difference and to subvert the myth of a unified, universal and unchanging Chinese script (Kam 1993). A new trend in the late 1990s also challenges an exclusively linguistic definition of Chinese cinema because several ethnic Chinese directors have made English-language films, sometimes with a separate soundtrack in Chinese. It should be clear by now that a principal source of the anxiety about Zhongguo dianying is the association of guo in Chinese with the ‘nation-state’ or simply ‘state’. But this problem is not as serious in Chinese as in English because, contrary to Crofts’ proposal to envision a ‘state cinema’, we can strategically approach the ‘Chinese’ in ‘Chinese cinema’ in predominantly cultural and historical terms. For this book I prefer to use ‘Chinese national cinema’ to cover all films produced in mainland China (including those prior to 1949), Hong Kong and Taiwan, and instruct the reader to keep in mind all problematics or messiness – theoretical as well as geopolitical – surrounding ‘China’ and ‘Chineseness’. This general and potentially comparative framework of Chinese national cinema enables us to trace the interactions between Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong (all marked by distinctive dialect uses) in early cinema and transnational cinema throughout the twentieth century. It also directs our attention to the remarkable similarities between nationalist state policies (such as film censorship and state subsidy) of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime in the mainland and the Kuomingtang (KMT) regime in Taiwan after 1949. Rather than being constantly apprehensive about the unsettling, multifaceted Chineseness in Chinese national cinema, I believe it is the ‘national’ as historically constructed, circulated and contested in Chinese cinema that demands our in-depth investigation. THE ‘NATIONAL’ AS CINEMATIC PROJECTS Here, we must confront another kind of messiness unique to Chinese cinema: the Chinese language does not possess an exact equivalent to the English word 5 INTRODUCTION ‘nation’. A nation can be translated as both minzu (nation-people) or guojia (nation-state) in Chinese (Y. Zhang 2002: 152–7), and a national cinema thus means more than a nation-state cinema, for it also implies a cinema of, by or for the nation-people. The construction of the national has consequently become an ongoing project of contestation whereby the state and the people compete for the right to speak in the name of the nation. Historically, this tension between people and state has resulted in a cyclical or spiral pattern of development in Chinese cinema: from cinemas of the nation-people during the 1920s through to the 1940s (e.g., early cinema and leftist cinema) to cinemas of the nation-state during the 1950s to the 1970s (e.g., socialist realism in mainland China and healthy realism in Taiwan) and back to cinemas of the nation-people during the 1980s and 1990s (e.g., New Chinese Cinema marked by its cultural reflection and New Taiwan Cinema marked by its rewriting of Taiwan history). The increasing interdependence of people and state in both mainland China and Taiwan at the turn of the new millennium thus lends legitimacy to guo/zu (nation/people), a shorthand new coinage originated from Taiwan. But even this new integrative term is built on an inherent split of the two fundamentally incompatible parts, thereby further foregrounding the messiness of the national in Chinese cinema. I suggest that we take the messiness of Chinese cinema positively, as a sign that producers, filmmakers, exhibitors, state regulators, critics and audiences in different Chinese geopolitical regions and over different periods of time have aspired to different constructions of the national. Given the fundamentally messy and dispersed attributes of Chinese cinema, its enunciation of the national must be examined at multiple levels, historically, typologically and theoretically, all at once. Theoretically, Chris Berry proposes that we study ‘national agency’ as a missing term in current scholarship on cinema and the national. For him, ‘the nation is not merely an imagined textual object but a historically and socially contingent construction of a form of collective agency’ (1998: 132). His source of inspiration is Judith Butler’s theory of citation and iterability, ‘a flexible conceptual framework that suggests any identity is infinitely plural because it exists only in its infinitely different citations’ (Berry 1998: 146). From there he recommends ‘recasting national cinema as a multiplicity of projects, authored by different individuals, groups, and institutions with various purposes, but bound together by the politics of national agency and collective subjectivity as constructed entities’ (1998: 132). Yet Berry’s ‘national agency’ is itself an ambiguous term. How do we measure national agency – against regional or local agency, international or transnational forces? On what kind of the ‘national’ does national agency rely – the nationstate or the nation-people? And what is the relationship between individual subjectivity and national agency? Questions like these notwithstanding, I find Berry’s reformulation of national cinema as multiple and heterogeneous projects particularly useful to a study of the national in Chinese cinema. Following Berry, we can entertain a vision of several distinct but equally valid Chinese national 6 INTRODUCTION cinemas as ‘socially, politically, and historically specific projects contesting each other in the construction of Chinese national agency, which is itself defined in various ways’ (Berry 1998: 132). This vision allows for the possibility that a particular cinematic project of constructing national, regional or other collective agency or identity may exceed the unitary nation-state model, but it does not disqualify the project as belonging to a national cinema at the same time. Films like Yellow Earth (Huang tudi, dir. Chen Kaige, 1984), City of Sadness (Beiqing chengshi, dir. Hou Hsiao-hsien [Hou Xiaoxian], 1989) and Centre Stage (Ruan Lingyu, dir. Stanley Kwan [Guan Jinpeng], 1992) are just a few examples here. Moreover, the flexibility of this vision enables us not only to reformulate China (or Chineseness) as ‘a discursively produced and socially and historically contingent collective entity’ (Berry 1998: 131), but it also clears the way for strategic allegiance or permutation by means of boundary-crossing, intra-national and intercultural citations of images, themes, motifs, styles, genres and other cinematic or cultural conventions – strategies that historically characterize film production in all three Chinas. FILM HISTORIOGRAPHY A historical perspective is paramount to sorting out instances of allegiance and permutation as well as contestation and deconstruction in Chinese cinema. At the same time, we must remember that film history as a mode of inquiry has its own limits. ‘The history of the cinema,’ Gerald Mast asserts, ‘will never be written; we shall simply have to be satisfied with histories of the cinema’ (1976: 298). Histories of Chinese cinema were published as early as the 1920s and 1930s (ZDZ 1996a: 1320–5, 1355–80, 1385–1432), and the 1990s saw a proliferation of such writings in both Chinese and English. Rather than a full-fledged typology of Chinese film historiography (Y. Zhang 2000), I want to briefly differentiate several types of conventional historiography of national cinema here. First, the auteurist historiography is dedicated to the study of a canon of masterpieces, and the historian’s task is to locate outstanding careers, representative works and distinguished styles. As an early proponent of this approach, Mast thus justifies his practice: ‘Just as the history of the novel is, to some extent, a catalogue of important novels, . . . the history of film as an art revolves around important films (1976: 298). For Mast, film is undoubtedly the most reliable textual source from which the historian can proceed to study the ‘great film minds’ in the history of cinema. In accordance with this model, Kwok-kan Tam and Wilmal Dissanayake’s New Chinese Cinema (1998) stages a hit parade of six great recent Chinese film minds – Chen Kaige, Zhang Yimou, Tian Zhuangzhuang, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang (Yang Dechang) and Stanley Kwan. One problem with the auteurist approach is that it inevitably situates cinema in ‘the province of the high art rather than popular culture’ (Hayward 1993: 7), and the outcome is generally more biographical than historical. 7 INTRODUCTION Figure 1.1 Zhang Yimou: an auteur from China’s fifth generation Second, the movement approach aims at a similarly ‘monumental’ history, foregrounding moments of exception at the expense of a more comprehensive picture. Typically, the complexity and heterogeneity of a national cinema is systematically reduced, and the priority is given to narrating ‘a select series of relatively self-contained quality film movements [that] carry forward the banner 8 INTRODUCTION of national cinema’ (Higson 1995: 22). Not surprisingly, the leftist film movement and the fifth generation have become virtually synonymous with pre-1949 and contemporary Chinese cinema in the mainland (J. Cheng et al. 1981; X. Zhang 1997), while New Taiwan Cinema stands for Taiwan film in general. What usually happens is that ‘such cinema “movements” occupy a key position in conventional histories of world cinema, whose historiography is not only nationalist but also elitist in its search for the “best” films’ (Crofts 1993: 62). One needs only to browse through the entries on China, Hong Kong and Taiwan in two recent film surveys to see the reductive nature of such a movement approach to film historiography (Hill and Gibson 1998: 543–81; Nowell-Smith 1996: 409–12, 693–713). Third, the theme-and-issues approach concentrates on specific themes and genres in a national cinema (Elsaesser 1989: 1). The best recent example is perhaps Rey Chow’s study of ‘primitive passions’ and auto-ethnography in contemporary Chinese cinema, albeit she intended it not so much as film history as a ‘cultural history’ of modern China (1995: x). A prominent advantage of this approach is its ability to diagnose ‘symptoms’ of an entire period by way of analyzing selected directors and films. An equally prominent disadvantage, however, is its narrow focus on textual evidence at the expense of film production, distribution, exhibition and reception. In addition to the text-based and the criticism-based approaches (both exemplified by Chow), Andrew Higson mentions two other types of film historiography – the industry or production-based analysis and the exhibition-led or consumption-based approach (1989: 36–7). Higson advances ‘an argument that the parameters of a national cinema should be drawn at the site of consumption as much as at the site of production of films; an argument, in other words, that focuses on the activity of national audiences and the conditions under which they make sense of and use the films they watch’ (1989: 36). Chow’s Primitive Passions, for instance, tells us little about how Chinese audiences make sense of the ‘auto-ethnographic’ films which they watch. For his study of the construction of a national cinema in Britain, Higson adopts a case-study method (1995: 272), using five films as a combined textual and contextual basis from which to unravel a fascinating history of film industry, filmmakers, film genres, film iconography, film audience and film criticism. In Chinese film studies, production (industry) and consumption (audience) are two underdeveloped areas. Jay Leyda’s chronology of film events and publications remains an isolated early attempt in English (1972), but there has been an increasing Chinese output in this area since the early 1990s, especially on Taiwan cinema (Chiao 1993; F. Lu 1998). A daunting problem facing the film historian has always been the lack of access to early films and film statistics. In the past decade, the publication of early film scripts and film reviews, together with the release of early films on VCDs (video compact disks) and extensive filmographies on mainland China and Hong Kong, have considerably eased the access problem. Such improvements of the research situation, admittedly still insufficient, should 9 INTRODUCTION encourage Chinese film scholars to consider Higson’s following argument more seriously (1989: 45–6): To explore national cinema . . . means laying much greater stress on the point of consumption, and on the use of film (sounds, images, narratives, fantasies), than on the point of production. It involves a shift in emphasis away from the analysis of film texts as vehicles for the articulation of national sentiment and the interpellation of the implied national spectator, to an analysis of how actual audiences construct their identity in relation to the various products of the national and international film and television industries, and the condition under which this is achieved. Following Higson, I propose that we pay sufficient attention to archival material and historical evidence before or while committing ourselves to interpretations and speculations fashioned by theoretical or ideological positions. To say the least, a willing consideration of various issues at both production and consumption ends may compel us to re-examine lacunae, discrepancies and contradictions in film scholarship itself. HISTORICAL PERIODIZATION It is no surprise that different theoretical models hold sway at different times in film historiography in different geopolitical locales (Y. Zhang 1999a: 8–9). The ways in which ideological issues may alter our view of Chinese film history are illustrated by two examples from mainland China. First, based on the principles of ‘Marxist’ historiography, Li Shaobai divides Chinese film history into nine periods (1991: 43–63): (1) initial experiment, 1905–23, (2) early artistic exploration, 1923–6, (3) crisis and turning, 1927–32, (4) revolutionary change, 1932–7, (5) war time, 1937–45, (6) artistic enrichment, 1945–9, (7) socialist cinema, 1949–65, (8) prohibition, 1966–76, and (9) further exploration, 1976– 89. Li’s case is symptomatic of recent Chinese film historiography in general. In spite of his declared intention to write a history of Chinese film art, a project that would differ significantly from the heavily politicized history he collaborated with Cheng Jihua and Xing Zuwen in the early 1960s (J. Cheng et al. 1981), he cannot but subscribe to the officially sanctioned historical position. The labeling of his periods thus reflects a fundamental dilemma, which he manages to address by giving priority alternatively to artistic concerns and sociopolitical events, thereby striking at least a semblance of balance. Paying little attention to balance, Ma Debo advances a revisionist scheme of periodization (1995: 1–32): (1) primitive commercial film, 1905–31, (2) leftist film, 1932–7, (3) realist film, 1947–9, (4) propagandist film, 1949–76, (5) social film, 1980–1, (6) film of life (rensheng dianying), 1982–6, (7) cultural film, 1984–7, and (8) modern commercial film, 1987 to present. Clearly, 10 INTRODUCTION Ma’s scheme is not complete because it omits the war years (1938–46) and the immediate post-Mao years (1977–9). The imbalance of his scheme is evident in his preference for the 1980s, which includes four periods with overlapping years. Ma’s scheme is designed to advance his argument in favor of a cyclical model of development in Chinese cinema, which recognizes an extraordinary coincidence of commercial film as the dominating mode at the beginning as well as the end of the twentieth century. In an uncanny way, Chinese cinema seems to have returned to its commercial basis (i.e., film as entertainment or yule) after sixty years of ideological battle and political control (i.e., film as vehicle of morality or zaidao). Both Li’s attempt to redress film art and Ma’s attempt to reclaim commercial film signal new developments in Chinese film scholarship. Each periodization scheme necessarily fulfills a different objective in film historiography. For my part, since the focus of this book is the national in Chinese cinema, I have devised a larger scheme of periodization in order to accommodate parallel, divergent and diverse developments in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The labels of my broad periodization are therefore more thematic in nature. I start with early cinema and national traditions (1896–1929) in Chapter 2, and move from cinema and the nation-people (1930–49) in Chapter 3 to the cinematic reinvention of the national in Taiwan (1896–1978) in Chapter 4 and the cinematic revival of the regional in Hong Kong (1945–78) in Chapter 5. I return to examine socialist cinema and the nation-state in the PRC (1949–78) in Chapter 6 and investigate cinema and national/regional cultures in all three Chinas (1979–89) in Chapter 7. I conclude with a discussion of cinema and the transnational imaginary and update developments in the new millennium (1990–2002) in Chapter 8. In all, my scheme aims to provide a flexible framework for a comparative study of cinema and the national in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan in the twentieth century. CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY Considering the fact that an up-to-date, comprehensive history of Chinese cinema in English is not yet available at the time of writing, I am convinced that a chronological history is the place to start in our endeavor to capture the richness of the national as cinematic projects in twentieth-century China. Such a history naturally follows the chronological order, and its approach is necessarily synthetic and interpretative, relying in turns on industry analysis, biographic sketch, stylistic consideration, textual criticism and audience study, among others. Given the fundamental diversity of Chinese cinema, I have devised a multi-layered, multi-focused scheme of presentation. In each chapter, I divide a period into phases, organizing information and offering analysis in regard to studios, producers, markets (distribution, exhibition, audience), genres, trends, artists (directors, screenwriters, stars), films, arts (aesthetics, style, technology), and sometimes also film publications and criticism. 11 INTRODUCTION My emphasis on a chronological history may depart from a new move in contemporary historiography: namely, the move from global history to sectorial or fragmentary history, from monumental history to diagrammatic history, from historicist history to structural history, and from documental history to conjectural history (Talens and Zunzunegui 1997). But my choice of a more conventional method in this book is conditioned by the current state of Chinese film scholarship in English. We must first of all explore a wide range of articulations of the national in Chinese cinema in order to appreciate, modify, challenge or subvert the conceptual frameworks of these articulations and the scholarship based on them. Simply put, we must be patient and willing to conduct primary research and complete the constructive phase of film historiography before we can proceed with deconstruction and reconstruction in any confident, meaningful way. Ostensibly, this book does not attempt to embrace the totality of Chinese cinema, nor does it entertain the possibility of exploring all archival resources or exhausting all interpretive frameworks related to the national in Chinese cinematic projects. Similarly, this book does not dwell solely on the ‘great film minds’ or a body of canonized texts for an excavation of the essential Chineseness, nor does it privilege the marginal or the visionary merely for the sake of endorsing oppositional or alternative politics. Other caveats must follow. Given a limited space, this book concentrates primarily on feature films; documentary, animation and other types of film production – as valid articulations of the national themselves – regrettably have to await further investigation. The limited space also renders it unfeasible for me to cite all previous studies, although I appreciate their invaluable contributions, each in its own way, to our understanding of Chinese cinema in general. The access problem has prevented a more in-depth study of such topics as prewar Hong Kong cinema, the Japanese-sponsored Manchurian Motion Pictures, and wartime production in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. These imbalances, however, do not impact the overall picture of Chinese cinema narrated in the following chapters. As new archival material surfaces, a more comprehensive history will surely arrive to further our knowledge of Chinese cinema in all its diversity and complexity. 12 2 CINEMA AND NATIONAL TRADITIONS, 1896–1929 INTRODUCTION: EARLY CINEMA This chapter covers the period of early cinema in China. The period started in 1896, a year in which film was first exhibited in China, and ended in 1929, a year in which the crisis-ridden film industry struggled to restructure itself and the premiere of American talkies in a major Shanghai venue signaled the impending technological change. This period witnessed several events that would fundamentally change the history of modern China. The Republican Revolution of 1911 overthrew the Qing court and terminated the imperial system of government in China. The newly created Republic of China, however, did not achieve central control as provincial and regional warlords fought against each other and ruled most of the nation. On the cultural and political fronts, the famous May Fourth movement, which introduced new ideas such as enlightenment and modernity by denouncing age-old Chinese traditions like Confucianism, began in Beijing in 1919 and spread to major cities around the country, and the CCP was founded in Shanghai in 1921. But these two events did not immediately impact the film industry, which reveled in traditional narratives and conservative ideologies. The Northern Expedition launched by the first KMT–CCP united front conquered much of Southern China and brought optimism to the war-torn nation. Yet the bloody crackdown on the CCP engineered by Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) in 1927 and the ensuing years of autocratic rule made the issue of political allegiance precarious for those engaged in film production and criticism. Nonetheless, 1928 marked the beginning of institutional changes favorable to centralized governance and economic development after the KMT government relocated the nation’s capital to Nanjing (literally, ‘southern capital’) from Beijing (literally, ‘northern capital’, hence renamed Beiping until Beijing was reinstated as the capital of the PRC in 1949). In terms of film history, this period can be divided into three phases. First, in the phase of cinema as attractions (1896–1921), Chinese filmmakers treated film as a new technology possessing an enormous appeal to the audience and hence with potential financial as well as educational benefits. Early short films 13 N AT I O N A L T R A D I T I O N S , 1 8 9 6 – 1 9 2 9 were intimately wedded to traditional theater (jiuju or xiqu) and modern drama (xinxi or xinju), the latter widely known as the ‘civilized play’ (wenmingxi) from the late 1900s to the early 1920s. Second, in the phase of cinema as narration (1922–6), filmmakers began to treat film simultaneously as a business by organizing production companies with explicit objectives and investing in distribution and exhibition chains and as a profession by launching film magazines, establishing film schools and publishing film books. The success of feature-length films like Orphan Rescues Grandfather (Guer jiuzhu ji, dir. Zhang Shichuan, 1923; 10 reels), some of them influenced by a kind of popular urban fiction known as ‘mandarin ducks and butterflies’ (yuanyang hudie; ‘butterfly’ hereafter), strengthened the status of film as a legitimate art form. Third, in the phase of cinema and speculations (1927–9), cheap primitive genre films and the ferocious competition among studios overwhelmed the market and resulted in financial ruin for innumerable companies in Shanghai. The immense popularity of martial arts films like The Burning of Red Lotus Temple, I–XVIII (Huoshao honglian si, dir. Zhang Shichuan, 1928–31, 27 hours total) set a record for serial production and pushed this new genre to its market limits. In general, early Chinese cinema did not establish itself as a full-fledged ‘industry’ because the security of a vertically integrated system was not in place and there was no concentrated ownership simultaneously coordinating the operations of investment, production, distribution and exhibition as a whole. Independent and under-funded in most cases, production companies rose and fell regardless of their ideological intentions, artistic visions or financial wellbeing, thus creating a chaotic film market not unlike that of France at the same time. In terms of film technology, especially camerawork and postproduction, Chinese filmmakers relied heavily on foreign expertise at first but managed to learn the basics along the way. Similarly, exhibition venues changed from the teahouse through the opera theater to the modern cinema, as film itself evolved from a leisure attraction to a narrative art over these two decades. Understandably, the period of early cinema in China is linked to its ‘prehistory’ as well. Generally, 28 December 1895 is regarded as the birthday of cinema, this being the day that the Lumière brothers showed their documentary shorts at the Grand Café in Paris. Shortly afterwards, on 11 August 1896, a French showman introduced ‘Western shadowplays’ (xiyang yingxi) amidst variety shows at the Xu Gardens (Xuyuan), an entertainment complex in Shanghai, thus marking cinema’s first entrance in China. In July 1897 the American film made its debut in China when James Ricalton of New Jersey exhibited a program of Thomas Edison movies at the Tianhua Teahouse in Shanghai, charging tickets at four levels ranging from 0.1 to 0.5 yuan (Du 1988: 7) (see Tables 2.1 and 2.2).1 In 1903 Spaniard Antonio Ramos took over the business started in 1899 by his countryman Galen Bocca and screened films at public venues in Shanghai such as a skating rink, teahouses and restaurants. Ramos’ consistent effort 14 N AT I O N A L T R A D I T I O N S , 1 8 9 6 – 1 9 2 9 Table 2.1 Approximate value of Chinese currencies, 1920s–90s General Item Equivalent 1927–9 Jan–Dec 1930 Jan 1931–Feb 1933 March 1933–May 1935 Nov 1935–July 1937 1960s–90s 1980s–90s 1 yuan (silver coin) 1 yuan (silver coin) 1 yuan (silver coin) 1 yuan (silver coin) 1 yuan (fabi or legal tender) HK$7.8 RMB8.3 US$0.38–0.45 US$0.23–0.38 US$0.20–0.25 US$0.20–0.42 US$0.30 US$1 US$1 Specific Item Equivalent 1930 1934 1948 1951–8 1951–8 1999 2001 1955–8 3 yuan 2.4 yuan HK$4.5 NT$32.28 (exchange to US$) NT$26.35 (exchange from US$) NT$32.27 NT$33 NT$7–8 US$1 US$1 US$1 US$1 US$1 US$1 US$1 HK$1 Sources: Y. Ding 1998: 105–24; GIO 2001: 154; J. Gong 1967: 479; R. Huang 2001: 40; Kubo 1986: 54; L. Lee 1999: 83; F. Lu 1998: 57; Z. Wang 1998: 64; Z. Zhang 1990: 303–4. Note: After 1937, the unstable wartime situation and skyrocketing postwar inflation made it impossible to calculate exact equivalents between Chinese yuan and US dollars. eventually made his programs at the Green Lotus Pavilion profitable (Leyda 1972: 2–3). Also in 1903 Lin Zhusan, who had studied in Germany, brought home a projector and reels of film and showed them at the Tianle Teahouse in Beijing (S. Cheng et al. 1927: chap. 2). Just as foreign businessmen had to rely on traditional entertainment venues to attract Chinese audiences to the newly imported Western shadowplays, the Chinese on their part insisted on claiming certain credit for the invention of cinema by tracing comparable shadowplays in their national traditions. The inverted picture shown in a black box was said to exist in China as early as 475–221 bc and around 140 bc the Chinese invented the ‘lighted shadowplay’, in which papercut human figures were projected onto a screen for enjoyment. The lighted shadowplay reportedly had traveled to the Middle East and Southeast Asia by the thirteenth century, and between 1767 and 1776 it reached France (as ombres chinoises) and England (J. Cheng et al. 1981: 1: 4–5). The term ‘shadowplay’ (yingxi) – as well as its derivative, ‘Western shadowplay’ (i.e., film or dianying, literally ‘electric shadows’) – thus foregrounds a conscientious effort of the Chinese to treat film as historically related to and conceptually indebted to some kind of Chinese tradition. As shall be clearer below, institutionally as well as theoretically, early Chinese filmmakers depended on their experience with 15 N AT I O N A L T R A D I T I O N S , 1 8 9 6 – 1 9 2 9 Table 2.2 Sample ticket prices in China, 1890s–1940s Year Theater Type of film Prices (yuan) 1897 1910s–20s 1910s–20s early 1920s 1920s 1920s Tianhua Teahouse YMCA Great World Embassy Pavilion, Beijing Zhenguang, Beijing 0.1–0.5 0.1 0.1–0.2 1–5 up to 2 0.1 1932 first-run venues, e.g., Capitol, Lanxin, Majestic first-run venues, e.g., Cathay, Carlton, Grand, Strand second-run venues, e.g., Paris, Iris, Odeon, Peking, Palace, Embassy, Apollo, Wiley second-run venues, e.g., Star, Guanghua, New Palace third-run venues, e.g., Empire, Carter, China, Hongkew others, e.g., Zhabei cheapest to highest first-run venues average venues, Manchuria teahouse-type venues, Beijing first-run venues first-run venues cheapest to highest Edison movies domestic comic shorts midnight show foreign and domestic foreign weekend foreign matinee at student discount foreign sound 1–2 foreign and domestic 0.6 foreign and domestic 0.4 foreign and domestic 0.3 foreign and domestic 0.2 unknown foreign and domestic foreign and domestic Japanese and domestic domestic silent Japanese and domestic domestic foreign and domestic 0.1 0.2–2 3.2 0.2–1.5 0.1–0.2 8 60 0.2–1.2 million 1932 1932 1932 1932 1932 1936 1940 1941 1941 1942 1945 1948 Sources: Y. Ding 1998: 105–24; Du 1988: 7; Fu 1997: 72–7; Fu 1998: 91–9; Hou 1996: 199–218; Leyda 1972: 2–3; S. Li and Hu 1996: 104; Manzhou zazhi she, March–April 1941; ZDZ 1996a: 191–8, 1496, 1509, 1569. Note: All theaters are in Shanghai unless otherwise indicated. theater-drama and deliberately validated ‘play’ or ‘theater’ (xi) as foundational to Chinese film practice. CINEMA AS ATTRACTIONS, 1896–1921 For foreign exhibitors and Chinese filmmakers alike, the primary concern in the initial phase was to attract the Chinese audience to Western shadowplays as an acceptable form of modern entertainment. Zhang Shichuan thus remembered his first reaction to filmmaking in 1913: ‘since it is making shadow “plays”, I naturally associated it with traditional “plays” in China’ (ZDZ 16 N AT I O N A L T R A D I T I O N S , 1 8 9 6 – 1 9 2 9 1996a: 401). Immersed in national traditions, Chinese theater thus provided a focus both as an institutional base and as an artistic model for early cinema in China. Early exhibition: teahouse, tent and theater To attract audiences, early exhibitors relied solely on old-fashioned venues like teahouses and theaters. Parallels between watching a traditional stage performance and early cinema can be drawn here. Characteristically of a teahouse, viewers sat at tables, while tea, snacks and occasionally hot towels were served (ZDZ 1996a: 1381). Since patrons came to such occasions as much to meet friends as to enjoy movies as exotic spectacles, they tended to drink, chat, laugh, shout, applaud, cough and spit at any time (ZDZ 1996a: 182–3, 608). This means that during a show the theater was a noisy or even chaotic place, a situation which did not bother the early audience too much. As reminisced by the eminent butterfly writer Bao Tianxiao, a small theater inside the Shanghai Great World Amusement Park regularly featured stage plays from eight o’clock in the evening to midnight at 0.3–0.4 yuan per ticket and showed movies from midnight to one-thirty in the morning at 0.1–0.2 yuan (see Table 2.2, p. 16). The midnight shows did brisk business because this was the time when courtesans arrived to enjoy themselves (ZDZ 1996a: 1509). Indeed, such a combination of film exhibition and theater performance had existed in China for decades. After its renovation in 1906, Beijing’s Grand Shadowplay Theater (Daguanlou, 400 seats) featured both plays and movies. These examples confirm that the traditional theater seemed to provide the most reliable place to attract the Chinese and familiarize them with early cinema. In addition to featuring movies amidst variety shows, some theaters developed what were known as ‘chained-sequence plays’ (lianhuanxi or liansuoju), a program of alternate live theatrical performances and film screenings (normally with five to six transitions). Modeled after its Japanese counterpart, the chainedsequence play sought to doubly satisfy the audience’s needs by making the film and the theater complement each other. Just as the film might extend the theater through location shootings, the theater would heighten the artistic impact by introducing singing and chanting at the right moment, something cinema could not deliver in the silent era. But the requirement that the same actors appear both on stage and on the screen proved logistically too difficult to manage and financially too expensive to produce. Consequently, chained-sequence plays went out of fashion (M. He 1956: 49–50). Fairy Maiden (Lingbo xianzi; 9 reels) and Red Rose (Hong meigui) were two chained-sequence plays jointly produced in 1925 by the Shanghai New Stage (Xin wutai) and Xu Zhuodai’s Kaixin Film Company. Although Xu admitted these productions were financial disasters (ZDZ 1996a: 377), film historian Gu Jianchen believed that they foreshadowed the full-scale ‘costume drama’ (guzhuang pian). Gu also noted that in 1925 the Shared Stage (Gong wutai), 17 N AT I O N A L T R A D I T I O N S , 1 8 9 6 – 1 9 2 9 another Shanghai theater, competed with the New Stage and produced a chained-sequence play, Princess Lotus Flower (Lianhua gongzhu; 9 reels) (ZDZ 1996a: 1365–6). Later that year, with some members from this production, Gu Wuwei established Great China (Da Zhongguo), which produced two sequels to Princess Lotus Flower (1926; 9 reels each). There is no indication whether these sequels were chained-sequence plays or entirely films. But what matters is that, in spite of its ephemeral existence, the chained-sequence play had served its function as a transitional, hybrid form of visual-performing arts that moved early Chinese audiences closer to a full screen experience. As an alternative to the theater, an early exhibitor might rent an empty lot and set up a tent for screening, as an Italian expatriate A. E. Louros did in 1907. The audience paid a few coins to sit on rows of narrow benches placed on uneven, dirty and sometimes muddy ground. Ventilation was poor, and no heating or cooling system was installed inside the tent. As in a traditional theater, men and women were required to sit in separate seats, and the police was routinely invited inside to keep order (Hou 1996). In terms of creature comfort, these tents were worse than noisy theaters, and it was not long before enterprising businessmen started to invest in movie theaters in China. In 1907 the first Chinese movie theater, the Pavilion Cinema (Ping’an), was built in Beijing.2 As with most other cinemas to come, the venue was foreignowned and served mostly foreign patrons (ZDZ 1996a: 177). A year later, buttressed by a steady income from teahouse screenings, Ramos completed the Hongkou Cinema in Shanghai, a simple sheet-iron structure of 250 hard seats, yet the first among dozens of modern theaters to be erected in the treaty port in the following decades (S. Li and Hu 1996: 19–20). Early audience: class, gender and motivation Corresponding to the changes taking place in theaters, Chinese audiences of early cinema had also transformed themselves. In the early years, traditional theater fans might venture side trips into the exotic spectacles offered by Western shadowplays. Typically, these early shorts featured smiling female dancers, a woman bathing in a tub, passengers on a giant steamship, a bicycle race involving a head-on collision, and the police and passers-by chasing a troublemaker on the street (Leyda 1972: 2; Y. Zheng 1982: 1–2). As time went by, students, clerks and other educated urbanites were no longer content with action-filled slapstick. Instead, they would join the gentry and other urban leisure classes in appreciating the screen equivalents of butterfly stories in the 1920s. The adaptation of traditional narratives of legendary heroes and historical figures further accustomed an audience of the literate and the illiterate alike to watching films as a satisfactory experience. More satisfied perhaps were those upper-class ladies who brought their tailors to a show and ordered them to custom-make any screen fashions that happened to catch their fancy (Cambon 1995: 34). In 18 N AT I O N A L T R A D I T I O N S , 1 8 9 6 – 1 9 2 9 sum, from the turn of the century to the 1920s, the shadowplay evolved from an occasional visual treat to a staple in entertainment. In 1927 Chen Dabei divided Beijing audiences into four groups: (1) the majority liked exciting stories with convoluted plots; (2) women liked sentimental tales and tear-jerkers; (3) more senior, experienced audiences liked characterization in depth; (4) a minority of intellectuals liked to study meaning in a film (ZDZ 1996a: 606). But even the last group might watch films simply for entertainment. A 1930 poll of eighty-five college sophomores demonstrated that seventy of them watched films for fun, compared to fifteen for learning English or for a taste of history (ZDZ 1996b: iv). The pressure of entertainment had engendered widespread opportunism in the film industry of the time, and even serious filmmakers had to concede to the market demand. Yang Xiaozhong admitted in 1926 that the most crucial thing was to cater to the taste of audiences of the middle and lower social strata. Zheng Zhengqiu was cognizant in 1925 of the necessity to adjust his goal of social education by adopting a pragmatic policy of ‘commercialism with a dose of conscience’ (ZDZ 1996b: v). Early production: Yaxiya, Huanxian and Zhang Shichuan As with early exhibition, it was a foreigner who established the first production company in China. Benjamin Brodsky (aka Brasky), a Jewish-American of Russian descent, founded Yaxiya (China Cinema Company, aka Asia Film) in Shanghai in 1909 and produced shorts in Shanghai and Hong Kong (Law 2000: 45–6). Nothing substantial came out until 1912, when Brodsky transferred his business to two compatriots, T. H. Suffert and a Mr Yashell. As manager of a life insurance company in Shanghai, Yashell knew little of the film business in China, so he entrusted production to his associate Jing Yingsan’s nephew, Zhang Shichuan. At age 21 and speaking Pidgin English, Zhang recruited his playwright friend Zheng Zhengqiu to form Xinmin (literally, ‘new people’), a film company based on Minming, a theater troupe organized by Zhang and Zheng and devoted to civilized plays. Since the stage performance took place in the evening and their employees had little to do during the day, Zhang and Zheng were particularly receptive to the film project, as their contract with Yaxiya had shifted the burden of their salaries to Yashell. With Yaxiya responsible for funding (US$30,000) and technology, and Xinmin for screenplay, directing and acting, an example of film co-production was set in Chinese film history. Yashell first wanted to adapt Wronged Ghosts in Opium Den (Heiji yuanhun), a popular civilized play from the New Stage, but gave up the idea when he found out about its anti-drug theme and the theater owners’ asking price (5,000 yuan). Instead, The Difficult Couple (Nanfu nanqi, dir. Zhang and Zheng; 4 reels), a comedy poking fun at traditional wedding rituals in Zheng’s hometown in Guangdong province, became Yaxiya’s first feature, which premiered at the New New Stage (Xinxin wutai) in September 1913. 19 N AT I O N A L T R A D I T I O N S , 1 8 9 6 – 1 9 2 9 Despite this successful cooperation, Zheng left Yaxiya to devote his energy to the civilized play and became known as a leading playwright and drama critic who would revive the genre in the mid-1910s (ZDZ 1996a: 398; Tan 1992: 1–216). Meanwhile, Zhang knew little about his work as film ‘director’ or daoyan, a Chinese term Lu Jie would invent in 1922. With Yashell standing behind a fixed camera, Zhang enjoyed directing his actors against a simple painted backdrop. In lieu of a full-scripted screenplay, early directors like Zhang used mubiao, something Zheng had adopted from the practice in the Beijing opera and the civilized play. A mubiao is divided in four parts: (1) number of acts; (2) indoor and outdoor settings in each act; (3) appearance of characters; and (4) main plots. Further details might be added to the plot section, such as gestures, facial expressions and main dialogue, but most actors improvised in the middle of shooting (ZDZ 1996a: 1574). Intertitles (zimu), sometimes bilingual in semiliterary Chinese and English, were added after the film was completed. Indeed, as Yaxiya’s other American boss, Suffert was responsible for writing English intertitles and synopses (benshi). Normally, Zhang shot a comic short in four to five days. Modeled after American slapsticks in style but drawn from funny acts preceding the feature civilized plays, these shorts were never welcomed by major theaters and had to be scheduled after the shows of civilized plays or at the YMCA at 0.1 yuan a ticket (ZDZ 1996a: 1569). A more reliable source of income came from the sales to Southeast Asia, where comedies were popular among the less educated Chinese diaspora. Yaxiya’s fortune ran out as the outbreak of World War I in 1914 interrupted the supply of German film stock (ZDZ 1996a: 1388–91). Zhang returned to manage Minming in addition to his uncle’s amusement park, but he resumed film activities when American film stock arrived in 1916. With a few friends, he raised 6,000 yuan and established Huanxian. Since Wronged Ghosts in Opium Den continued to play to a capacity audience in Shanghai, Zhang rented equipment from Louros and directed a 5-reeler of the same title. This time, Zhang varied the position of the camera between takes, employing long, medium, close and extreme close-up shots. Although the picture had a decent theater run, Huanxian went out of business and became the first of innumerable ‘one-picture companies’ in China. Commercial Press: popular education and national culture A more prominent player in early cinema was the all-powerful Commercial Press based in Shanghai. In 1917 the company had acquired a Pathé camera, a printing machine and other equipment from an American for less than 3,000 yuan and installed them in its photography studio. In 1918 Commercial Press formally instituted the Motion Picture Department. Having obtained the recently invented lamps in 1919 after aiding the location shooting of a Universal picture in China, the board of trustees approved the funding for new equipment, set 20 N AT I O N A L T R A D I T I O N S , 1 8 9 6 – 1 9 2 9 production policy and formalized exhibition and rental procedures. The Motion Picture Department produced over forty shorts in five distinct categories: scenery, newsreels, education, ancient plays (opera movies) and modern plays (short features). In particular, their education titles sought to complement a long list of popular primers, textbooks and magazines issued by Commercial Press since its establishment in 1903. In 1919 Commercial Press justified its motivation in setting up the Motion Picture Department. While most foreign films shown in China were considered by the authorities to be harmful to Chinese custom and morality, those films shot in China and shipped abroad were often exposés of Chinese life at the lower social strata for the sake of ridiculing China. The envisioned products of Commercial Press, on the contrary, endeavored to battle on two fronts. Domestically, their films would be shipped to provincial capitals and commercial centers and shown at select sites as aids in popular education in resistance to morally detrimental foreign films. Internationally, their films would promote Chinese culture, abate foreigners’ contempt for China and stir up patriotism among the overseas Chinese (J. Cheng et al. 1981: 1: 39).3 In spite of its solid financial support, new facilities (e.g., a glass-wall studio) and lofty rhetoric of enlightenment, feature productions from the Motion Picture Department were always substandard. Drawing mainly on traditional narratives, their early titles did not generate critical interest and failed to live up to the board’s expectations of promoting modern education. On the other hand, by leasing equipment to small companies and shooting films on others’ behalf, the Department claimed the credit for two spectacular successes: Yan Ruisheng (dir. Yang Xiaozhong; 10 reels) and The Vampires (Hongfen kulou, dir. Guan Haifeng; 14 reels). Together with Sea Oath (Haishi, dir. Dan Duyu; 6 reels), these three earliest Chinese feature-length films were all produced in 1921. ‘Modern plays’ as genre attempts: the three earliest long features As one of the two categories Commercial Press set up for feature productions, ‘modern plays’ (i.e., films set in contemporary life) cover a range of possible genres, as illustrated by the three long features cited above. Yan Ruisheng, an adaptation of Zheng Zhengqiu’s popular civilized play, was based on a sensational real-life case in which a renowned courtesan was murdered for money in 1920. Incidentally, Yan the real-life perpetrator admitted in court that foreign crime films had influenced his behavior (J. Cheng et al. 1981: 1: 13). Roughly similar to the fiction of social exposé or court cases fashionable among Chinese readers, the film sought to enhance its ‘reel’ impact by recruiting a former prostitute to play the victim and a former friend of the perpetrator to play Yan. The film premiered at the Embassy, a first-run Shanghai cinema that otherwise featured high-quality Western films, on 1 July 1921. In spite of paying 200 yuan 21 N AT I O N A L T R A D I T I O N S , 1 8 9 6 – 1 9 2 9 in advertising fees and additional theater rental fees of 200 yuan per day, the film ran for a week and grossed over 4,000 yuan, with 1,300 yuan on the opening day alone (S. Li and Hu 1996: 70). Bringing romance (aiqing pian) to the foreground, Sea Oath tells of a girl (Yin Mingzhu) who abandons her fiancé (a poor painter) and accepts the luxury provided by her rich cousin. But the film inserts a plot reversal by making the girl a runaway bride who regrets her ‘sins’ during her wedding at a church and chases the painter to a beach. When he refuses to accept her apology, she attempts suicide by jumping in the sea but is rescued by the painter. The film premiered at the Embassy on 23 January 1922 amidst media publicity, charging as high as 5 yuan a ticket. A 1922 review from the leading newspaper Shenbao praised Dan Duyu for capturing certain flavors of Western movies and the first-time actress Yin Mingzhu (aka Pearl Ing) for delivering a performance comparable to that of Mary Pickford. But the review also blamed the film for its Europeanized decors and unrealistic details (ZDZ 1996a: 1079). Nonetheless, Dan was praised for his dedication to quality because he had spent six months shooting Sea Oath and had discarded 15,000 feet of rushes to settle for a six-reeler of 6,000 feet (S. Li and Hu 1996: 73, 104). The Vampires was an attempt at the detective and thriller genres. Based on a French detective story and originally titled Ten Sisters, the film devises a complicated plot of the kidnaps of a doctor and a lawyer by the Vampire Gang, whose members include ten gorgeous women. The locations of a hospital, a city park and an insurance company highlight the film’s modern look, while the gang’s secret cave and witchcraft intensify the ambience of mystery. The use of special effects and martial arts fights, along with a happy ending in which the lovers are united and married, further guaranteed the film’s box-office success. For promotion, the producers sent a truck to tour the city, blasting its loud speakers and trumpets and distributing film plot sheets along the way. The scene of the gorgeous gangsters’ meeting was staged live on the truck. When the film premiered at the Embassy on 10 May 1922, tickets were sold at threetiered prices from 1 to 3 yuan (see Table 2.2, p. 16). Even foreigners joined the Chinese crowd in the theater, and the film was screened in Beijing, Tianjin and other large cities, as well as in such countries as Japan and Vietnam (ZDZ 1996a: 1496). CINEMA AS NARRATION, 1922–6 The upshot of the success of the first three long features was the twin realization by Chinese filmmakers that film could be a profitable business in addition to a popular attraction and that feature-length modern plays had a better chance of attracting audiences than comic shorts. As a result, from the early to mid-1920s many studios were established, most of which specialized in producing films of contemporary life. 22 N AT I O N A L T R A D I T I O N S , 1 8 9 6 – 1 9 2 9 Mingxing: between entertainment and education The most influential studio to emerge in the early 1920s was Mingxing (Star Motion Picture Company), founded in Shanghai in 1922 by Zhang Shichuan, Zheng Zhengqiu, Zhou Jianyun and two others with 10,000 yuan originally earmarked for stock speculations. The conflict between Zhang’s profiteering mindset and Zheng’s moralizing propensity surfaced immediately. While Zhang insisted on catering to the audience, Zheng proposed ‘serious feature plays’; whereas Zhang declared that his films had no ‘isms’ (zhuyi) to speak of, Zheng insisted that films must have ‘isms’ (Luo et al. 1992: 1: 67). Their initial agreement was to bring out Zhang’s preferred comic shorts, most of which proved unsuccessful. Zhang Xinsheng (dir. Zhang Shichuan, 1922; 8 reels), a more serious film about a real-life patricidal case, sold well at first but was chastised for its ‘ruthless’ depictions of murder and autopsy and was reportedly banned afterward (ZDZ 1996a: 403, 1520). Financial difficulty compelled Zhang to adopt Zheng’s proposal in 1923, which materialized in Orphan Rescues Grandfather, a phenomenal success that took eight months to prepare but brought Mingxing an unexpected financial windfall (its assets now valued at 100,000 yuan) and secured its position as an industry leader (Du 1988: 70). Between 1924 and 1928, Mingxing produced nearly sixty long features. A great number of these films portrayed suffering women of different ages and varied backgrounds. As with civilized plays, Zheng believed in education and wanted to promote reform through Mingxing’s ‘social films’. Nevertheless, Zheng was fully aware of the market and advocated a tripartite approach to ‘social psychology’: catering to (yinghe), adapting to (shiying) and improving (gailiang). Although a particular film might adopt all three, Zheng warned in 1925 that Chinese films must aim at the majority of audiences and must not be ‘too profound’ or ‘too elevated’ in thinking (ZDZ 1996a: 290). From time to time the press would criticize Zheng’s compromised solutions to social problems, but Zhang was happy to support Zheng for financial considerations. To cultivate a loyal following in the female audience, Zhang intended to churn out films that would elicit sympathetic tears and compensate his viewers with happy endings. Over the years, the maturation of Mingxing’s family dramas was such that even old ladies were able to follow their convoluted plots, thus guaranteeing Mingxing’s popularity across a wide spectrum of audiences (ZDZ 1996a: 1522). Feature films: from attractions to narration Perhaps fortuitously, Mingxing had engineered a quantum leap in early Chinese cinema from pure spectacular attractions to sophisticated narration, best illustrated in Laborer’s Love (Laogong zhi aiqing, dir. Zhang Shichuan, 1922), now reputedly the earliest extant Chinese-made feature, and Orphan Rescues 23 N AT I O N A L T R A D I T I O N S , 1 8 9 6 – 1 9 2 9 Grandfather. A close reading of these two films will reveal the intricacies of this crucial transformation in Chinese film history. Billed as a comic short, Laborer’s Love tells the story of a carpenter-turnedstreet-vendor’s romantic quest for the daughter of an ageing doctor whose business across the street goes downhill. The negotiation between the fruit-seller Zheng and debt-ridden Dr Zhu (Zheng Zhengqiu) leads to an agreement: once Zheng brings prosperity to the clinic, he can marry Zhu’s daughter. Typical of the cinema of attractions, a form of early cinema Tom Gunning (1998) theorizes as characterized by a series of curious or novel views, Laborer’s Love offers a quick succession of humorous scenes as spectacular visual treats. Zheng readies fruits for sale with the same precision as he handles carpentry. He swings a box of pears – his tokens of love – across the street to the daughter, who returns the box with her handkerchief and, by accident, her father’s glasses. Zheng sees through the glasses and, in an optical point-of-view shot, everything goes out of focus. Some hooligans harass the daughter in a nearby teahouse, so Zheng comes to the rescue. He pushes a fat guy into a huge wok of boiling water and with a ladle pours water over the hooligans’ heads. At night, Zheng’s sleep is disrupted by a brawl in an upstairs nightclub, where two gamblers fight over a young woman. The climatic scene comes when Zheng devises an ingenious trick the next day by replacing the ladders and turning the stair into a controllable slide. He hides under the stairway and pulls the device when the nightclub patrons are about to descend, thus sending them tumbling down the stairway. As patients arrive at the clinic, Zheng volunteers to help Zhu. The two ‘heal’ the patients by pounding, pulling, pushing, turning and bending their heads, arms and legs (in fast motion). Upon hearing Zhu’s marriage approval, Zheng kneels down and exclaims, ‘My father-in-law!’ The film ends with Zhu directly facing the camera in a fit of laughter, and his daughter covering her mouth with a handkerchief (ZDZ 1996a: 13–40). These concluding images recall an earlier, frontal medium shot of Zheng shaking his head in a broad grin, while a superimposed image of him confessing love to the daughter is seen in the upper left-hand corner of the frame. A few shots later, Zheng’s face turns miserable, as another superimposed image of Zhu refusing Zheng’s proposal appears in the upper left corner. Clearly, by this film, Zhang Shichuan had mastered a number of specifically cinematic tricks. In addition to Zheng’s fantasy sequences, a few extreme close-ups (e.g., of a clock or silver coins on Zhu’s tray) highlight key narrative details. In spite of innovative camera work, though, the film ensures a fundamental familiarity to the audience by having characters enter and leave on both sides of the frame, thus simulating a viewing experience comparable to that of a stage play. A closer scrutiny unravels several hidden layers of meaning in this otherwise simple comedy scripted by Zheng Zhengqiu. In its Chinese title, Laborer’s Love pays lip service to the ‘sanctity of working classes’ (laogong shensheng), a typical May Fourth slogan. With its positive portrayal of the fruit-seller as a workingclass member, the film also endorses the notion of ‘love of one’s free will’ (lian’ai 24 N AT I O N A L T R A D I T I O N S , 1 8 9 6 – 1 9 2 9 Figure 2.1 Laborer’s Love (1922): the earliest extant feature in China ziyou), another standard May Fourth theme. Yet, the fact that Zheng must kneel to Zhu in gratitude at the end of the film implies an endorsement of filiality, thereby tactfully anchoring the film in a conservative ideology. The film’s alternate Chinese title, Zhiguo yuan (literally, ‘love occasioned by the throwing of fruits’) contains a classical Chinese allusion thus further strengthening the film’s claim to national traditions. On the other hand, the fact that the extant print of the film carries English intertitles indicates that the Mingxing producers were fully aware of the Western audience from the outset. A mixture of disparate, sometimes contradictory elements, Laborer’s Love embodies the confusion facing early Chinese filmmakers (Z. Zhang 1999). Since this was a transitional moment in Chinese films, the producers threw in pieces grabbed from various sources (e.g., lofty ideas, comic gestures and exaggerated acts). To Mingxing’s relief, Laborer’s Love opened at the Embassy to an enthusiastic crowd and anticipated the studio’s fortune a year later (Tan 1992: 247–9). A feature-length ‘ethical drama’, Orphan Rescues Grandfather starts with the tragic death of millionaire Yang Shouchang’s only son, who is survived by his wife Yu Weiru (Wang Hanlun). Persuaded by his clansman, Yang adopts his nephew Daopei, a schemer who eyes Yang’s riches. Since Yu is pregnant and a son may threaten Daopei’s chance of acquiring a fortune, Daopei conspires with a friend and accuses Yu of infidelity. Yang believes them and kicks out Yu, who gives birth to a son named Pu and works hard to bring him up properly. In the 25 N AT I O N A L T R A D I T I O N S , 1 8 9 6 – 1 9 2 9 meantime, Daopei squanders away money and gets himself in debt. Yang moves to a new house near a school built with his donations. One day, he is surprised to learn that Pu (Zheng Xiaoqiu, Zhengqiu’s son) used what he learned from classical stories and rescued a child who had fallen into a large water pot. Yang pays for the broken pot and invites Pu to his house without knowing Pu’s true identity. Debt-ridden Daopei demands money from Yang by force, but Pu who happens to pass by rescues Yang. Yu rushes to Yang’s house to see the injured Pu and is shocked to meet Yang, her father-in-law. Before his death, Daopei admits his conspiracy against Yu, and Yang regrets his irresponsibility. The three generations reunite in tears. The ageing Yang entrusts all his fortune to Yu, who donates half of it for building new schools and extending free education to poor children like Pu (ZDZ 1996b: 1: 47–60). Orphan Rescues Grandfather premiered at Shanghai’s Shenjiang Theater on 21 December 1923 and set a box-office record for domestic films. Just as an orphan rescues his grandfather on screen, this film rescued Mingxing from its mounting debts and financed the studio’s expansion. The significance of this film was both immediately felt and far-reaching. In 1923 Gu Kenfu judged the film to be extraordinary, the first domestic production to emotionally move the audience in a positive way, although he faulted the film for its excessive uses of intertitles and iris shots (ZDZ 1996a: 1080–1). In 1934 Gu Jianchen declared that the film had ushered in ‘an unprecedented national film movement’ (ZDZ 1996a: 1364). In 1992 Tan Chunfa regarded the film as the first Chinese ‘art film’, a work of ‘idealized realism’ laudable for its accessibility as popular education, its appropriate level of audience appreciation, its abundant humanism and its engaging narrative (1992: 270–84). Arguably, with Orphan Rescues Grandfather, early Chinese cinema had completed a number of significant transformations: artistically, from a cinema of attractions to a narrative cinema; conceptually, from film as leisure entertainment to social enlightenment; institutionally, from filmmaking as opportunist investment to a legitimate business. Family drama: a ‘Chinese’ genre Like Zheng’s subsequent family dramas, Orphan Rescues Grandfather tackles social problems by exposing vices and eulogizing virtues. In film narratives of the 1920s, these vices included gambling, opium-smoking, prostitution, theft, robbery, grabbing others’ inheritance, kidnap, infidelity, vanity and corruption, whereas virtues ranged from chastity, filiality, perseverance, diligence, patriotism, altruism, charity, risking one’s life or giving up one’s love for others (ZDZ 1996b). Given such clear-cut binaries, the family drama would foreground human sufferings (in particular those by miserable women and children) and resolve seemingly irresolvable problems by way of coincidences and compromises. More than any other incipient genres of the 1920s, the family drama marks the maturing of Chinese film as a narrative cinema. First, in terms of narration, this 26 N AT I O N A L T R A D I T I O N S , 1 8 9 6 – 1 9 2 9 genre typically structures a linear plot of conflict, climax and resolution, a plot punctuated by moments of obstacle, crisis, catastrophe and suspense. In terms of characterization, the family drama follows a few protagonists whose tribulations in life furnish both narrative momentum and emotional fluctuations through which the narrative attains a degree of psychological depth. In terms of ideology, this genre espouses traditional ethical values and upholds the sanctity and stability of family, thereby underscoring a conservative position vis-à-vis contemporaneous May Fourth radicalism. Historically, the conservative position of the family drama might have resulted from a perception of social psychology shared by most Chinese filmmakers and their audiences: namely, each in their own ways had manifested a psychological need for a stable society amidst a rapidly changing environment. The conservatism in question does not mean that they did not wish for any change for the better, but that such changes would occur within the existing social and ethical structures. The tension generated by their yearning for a better future and their inability to imagine an alternative new society engendered constant conflicts between vices and virtues on the one hand and compromised solutions to social problems on the other. At the level of social psychology, family dramas like Orphan Rescues Grandfather sought to address the equilibrium of venting frustrations and observing conventions – an equilibrium believed to be characteristic of the ‘Chinese mentality’ (K. Hu 1996: 53). The butterfly connection: conservatism and commercialism Not surprisingly, the narrative compromise typical of the family drama paralleled Mingxing’s ideological compromise between butterfly fiction and the May Fourth spirit. The studio’s increased output demanded a new source of creative energy, and this led to Zhang and Zheng actively recruiting new talent. In 1924 Zheng enlisted Bao Tianxiao, whose successful stint inaugurated the subsequent participation of butterfly writers. Hong Shen joined in 1925, bringing his prestige as a Harvard-trained specialist in modern drama. A question thus arises as to why butterfly fiction had exerted more influence than May Fourth literature in early cinema. The first factor to consider in formulating an answer to the question was the market timing. Early cinema arrived in a period when butterfly fiction, with its focus on various emotions or sentiments (qing), dominated the publishing world in spite of the heavy-handed intervention by May Fourth critics, who criticized butterfly writers as morally corrupt ‘literary prostitutes’ or ‘literary beggars’ (Y. Zhang 1997). The second yet more direct factor was the ideological affinity between the civilized play and butterfly fiction, both operating under conservatism and preferring compromised solutions to social problems instead of fundamental social changes propagated by May Fourth radicalism. In fact, in the late 1910s the civilized play borrowed extensively from butterfly fiction (B. Tian 27 N AT I O N A L T R A D I T I O N S , 1 8 9 6 – 1 9 2 9 and Jiao 1993: 67). Since Zheng Zhengqiu and many other early filmmakers came from a background of the civilized play, their cooperation with butterfly writers in producing family dramas since the mid-1920s was a natural one. After all, these three modes of cultural production held on to traditional morality and ethical codes, at best endorsed reform instead of revolution and made no attempt to hide their commercial interests. The third factor might be the elitism of May Fourth writers. When writers from the Literary Association, a May Fourth stronghold, attacked butterfly writers, they manifested little interest in similarly ‘vulgar’ and ‘escapist’ genres in commercial films of the 1920s. The situation only changed in the early 1930s when the leftists sought to bring enlightenment to filmmaking. Understandably, Zheng’s family drama had a lot in common with butterfly fiction, and their mixture had healthy financial returns. Lonely Orchid, I–II (Konggu lan, dir. Zhang Shichuan, 1926; 20 reels), an adaptation of Bao Tianxiao’s novel based on Japanese fiction, ran for two weeks at the Palace Theater and earned 132,300 yuan. This was a record for all silent films from Mingxing combined, including those in the 1930s (J. Li 1995: 39; Tan 1992: 324). In spite of its conservative ideology, butterfly fiction had played a transitional role in cultivating a new urban audience differing from that of slapstick comedies. Recruited to compose stories, synopses and intertitles, butterfly writers used their skills in semi-literary Chinese, which was cherished by many urban readers of the time, and helped bring them to modern cinema (Lee 1999: 82–119). Such linguistic proximity, coupled with visual and narrative proximity devised by early Chinese filmmakers in accordance with traditional Chinese narratives and arts, had successfully established film as a staple in urban entertainment by the end of the 1920s. The May Fourth connection: Hong Shen and Hou Yao Two filmmakers embodied the May Fourth connection in early Chinese cinema: Hong Shen and Hou Yao. Hong Shen had been interested in literature and theater before he attended Qinghua University in Beijing, which dispatched him to study at Harvard University in 1916. The May Fourth Movement at home convinced him to switch his studies from pottery to drama in 1919. He started writing plays at Harvard and in 1921 enriched his experience by taking classes in voice, acting and dance in Boston. He also worked as an intern at a theater, observing the entire procedure from rehearsals to programming and advertising. Hong returned to Shanghai in 1922 and wrote a call for screenplays for China Film (Zhongguo, a small company founded in 1919). ‘Film is an effective vehicle for civilization’, declared Hong, capable of ‘spreading education and elevating the nation-people (guomin)’. To safeguard film’s educational function, he specifically opposed certain subject matter. Frowned upon topics included pornography and robbery, those exposing human vices and the nation’s shortcomings, as well as those which admired foreign stories, and Chinese tales of 28 N AT I O N A L T R A D I T I O N S , 1 8 9 6 – 1 9 2 9 Figure 2.2 Lonely Orchid (1926): an adaptation of Bao Tianxiao’s novel, an example of butterfly fiction immortals and demons (ZDZ 1996a: 24). Significantly, the rhetoric Hong relied on here echoes the enlightenment discourse of Liang Qichao, a renowned late Qing reformer who in 1902 had advocated new fiction as an effective means of strengthening the Chinese nation. Hong’s stage plays of this time were groundbreaking in that they brought actors and actresses to the same stage. He was also praised for his psychological depiction of characters, something which was new to Chinese drama. His contribution to Chinese cinema was similarly substantial. In 1924 he published a script, The Story of Lady Shen-Tu (Shen Tu shi). Albeit never made into a film, this is the first complete Chinese screenplay, which structures the plot by units of ‘scenes’ (jing) rather than ‘acts’ (mu) and which emphasizes visual impact and emotional dynamics. This screenplay gradually encouraged many directors to discard the old-fashioned mubiao (ZDZ 1996b: viii–ix). Hong’s decision to join Mingxing in 1925 signaled the cooperation of the new and the old school of theater people. Although the film industry was regarded as a corrupting place and a friend had criticized his decision as an outrageous act of ‘prostitution of art’, Hong still saw his new challenge worth the risk. While teaching at Fudan University, Hong received a monthly salary of 40 yuan for his active role in Mingxing productions (Tan 1992: 339) (see Table 2.3). In subsequent years, he wrote and directed several films focusing on urban 29 N AT I O N A L T R A D I T I O N S , 1 8 9 6 – 1 9 2 9 Table 2.3 Salary comparison in China, 1910s–30s Year Monthly pay (in yuan) Name Job Studio/city Shanghai Shanghai Mingxing Commercial Press Mingxing Mingxing Mingxing Mingxing Lianhua Lianhua, loaned to Xinhua 1913 1913 early 1920s early 1920s 30–40 75 20 150 — — Wang Hanlun Ye Xiangrong actor lead actor actress cinematographer 1925 late 1920s late 1920s late 1920s early 1930s 1935 40 40 100 1,000 300 4,500/title Hong Shen Yao Sufeng Bao Tianxiao Hu Die Bu Wancang Jin Yan screenwriter title writer screenwriter lead actress director lead actor Sources: Gongsun 1977: 1: 67, 2: 119; S. Li and Hu 1996: 30; Tan 1992: 272; ZDZ 1996a: 1438, 1456, 1510, 1523. bourgeois life, in particular on female characters. Films like Young Master Feng (Feng da shaoye, 1925) were critically acclaimed as ‘psychological films’, distinctive in their characterization but far from successful at the box office, the latter attributed by Bao Tianxiao to the lowly taste of Shanghai audiences in general (ZDZ 1996a: 1516). One obvious challenge Hong posed to his audience was his drastically reduced use of intertitles. Compared with an average of 300 intertitles in films by Zhang and Zheng, Hong used merely 113 in Young Master Feng in an endeavor to foster a ‘poetic’ style different from that of the hyperbole in Zhang and Zheng’s cinema (ZDZ 1996a: xii–iii). Like Hong, Hou Yao was interested in new literature and joined the Literary Association in 1922. This connection resulted in two distinctive...
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