| Fu-Yow-Chin |
September 16, 2021
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| Recently he watched the news on TV, in which it said that a Chinese Sci-Fi movie became a big hit in China, then in other countries as well. The movie was based on a bestseller story. Millions of volumes of the book were sold in China, as well as other countries. The TV commentator mentioned that in China, creative writers and movie directors had to make efforts to pass the government's censorship, so those works that they created could be said to be elaborate and smart. His Chinese Movie fan history was long. His first Chinese movie was 'Fu-Yow-Chin', this was his country's pronunciation. He watched it more than 30 years ago. He couldn't remember why and where he watched it, at a theatre or on VHS. The movie fascinated him so much that he started to watch Chinese movies. But, there were a limited number of Chinese movies at that time, although there were an uncountable number of Hong Kong movies. He watched 'Old Well', 'Red Kaoliang', 'Chrysanthemum Beans', etc. 'Old Well's setting was in the modern times, and this rocky mountain village didn't have a well, so they had to carry water from a very far place on a regular basis. Every year there were some victims who fell from the cliff on their way home carrying a heavy water load. One day, an engineer who was born in this village and studied geology returned to the village in order to dig a well. In the movie 'Red Kaoliang', a young beautiful woman was taken to a brewery, which had an old history in the country  side, to be the new wife of the owner of the brewery. In this story, Japanese soldiers appeared and did cruel things. He was amazed by those well-made scenarios, camera work, good actors and actresses, and especially the movies' overwhelming realism. 'Red Kaoliang' and 'Chrysanthemum Beans' were both directed by a famous Chinese director, Zhang Yimou. He watched another good movie of his, 'Looking for a Child', in which a 12 year old 'teacher' in a remote village went alone to a big city in order to take back her poor student. It was a very moving story. The movie took the Grand Prix in the Venice Film Festival in 1999. Later the director became commercially successful, and made the movies 'Hero' and 'Lovers', which were like Hollywood movies. He also directed the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony. He wasn't so interested in those type of movies, though. 'Fu-Yow-Chin' was a movie set in the era of the 'Cultural Revolution'. A female protagonist was a small restaurant owner and another male protagonist was a poet. They were criticized as being rich or being bad influencer, thus they had a hard time. He had once wanted to watch this memorable movie again, and had looked for the DVD at a rental shop, but he couldn't find it. He checked on Amazon and found one for sale, but it was very expensive, so he gave up. It seemed that the DVD was manufactured a long time ago and hasn't been reprinted because maybe the Chinese government bans some old movies, and this must be one of them since it was a political type of movie, he thought. But, the Chinese Sci-Fi movie's success reminded him of the 'Fu-Yow-Chin' movie and when he was drunk, he clicked the purchasing button on Amazon to buy it. When it came, and he started to watch it, it was a longer story than he had imagined, 164 minutes. And its way of criticizing the 'Cultural Revolution' was more harsh than he had imagined. The movie was as good as he had imagined. From the cover, he read that the director was one of the greatest masters of the Chinese movie world. The movie won the Grand Prix of the Chinese Movie Awards. The movie was released in 1987, the DVD was manufactured in 2006. So, at least at that time, the government didn't think that criticizing the movement of the old government was a bad thing. "But ..." He got an idea and started to research about the movie. His country's information was poor, but he could go to some websites in China. The movie's Chinese pronunciation was 'Fu-Rong-Zhen'. Surprisingly, a Netflix type of website introduced the movie normally, and had a normal price tag. He was shocked and relieved. Maybe the present government also defines the 'Cultural Revolution' as a bad thing. In the last part of 'Fu-Yow-Chin', people who had lost their social class were restored by the government. The movie finished with the ending scene being that of an old guy, who was a friend of the protagonists, warning that if the citizens didn't pay close attention, a new movement would start again. |
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No.446
*on a regular basis :日常的に
*load : 荷
*geology : 地質学
*overwhelming : 圧倒する
*Grand Prix : グランプリ
*commercially : 商業的に
*ban : 禁止する
*restore : 回復する