Tag: Chinese Film

China 1911中国辛亥革命(2011)

Today, the film we are going to talk about is China 1911 (中国辛亥革命Zhōngguó xīnhài gémìng).In this film Jackie Chan   (成龙Chéng Lóng)  stars as a soldier who reluctantly takes up arms against the royal family, and Winston Chou (Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet) plays Chinese nationalist hero Sun Yat-sen ( 孙文Sūn Wén ). The trailer feels like a Chinese version of Pearl Harbor, what with all the explosions and blatant flag-waving. 

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The No.1 Film Carline in China: Xuan Jinglin (宣景琳)

Xuan Jinglin(宣景琳 Xuān Jǐnglín) was born in 1907, called the No.1 film carline in China. Although she had a highly successful film career, Xuan Jinglin had a very bad start in life, with a sad and bitter childhood. She was born in Shanghai, the youngest of six children (five girls and one boy) of a newspaper deliveryman. The father died when she was four months old, leaving his widow and children, already poor, in desperate straits. The only income they had was what little money her uncles, the mother's brothers, were able to give them. Jinglin received some education when a school operated by a Christian church waived the tuition for her to attend classes. But this also turned out to be a bad experience for the little girl, as her affluent classmates teased her unmercifully about her family's poverty and her hand-me-down clothes, and she often came home in tears. When the uncles died one after another, Xuan Jinglin's mother had no recourse but to sell her youngest daughter to a brothel, in effect sentencing her to an abysmal, and probably short, life of degradation.

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Tragic Goddess: Ruan Lingyu 悲剧女神阮玲玉

Ruan Lingyu (阮玲玉 Ruǎn Língyù) was born on April 26, 1910. She was a silent-film actress still remembered by many, left behind 29 films and the final message, "gossip can kill," when she committed suicide in Shanghai on March 8, 1935. As one of the most prominent Chinese film stars of the 1930s, her tragic death at the age of 24 led her to become an icon of Chinese cinema. 

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