1950 Shanghai, China

Liyin Feng
1938
Shanghai, China
Interviewed on January 30, 2018
by George Chen

The first movie I saw was Eight War-Torn Years, the first part of the two-part film The Spring River Flows East (part two being The Dawn), which is in my opinion one of the greatest Chinese and certainly Shanghai films ever made. It was 1950, so I was around 12 years old then, and I didn’t really understand the movie my first time watching. But from that time all the way to my 40’s, I watched the film again and again too many times to count, along with your aunt and mom at times, as they re-ran the movie on television quite often. So, the film always had lasting appeal for me.

The performances of all the actors and actresses involved were excellent, but I think even when I was 12 years old, the performance of Bai Yang, the female lead, stood out to me. She struggles with making ends meet and with romantic and family relationships through most of the film, which is set during the time of the Second Sino-Japanese War, and she really made me feel emotional and sympathetic for her.

The other main thing I remember was that I was very excited to go to the movie theater for the first time ever. I took a rickshaw with a good cousin of mine and her family, and since at that time we lived near the center of Shanghai, on Nanjing West Road near People’s Square, the movie theater we went to, called the Majestic Theater, happened to be very close to our apartment – in fact, you can still go see movies at that very theater on Nanjing West Road today.

This movie theater had almost everything, with concessions, ushers, and whatnot, and it also was very popular with Western foreigners at the time. Since I was young, I have never been the type to eat snacks and candy, but I think they offered all the standard Shanghai sweets and snacks – in particular, I remember these large lollipops being quite popular. They didn’t have popcorn though – that probably is an American thing. They also didn’t offer drinks for some reason.

You have to remember, the preceding 1930s and 1940s were a time when China was quite open culturally, which made The Spring River Flows East possible, I think. The Communist Party took control of government in 1949, and afterwards in the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, the entire film industry was persecuted. During that time, The Spring River Flows East had its name changed, and everyone involved was at least jailed for a number of years.

Like I said though, even into my 40’s I enjoyed watching the movie again and again. It may sound strange, but when I think of the movie and those years, I feel like I have seen most of what there is to see in society, what with women chasing what’s fashionable to wear and really showy French buildings on The Bund, and a lot of the culture from that time has persisted even today. You could say, in a way, we are just repeating history in quite a number of ways during the present-day.