Uploaded 1 November 2000

Film was invented at the end of the 19th century in a number of Western capitalist countries as a result of certain technological developments. Though China had a long history of civilisation, it was comparatively underdeveloped in economic and technological terms at that time: in fact, Western civilisation was launching an all-out challenge to Chinese civilisation when film was introduced into China. On the one hand, the military, economic, political and cultural expansions of the imperialist powers put China in a position of great crisis. On the other hand, the coming of Western civilisation marked an historical turn in Chinese people’s understanding of domestic China as well as the outside world. Ultimately, it provided a strong stimulus to the development of Chinese civilisation, which had long been at a standstill. At the end of the 19thcentury, then, the Chinese were changing their stance towards Western civilisation, from total rejection to a more ambivalent attitude. Film, as another achievement of Western civilisation, happened to arrive in China at this very moment. Like their attitude towards many other Western things, historical conditions determined the mixed feelings of the Chinese about film. Meanwhile, the unique social conditions of China determined both their way of film screening and the way Chinese philosophy responded to film.

1. Naming film “yingxi“

Film was introduced into China from the West on 11 August 1896. [1] What is interesting about the arrival of cinema in China is the manner in which the Chinese discussed and defined this apparently new invention. The Chinese called film dianguang yingxi (electric light shadow play) which involved the use of the modifier “electric light” to differentiate the new form from the traditional Chinese shadow play. The term “electric light shadow play” even appeared in the earliest film review in China which can be traced today. [2] This usage indicates that in China the cinema was regarded, to a certain degree, as having a connection with a traditional Chinese art form.

This phenomenon, to my understanding, revealed two aspects of the Chinese attitude towards film. Firstly, the Chinese generally underestimated the importance of science and technology and therefore did not probe into the essence of film from the perspective of science and technology. It does not mean that the Chinese were so careless as to confuse film with the traditional Chinese shadow play: it was pointed out that “the similarity between film and shadow play is really so little… We should never claim credit for it.” [3]  However, the general tendency of the Chinese to classify film as shadow play meant that up to the 1940s people still believed that there was a certain connection between the traditional Chinese shadow play and film:

Shadow play is a very special kind of play. Though it is different from today’s shadow play [film], they are really similar if we consider the fact that they both use the principle of light projection. What we should keep in mind is that five hundred years earlier before the invention of film in the West, this kind of motion shadow play, which used light to project images on screen, already existed in China. [4]

In fact, this Chinese attitude towards film as a technological mechanism led to their indifferent attitude towards techniques of film expression. Chinese cinema before the 1920s made very slow progress and the most important reason was the lack of talent in the fields of film technology and film creation. [5] Therefore, the Chinese, first of all, did not treat film as a new art form which could develop its own techniques of expression. On the contrary, they simply looked at it as a tool to record another art form, similar to the traditional Chinese shadow play which displayed stories from traditional Chinese operas. In 1905, the Chinese started to make their own films and all of the seven films which were made in that year were opera films. [6] For those films, opera was the essence while “film” was only the means of recording it: “the interest of Lumières was to film the boundless universe… while Méliès was keen to create a dreamlike world through trick effects… By comparison, the earliest Chinese cinema only intended to be a means of record of another art form”.[7] Here, “another art form” means Beijing opera. Since the Chinese simply treated film as a recorder of a traditional Chinese art form, they consequently paid little attention to the techniques of film expression.

When the Chinese called film “shadow play”, the emphasis was placed on “play” rather than on “shadow”. This, in fact, revealed a unique Chinese conception about art. A contemporary Chinese film critic, Luo Yijun, discusses the issue as follows:

According to the Chinese cultural conception, all art forms using figures, shapes and continuous action belong to the category of play. As for issues concerning essential distinctions among various art forms, such as whether a figure is an entity or an image, and whether an image is a lifelike representation of physical reality or an assumed imitation, this conception only pays a little attention to them. [8]

Luo’s explanation of this Chinese conception shows us, from another perspective, how the Chinese ignored the differences between different art forms, or how the Chinese regarded content as more important than art form. This initial conception in fact affected Chinese filmmaking for a long time. As Chen Xihe points out:

according to Chinese filmmakers before and during the 1920s, film was neither the direct recording of reality, nor a game of shooting and editing, but a drama. ‘When film initially came to China, it was called a shadowplay. People simply spoke of going to see shadowplay. This tells us that film is derived from drama’ [9]

Therefore, when the European filmmakers in the 1920s were busy exploring the potentialities of film as a new medium, their Chinese counterparts did not show much enthusiasm for developing a “language” which specifically belonged to film.

Secondly, naming film as “shadow play” showed the ambivalent attitude of Chinese as a nation towards Western civilisation and, at the same time, indicated the attempt of the Chinese to convert cinema into an indigenous Chinese art form. The evidence which can support my argument is that the Chinese did not start their filmmaking by modelling on foreign films; on the contrary, they gained their inspiration, like the traditional Chinese shadow play, from traditional Chinese opera. In addition to this, the aim of many early Chinese filmmakers was unanimously “to display the merits of the Chinese nation” through film, though they were actually quite hazy about the technological mechanism and techniques of expression of film. [10] To regard film, a foreign art form, as “shadow play”, made it relatively easy for the Chinese to treat their film undertaking as a national cause.

Partha Chatterjee points out that what he calls “anticolonial nationalism” consisted of:

dividing the world of social institutions and practices into two domains – the material and the spiritual. The material is the domain of the “outside”, of the economy and… of science and technology, a domain where the West had proved its superiority and the East had succumbed… The spiritual, on the other hand, is an “inner” domain bearing the “essential” marks of cultural identity. [11]

The attitude of the Chinese towards film was slightly different from Chatterjee’s theory. On the one hand, the Chinese, to a certain degree, realised the superiority of film to the traditional Chinese shadow play in technological terms, though they did not openly admire this Western technological invention. On the other hand, they attached great importance to the spiritual domain: the expression of Chinese cultural identity. It was on the spiritual level that the Chinese attitude towards film conformed to Chatterjee’s theory.

2.The relationship between film and traditional Chinese opera

Film screening in China first started in teahouses. According to one film history, nearly all early film screenings in Shanghai took place in teahouses, [12] and in Beijing and Hong Kong screening conditions were generally similar. [13]  I believe that there was one thing which accounted for this phenomenon: because film was called shadow play, it was situated in appropriate places for “play”, that is, in teahouses, which were one of the most important places of recreation in Chinese society and had long been the sites where traditional Chinese operas were performed. [14]

However, this situation in fact did not last long and teahouses did not officially become movie theatres. Starting from the beginning of the 20thcentury, movie theatres were constructed in the coastal areas such as in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Film screening then gradually separated itself from teahouses and became an important recreational and commercial activity. [15] Besides some other reasons such as the development of separate film exhibition venues, I think this separation between film screening and teahouse was because of the contradiction between the different natures of film and opera. The traditional Chinese opera is a highly stylised art and is “first of all based on a conception that opera is artificial”. [16]  This characteristic of opera was in sharp contrast to film, which was thought to be highly “realistic” in its nature. Therefore, it seemed quite incompatible for film and opera to appear together in teahouses. Those opera fans who enjoyed stylised performance of opera might watch films out of curiosity for a short period of time, but film must move out from teahouses if it wanted to attract a larger audience. However, if we consider the fact that the first Chinese films were opera films, we find that there was indeed a complicated bond between film and opera. The initial examples of opera films were meant to extend the influence of Beijing opera and to let more people have an opportunity to watch the wonderful performances of well-known actors. [17] But, after their initial attempt, the Chinese did not produce many more opera films because they realised the incompatibility of the two art forms. [18] Therefore, the relationship between film and Chinese opera, to a certain degree, determined the development of early film screening in China.

It was especially true in Beijing and other parts of northern China. In Beijing, the supreme headquarters of Beijing opera, “the only recreational places were opera theatres” at the beginning of the 20th century. [19] In another northern city, Tianjin, “there was only one movie theatre up to 1915 while there were numerous opera theatres by that time.” [20] It was pointed out that people there “loved Beijing opera more than film. Therefore, film could not compete with opera.” [21] This conflict between opera and film, to a certain extent, reflected the conflict between traditional Chinese culture and Western culture since the interior of northern China received relatively less Western influence than did southern China. However, this phenomenon gradually changed. Starting from the early 1920s, “many opera theatres in Tianjin closed down because the business was slack. On the contrary, film exhibition was growing more and more prosperous… because people in Tianjin had shifted their attention from traditional opera to film.” [22]

It can be inferred that opera was so popular before the coming of film simply because there was no other art form which could challenge it. However, this supremacy of opera had gradually been threatened by the introduction and spread of film. “The disadvantage of opera is its repetition of performance… By comparison, things in films are changeable and look real.” [23] To examine other reasons for the popularity of film, Guan Ji’an pointed out that:

film exhibition has recently become more and more prosperous and the number of film viewers have been increased four or five times. There are several factors which have brought about the change: films are more understandable than they used to be, …admission fees are cheaper and more people know English. In addition to these, boys and girls who are in love like the darkness in movie theatres. [24]

By comparison with northern China, the conflict between film and opera in southern China was not as intense as Northern China. Beijing opera and other types of Chinese opera were also popular in southern China, but film exhibition developed rapidly there because of its geographic position and earlier opening to the outside world. For example, Shanghai, one of the earliest trading cities in China, was quite open to the West and people there were ready to accept new things and ideas. For instance, a Spaniard, A. Ramos came to Shanghai in 1903 to start his film exhibition “with dozens of reels of old and incomplete films… Within about ten years, Ramos became the owner of seven movie theatres and a millionaire.” [25] From the experience of this Spaniard, we can imagine the popularity of film screening in Shanghai. Film screening in Kwangtung and Hong Kong also developed quickly because “these areas were coastal areas which had received more Western influences.” [26]

In general, film and Chinese opera clashed with each other when film was first introduced into China. The result of this clash was that the exhibition of film expanded while Chinese opera managed to remain popular to a lesser degree. After that, film exhibition and opera performance each developed along its own way. In addition to this, there were a few filmmakers (such as Fei Mu) who attempted to produce cinematised operas and meanwhile to “graft” techniques of expression of Chinese opera into the creation of feature films. [27] These later attempts and efforts made by the Chinese filmmakers indicated that film and opera could finally benefit from each other.

3. The Chinese philosophical response to film

Gunning calls the conception of cinema before 1906 “the cinema of attraction” which:

sees cinema less as a way of telling stories than as a way of presenting a series of views to an audience, fascinating because of their illusory power (whether the realistic illusion of motion offered to the first audiences by Lumière, or the magical illusion concocted by Méliès), and exoticism. [28]

Chinese viewers of these films were not only attracted by this realistic illusion, but were extremely astonished by the “truthfulness” of film. “It is lifelike… Viewers have the feeling of being in beautiful scenery without having enough time to see everything.” [29] The exceptional astonishment of Chinese audience towards film was the result of their acceptance of various traditional Chinese art forms as aimed at being fictitious rather than real in appearance – an aesthetic which constituted a basic difference between Western and Chinese conceptions of art. For example, “the traditional Chinese opera never takes presenting true life as its mission.” [30] Therefore, it can be inferred that Chinese film audiences which had been used to these traditional Chinese art forms might be surprised by the “lifelike” nature of film.

However, Chinese viewers’ understanding of film did not remain at the level of the apparent similarity between film and reality. From the earliest Chinese film review, we find the Chinese audience trying to see through the appearance of film to get at its essence:

After seeing these shadow plays [films], I thereupon sighed with the feeling that every change in the world is just like a mirage. There is no difference between life and shadow play… Suddenly hidden from the view, suddenly reappearing. Life is really like dreams and bubbles, and all lives can be seen this way. [31]

By commenting on the changeable and incredible aspects of film, the author expresses his views about human life and even the universe, rather than his interest in the technological mechanism of cinema and techniques of film expression. In this sense, it seemed that the Chinese tried to find the identity of film and the traditional Chinese art forms through their “essential common aspect” by ignoring the mechanism and techniques of film. It again shows that the Chinese did not pay much attention to the objective knowledge of cinema. Instead, they “paid more attention to the expression of subjective feelings and social functions of art.” [32]

Thus, we find that Chinese conditions did not completely conform to Gunning’s “attraction” theory: the Chinese were not simply attracted by the illusory power of early cinema, but tried to rationally grasp the essence of cinema in ideological terms. Moreover, as Luo Yijun points out: “this feature of the earliest Chinese film review indicated the future development of Chinese film theory.” [33] The authors of film reviews generally remained at the level of commenting on films’ ideologies and expressing their purely subjective feelings about films. It was stated in the 1920s that “when we read film reviews in newspapers, we find that there are a very few reviews which show authors’ knowledge about film; by contrast, most of them are simply free talks.” [34]

For example, what was expressed in the first Chinese film review was the famous idea of “life is but a dream” which was held by an ancient Chinese philosopher, Chuangtze [Zhuangzi]. Therefore, though this earliest film review was only fragmentary thoughts about films, it did contain a philosophic response to film. Instead of expressing surprise and curiosity about techniques of film expression, what the author poured out was his thoughts about the relationship between film and human life, and even the relationship between film and dream. Considering the fact that early films were merely the record of daily scenes, the author’s perception of film was quite prescient. It was on this ideological basis, then, that early Chinese film theory was established. As Hu Ke pointed out: “early Chinese film theory was generally simple compared with the Western theory. However, its exposition of the relationship between film and society was not inferior and was quite unique in its portrayal of film theory.” [35] Chen Xihe and Zhong Dafeng also suggest that Chinese film theory laid its stress on “the relationships between film and the times, film and society, film and the people and film and politics. It is a kind of function-aesthetics, taking the ethical and political spirit as its core.” [36] Therefore, early Chinese perception of cinema in film reviews conformed to the Chinese definition of film as shadow play, that is, the Chinese regarded content as more important than aesthetics.

Conclusion:

The introduction of film into China had close links to the background of the economic expansion of the Western capitalist powers at the end of 19thcentury. It was also the result of the Western cultural influence. Since China had long cut off itself from the outside world, the Chinese people’s attitude towards film, the most foreign art form, was complicated and was determined by historical conditions. The Chinese did not greatly admire this Western invention, but they accepted it, tried to understand it and to use it according to their own social and aesthetic conceptions. What is more important is that, as Zheng Junli pointed out in 1936, “the import of film gave the Chinese people, who generally received little education, an impression of the outside world which was in progress.” [37]

Footnotes:

[1] See the advertisement for Xuyuan Garden in Shenbao, 10 August 1896
[2] See anonymous, “Notes of viewing shadow play”, Recreation (Youxi bao) 74 (1897).
[3] Anonymous, “The teaching material of Changming corresponding film school”, Screen Review (Yinmu pinglun) 1, no. 1 (1926): n.p.
[4] Jing Yi, “Chinese shadow play five hundred years ago”, Popular Film News (Dazhong ying xun) 2, no.16 (1941): 542.
[5] See Luo Luo, “Production and personnel training”, Entertainment Weekly (Kuaile zhoukan) 2, no. 18 (1929): n.p.
[6] See Wang Yue’s “The cradle of Chinese cinema”, Film and Television Culture (Ying shi wenhua) 1 (1988): 295-301.
[7] Ma Junxiang, “The oblique startling line of Chinese cinema”, Film Art (Dianying yishu) 1 (1990): 6-21.
[8] Luo Yijun, “The cultural tradition and Chinese film theory”, Film Art 4 (1992): 20-30.
[9] Chen Xihe, “Shadowplay: Chinese aesthetics and philosophical and cultural fundamentals”, in George S. Semsel, Xia Hong and Hou Jianping, (eds), Chinese Film Theory: A Guide to the New Era (Praeger, New York, 1990) 192-204.
[10] See anonymous, “The first signs of an improvement in Chinese film undertaking”, Shenbao, 11 August 1922.
[11] Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993) 5.
[12] Cheng Jihua, Li Shaobai and Xing Zuwen, The History of Development of Chinese Cinema, (Beijing: China Film Press, 1981), 8-9.
[13] See Xiao “The development of the film enterprise in Beijing” (Film Weekly 1 [1921]: n.p.) and Yu Muyun, Anecdotes of Hong Kong Cinema (Hong Kong: Guangjiaojing Publishing House, 1985: 5).
[14] Wong Minhua, Chinese Opera (Shanghai: Shanghai ancient book publishing house, 1996), 18.
[15] Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, Chinese Silent Film History (Beijing: China Film Press, 1996), 17-18.
[16] Wong Minhua, 98.
[17] Wang Yue, 299.
[18] There have been many writings in China relating to the incompatibility between film and Chinese opera such as Mei Lanfang’s My Life in the Film World (Beijing: China Film Press, 1962).
[19] Shen Ziyi, “Film in Beijing”, Film Monthly (Dianying yuebao) 6 (1928): n.p.
[20] Ku Sheng, “The conditions of the recent film exhibition in Tianjin”, Film Journal (Dianying zazhi) 3 (1924): n.p.
[21] Xiao, “The development of film enterprise in Beijing”.
[22] Ku Sheng, “The conditions of the recent film exhibition in Tianjin”.
[23] Wu Tiesheng, “The advantages of film”, Film Weekly 1 (1921): n.p.
[24] Guan Ji’an, “Changes after film is imported into China”, Shadow Play Journal (Yingxi zazhi) 1 (1922): n.p.
[25] Zhou Jianyun, “The prospect of Chinese cinema”, Film Monthly 5 (1928): n.p
[26] Zheng Junli, “A brief history of modern Chinese cinema”, in China Film Archive, (ed), Chinese Silent Film (Beijing: China Film Press, 1996) 1385-1432. It was originally published in The History of Development of Modern Chinese Arts (Shanghai: Shanghai Liangyou Publishing and Printing Company, 1936): n.p.
[27] For Fei Mu’s film activities, see Huang Ailing (ed), Poet Director Fei Mu, (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Film Critics Society, 1998).
[28] Tom Gunning, “The cinema of attraction – early film, its spectator and the avant-garde”, Wide Angle 8, nos. 3-4 (Fall, 1986): 63-70.
[29] See the advertisement for Western films in Shenbao, 27 July 1897.
[30] Weng Minhua, 105.
[31] Anonymous, “Notes of viewing American shadow plays”.
[32] Luo Yijun, “The cultural tradition and Chinese film theory”.
[33] Luo Yijun, “The cultural tradition and Chinese film theory”.
[34] Cao Yuankai, “The qualifications a film critic should have”, Film Journal 2 (1924): n.p.
[35] Hu Ke, “Theory about the relationship between film and society in China in the 1920s”, Film Art 1 (1996): 14-19.
[36] Chen Xihe and Zhong Dafeng, “Chinese film theory”, Film and Television Culture 1 (1988): 302-308.
[37] Zheng Junli, “A brief history of Chinese cinema”