1980 Changsha, China

Yang ZiLan

 1949

 Changsha, China

 Interviewed on February 10, 2022

 by Shirley Wang

[Translated from Chinese] I had never watched a movie until I was in my 30s. My parents and grandparents were very poor and grew up in Ba Zi Shao as farmers. There was no electricity or running water, and movies were not a priority for us growing up. When your grandfather finally started making more money, the government controlled a lot of the media that was made and let into China which made it hard for us to see the films we wanted to see. I was in my late 20s when movies started to play again. When I was in my early 30s, your grandfather took me to my first movie in Changsha. There was a screening of a movie called the Legend of Tianyun Mountain that your grandfather had heard was really popular. We biked an hour to a larger village where your grandfather’s friends had motorcycles. Then, we got on the motorcycles and drove for a couple hours to get to the city hall where they would be showing the movie. I don’t remember feeling very excited because I had never watched a movie before and the idea of watching people in a wall seemed boring. I did want to take the trip to see Changsha though, because I had never seen a large city before. 

When we got to the city hall building, the building was extremely full. There were people everywhere and even the isles were filled. The movie was shown on a wall of the inside of the building and there were no screens like today. I don’t remember much of what happened in the actual film because I was so excited by the sounds and sights. There was action and a lot of fighting. I was so startled by all the sound effects, and I thought that they were happening in real life. I paid more attention to sets, actors, and filming locations. Some of the houses were so beautiful, and I had never seen a house so nice. The actresses and actors were all so good looking and I remember thinking that people in the film were more beautiful and that their voices sounded better than in real life. It was probably because film cameras were not good back then and everything was in black and white, but I distinctly remember how the character’s eyes sparkled. It was too beautiful.

If I were to say anything about the plot, I only remember there being a lot of action scenes because the film was about the anti-leftist movement. However, I didn’t have a good enough knowledge about what had happened in the 70s because we lived so far away from the city. When I rewatched the film later on, I understood why the movie became so famous. It captured a lot of the false accusations against families during the Cultural Revolution.