If, like almost everyone I know, you have been putting 2020 behind you with the help of massive overindulgence this Christmas, a dry and lean January may be on the cards – and so allowing a bit more time in front of the television.
Everybody of a certain generation remembers when the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon came out. Back in 2000, not many Westerners had seen a wuxia (martial arts) film, and especially not one where the characters zipped around against the laws of physics and fought above the treetops.
There’s far more to Chinese film and TV than CTHD, however. They are also an easy introduction to the history and culture of the country, and there are a lot to choose from.
In numerical terms, China’s domestic movie industry is now bigger than Hollywood. In 2019, China produced 1067 films, compared to 786 released in the US. China’s box office has also overtaken America’s as the world’s largest.
Whilst there are many in China who want its media output to become as powerful a tool as Hollywood was for the Americans in their rise to the top, so far this looks unlikely to happen. The analysis I have done on box offices around the world, which will be released soon, shows that Chinese films very, very rarely make it into the top 20 movies watched. I’ll be writing more on China’s efforts to push its global cultural influence in the near future.
In the meantime, below are some of the best screenshows that I’ve come across, in chronological order from when they are set. Happy viewing.
Qin Empire Alliance (2012) (TV – on Netflix)
The Warring States period (475 BC to 221 BC) is one of the formative ages in Chinese history. The territory of early China had dissolved and split into seven warring states. One of those states, the Qin (pronounced “Chin”) lay in the far West, and in Ancient Greek terms, was very much the Macedonia of its day. The more central rulers considered the Qin hick and on the fringes of the civilized world, in much the same way as the cities of Athens and Thebes viewed their cousins in the north.
This snobbishness did not, however, stop the Qin from becoming the dominant state and conquering the rest, culminating in the first official unification of China in 221 BC. Qin Alliance tells the story (in 40+ addictive episodes) of the middle part of Qin’s rise, featuring historical personalities like Zhang Yi, a sort of humorous Sir Thomas Cromwell. Think The Tudors set in Ancient China, but with more silk and less bawdiness.
Red Cliff (2008) (Film)
The four hundred years following China’s unification in 221BC were relatively peaceful and prosperous. By 200 AD, however, the Empire had begun to fall apart into three distinct states – hence its name as the Three Kingdom period. Red Cliff, directed by John Woo, tells the story of one of the biggest battles of the time, including historical personalities that are famous still today, like the villain Cao Cao, and his enemies Sun Quan and Liu Bei. There’s also a great scene explaining how you can use straw-covered boats to capture the enemy’s arrows for your own use.
The Crossing (Part I) (2014) (Film)
The Chinese civil war that erupted after Japan’s surrender in 1945 was brutal. As the Communist net closed in on cities like Shanghai, where The Crossing is mainly set, families had to decide whether to stay or to flee. Many wealthy Shanghainese escaped to Hong Kong, thus setting the scene for the British Colony’s post-War economic boom, as I have written about here.
The option for the majority was Taiwan, where the leader of the Nationalist enemies of the Communists, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, had escaped to. The Crossing (a two-part film) tells the stories of some of the couples who had to make this voyage. Like Red Cliff it was directed by John Woo, and is a love-action story that offers an extraordinary glimpse into the lives of 1940s China, both rich and poor.
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (2002) (Film)
The Cultural Revolution (1966-76) was one of the seismic events of modern China. Millions died, were tortured, or driven from their lives as Mao sort to use the population to regain his power following the calamity of his Great Leap Forward, where 40 million-plus died. Adapted from a best-selling book, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is a semi-autobiographical account of the human cost of the Cultural Revolution.
In the film, two “bourgeois'” boys are sent for “re-education” in a remote Sichuan Province village. As they struggle to come to terms with their new lives, they and a beautiful seamstress find solace in reading a hidden collection of banned Western books, their favourite being Balzac’s Ursula Mirouêt. It is, as one reviewer put it, “a coming-of-age story that touches upon the themes of love and intellectual enlightenment… a remarkable study of youthful resilience overcoming adversity”.
(If you want to hear a more factual representation of the period, then the BBC podcast, In Our Time, presented by Melvyn Bragg, has just released an episode. Professors Rana Mitter, Sun Peidong, and Julia Lovell go through the terrors of the time in fascinating detail.)