Teaching in Hubei!!!: Chen Kaige's Movie Base

ALRIGHT!! I’ve been super excited to write this entry! I’ve just been backed up with the others so I haven’t gotten to it. I suppose it won’t be as exciting for you as it was for me, but it’s just because I love movies so much. Movies are my thing, and any kind of chance I have to witness something to do with movies makes me happier than you can imagine. One day, very early in my time here in Xiangyang, I was sitting at the coffee shop, talking to the boss, Fuli’s, boyfriend…his name is Chris. We were just talking about anything and I decided to ask him out of the blue (because I was curious) what his favorite movie was. Now quite honestly I don’t remember what it was or if he even told me he had one…and it’s not because I’m writing this months after it happened because I forgot it pretty much immediately on account of he had said something not long after that I was never to forget. I was telling him that I had seen a whole bunch of Chinese movies and that one day I hope to make movies, maybe with Chinese actors and directors. What he said to me afterwards was this: he asked me if I knew Chen Kaige (pronounced CHEN kye-GUH). No that’s not the end of it.

Now to those of you who aren’t cinephiles like me, and to those of you who ARE cinephiles but only for American or English-language movies, let me explain to you who exactly Chen Kaige is. There are three super famous (even in the West) Chinese directors, here they are in order of their popularity:

Zhang Yimou: (JAHNG yee-MOE) (by a long shot leaving all the others in the dust) he directed Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Hero; House of Flying Daggers; To Live (the movie about the evils of the Cultural Revolution which was censored in China); and The Road Home. Zhang Yimou’s biggest trademark is creating movies with elaborate sets, beautiful costumes, and bordering-fantastical dramatic scenes. His stories are generally seemingly very simple but with points that keep you thinking for weeks and even years to come.

Chen Kaige: he directed in order of popularity Farewell My Concubine, The Emperor and the Assassin, and Together. Though he has directed many more, these are the three that have acquired a following in America and other foreign countries. Chen Kaige’s trademark, in my opinion, is having more complicated yet still moving stories that still have you thinking for weeks and years. All three of these films I have studied in class, The Emperor and the Assassin I’ve studied twice. Both Farewell My Concubine and The Emperor and the Assassin I have never stopped needing to constantly think about, constantly considering their themes and morals, and coming to new conclusions of what the filmmakers wanted me to learn and what I personally can take from these films. I could write several essays of several pages about what I’ve taken from these films, and others directed by Chen Kaige…he knows how to pick his stories.

Wong Kar-wai: (WONG kar-WHY) At the moment, I’ve only seen three of his films, so I’m not as personally familiar with his style as I am with the others. He is a Hong-Kong filmmaker and has directed internationally acclaimed films such as Lust, Caution; Chungking Express; and In the Mood for Love. In my opinion, his films are much more what people would call “art-house”…films that experiment with camera shots and angles, camera technology usage, and even the running time of the film. The stories are much more grungy and about “the real man”, and his stories are far from simple and easy. They are about people’s struggles with love amidst their own battles in the modern world, and they are centered around the culture of Hong Kong, or at least reminiscent of Hong Kong.

He doesn't like to take off his glasses. Google him and you'll see what I mean.

Note: There is also Ang Lee, who is also a Chinese (Taiwanese) director, but I don’t count him (not because he’s Taiwanese) but because he has changed his citizenship to American and has been producing American films for years. He did Brokeback Mountain, Sense and Sensibility (1995), and the most recent Life of Pi.

So those are my brief introductions of these directors. As I mentioned before, I have studied Chen Kaige in school, in high school and in college, so I’ve been VERY aware of Chen Kaige for many years. I know my Chinese stars and my Chinese directors (at least the big three), and so when Chris asked me if I knew Chen Kaige, to reply to him, “Yeah, I know him” was definitely an understatement. I am very acquainted with Chen Kaige.

So of course, I said yes, and he then says to me, “You know he has a big movie base here.” I’m there thinking, “Yeah, I know that. We’re in China, and he’s a Chinese director, of course he’s got a film base in China.” Chris continues on to say, “He’s building a huge base, one of the biggest, right here in Xiangyang.” My jaw literally dropped. And he said that people can go and visit if they wanted to. My jaw LITERALLY dropped again. He said that Chen Kaige was in the process of making a new movie, set in ancient Xiangyang, and the set for the movie was in the process of being built at the time…as cool as this already sounded, I jokingly asked him, “Will there be any stars in the film?” to which he replied to my surprise, “Yeah! There should be a bunch!” and then proceeded to name at least one or two that I was well acquainted with.

So that was the beginning.

Chris had said that I could go there whenever I wanted to, and so I had to find a way to go. So I asked around to a few of my Chinese friends, including my co-teacher Xixi, and a couple weeks later Xixi told me that she had found the movie base! Now Xiangyang is not a huge city, but it’s pretty big and I figured that this base was gonna be in some far corner of the city, miles away from any civilization…at so far a corner that any further it would be considered another city. I figured it would be maybe at least a 40 minute drive via taxi, the only form of public transportation that could get me to an obscure location. But soon after Xixi found the place, she suggested we make a trip together to go see what it was all about.

So not long after, Xixi picked me up in her car along with her mother (and I brought along another one of the foreign teachers named Cat), and the four of us drove to the base. Twenty minutes after getting in the car, we were there. The general location was something I had passed several times before, and nowhere near as obscure as I thought it would be. If I had wanted to go by myself, I could’ve hopped a public bus and walked the rest of the way. This base was hidden in plain sight, just a little trip down a dirt road off the main road and we were there.

We entered a large area untouched by civilization except for the movie base itself. A small building in Chinese traditional style architecture served as the office/headquarters. The place was almost completely empty of people, save for some five or six tourists and the security workers that were there. We entered the grounds, which were very crude…there was no parking lot, only a dirt plain where parking cars was implied.

There really wasn’t too much to see at the start, and the only way you could see more was to go further up and further in. (There happened to be a small hill behind that office which played a huge role in covering up most of the base, as seen in the photo above. All that could be seen was the tip-tops of ancient style roofs covered with scaffolding.)

After standing around for a bit, then taking a few steps to the right, and a few steps to the left (there really was literally nowhere to really go because all there was to be seen was dirt, grass, and hill), Xixi talked with the security guards dressed in these GI Joe-looking uniforms. She then said to me, “We’re not allowed to go further in.” For some reason I wasn’t disappointed, because for some reason I didn’t believe that was actually true. Things that are said often aren’t always as final as they seem from what my experience has been in China. At that moment, the security guard standing nearby me and Cat pulled out a camera and snapped a picture of us.

BAM. That was what we needed.

I didn’t even need to say a single word to Xixi, she was WAY ahead of me. She jumped on that immediately. She was super clever the way she talked to the security guards, she spoke very politely and very sweetly and worded everything I was thinking in a much sweeter way than I was thinking. I was there thinking, “Look this guy just took a picture of us! He won’t let us through, but he gets the privilege of taking a picture of us? Uh uh, seeing a foreigner is a really cool thing for many Chinese people. Let’s compromise: he gets a picture of us and we get to see the set.”

This is how Xixi put it: “I know you’d love to take a picture with the foreigners, right? Well, why don’t we go up the hill and take a picture together with the set in the background? Then that would be a MUCH better picture.”

This lady…she’s fantastic.

The security guards ate it all up, and before we knew it, we were being led across the rope that blocked the way, with the security guards not only leading but serving as a tour guide, explaining to us the whole spiel about the movie base, how it was being constructed, what styles of dynasties different parts were being built in, what would happen to the base when filming was finished, and when exactly would the filmmakers come and begin filming.

The main security guard led us up the hill, commentating as we went, and I was just taking it all in. Now as I keep saying, I love film. I love the art of making it and I love the fun of watching it, and as soon as I crossed over the rope that kept everyone else out, I felt shivers of excitement that I only feel when I’m doing something I really really love. It’s a great feeling and I hope all of you have experienced the same feeling too. We walked up the hill, which was lined with these purple flowers. I found it strange that the hill was covered with these blooming flowers, even though it was the middle of fall and beginning to get cold…certainly not flower weather. Xixi told me that they were planted there for the film. I thought that was pretty cool.

Finally we got to the top of the hill, and I could see the whole set that was under construction. My pictures don’t do it justice, I couldn’t capture the awesomeness that I was witnessing. Traveling to foreign countries and seeing beautiful sights has made me realize how very limited cameras are, even with all the capabilities they have today…despite it all, the cameras of today are still unable to capture the beauty of what the eye can perceive. I can show you pictures of what I saw, but you’ll never see the full extent of how awesome it is. I’ll see it when I look at the pictures because they are an easy reminder of what I’ve witnessed with my eyes, but for someone who hasn’t seen it, all they have is the picture.

But hey, it’s better than nothing.

Anyway, I stood at the top of the hill looking down across the vast set that was being built. I could see the traditional style buildings underneath green nets and scaffolding. Some were very tall and others were smaller. The security guard explained that only about 25% of the set had been built, and already there was a lot there. There were different styles of architecture being built, from the different dynasties that would be featured in the film. I don’t remember what the other ones were that were mentioned, but I know the Tang dynasty was one of them. The whole set was not going to be done for maybe almost another year, but the filming would begin in March 2014. If you don’t know, sometimes what filmmakers do is build part of the set and film the scenes set in those locations, while simultaneously other parts of the set are being built. And this will continue, part by part, until the movie is complete. It’s inconvenient financially and timing-wise to build everything all at once and then film it. Especially when the set is just going to be taken down when it’s all over.

Pics, or it didn't happen ;)

However, in this case the set was not going to be taken down. Like what has been done with the Shire set from Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit series, the buildings in this film are not simply facades (as is normally done) but rather they will be permanent structures. The Shire set from The Hobbit has become a kind of museum/tourist site, but this whole complex will become a shopping center after all the filming is done.

It was amazing just taking it all in. Movies take you to worlds where you could never go in real life, and I felt that being there gave me just a taste of a world of ancient China. It was more than ancient buildings being plopped in the middle of a mostly-modern world like I see every day in Xiangyang: this was really ancient China, no signs of modern life. This was another world. And I’ll get to see it again when it is more complete…but more on that later.

As we took in the huge set stretching almost as far as the eye could see, they had us turn around to look behind us. I turned around and they showed us a large hill, further in the distance not currently part of the closed off set but rather nearer to the main road. Part of the hill kind of had a cliff face to it. They told us that this hill would also be part of the film, with Chinese characters and a face of a famous ancient Chinese poet carved into the cliff with the help of CGI (computer generated imagery). It’ll be like a smaller Chinese version of Mt. Rushmore, with only one face and writing on it. Later on, they showed us a picture of what it would look like, and though it was a fake picture, I could only imagine how epic it would look as part of the movie, as real as CGI can make something look (and that’s pretty real).

That's the hill in the distance, click on the picture to see a bigger version.

After that we went down the hill. We couldn’t go further down into the set because it’s a construction site, but the adventure wasn’t over. At this time right now, I’m doing all I can to keep myself from acting like an excited and crazy fangirl, and I realized how cool the Chinese people there thought it was to see foreigners at a movie base (I’m serious though, even when we go shopping Chinese shoppers observe our shopping carts to see what we’re getting…once we were at a store’s grand opening and taking advantage of the free wine tasting they had, with no Chinese people around. After a couple minutes of hanging out there, after seeing us there all of a sudden Chinese people begin to join us to take part in it too…and there are many more stories like this, we’ll be standing around in a circle literally doing nothing but talking and Chinese people will come up to us and just stand with us watching us.)

So instead of acting like a fangirl, I’m trying to play it off like I’ve done this plenty of times, like it’s totally cool, like this is just a day in the life of a glamorous foreigner. I’ve got my sunglasses on and everything, no huge smiles, just cool. I think it worked because most of the Chinese people there (and there weren’t too many, the place was pretty empty) were snapping pictures of me. Me and Cat went to pose somewhere to get some pics with our cameras and I found that there were more cameras snapping away than simply those belonging to the people I came with.

So anyway, as I’m trying to play it cool and all, they lead us down the hill and to my delight there was more to be seen. They took us into the small main office building where inside they showed us a huge model of the whole complex in its intended entirety. Because the place would be a shopping mall after filming was over, the model showed not only the completed sets, but also extra parts of the complex that would be part of the mall (for example, there will be a small amusement park built after filming is over). But the size of the whole thing was immensely huge. I couldn’t believe it, but Chris had said earlier that this would be one of the biggest movie bases in China. I can certainly believe that.

Click on this photo and observe the triangle at the left...look closely and you'll see that that's the model for the mountain carving. You can see the face of an old man carved into the mountain. Look for it in the other photos as well.

The model lit up and changed colors, and different sections could be lit up separately.

I tried to get a closer picture of the mountain, but my camera gets very blurry without sunlight.

Then after that, they showed a 10 minute video about the base, talking about the filming and about the future shopping mall. The security guard even gave us some brochures to take home. HA. And they said we couldn’t come in. What a change of mind!

NOW, ALL OF WHAT I JUST WROTE RIGHT NOW WAS EPICLY AWESOME…BUT NONE OF THAT REALLY COMPARES TO WHAT HAPPENED NEXT. I DON’T EVEN KNOW FOR 100% CERTAIN WHETHER TO TAKE IT SERIOUSLY, BUT STILL JUST THE IDEA OF IT COMING UP WAS MORE THAN I’D EVER EXPERIENCED.

After we were all done watching the video, we took a few more pictures around the building and then got ready to go. Xixi then spoke to the security guard once more, thanking him profusely for allowing us to go further in and see the set. She really did an excellent job, saying, “Thank you so much. We’re so grateful to you, we know that you didn’t have to let us see all that we did.” And man, by the end of it, guess what happened? The security guard gave her his number and told her, “They begin filming around the end of March. If you want to come back again at that time, and either meet the director and the stars, or even be an extra in the film, give me a call.”

:O :O :O

I can’t even believe he said that. Xixi really must have gotten through to him. I still can’t even believe it. I think in regards to being an extra he was referring more to Xixi, because the film is an ancient China film, so it’s unlikely foreigners would be invited to be in it…not 100% sure though. However, I think that in regards to meeting the cast and the director Chen Kaige, he definitely meant all of us. After we had left the base, I thanked Xixi for being a genius at getting us in, but Xixi also said (and I think she’s right) that it took all of us together to make that happen. If Xixi had been by herself or with an all-Chinese group, the guards would probably have turned her away. But being a foreigner in China gets you some privileges at times (not all the time, but more than a Chinese citizen…sometimes we get free drinks, free food, people treating us to dinner, students giving us gifts, people inviting us to go places together, etc.), because I think it’s because there’s something fascinating about us to most Chinese people as you go deeper into the mainland (I’m not talking about Shanghai and Beijing, they don’t count :P).

I’ve been pondering for years, trying to find an equivalent of something we see here in America that would give us a similar reaction as Chinese have to us. At first I thought maybe it was seeing someone from a particular culture in their traditional wear, like an Amish person in their dresses and caps, or an Indian lady in her sari, or a Muslim lady in her burka. But that’s not quite the same, because we in America are generally used to seeing people of different cultures, our nation being a big melting pot.

No…after years of pondering, I think I found the answer. It’s a strange one and perhaps a funny one, but try to get past the humor to understand why this is the best equivalent. The best equivalent of Chinese people deep in China seeing foreigners is like seeing Disney costume characters walking down the street. It’s not normal to see a Disney costume character walking down the street (maybe in Disney world, where they belong, but not anywhere else), and if we saw one we’d stare. I know I would. Now here’s the comparison. Sometimes Chinese people think foreigners are so beautiful (like maybe Disney princesses) that they have to go and talk to them, and will even forget their manners and invade your privacy just to be able to talk to you. Then there are the Chinese people (mainly little children) that are quite frightened of foreigners (like the Disney villains) and they stare from a far with wide eyes or even cry. But mostly, when seeing a foreigner (like most Disney costume characters) they just want to take a picture and instead of signing an autograph, they ask for our number.

This can give a lot of benefits, I’ve just named a few a little earlier. But also this causes the problem of a disconnect from reality. Often foreigners here are treated like stars, like they’re more special for no other reason than their race. I know that’s blunt but there it is. (That’s also another reason why some foreigners come to China, to feel validated…that’s also blunt but there it is.) Anyway, the problem with this is that they treat you like you’re so much better than they are for no other reason than what you look like, and I hate that. It feels like I’m being worshipped and it makes me angry, because we are all the same. We’re people, and no one should sell themselves short.

BUT THAT WAS A TANGENT. And at any rate, I really don’t mind using my foreigner status to get me in to see a movie base. That’s perfectly harmless, and I also helped my Chinese friends (Xixi and her mother) by doing so as well.

So all in all, my trip to Chen Kaige’s movie base turned out to be way more awesome than I imagined it would be, and because of what happened at the very end, Xixi and I intend to return in March and see what we can see. Maybe something epic will happen then. Maybe not. But I’ll have fun either way. It’s a movie base! How can you NOT have fun???