A
Prayer on the Great Wall
26 October 2006
One
is the best known Chinese film director,
and the other is the most famous Chinese
actress. They were best business
partners, together having produced
unforgettable classics like Red
Sorghum, Raise the Red Lantern, Qiuju
and To Live. This fact is knwon by
many people in the world.
They
were also great lovers. She waited for
the day to marry him, and waited for nine
years. He waited for the right moment to
ask her to marry him, and waited for nine
years. This fact is known by many people
in China.
When they were young
and rest-ful on the Great Wall
they made a wish:
One shall be the empress and the
other the empress-maker
When
they went to the Great Wall to make
prayer, Zhang Yimou (张艺谋)
was 42, and Gong Li (巩俐)
27. Zhang prayed for seeing Gong playing
Wu Zetian, the only woman emperor in
Chinese history; and Gong prayed for
being able to play the woman emperor in
Zhang’s film.
Later
that year Gong Li became queen when she
won the title of the best actress of the
year in Venice film festival for her role
in Qiuju, and Zhang, the
queen-maker, won Gold Lion for Best Film.
Three
years later, they parted, in film and in
life – a fairytale did not eventuate.
Zhang
Yimou has never made a film about Wu
Zetian, and Gong Li has never played the
woman emperor.
But
Gong Li has already been a queen of the
Silver Screen, and her fans are all over
the world. And she needs to wait no more
– a marriage proposal from another man
was gracefully accepted.
So
Zhang, alone, went on searching and
making the replica of Gong Li. Years
later, another Silver Queen loomed larger
than life on the screen, that is Zhang
Ziyi.
It
seemed the story about the lives of Zhang
and Gong together on and off screen had
reached the finale.
Then
one day in 2006, 11 years after the
parting, a sequel bluntly emerged. They
once again teamed up in Zhang’s new
film The City of Golden Armour (《满城尽带黄金甲》),
and this time Gong Li plays the empress.
The
pair’s prayer on the Great Wall has
been fulfilled, to a degree.
Gong Li as the empress
and Chow Yun-Fat as the emperor
and they are all in golden coloured
costume, a colour became the symbol
of royalty after the third Ming emperor, several thundred
years later
But,
on the other hand, the man of
queen-making on screen is still a
queen-lacking off screen. Zhang Yimou is
yet to find a right moment to make a
proposal to a woman.
Then,
which woman? After Gong Li is there still
a woman out there somewhere on the
planet? In the eye of Zhang Yimou? Doubt.
If
a typical romance of the West is like a
stir-fry, making all the audio and visual
spectacles amid the burning heat, then a
typical Chinese romance is like a pot of
stew, quietly and slowly shimmering over
a small fire. It doesn’t have much to
see on the surface, but has a lot of
bubbling inside the pot - which is a
passion that could touch the very deep
corner in the heart.
Zhang
Yimou, a native of Xi’an, the ancient
capital of Tang Dynasty, is in a way an
old fashioned Chinese man. He may keep
shimmering his stew and never lift open
the lid.
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