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.
China
stories are told at wenhousecrafts.com
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