Liu Yang is a lecturer in film studies at Nanjing University.

World Film Locations Beijing

By John Berra, Liu Yang

Intellect Ltd

Copyright © 2012 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84150-642-5

Contents

Maps/Scenes,
Scenes 1-8 1972-1993, 10,
Scenes 9-16 1993-1997, 30,
Scenes 17-24 1997-2001, 50,
Scenes 25-32 2001-2004, 70,
Scenes 33-39 2004-2007, 90,
Scenes 40-46 2007-2011, 108,
Essays,
Beijing: City of the Imagination John Berra, 6,
Confined Spaces: Conflict within the Squares and Courtyards of Qing Dynasty Beijing Joann Huifen Hu, 8,
Feng Comedy: Beijingers in a Transitional Era Liu Yang, 28,
Made in China: The Production of Red Light Revolution (Sam Voutas, 2010) Sam Voutas, 48,
Navigating Beijing: Dreamers, Drifters and Drivers Mariagrazia Constantino, 68,
The State of Things: Political Power in Beijing Yomi Braester, 88,
Zhang Yuan’s Urban Cinema: Transitional Cityspaces and Peripheral Lives Dave McCaig, 106,
Backpages,
Resources, 124,
Contributors, 125,
Filmography, 128,

CHAPTER 1

BEIJING

City of the Imagination

Text by JOHN BERRA

It can be argued that cinematic representations of Beijing rely much on the imagination of film-makers and audiences, as both the city’s on-screen past and present are largely characterized by absence. With regards to the past, such absence is caused by a lack of a cinematic record of Beijing due to the initial locality of feature film production in mainland China. The first Chinese film was a recording of the Beijing Opera, Ding Junshanmade/The Battle of Dingjunshan (Ren Jingfeng, 1905) by Beijing’s Fengtai Photography Studio. However, the early incarnation of China’s film industry, established in 1909, was controlled by foreign-owned production companies, such as Yaxiya and Yingze, who set up their enterprises in Shanghai, where local technicians were trained by professionals from the United States. Mingxing Film Company Pictures and Tianyi Film Company, the latter founded by the Shaw Brothers and eventually relocated to Hong Kong, found success with a mix of comic shorts and dramas based on Chinese folklore. The output of the leftist movement that emerged in the early-1930s would deal with the problems facing the lower classes in society and constitutes much of the ‘Golden Age’ of Chinese cinema. But while such films as Shennu/The Goddess (Wu Yonggang, 1934) and Malu tianshi/Street Angel (Yuan Muzhi, 1937) addressed Chinese society as a whole, they were consistently located in Shanghai, leaving Beijing without cinematic representation. Production was suspended during World War II, but when film-making resumed with the backing of some new studios, Shanghai would again serve as both industrial base and urban subject.

Beijing would not become a location fixture until the Chinese government set up the Beijing Film Studio in 1949 when the People’s Republic of China was founded and the city was chosen as the capital. It was in the 1980s and 1990s that cinematic images of Beijing came to international prominence. Despite operating within political restriction, the Fifth Generation Chinese film directors achieved a degree of freedom that was subsequently capitalized on by the Sixth Generation in the mid-1990s and 2000s. This resulted in an increasing number of Beijing-set films that documented its rapid urbanization, exploring the city as a post-Mao metropolis. The scars of China’s turbulent history are evident, but Beijing is undeniably modern in terms of its cinematic identity. Yet direct commentary on its social order is seemingly absent, with parts of the city that lack tourist appeal evoking urban anonymity and film-makers expecting the audience to intuitively follow a series of abstract codes or social representations: Beijing Zazhong/Beijing Bastards (Zhang Yuan, 1993), Youchai/Postman (He Jianjun, 1995), Shi qi sui de dan che/Beijing Bicycle (Wang Xiaoshuai, 2001), Jin nian xia tian/Fish and Elephant (Li Yu, 2001), Xiari nuanyangyang/I Love Beijing (Ning Ying, 2001) and Niupi/Oxhide (Liu Jiayin, 2005) sidestep explicit statements in favour of character studies, with individual struggles framed against a looming cityscape. The audience must assemble the wider social framework from the telling details.

The urban regeneration of Beijing has resulted in a faceless capital, imagined by the mainland independent sector as a space of anxiety that can lead to a crisis of identity and ideology for natives, transients or transplants. In Jintian De Yu Zenme Yang?/How is Your Fish Today? (Guo Xiaolu, 2006), screenwriter Hui Rao, playing a meta-fiction version of himself, drives around Beijing, dealing with heavily congested traffic, musing: ‘There are 15 million people in Beijing […]. Since I moved here the city has changed so much, that I keep getting lost all the time […]. If someone goes missing in this city, how can you possibly find them?’ Getting lost is a theme that pervades many Beijing films, with the performance artist of Jidu hanleng/Frozen (Wang Xiaoshuai, 1997), the young lovers of Lan Yu (Stanley Kwan, 2001), and the university students of Yihe Yuan/ Summer Palace (Lou Ye, 2006) all dealing with identity issues. People can become lost politically, but also literally, hence the marginal characters who are just about scraping by, such as the ex-convict in Ben ming nian/Black Snow (Xie Fei, 1990), the bootleg DVD seller in Man Yan/Pirated Copy (He Jianjun, 2004), and the migrant couple in Pingguo/Lost in Beijing (Li Yu, 2007). When dealing with characters that exist at lower social levels, directors often imagine Beijing as a trap: a place that promises opportunity, but ultimately makes hopeful individuals entirely subservient to its accelerated economic conditions, thereby prompting disillusionment and desperate behaviour.

If films shot on location in contemporary Beijing are rooted in realism, those set in its imperial past are exotic spectacles that require soundstage recreations of ancestral homes and landmarks. Such extravagant imaginings of the city inspire feelings of nationalistic pride in the Chinese audience, or a yearning for a period when society was more clearly-ordered, while increasingly receptive international viewers are transported to a world that balances the historical with the fantastical. Wohu Canglong/ Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee, 2000) and Mancheng Jindai Huangjinjia/Curse of the Golden Flower (Zhang Yimou, 2006) are wuxia (martial hero) melodramas, complete with characters performing gravity-defying physical feats within the city’s courtyards or palatial grounds. Action sequences enhanced by complicated wirework and/or computer special effects serve to link the legends of Beijing’s past with the commercial ambitions of its present, while politics remain shrouded in ambiguity. Less escapist, but equally sumptuous, the international co-production of The Last Emperor (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1987) is Chinese history as filtered through the tasteful haze of Vittorio Storaro’s award-winning cinematography. The Forbidden City is as much of a place of indulgence for the audience as it is for Emperor Pu Yi (John Lone), who is later removed from the throne and re-educated, eventually finding happiness attending to a simple garden in the early years of the Great Leap Forward.

As with all cities, the manner in which Beijing is cinematically imagined varies from film to film, depending on financing structure, genre, politics, or practical decisions made during production. But deliberate absence ensures that audiences seeking understanding of its complicated nature must read between the lines of the spaces represented.

CHAPTER 2

SPOTLIGHT

CONFINED SPACES

Conflict Within the Squares and Courtyards of Qing Dynasty Beijing

Text by JOANN HUIFEN HU

THE DEMOLITION OF Beijing’s hutongs (alleys) in recent years has caused many native Beijingers to lament the loss of one of the city’s architectural characteristics. These areas grew out of Beijing’s burgeoning population after the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911; siheyuans (large courtyards) of well-to-do family residential compounds were divided once, twice, thrice, to fit smaller houses within these spaces. The courtyards and squares prior to Qing Dynasty Beijing were more spacious and serve as a perfect backdrop for film-makers to stage inner, private and contained conflicts. These subsequent hutongs also relay how Beijing’s Qing Dynasty political and social scape manifests itself in more private enclosures.

Most of the courtyard houses that surround the Forbidden City used to be occupied by officials, Manchu aristocrats and wealthy persons. The wuxia (martial hero) films that are set in the earlier Qing period, such as Wohu Canglong/Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee, 2000) adopt the courtyard as an empty stage where the discontents of persons belonging to the politically influential upper class unfold in physical combat. The then-spacious courtyards serve as a walled arena in which fights occur away from public view. The character of Jiaolong (Zhang Ziyi), daughter of a Manchu aristocrat, engages in a showdown with Xiulian (Michelle Yeoh), a well-respected martial artist, swordswoman and business lady, in a courtyard of grey stoned walls with sand flooring: this is a physical display of the struggles of a sheltered, young, female aristocrat yearning for the freedom and escapades that her opponent is able to pursue. In Wong Fei-hung ji saam: Si wong jaang ba/Once Upon a Time in China III (Hark Tsui, 1993), full use is made of an unknown courtyard in Beijing to stage the final showdown of a lion dance competition between various countrywide martial arts schools, as encouraged by the Empress Dowager Cixi in her bid to display Chinese credibility to the world, specifically to the technologically advanced West. It ends up with a flurry of lion dancers out-fighting one another, displaying the rivalry between martial arts schools, a messy spectacle that both the governor to the Empress and foreign diplomats witness. As in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the walls of the courtyard act as a containment of a conflict that symbolizes the degeneration of the last Chinese dynasty set in Beijing.

The space of contained squares or courtyards of the Forbidden City is similarly made use of in The Last Emperor (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1987) to stage the manifestations of the political upheaval that would lead to the eventual downfall of the Qing Dynasty. In various scenes, Bertolucci depicts his protected protagonist, Emperor Puyi (John Lone), traversing across the massively barren concrete scape of courtyards and squares – mostly the space between the Meridian Gate and Gate of Supreme Harmony – of the Forbidden City. We see him running desperately after his birth mother as she is taken away from him, riding his bicycle in an attempt to escape the imperial grounds, and his old self walking morosely across the empty square as he revisits his former residence that, in 1966, had been turned into a tourist attraction. Like the fighting duels that take place in Lee’s courtyards, Bertolucci’s staging of the conflict within the squares of the Forbidden City is portrayed and wrought with physical burden, albeit one involving a lone figure. The inner conflict of Bertolucci’s character is made more pronounced by the lack of activity in the square; the massiveness of the empty quadrangle frames the lone character as a captive in the palace, rendering Puyi minuscule and helpless. Puyi’s inactivity, juxtaposed against the chaos and political upheaval beyond the palace walls, such as the outbreak of World War II and the concomitant Japanese Occupation of China, ironically expresses Puyi’s emotional turmoil in having to face the political chaos from within the palace walls. In this context, his nickname of the ‘Puppet Emperor’ becomes particularly poignant.

In Once Upon a Time in China III, Tsui presents this space in a much less barren manner. In the opening scene, which Tsui returns to at the end of the film, the director crams the square with rows of lion dancers performing en masse, with the Empress, her entourage and foreign diplomats looking on from the Gate of Supreme Harmony. The activity here crowds the square, but crucially remains staged and self-contained. Tsui’s more crowded portrayal is reminiscent of Bertolucci’s mass display of Tibetan monks, courtiers and eunuchs in the same space that are prevalent in various scenes that depict the loyal following of the Emperor. While the maximal use of the iconic square between the Meridian and Supreme Harmony Gates in both instances appears to be more ceremonial than conflictual, the contained space of the square has the same symbolic function in terms of shrouding the latent decay of the Dynasty.

The spacious but enclosed squares, or inner courts, of the Qing residential compound in Beijing, especially those of the symbolic Forbidden City, set the stage for private, internal and consequently masked dramatizations of discontent: the desperation of influential members of the ruling upper class, as well as the feuds of the martial arts elite, take the cinematic form of physical and emotional ordeals. The covert display of physical conflict by the daughter of a Manchu official, the messy display of the rivalry amongst countrywide martial arts schools in Beijing, the Last Emperor’s lonely walk across the barren square between the Meridian and Supreme Harmony Gates, or the mass spectacle of lined courtiers and lion dancers within the same square, all express latent vexation. This state of frustration has been brought about by questions regarding the status quo of aristocratic rule and its concomitant deterioration of political power within and beyond China. The courtyards and squares of Qing Beijing, in this constellation of political and social upheaval, are depicted by Bertolucci, Lee and Tsui as stages, from which these conflicts manifest themselves covertly.

CHUNG KUO – CINA (1972)

LOCATION

Xinhuamen, entrance to Zhongmanhai, Xicheng District

AS MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI and his documentary team moved away from Tiananmen Square, they surreptitiously filmed Xinhuamen (the entrance Gate to Zhongnanhai). The short, fumbled shot was captured under the pretence of misunderstanding their official guide’s perturbations against filming. Antonioni’s voice-over identifies this as the home of Mao Zedong, although his residence is actually located far behind the gate, across South Lake, in the Garden of Plenty. Zhongnanhai is an even larger development: the southern and central lakes are part of three lakes created after the building of the adjacent Forbidden City. The serene environment attracted several dynasties to enjoy the site as a place of Imperial leisure. Whilst North Lake is now a public park, the rest of the area has become the seat of Republican China. Yuan Shikai first chose to use the area as a government centre, whilst the emperor continued to reside in the Forbidden City. The lakes, temples and pavilions are now joined by state buildings. Chung Kuo – Cine drew the wrath of Chinese officials, although criticism was less for the violation of filming Zhongnanhai than for Antonioni’s failure to follow the government’s ambition to produce the desired document of Chinese modernity. Rather than any kind of official architecture, it is the teaming bodies of the Chinese that fascinate Antonioni, as they waver between disciplinarity and individuality. Now an emblem of state power, Xinhuamen has recently been the place of several political protests. The Maoist slogans visible in Chung Kuo – Cine still remain today. [right arrow] Christopher Howard

MY MEMORIES OF OLD BEIJING/CHENGNAN JIUSHI (1982)

LOCATION

Zhengyangmen, south of Tiananmen Square

MY MEMORIES OF OLD BEIJING is set in the late 1920s and follows everyday events in the childhood of Yingzi. She grows up in a hutong, and after the death of her father, leaves the place forever. Lin Haiyin’s 1960 novel is tinged with nostalgia for a city to which Lin could not return from exile in Taiwan, while Wu’s screen adaptation, released in 1982, laments the atmosphere that disappeared with Beijing’s modernization. The film features the old Beijing of hutongs and siheyuans, shown through reconstruction on the lot of the Beijing Film Studios, a set later used for other films, such as Ba wang bie ji/ Farewell My Concubine (1993) and Mei Lanfang/Forever Enthralled (2008). The Chinese title specifies the location as the southern part of Beijing, known as the Outer City. Unlike the Inner City, with its imperial palaces and princely mansions, the Outer City housed the working class and was identified with a down-to-earth lore of the poor. The film begins with a camel caravan riding into the walled city. The opening credits appear over a slide of Zhengyangmen Gate, popularly known as Qianmen. The structure, which dates back to 1419 (when it was named Lizhengmen), stands between the imperial city, Tiananmen Square, and the Outer City. It now overlooks the gentrified Qianmen Avenue, yet as the period photograph shows, in the early twentieth century, the gate stood in the middle of an untended and largely deserted space. Old Beijing exists only in memories and still photos. [right arrow] Yomi Braester

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