Bruce Humes

Inspired by the death of his own father and the Chinese novel Tales of Survival From a Chinese Labor Camp (夹边沟记事) by Yang Xianhui (扬显惠), director Wang Bin (王宾) has shot a film that ranks high among the contenders for the Golden Lion Prize to be awarded later this week at the 67th Venice Film Festival. Ironically, viewers in the West can now watch the film which is unlikely to be shown legally in the PRC any time in the near future, so sensitive is the topic—how China used labor camps to isolate and even starve to death those who dared criticize the Communist Party and its policies in the late 1950s.

Yahoo.com reports:

A powerful Chinese film on the plight of political prisoners condemned to forced labor camps in the late 1950s wooed critics in Venice on Monday, with some tipping it as a strong contender for the festival’s top prize.

“The Ditch” [夹边沟] tells the little-known story of some 3,000 people deported for “re-education” to labor camps on the edge of the Gobi desert, in western China, and struggling to survive extreme climate and acute food shortages.

Billed as right-wing enemies by the government for even mildly criticizing the Communist party or simply because of their background, many died of starvation, disease and exhaustion in the ditches that served as dormitories.

Liu Wei at China Daily writes:

Law student Wang Chen has more than 20 novels under her belt, all published online. It costs about 0.03 yuan to read 1,000 Chinese characters of her works on literature website www.17k.com – money that she shares with the website.The nation’s writer wannabes are discovering that writing online offers the best way out of having to compete for space in literary magazines and lobbying publishers for that all-important chance.

The Global Times reports that the movie adaptation of the best-selling novel by Ai Mi (艾米) has been previewed (too bad reporter Leng Mo doesn’t tell us where!):

Adapted from the popular novel “Hawthorn Tree Forever” [山楂树之恋], Zhang Yimou’s latest film “Under the Hawthorn Tree” previewed Wednesday [Sep 2, 2010] and was acknowledged as a welcome return for Zhang to the art house genre.

Set in the 1970s during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), the novel “Hawthorn Tree Forever” is based on a true story about a young city girl named Jing with a condemned political background who falls in love with a young man Sun from a high-profile family when she goes to the countryside to be re-educated. Jing’s age and social standing prevent the two from being together until she graduates and gets a secure job in the city.

Sun continues to support Jing and they date secretly before Sun is diagnosed with leukemia and dies.

See Rights Sold to Buyers in the EU, Brazil and Canada for details on the marketing of the novel overseas. Back in China, Hawthorn Tree Forever in the original Chinese ranked Number 28 in OpenBook’s List of Top 30 Best-selling Fiction Works (July 2010).

Four English-language articles from BeijingReview.com.cn:

The E-Reader Boom:

“Why are the prices for domestically made e-readers, which use the same technology as the Kindle, so much higher? The difference lies in the business models of Chinese and U.S. e-reader providers. Amazon.com, the largest online book retailer, sells e-books through its Kindle, while Chinese market players, mostly IT companies, have to profit from the devices alone.”

Embracing E-books:

Short interviews with four Chinese publishers. Says Ge Xiaozheng, VP of the Chinese Writers’ Publishing Group: “We have entered into an agreement with China Mobile to publish content on mobile phones.”

The E-reader Arena:

“Along with the debut of iPad and Nook, as well as cost reductions thanks to mass production, e-reader gurus like Kindle and Sony started to cut prices in order to win over more users. If the e-reader price falls below 1,000 yuan ($146), the student market would be immediately opened up. If 1 percent of students buy these devices, the sales volume of e-readers will reach 2 million and may even exceed 10 million in 2011.”

Growing Pains:

Interview with VP at Hanvon Technology, which reportedly sold over 250,000 e-readers in 2009.

The Global Times reports:

On the foot of Yulong Mountain in Southwest China’s Yunnan Province, lies the small village of Kenpeigu, once famous for its handmade paper, the production of which dates back to the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). It is called Dongba paper after the religion of the local Naxi ethnic group because it was used to record religious text in pictographic script. While enduring for hundreds of years, the industry withered away during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) when all religions were tagged as superstition and banned.

Here’s a backgrounder on the Dongba script that has actually been around since the early Tang Dynasty (7th century). Wikipedia notes that “during the Cultural Revolution, thousands of manuscripts were destroyed. Paper and cloth writings were boiled into construction paste for building houses. About half of the Dongba manuscripts that survive today had been taken from China to the United States, Germany and Spain.”

Harmonious Land (水乳大地), a historical novel set along the Yunnan-Tibetan border, also contains many fascinating passages about the Naxi. See my interview with author Fan Wen (范稳).

China often tempts Westerners to make sweeping, oversimplified statements — for instance, Chinese culture is repressive, or materialistic or all about saving face. Sometimes this happens precisely because China is a place of such vastness and complexity that it’s easier to make such statements than to convey true understanding; sometimes it’s plain ignorance. Either way, when you combine this impulse with the fact that nonfiction and academic writing are often aimed at arriving at a definitive answer, at some inarguable conclusion, there’s considerable potential for misunderstanding.

Fiction, by contrast, is aimed at exploration, not explanation. It’s the province of nuance and contradiction. A good novel gives a sense of expansion, of a broadening and deepening view, but it also acknowledges that some things remain beyond our grasp. In this way, fiction can sometimes offer readers a truer perspective of China than other forms of writing. (Deanna Fei, author of A Thread of Sky, in an interview with The China Beat)

The Global Times reports:

Renowned Taiwanese writer Chen Yingzhen (陈映真) has been appointed deputy honorary chairman of the Seventh National Committee of the Chinese Writers Association, a leading literature organization in China, becoming the first from Taiwan to do so.

A fitting honor, perhaps, for someone who did prison time (1968-73) in Taiwan for allegedly “leading procommunist activities.”

China Daily reports on a recent gathering in Beijing, the Chinese Women’s Literature Forum:

‘Gender provides an advantage but is not a weapon.’ [Wang Hongqi, Director of the China Research Center on Women's Culture]

The reform and opening up ushered in a series of transformations in women’s writing on the mainland. Female writers surged in numbers in the 1980s. A slew of new heavy hitters emerged, names like Zong Pu, Zhang Jie, Tie Ning (铁凝), Wang Anyi (王安忆), Zhang Kangkang (张抗抗) and Zhai Yongming.

Director Feng Xiaogang’s gaze graces the cover of several publications this week, and indeed, the “disaster movie” genre in China may never be the same again thanks to him.  His adaptation of Zhang Ling’s Aftershock (张翎的 “余震”) is mesmerizing the nation’s moviegoers, and this tale of the 1976 Tangshan earthquake that killed over 200,000 leaves many drenched in tears.

Even Time is writing about the new film, the first IMAX film ever shot outside the US, based on the fictional work by the Chinese-Canadian author. Here’s Time’s synopsis of the plot:

As if a deadly earthquake weren’t devastating enough, a Tangshan mother is forced to decide between saving her son or daughter.Both are trapped under a collapsed building, and rescuers can reach only one of them before the structure topples. She chooses the son, but, unbeknownst to her, the daughter miraculously survives. With her mother’s betrayal fresh in her ears, the little girl flees her family and is raised by a husband and wife in the People’s Liberation Army. Thirty-two years later, she travels to help victims of the earthquake in Sichuan. There she sees how another mother is forced to make a similar choice, and the experience changes her appraisal of the past.

I haven’t read the book or seen the movie (唐山大地震), but I just read a fascinating interview in the weekly SMW (2010.7.26 南都周刊), that offers insights into how the movie script was conceived: From Cold Novel to Warm Movie (从冷小说到暖电影).

As you read my translated excerpt (below) from SMW’s interview with Su Xiaowei (苏小卫)—the screenwriter for Aftershock, pictured above—keep in mind that she also puts in two days a week at the Film Review Board, i.e., she works for the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), the body that enforces China’s censorship guidelines.

(Note: Words inside quotation marks below are quotes from Su Xiaowei cited by the author of the article, Chen Yu (陈雨)).

The excerpt:

Besides [changes to] the structure of the story, the movie also “performed major surgery” on the theme; the basic tone of the story was altered from one of darkness and pain, to one of warmth and hope [in the film]. The novelist Zhang Ling intended to convey that even after the disaster was over, the ravaged land gradually flattened and structures rebuilt, the blood from the wounds scratched open by the earthquake in the souls of children continued to ooze silently long thereafter.

The novel emphasizes the description of how the daughter, Fang Deng, undergoes a “series of post-earthquake disasters”: her adopted mother dies, she’s molested by her adopted father, her husband falls in love with another woman, her daughter leaves home, she finds herself in a hospital unit for psychological therapy, and tries to commit suicide several times.  These somber and cruel events reflect the fate assigned to the female protagonist by Zhang Ling: Having lived through an earthquake, Fang Deng’s soul is veiled in darkness, her personality has become skewed, she cannot return to her family nor can she live a normal life. The novel leaves the reader downcast and tearful.

But “the movie is much more heart-warming, and cuts parts such as the adopted father’s sexual aggression, the husband’s infidelity and the departure of her daughter,” says Su Xiaowei. “Much more of the story is devoted to describing daily life and warmhearted emotions. After the earthquake, people overcome their grief, regain a sense of calm, and get on with their lives.”

“Film is a mass medium that speaks to greater numbers of viewers, and it’s not like a book that represents a more ‘personalized’ account,” says Su Xiaowei.  “After all, a film should offer a sense of warmth and consolation.” At the outset, Su Xiaowei was told quite clearly by the director and producer that she was to write a script for a film that would warm the hearts of the audience, not a film that would hurt their feelings and leave them in despair. The film should “cure” the daughter of her hatred for her mother.

In order to create a heart-warming theme, the movie not only cut the scene in which the adopted father violates Fang Deng, it also recasts the adopted parents as People’s Liberation Army soldiers.

“All these requirements were decided after discussion with the producer,” says Su Xiaowei frankly. “We didn’t reject a melodramatic approach to the story, but everyday life can also fully express a person’s emotions. In everyday life, the great majority of fathers would not molest their adopted daughter. We chose to represent good relations between the father and adopted daughter as in a normal life. And our film is not rated—adults and children can view it—so we intentionally altered this part.” [end excerpt]

Paper-Republic interviews Gray Tan at The Grayhawk Agency, the up-and-coming agency whose stable now includes Zhang Ling (Gold Mountain Blues), Mai Jia (Decoded), Ai Mi (Hawthorn Tree Forever) and Chi Zijian (Right Bank of the Argun):

The biggest advantage of being based in Taipei is having access to the most sophisticated publishing and the widest selection of books in the Chinese world. A lot of books either banned or censored in China are available in Taiwan, and it’s very easy to buy simplified Chinese editions too. I am different from most other agents of Chinese authors in that I’m a native Chinese speaker who also has experience in handling international bestsellers. My understanding and appreciation of Chinese novels is probably very different from a non-native reader. I don’t need to rely on reader’s reports to find books; I can always read the Chinese original myself.