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Early Film Culture in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Republican China

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Early Film Culture in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Republican China Early Film Culture in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Republican China Early Film Culture in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Republican China Kaleidoscopic Histories Emilie Yueh- yu Yeh, editor University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor Copyright © 2018 by Emilie Yueh- yu Yeh All rights reserved This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publisher. Published in the United States of America by the University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid- free paper 2021 2020 2019 2018 4 3 2 1 A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication data has been applied for. 978- 0- 472- 07372- 6 (Hardcover : alk paper) 978- 0- 472- 05372- 8 (Paperback : alk paper) 978- 0- 472- 12344- 5 (ebook) Acknowledgments Many people were supportive of this publication and did their utmost to direct it toward completion. I would like to thank the twelve contributors for their trust and support. Without them, our knowledge of the early film culture would remain impoverished. Among outside supporters, I thank Nicole Huang for her valuable advice. Thanks also to Markus Nornes and Matthew Solomon for putting their hats into the ring. Mary Francis, the Editorial Director at the University of Michigan Press, guided this project from the beginning, and her editorial nous was essential for this work to get in shape. The anonymous readers’ comments were incisive in refining individual chapters and reframing the book as a whole. Zhang Zhen’s pio- neering work in Shanghai cinema injected theoretical rigor to the studies of early film culture in East Asia. Poshek Fu’s vision in reshaping Chinese film historiography opened many gates for new studies, including this one. Xiaocai Feng showed us how to craft exemplary historical research. David Bordwell, Michael Curtin, Melissa Curtin, Dudley Andrew, David Der-w ei Wang, Chris Berry, Wenchi Lin, Isabelle Pei- tzu Wu, Sheldon Lu, Weihong Bao, Song- Yong Sing, Michael Berry, Shi Chuan, and Paul Katz offered their help, encouragement, and fellowship at various stages. I thank the Chi- ang Ching- kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, the Re- search Grants Council of Hong Kong Government, and Hong Kong Baptist University for their research support. I also want to thank my colleagues at the School of Communication for their friendship and help over the years. My research assistant Wai Ka Yan deserves special mention. Without her backing, this book would not be published on time. Four chapters in this volume were previously published in a special issue of the Journal of Chinese Cinemas. I thank the then- editor, Song Hwee Lim, for the opportunity. I thank Jenny Geyer and Mary Hashman at the University of Michigan Press for their care and help throughout the entire production. Most of all, I am indebted to my family in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States. Their unfailing support has given me much-n eeded stamina and faith in my em- barkation on early screen histories in this part of the world. Emilie Yueh- yu Yeh February 2017 Hong Kong Contents A Note on Transliteration and Translation ix Introduction 1 Emilie Yueh- yu Yeh Part I. Revising Historiography: Early Film Culture in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Guangzhou Chapter 1. Translating Yingxi: Chinese Film Genealogy and Early Cinema in Hong Kong 19 Emilie Yueh- yu Yeh Chapter 2. Magic Lantern Shows and Screen Modernity in Colonial Taiwan 51 Laura Jo- Han Wen Chapter 3. From an Imported Novelty to an Indigenized Practice: Hong Kong Cinema in the 1920s 71 Ting- yan Cheung and Pablo Sze- pang Tsoi Chapter 4. Enlightenment, Propaganda, and Image Creation: A Descriptive Analysis of the Usage of Film by the Taiwan Education Society and the Colonial Government Before 1937 101 Daw- Ming Lee Chapter 5. “Guangzhou Film” and Guangzhou Urban Culture: An Overview 134 Hui Liu, Shi- Yan Chao, and Richard Xiaying Xu Chapter 6. The Way ofThe Platinum Dragon: Xue Juexian and the Sound of Politics in 1930s Cantonese Cinema 156 Kenny K. K. Ng Part II. Intermediaries, Cinephiles, and Film Literati Chapter 7. Toward the Opposite Side of “Vulgarity”: The Birth of Cinema as a “Healthful Entertainment” and the Shanghai YMCA 179 Yoshino Sugawara Chapter 8. Movie Matchmakers: The Intermediaries between Hollywood and China in the Early Twentieth Century 202 Yongchun Fu Chapter 9. The Silver Star Group: A First Attempt at Theorizing Wenyi in the 1920s 223 Enoch Yee- lok Tam Chapter 10. Forming the Movie Field: Film Literati in Republican China 244 Emilie Yueh- yu Yeh and Enoch Yee- lok Tam Chapter 11. Rhythmic Movement, Metaphoric Sound, and Transcultural Transmediality: Liu Na’ou and The Man Who Has a Camera (1933) 277 Ling Zhang Chinese and Japanese Glossary 303 Contributors 309 Bibliography 313 Index 345 A Note on Transliteration and Translation Romanization of Chinese characters has become simpler in recent decades. For the most part, essays in this volume use the pinyin system to transliter- ate and render Chinese names, titles, places, and people. In some cases the authors provide additional Cantonese pronunciation for further specifica- tion. When filmmakers or authors refer to English renditions of their work, we usually follow that convention in subsequent references. This was a com- mon convention during the Republican period, with many companies and political bodies adopting official English names. Several essays also use loan- words from Japanese, which are romanized in the usual Hepburn system. Introduction Emilie Yueh- yu Yeh Studies on Chinese early cinema and its extended history in the Republi- can period (1911– 1949) have trod a rocky path.1 After the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, film historiography developed into a guarded field, even until today. In the immediate postwar time the term “Republi- can” was tainted by its attachment to the defeated Nationalist Party and its associated autocratic capitalism, corrupt bureaucracy, and dependence on foreign imperialist powers. Because of these negative associations, the no- tion of Republican cinema became suspect and was subject to monitoring and constraint, in the 1950s and after. The formerly “infamous” epoch was acknowledged as pivotal to the development of Chinese modernity when the censorious treatment of the Republican period relaxed in the twenty- first century. Subsequently, Republican history was reconstructed by many scholars as Shanghai history, given the city’s unrivaled position (so- called Paris of the Orient) in early twentieth- century China. “Shanghai cinema” was then upheld as a synecdoche for cinema of the entire era as the city was then the country’s center of film production, distribution, and exhibi- tion. The term “Shanghai,” despite its mythology qipao( , jazz, dance halls, intrigues, department stores, hippodrome, canidrome, dandies, motor cars, Ruan Lingyu, sultry Mandarin pop), risks reducing the scope of Republican history into a “looking glass” containing the most alluring facets. “Shanghai cinema,” too, when used as the overarching Republican cinema or Chinese cinema before 1949, entails a limited, partial approach to the vast terrains of cinema practices in many parts of China and colonies like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macao, and the Chinese diaspora generally. Granted, Shanghai is central in the development of China’s modernity 2 early film culture in hong kong, taiwan, and republican china before 1949, including not just cinema, but other cultural formations. To quote Wen-h sin Yeh in her pioneering article: “Shanghai in the first half of the 20th century emerged to become China’s largest metropolis for trade, finance, manufacturing, publishing, higher education, journalism and many other important functions, performed by a growing population increasingly diversified into multiple classes of different incomes and interests.”2 Major publications by Leo Ou- fan Lee (1999), Zhang Yingjin (ed., 1999), Andrew Jones (2001), Barbara Mittler (2004), Zhang Zhen (2005), Nicole Huang (2005), Wen- hsin Yeh (2008),3 and many others fasten on Shanghai as the wellspring of modern China in consumer and media culture.4 Through the concerted efforts of two generations of scholars, Shanghai was decisively crowned as the jewel of Chinese modernity and cosmopolitanism; film and media culture associated with the city— celebrities, advertising, magazines, popular fiction, theaters, and the urban space— also emerged to typify Chi- nese cinema in general. Hence the currency of “Shanghai cinema.” Further, in the course of rewriting Chinese film history, the cinema of Shanghai was useful in presenting alternatives to party-i nflected hagiography of the na- tional cinema, including those claimed by the Communist and Nationalist parties. Since the beginning of the new millennium, “Shanghai cinema” has returned with a vengeance with its voluptuous endowment. Resonance with historic sounds and sights of the International Settlement, recollections of China’s cosmopolitan glamour of the early twentieth century, and archival resources hidden in old magazines, diaries, and warehouses have turned Shanghai into a centerpiece, the one and only film capital in contemporary Chinese film studies. “Shanghai cinema” may deserve its reputation for luminous glamour, but it may also obscure roads not taken. It is fair to say that the talisman of “Shanghai cinema” has eclipsed other sites and activities important to the makeup of an inclusive history. There are gaping holes and omissions when we pigeonhole Shanghai as the sole repository of Republican mov- ie experience. To address this issue, we must adjust the existing binary of Communist- orthodox versus Shanghai- modern historiography by probing the cinema histories of less familiar sites located in different sociopolitical institutions. Republican China is too large, too diverse to be shackled to just one city, no matter Shanghai’s enchantment.
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