Yaoyao-chan: Zhang Yimou: From To Live to "Makeup Artist of the Prosperous Age"
This episode provides an in-depth analysis of the evolution of director Zhang Yimou's artistic career and political role. From his early days of directing humanistic films such as "Red Sorghum" and "To Live," based on literary works by Mo Yan, Yu Hua, and others, to his later transition into commercial blockbusters and tourism performances, and his consecutive roles as chief director for state-level ceremonies including the Beijing Olympics, the G20 Summit, National Day celebrations, and "The Most Memorable Shaoshan Chong." The program explores how he has constantly weighed and chosen between fame, fortune, capital, and the state apparatus, ultimately deeply integrating his visual craftsmanship with totalitarian aesthetics to become the "makeup artist for the golden age" of official narratives.
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Hello everyone, I am Yao Yao Jiang, who loves to think and values logic. In 1994, Zhang Yimou filmed "To Live." When Fengxia was giving birth, she suffered a massive hemorrhage, but the experienced doctors had all been locked up by the Red Guards. After much difficulty, they managed to find an old professor from detention, but he was so hungry that he fainted. Fengxia died on the delivery bed just like that. This film clearly captured how the Cultural Revolution destroyed the lives of ordinary people. Later, it gained international acclaim, yet it was the only one that could not be screened in mainland China. Twenty-seven years later, Zhang Yimou became the chief director of "The Most Memorable Shaoshan Chong." In Mao Zedong's hometown, he used poetry, songs, and lighting to retell the revolutionary journey of this leader. Why did the person who filmed "To Live" later become the CCP's go-to director for grand ceremonies? Was the humanistic concern in his early films truly his own? Today, we will dismantle the golden aura of the "National Master": see how he borrowed the literary depth of writers to achieve his own fame as a master, how he sold that fame to capital, and how he used the skills he honed over a lifetime to apply makeup and beautify a dictatorial regime. Let's use facts and logic to bring the "Old Mouzi" down from his pedestal.
This is a modern proposition. So from beginning to end, this person asks, "Who am I? Who exactly am I?"
Zhang Yimou's family background was politically unfavorable. His father was labeled a counter-revolutionary. His eldest uncle went to Taiwan, and his second uncle was accused of being a latent spy. As a teenager, he learned very early on that he could not give anyone a handle to use against him. He learned to write big-character posters, learned to paint portraits of Chairman Mao, and also learned how to prove his political utility. Years later, he recalled that to show loyalty, his portraits of the Chairman had to be larger, brighter, and redder than anyone else's. He called this process "making himself rapidly instrumentalized." Painting them redder was a matter of survival at the time. But he also developed a skill from this: first, figure out what the authority wants, then make that thing eye-catching, beautiful, and flawless. The content was decided by others; he was responsible for the execution, and he had to execute it better than anyone else. Later, he saved money to buy a camera, even selling blood to scrape together the funds, and practiced photography diligently. In 1978, the Beijing Film Academy resumed admissions. He was already twenty-eight, five years over the age limit. Finally, after approval from the cultural department, he was admitted as an exception. He studied in the cinematography department, systematically learning how to use light, color, position, and framing to capture the audience. His professional training was in cinematography, not literature. In the early days of the Reform and Opening-up, Chinese literature restored individuals from abstract political slogans to human beings earlier than film did. Scar literature, root-seeking literature, and new realist novels began to rewrite human desires, humiliation, hunger, sex, and fear. Zhang Yimou caught up with these works and quickly saw which texts were best suited to be turned into visuals. That is how "Red Sorghum" came to be.
He used high-end liquor to kill and didn't go in. Zhang Yimou recalled. He took a fancy to Mo Yan's novel, first because it was very visual, and second because of its rich colors. The red sorghum, strong liquor, wild romance, and bandits in the novel naturally possessed an unruly vitality. Zhang Yimou seized upon these elements, filming the sedan chair shaking, red cloth, red sun, and the winery into a surging wave of heat. He later admitted that the movie's most important imagery and that lawless spirit both came from Mo Yan. There was another story before filming started. Zhang Yimou went to Gaomi to scout locations and found that the local area no longer had the continuous fields of sorghum found in the novel. If they were to shoot in autumn, they had to plant in spring. But the approval procedures from the Xi'an Film Studio had not yet been completed. Studio director Wu Tianming pooled 40,000 yuan from the sideline income of the lighting, sound, and developing workshops to plant the sorghum first. Mo Yan wrote that world, Wu Tianming took on the financial and institutional risks for the film, and Zhang Yimou turned it into the most striking patch of red on the silver screen. In 1988, Red Sorghum won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, becoming the first Chinese film to win the award. Zhang Yimou also transformed from a cinematographer into an internationally renowned director. Ever since then, whenever people mention Red Sorghum, the first thing they think of is Zhang Yimou. Mo Yan's novel, the performances of Jiang Wen and Gong Li, and Gu Changwei's cinematography often ended up overshadowed behind the five words 'Zhang Yimou's work'.
Nor is Gong Li just a romance from Zhang Yimou's early life. The two fell in love while filming Red Sorghum, and their cooperative and personal relationship continued until after Raise the Red Lantern. Almost all the women in Zhang Yimou's early films who were oppressed, capable of endurance, and would eventually explode relied on Gong Li's performance to stand firm. Jiuer loved and hated fiercely, Jiedou was trapped in the dyeing workshop, Songlian was trapped in a deep courtyard, Qiu Ju pushed out her belly to demand justice, and Jiazhen guarded a shattered home amidst political movements. The characters came from the novel, and Gong Li gave them bodies, expressions, and personalities. Zhang Yimou then created unforgettable screen images for them.
What is Tian Tian afraid of? What am I afraid of? Not afraid. What gates are you managing?
Ju Dou was adapted from Liu Heng's Fuxi Fuxi. The tragedy in the novel took place in the Taihang Mountains. Zhang Yimou moved it to a dyeing workshop in a certain locality in the south. Fabrics could be hung down from high places, and dyeing vats could continuously emit steam. Red, yellow, and blue colors saturated the screen with desire and taboos. Ju Dou suffered abuse, had an affair, gave birth, and was eventually swallowed up by patriarchal relations. This destiny was written by Liu Heng. The dyeing workshop and colors were Zhang Yimou's craft.
Raise the Red Lantern is even more typical. Su Tong's Wives and Concubines depicts the desires, scheming, and destruction of several women in a patriarchal family. The film moved the story into a closed-off compound and further increased and reinforced rules such as lighting lanterns, extinguishing lanterns, sealing lanterns, and foot-beating. High walls trapped people in individual courtyards, and high-angle shots made the entire residence look like a chessboard. Whichever courtyard the red lantern lit up in, that person received favor; the moment a lantern was sealed, that woman was sentenced to being out. Songlian faked a pregnancy to vie for favor, the maid Yan'er secretly lit lanterns in her room, and Meishan was finally taken into the house of the dead. Women vied for scraps of advantage within this set of rules and could be killed by the rules at any moment. Zhang Yimou turned patriarchy into a complete set of visible rituals. This was naturally a very clever film adaptation. Yet from this, one can also see his later habit: complex people placed into neat compositions. The audience remembered the red lanterns, but might not necessarily remember what the woman beneath the lanterns was actually afraid of.
"The Story of Qiu Ju" seemed to use a completely different filming approach. The story came from Chen Yuanbin's novella The Conceited lawsuit. The writer Liu Heng spent another two months writing the script. Zhang Yimou once shared a small detail: after everyone finished eating roast duck, they left the duck carcass for Liu Heng; Liu Heng would write until 1 or 2 in the morning at night and boil a pot of duck carcass soup. As the script was nearing completion, Zhang Yimou worried that the film would turn into an ordinary rural story film, so he dropped the original plan and switched to a documentary-style approach, even having Gong Li blend into real crowds for filming. Zhang Yimou did not just repeat himself. He was extremely sensitive to form and dared to temporarily swap out an entire filming approach. Yet why did Qiu Ju insist on demanding an explanation? Why did rural customs and human feelings collide with national law? And how did a farm woman step into the bureaucratic system? These questions that truly sustained the film had already been written by Chen Yuanbin and Liu Heng in the novel and script. What Zhang Yimou changed was the way the audience saw these questions. "The Story of Qiu Ju" won the Golden Lion at Venice, and Gong Li won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress. Zhang Yimou's fame grew even larger, but the film's power still could not be separated from Gong Li. She played Qiu Ju as both clumsy and stubborn. It was only those shots hidden among the street crowds that kept this film from degenerating into a formalist game.
By To Live, literature bore even more of the burden for Zhang Yimou.
Will open to see you and scatter. I look toward you. I miss my family and want to see people very much, right? Started calling it not gambling
Yu Hua's novel and the screenplay co-written by Lu Wei place a family inside the Chinese Civil War, the Land Reform, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. Fugui loses his family property to Long'er, who is later executed precisely because of this property, making Fugui grateful that he lost his family's wealth. When Fengxia is about to give birth, the experienced doctors have already been locked up by the Red Guards; after finally managing to find someone, he eats too many steamed buns out of extreme hunger and is utterly powerless to save Fengxia from hemorrhaging to death. Political movements are not just a distant background; time and again, they barge into this home, taking away the family members one by one. Zhang Yimou added shadow play to the film. The wooden box for the shadow puppets follows Fugui through wars, famines, and political movements. The little figures on the stage are pulled by strings, and the living people offstage do not have many choices either. This design is very precise, but why the characters are reduced to this point, and how politics rages through everyday life—the skeleton still comes from Yu Hua. The film is milder than the novel, with fewer deaths. The ending also leaves the audience with a slight hope that life can still go on. Because of this, more people are able to accept the story, and the utter despair found in Yu Hua's novel is lessened. To Live was not released in mainland China, but it won the Grand Prix at Cannes, and Ge You also won the Best Actor award. These achievements pushed Zhang Yimou to the position of a master and made many believe that he is a director concerned with the political fate of ordinary people.
Zhang Yimou does not simply copy the novel; he has an astonishing ability in his command of color, space, and actors. Yet the heaviest parts of a movie—why people suffer, how the system harms them, and why the characters deserve sympathy—were mostly written by the writers first. Mo Yan writes about vitality, Liu Heng about patriarchal tragedy, Su Tong about the predicaments of women, Chen Yuanbin about power and law, and Yu Hua about the political destiny of 20th-century Chinese people. What Zhang Yimou excels at is turning these contents into cinematic images that audiences cannot forget. Zhang Yimou himself admits this, stating that literary works are the matrix of films, and the director is merely a craftsman who tells stories through images. He also explicitly stated that he is not the kind of auteur artist who must establish a personal ideological system. In 1994, when discussing film and literature, the title he used was Literature Carries Film Forward. Right up until To Live, Zhang Yimou's most weighty works were provided with characters and ideas by literature, while he was responsible for turning them into films. He is an immensely talented craftsman, but those humanistic concerns were not originally inherent in his own heart. Later on, when the primary client was no longer literature, this distinction became increasingly obvious.
How should we view these past 10 years? Looking at television festivals around the world today, watching Chinese films gives the impression that China is a nouveau riche. People also understand that the era when the Fifth Generation swept awards at various film festivals has passed. It is not that our standards have declined; rather, their tastes have changed.
By the end of the 1990s, the environment for Chinese films had changed. Imported blockbusters entered the market, private capital began making films, and the theater chain reform pushed distribution and exhibition into competition. In the past, when shooting a film, directors mainly considered whether the film studio would approve it and whether film festivals would select it; now, they also had to calculate whether the investment could be recouped, which stars could sell tickets, and what kind of Chinese films foreign distributors would be willing to pay for. Zhang Yimou adapted very quickly. Beginning in 1998, he started preparing Hero. After Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon succeeded, he briefly wanted to give up, fearing others would say he was jumping on the bandwagon. Later, he felt that if he filmed a few years later, he would still be accused of the same, so he might as well film now, at least becoming the first in the mainland to do so. He expressed this calculation very directly: secular problems should be solved with secular solutions.
Hero did not initially have a scale of over 200 million yuan. Zhang Yimou asked Bill Kong, the producer of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, to help find a martial arts choreographer. After reading the script, Bill Kong offered to invest himself and suggested hiring Jet Li. Once Jet Li agreed to join, the budget had to increase by 10 million yuan for his salary. Zhang Yimou asked: Can we make it back? Bill Kong said yes. Subsequently, Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung also joined. The more famous the actors, the larger the budget. Before shooting even began, stars, investment, and overseas distribution were already tied together. When Zhang Yimou later talked about commercial blockbusters, he said that such films were inherently made for the market. Overseas distributors wanted action genres, and without action, even if the most famous Chinese actors were invited, the price would drop immediately. At this point, capital is no longer just responsible for providing money; it also begins to determine what actors the film should have, what story it should tell, and how it should be shot.
In Hero, one can still see Zhang Yimou's control over color and composition. Every time Nameless tells a version of the story, the costumes, the forest, and the palace change to a different color. The audience may not be able to clearly describe what kind of people Broken Sword, Flying Snow, and Moon are, but it is hard to forget the sky full of yellow leaves, the fluttering red clothes, and the rain of arrows pressing down on the city. At the end of the film, Nameless is made to give up on assassinating the King of Qin. The concept of "All Under Heaven" (the world/the realm) outweighs personal hatred. The unification by the King of Qin is also described as a necessary historical price to pay. The audience does not see how the King of Qin will rule, only an assassin walking toward the arrow formation for the sake of the realm. The King of Qin is understood, while the individual's death is filmed in a very heroic manner. Zhang Yimou later admitted that after Hero was released, many people criticized him for glorifying Qin Shi Huang and totalitarianism. He also said that he had cut thirty seconds from the film. The original idea was: after Nameless is shot to death, the King of Qin sheds tears. However, eight hundred ministers suddenly burst into laughter, collectively congratulating the King of Qin: "Congratulations, Your Majesty, you have escaped another disaster." In this way, the audience would suspect that Nameless's so-called sacrifice for the realm might have been under the King of Qin's calculation from beginning to end. These thirty seconds were ultimately not filmed. Zhang Yimou explained that at the time, his mind was full of "heroes" and could not accommodate another idea. Thus, the scene of eight hundred ministers shouting to kill was kept, while the ending that could have exposed the King of Qin's calculations was abandoned by himself. The film's momentum became more complete, and the suspicion of power disappeared. In 2002, Hero premiered at the Great Hall of the People. The choice of this location combined with the theme of assassinating the King of Qin is quite thought-provoking. In the end, the domestic box office exceeded 200 million yuan, becoming a symbol of Chinese commercial blockbusters. The audiovisual rights were auctioned, product placement ads were sold in advance, overseas distribution was negotiated beforehand, and television stations played trailers continuously. The producer later told Zhang Yimou that the audience for one Hero might equal the sum of his previous ten films. Zhang Yimou said he also noticed this.
The Golden Bear award made Zhang Yimou a famous director, while Hero showed him how much market value a director's fame can bring when tied to stars, marketing, and grand narratives. Early films required the audience to follow Qiu Ju through many detours to slowly understand why she insisted on seeking justice. Commercial blockbusters must constantly stimulate the audience within two hours. Arrow formations, palaces, large doses of visual spectacle, and stars must appear in turns. Later, House of Flying Daggers and Curse of the Golden Flower continued on this path. Bamboo forests, seas of flowers, golden armor, chrysanthemums, plus rows of palace maids and soldiers—the screen became increasingly crowded, and the characters became more like color blocks in the frame. When Curse of the Golden Flower was in preparation, Huang Xuan, who was still a student, auditioned. He spent more than half a year on makeup tests and thought he had secured the role of the little prince. Later, the production team added Jay Chou for distribution purposes, and the character relationships and ages were adjusted accordingly. Huang Xuan was replaced. At the premiere, the school sent him to be a backup dancer. A young man who thought he would be sitting in the main creative seat ended up standing in the back row of the stage. Huang Xuan's experience perfectly laid out the rules of commercial blockbusters: roles can be modified for stars, stories can be simplified according to the requirements of overseas market genres, and ordinary actors can be turned from characters into background at any time. Zhang Yimou accepted these rules and executed them beautifully with his visual capabilities. Years later, he said A Simple Noodle Story was his least satisfying work. The production company wanted to catch the popularity of Xiao Shenyang, and it was filmed in a rush before the script was mature. He called this situation "commercial coercion." But by this time, Zhang Yimou was no longer a newcomer without choices. He had international prestige and the ability to select projects. Capital should be held responsible for the failure of A Simple Noodle Story, but Zhang Yimou, having taken on the project, also had to be responsible for his own choices. Film box office has its ups and downs, but tourism performances can sell tickets every day. Impression Liu Sanjie made Zhang Yimou realize that a director's name can not only sell a movie but also engage in commercial operations with the government. This project was promoted by the Guangxi side, started preparation in 1998, and officially premiered in Yangshuo in 2004. Two kilometers of the Li River surface became the stage, twelve mountain peaks became the background, and hundreds of local actors and fishermen participated in the performance.
The host asked Zhang Yimou why the locals sought him out. Zhang Yimou said that the initiators first considered business, eyeing the fame of Turandot and Raise the Red Lantern, and wanted to use his brand to drive tourism. He also admitted that he was a signboard for the project and mainly adopted a macro-control creative method.
Zhang Yimou once envisioned illuminating all twelve mountain peaks, letting the distant mountains change colors with the performance, and even discussed building a power plant nearby specifically for electricity supply. Due to insufficient funds, this plan was not realized. In his vision, the landscape was no longer just scenery, but a giant theater that could be controlled by lighting.
Zhang Yimou also admitted that after Wang Chaoge and Fan Yue joined, many specific ideas came from these two co-directors. He could not stay in Yangshuo for long, mainly responsible for meetings, determining the direction, and providing the brand. In this way, the model became easier to replicate. Zhang Yimou did not have to stay on-site every day; as long as various places provided landscapes, funds, and local culture, and were equipped with a long-term execution team, the Impression series could continue. In 2006, Impression Lijiang began performing on the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain at an altitude of over 3,000 meters.
During a 2009 CCTV interview, it suddenly started raining on site. The actors performed as usual, and the audience watched the show wearing raincoats. More than 500 actors came from various local ethnic groups. A Pumi youth named Zhashi Cili said that he used to work odd jobs elsewhere with very low income, but after joining the performances, he could make 3,000 to 4,000 RMB per month, and his family members all asked him to help introduce jobs. During the peak season, they had to perform three to four shows a day. The operating company claimed at the time that the 87 million RMB investment could be recovered in two years.
These projects indeed increased income for some locals and brought tourists to the region, but those actors on stage, referred to as primitive ecology, were both showcased as ethnic culture and required to perform repeatedly in the rain and scorching sun year after year. Zhang Yimou’s name was printed on the posters, but what truly sustained the performances day after day were still the local actors and the on-site production teams.
After the success of the project, local governments and enterprises came knocking one after another. Fan Yue said that at that time, more than 20 cities and regions were waiting for cooperation, and people called almost every week. IDG Capital also entered the company, hoping to turn a stage performance into a cultural industry that could be replicated everywhere. IDG Capital was one of the earliest foreign venture capital institutions to enter China, long investing in technology, internet, and consumer enterprises. By 2016, a listed company acquired all equity in Impression Wonders for 1.9 billion RMB. Transaction materials showed that Zhang Yimou previously indirectly owned a 25% stake in Impression Wonders through a shareholding platform. One-quarter of the 1.9 billion RMB could not be directly counted as his personal income, but the documents at least demonstrated that he did not just collect director service fees, but also shared in the company's value appreciation through shareholding. From then on, Zhang Yimou's name had transformed from a signature on works into a commodity label. Local governments needed tourism projects and political achievements, investors needed an easy-to-pitch story, and as long as Zhang Yimou's name appeared on the poster, the project became much easier to get approved and sell tickets for. As for how much Wang Chaoge, Fan Yue, and the on-site team actually did, it was hard for ordinary tourists to know.
This business did not succeed every time. Some Impression projects made money, while others suffered losses year after year. The operating company of Impression Liu Sanjie even eventually entered bankruptcy reorganization. When the projects were launched, local governments, capital, and famous directors could all spin plausible justifications. After the projects incurred losses, the costs of building roads, constructing theaters, purchasing equipment, and long-term operation were often left for the locals to continue bearing.
China's 2009 railway promotional video brought this client-contractor relationship directly into the open. According to disclosures, the project production cost was 18.5 million RMB, and Zhang Yimou stated that his after-tax remuneration was 2.5 million RMB. He originally wanted to string the whole film together with characters and emotions, but the Ministry of Railways demanded stuffing in a massive amount of information. In the end, they had to retain numerous subtitles, and even he himself was unsatisfied with the final cut. Being unsatisfied did not prevent the delivery of the film and the collection of remuneration; the Ministry of Railways decided what the promotional video must say, Zhang Yimou was responsible for shooting those requirements, and his name was added to the title sequence.
When he was young, he used his visual capabilities to serve literature; by this point, that exact same set of capabilities began directly serving the propaganda of government departments. Yet capital and local authorities were still not his heaviest clients. Long before Hero was released, Zhang Yimou had already voluntarily stepped into an even larger project, explicitly stating that he was willing to put filmmaking aside for it, such as the Olympic opening ceremony.
Oh my god, the mood of the Chinese people back then was joking! You were moved to pieces! How could you possibly fall asleep?
In 2001, Beijing bid for the Olympics, and Zhang Yimou served as the chief director of the bid's promotional video. Beijing Mayor Liu Qi felt that the video was not energetic enough and asked him if he could add majestic gongs and drums. Zhang Yimou immediately changed the gongs and drums to the rhythm of a sports competition, saying that this would look like Chinese people cheering for athletes and the Olympics. In order to capture a few seconds of grand scenes, the Universiade opening ceremony rehearsal originally scheduled for a month later was brought forward, and tens of people completed two full rehearsals in the scorching heat with no audience on site, only film crews. Zhang Yimou later explained that when the actors saw themselves in the bid video, they would feel that this sweat had not been shed in vain. Behind those few seconds of bustle in the bid video were tens of thousands of people whose schedules were temporarily altered to attend two rehearsals. After the promotional video was submitted for review, the leadership of the Beijing Olympic Games Bid Committee felt the strength was still insufficient and failed to capture the Chinese people's enthusiasm for bidding for the Olympics. The team stayed up for several straight nights, re-editing and recomposing the music until Liu Qi was satisfied.
Zhang Yimou also helped Vice Premier Li Lanqing choose his shirt and tie, and reminded him to control the volume of his speech. How the delegation smiled, walked, and applauded was also rehearsed in advance. In this system of work, ordinary masses and national leaders alike were part of the national image, all needing to be color-corrected through Zhang Yimou's hands.
Zhang Yimou was very eager to take on this project. After the successful bid for the Olympics, a reporter asked him if he wanted to direct the opening and closing ceremonies, and he said he hoped to become the first choice. Even if it meant preparing for three or four years, making one or two fewer films, or even temporarily setting aside other matters, he was willing. This was because the Olympic Games could showcase the national strength and technology of China, and audiences from all over the world combined were incomparable to any film. What he valued was not just the large audience; behind the Olympics was the entire state apparatus, and money, people, venues, and communication channels were incomparable to a single film. Political power would also determine what was ultimately expressed, and Zhang Yimou knew very well how much resource, prestige, and status this position could bring, so he actively fought for it. This position was fought for by himself.
Before the opening ceremony in 2008, a review was held in the Bird's Nest. Three members of the Political Bureau Standing Committee and more than thirty ministers and vice-ministers attended. The room could not hold everyone, and some vice-ministers had to sit against the wall. Zhang Yimou sat in the back, listening and taking notes on opinions. After more than an hour, the leaders told the director team that these opinions did not need to be followed entirely, and those that fit the laws of art could be absorbed. Recalling this matter, Zhang Yimou said that it was indeed very democratic, and the leaders did not want to disrupt the artists' train of thought. Three Standing Committee members and more than thirty ministers watching the show and giving opinions together already explained who the final client was. The leaders allowed the directors to retain some professional judgment within the established direction, and Zhang Yimou felt this was democracy. He had long accepted this division of labor: politics decides what to say, and he decides how to realize it most brilliantly.
The opening ceremony was meant to let the world see a China with a long history, strong national power, tight organization, and a united people. Zhang Yimou handed these requirements over to tens of thousands of performers. Xinhua News Agency reported on the training of the fou-drumming performers, where each soldier had to complete more than 1,000 movements, including 45 drum beats, 212 movement changes, 300 kneeling motions, and 240 squats. Where the feet were placed, the angle of the head lifted, and the height of the horse stance were all calibrated repeatedly with positioning points and guide lines. Zhang Yimou later praised the army, specifically mentioning obedience to command, submission to the overall situation, strict discipline, and selfless dedication, saying they accomplished tasks that no other group could. What he valued was not only the physical fitness of the soldiers, but also the army's most basic organizational method: once an order was given, everyone put their own feelings aside and got the movements uniform first.
That was also the case with the movable type printing segment. Audiences saw from above thousands of type blocks rising and falling together, thinking it was a precision machine, but inside it actually hid 897 soldiers. Each type block was only 75 centimeters long and wide, and 1.4 meters high. On the day of the official performance, they crawled in at 2:00 PM and bent over waiting for six or seven hours in the stuffy heat of Beijing's midsummer. Because they could not just come out to use the restroom, they wore adult diapers onto the stage. A simple lifting movement was practiced for months. What the audience saw were neatly rising and falling Chinese characters, and the camera did not tell them that the people inside the type blocks had been bent over waiting for six or seven hours. The more precise the neatness Zhang Yimou pursued, the more the human body had to submit. Once a performer showed fatigue, hesitation, or their own rhythm, that perfect whole would be destroyed.
"Ode to the Motherland" then placed this trade-off onto two children. Near a dress rehearsal before the opening, a Political Bureau leader listened and suggested that Lin Miaoke's voice must be changed. The director team ultimately kept Lin Miaoke's image while using Yang Peiyi's recording. Music Director Chen Qigang later explained that Yang Peiyi had the best voice, while Lin Miaoke was more suitable for the screen, thus combining the most perfect voice and the most perfect image. He called this national interest, and said this arrangement was fair to both children. The result was that one child showed her face, and the other provided her voice. Lin Miaoke was seen by the whole world, while Yang Peiyi's name did not appear that night. National leaders made demands, the director team completed adjustments, and the music director then explained it using national interest. Whether the two children were willing and whether the audience had the right to know the truth were both placed behind the perfect national image.
The tower of memory in the closing ceremony sent people 30 meters high. Guo Jianlong, a soldier who participated in the performance, recalled that at most, he climbed up and down 190 times in a single morning, resting for only 20 minutes; some practiced until their palms were bloody and bruised, yet the executive director still said the soldiers fought for the highest and most dangerous positions, and those replaced to the bottom layer would feel they lost face. When some were eliminated, they said they obeyed on the surface, but tears fell from their eyes. These soldiers might truly have regarded the performance as an honor, and the director team relied precisely on this sense of honor to make people accept danger, pain, and long hours of training. In the end, wounds and tears both became proof of a spirit of dedication, and the audience only saw the neatness and grandeur on the tower.
When discussing fascist aesthetics, Susan Sontag summarized several common forms: gathering large crowds, turning people into objects that can be manipulated, replicating the same movements exponentially, and using militarized precision to make individual bodies submit to a powerful whole. The drum beating, the movable type, and the human phalanx are highly similar to these characteristics. The key to fascist aesthetics lies not in the number of people or the uniformity of movements, but in how people are used. In these programs, individuals must erase their differences so that submission can appear sublime. A child's true identity can give way to the image of the state, and the performer's body can give way to the overall effect; what the audience admires is precisely the power of a whole to mobilize individuals at will.
Zhang Yimou did not create this political system of the CCP, and many decisions regarding the Olympics were not made by him alone. However, he cannot claim to be merely a craftsman behind the lens. He actively sought the role of chief director, participated in selecting and training people, coordinated and presented the show, and publicly praised the virtues of obeying the big picture and strict discipline. The CCP handed him the army, the venues, and the political tasks, and he used his talent to make submission look magnificent, hide the sacrifices backstage, and turn state will into an exciting visual experience. After the Olympics, the title of "National Master" became increasingly prominent; it was not just praising a director's ability, but also pointing to his new role. Whatever the CCP wanted the world to see, he was responsible for turning it into a beautiful image. After the Bird's Nest, Zhang Yimou became one of the directors most trusted by the state for large-scale events. His name appeared simultaneously in commercial films, tourism performances, ministry propaganda, and national celebrations. While the purposes of the projects differed, his working method rarely changed: the client sets the theme first, and he then uses colors, lighting, formations, and technology to amplify the theme until it is instantly understandable to everyone.
In 2016, the Hangzhou G20 Summit was the largest diplomatic event since Xi Jinping took office. Zhang Yimou directed "Most Memorable Is Hangzhou" on West Lake, where symphonies, ballet, tea-picking dances, and water projections were brought together to piece together a China that was classical, modern, gentle, and open. The actors and the orchestra rehearsed continuously throughout the midsummer; the musicians of the Hangzhou Philharmonic called that month "military training." This diplomatic event did not require the earth-shattering momentum of 2008, so Zhang Yimou put away the drums and phalanxes, replacing them with the landscapes of Jiangnan. The state wanted to appear composed, so he filmed China as having no contradictions and no noise. After the summit ended, the original "Impression West Lake" was revised into "Most Memorable Is Hangzhou" for tourists. The state event provided the most expensive promotion for the program, and local tourism continued to sell tickets. Zhang Yimou had become very proficient at putting political tasks, local business, and his own brand into the same project.
For the 2019 National Day 70th Anniversary gala, he served as chief director again. 3,290 mass performers, each holding a light-emitting screen, ran to their positions according to modules pre-calculated by computers and on-site commands, eventually forming the Great Wall, kites, peace doves, and the five-star red flag. Zhang Yimou described the gala as free, vivid, joyful, and lively, and also designed the "Long Live the People" fireworks, saying he wanted to present a picture of a prosperous and peaceful era. The people dancing freely in the center of the field were indeed more relaxed than the military phalanxes of 2008. However, the 3,290 people responsible for the "puzzle" still had to walk to designated positions at designated times and hold up screens of designated colors. Each person only controlled a small piece of the image, while the complete pattern was determined by computers and the master control system. The freedom in Zhang Yimou's words did not change the most basic relationship of this performance: a few people design the overall picture, while the majority complete their own grid according to commands.
In 2021, "Most Memorable Is Shaoshan Chong" premiered at the newly built Red Star Theater in Shaoshan, with Zhang Yimou as chief director. The project was jointly invested by Hunan Caixin Financial Holdings, IDG Capital, and Xiangtan Industrial Group. The official positioning was immersive revolutionary tradition education and red culture experience. This performance used poetry and songs to tell the story of Mao Zedong's family life, growth, quest, and revolution, starting from an individual finding a way out and leading up to the Chinese people standing up. On the 2,450-square-meter stage, hundreds of light bars, giant screens, water stages, and lifting stages operated in unison. The producers called the light matrix within it an upgraded version of the movable type performance from the Beijing Olympics. The Olympics used 897 people to control the type blocks, while Shaoshan used light units to form a matrix; the control method was more advanced, but it expressed the same thing: all units obey the master control, ultimately supporting a grand image of the state and the leader. Zhang Yimou said this was using modern concepts to interpret red culture. The fascist aesthetics from the Olympics thus entered red tourism: one center issues commands, all units respond in unison, and the leader becomes sacred within this uniformity.
When he was young, he painted portraits of Mao Zedong. At that time, his family background made him fearful, so he painted the portraits red and large to protect himself during political movements. Upon arriving in Shaoshan, this time no one held a big-character poster to force him; he voluntarily served as the chief director, using the latest stage technology to make Mao Zedong look large, bright, and correct once again. This forms a contrast with the film To Live that is hard to avoid. To Live depicted how the Cultural Revolution drove doctors out of hospitals, leaving Fengxia to die in chaos and ignorance. The Most Memorable Shaoshan Chong, when speaking of Mao Zedong, leaves behind only family affection, growth, exploration, and faith. The political movements he launched, and the disasters those movements caused for ordinary people, never entered the stage. Red tourism needs a Mao Zedong who can be revered, investors need projects that can sell tickets for a long time, and local governments need revolutionary education; Zhang Yimou turned all three needs into a spectacle of light and shadow. This is the kind of work a makeup artist for a prosperous age does: which places to light up, which parts of history to censor, how the leader appears, and how ordinary people appear—all influence how the audience understands this country. Zhang Yimou does not need to stand up and defend the Cultural Revolution; he only needs to delete the disasters, film the leader as approachable, film the masses as orderly, and film today as glorious, and the political propaganda is already complete.
His over-quota birth incident reveals another choice he made when facing power. In 2013, Zhang Yimou and Chen Ting admitted that they had three children, born in 2001, 2004, and 2006 respectively, and the two did not register their marriage until 2011. To hide the identity of the children's father, the teachers had never seen Zhang Yimou after the children started school. When the family went out, he and the children had to stay at least two hundred meters apart. He later admitted that he had a mentality of taking chances, hoping to muddle through. After the matter was exposed, his biggest worry was that the brand he had built with his works over many years would be destroyed overnight. The family planning department later collected 7,487,854 yuan in social maintenance fees from the two. Family planning is a brutal intervention by the state into private life; Zhang Yimou wanting to have more children should not have been a crime in itself, but what is worth discussing is how he handled it. He was famous, wealthy, and had access to the highest levels of power, yet he did not publicly oppose this policy that had harmed countless families. He chose to secretly circumvent the regulations, letting Chen Ting and the children live in a state where they could not publicly reveal the father's identity for a long time. When he encountered power in his private life, he dodged it and muddled through if he could; when power wanted to host the Olympics, National Day celebrations, and red performances, he was willing to stand at the very front. Publicly opposing the family planning policy would bring risks, but working on grand ceremonies for the regime could earn him prestige; every time, he chose the path that was safer and more beneficial to himself.
At the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, Zhang Yimou once again served as the chief director for the opening and closing ceremonies. He said that a person being able to direct the Olympics twice is because the motherland is strong, and he is very lucky. Having collaborated for more than twenty years, he understands very well how the CCP wants to introduce China, and the CCP also knows what he can deliver. In 2008, he relied on human phalanxes to represent a China that could be mobilized and follow orders. In 2022, large-scale LED floor screens, algorithms, and real-time imagery replaced many people, making the visuals clean, ethereal, and full of a sense of technology. At that time, Chinese society was still under strict pandemic control; lockdowns, health codes, and the plight of ordinary people did not enter the opening ceremony. What the whole world saw was a romantic, confident, and future-oriented powerful nation. Zhang Yimou changed his techniques and his aesthetics, but he was still completing the same task: making the China that the regime hopes to display look more beautiful than the real China.
You must not go see him, he is a class enemy.
Turning the clock back to 2014, let us look at Coming Home. This film is often seen as an attempt by Zhang Yimou to return to his early creative style: no longer filming blockbusters, no longer arranging human phalanxes, and re-examining how politics harms a family. But how far could the film go? Zhang Yimou made his choice before filming began. The original work is The Criminal Lu Yanshi by Yan Geling. The novel spent a great deal of space writing about labor camps and political reform, and how an intellectual was tortured by the system for a long time. After reading it, Zhang Yimou said that the labor camp part was filmed too lightly and was boring, and if filmed deeply, it probably couldn't be filmed at all. He simply gave up that part and only filmed the story after Lu Yanshi returned home, putting the harm caused by the era into an amnesiac wife, a husband who could not be recognized, and letters from the past. Zhang Yimou did not continue to film into the labor camp system; he knew that was the heaviest part of the story, and he also knew that if he filmed it deeply, the film would likely fail to pass censorship. Therefore, he only filmed how the victims continued to live with their trauma after the political movements ended. The audience would shed tears for Feng Wanyu, but it is difficult to see from the film who exactly sent Lu Yanshi to the labor camp, and who made this family what it is today? The letters in the film were not written by Zhang Yimou alone; Yan Geling, screenwriter Zou Jingzhi, literary planner Zhou Xiaofeng, and others wrote them separately, and he was responsible for editing and refining. From Red Sorghum to Coming Home, nearly thirty years have passed, and Zhang Yimou still needs writers to provide the characters' memories, pain, and emotions first, and then he uses actors, visuals, and rhythm to deliver them to the audience.
You can see his contradictions upon his return. He hasn't forgotten how politics once harmed ordinary people, and he still wants to film such harm, but he is only willing to film up to the point permitted by censorship; a step further might touch upon the power structure he has already attached himself to. Unwilling to take that step, he treats the tragedy caused by the system as a matter of waiting and love within a family. It was also during those years that Zhang Yimou spoke of his own personality, describing himself as a classic example of forbearance, possessing a side of resignation and extraordinary endurance. He said he did not admire this personality, but it had already grown into him. He also repeatedly emphasized that a director is merely a craftsman, unwilling to bear the responsibilities that the public places on cultural elites. The three words craftsman left him a way out: when directing the Olympics, National Day celebrations, and leader commemoration performances, he was the chief director mobilizing massive resources, willing to accept the review of supreme power and also accepting the reputation of national master; when people asked what politics these works served and what reality they concealed, he would say again that he only cared for his craft. The resources and honors were claimed by the chief director, while the responsibility was pushed onto the client.
In Coming Home, Lu Yanshi can only impersonate a reader of letters, sitting beside Feng Wanyu, reading the letters he wrote back then. Feng Wanyu fails to recognize him and still goes to the station every fifth day of the month to wait for her husband. Zhang Yimou knows where such tragedy comes from, and he knows what words cannot be spoken; in the end, he chooses to accompany the audience in tears, yet refuses to point out the power that created the tragedy. This choice makes Coming Home appear deeply affectionate, yet also cowardly. Zhang Yimou's diligence, technique, and visual talent are all real, and precisely because these skills are real, it is all the more necessary to question to whom he has surrendered them. Put these experiences together, and Zhang Yimou's changes are not complicated. In his early years, he borrowed depth from literature; later, he relied on capital to expand his fame and market; and later still, he turned the resources provided by the state apparatus into his highest achievement. The client has grown wealthier and more powerful, and his position has risen accordingly, while the specific individuals in his works have grown smaller and smaller. This is not a story of an artist being forced to abandon his ideals; every step Zhang Yimou took was calculated in terms of fame, resources, risk, and position. He fears losing what he has already gained, and he values the safety and benefits that power can provide, which is why time and again he chose the stronger client. Craftsman. This phrasing sounds humble, but in reality it evades the most crucial responsibility and commitment. The position of national master was not earned through a single political task, but accumulated through many choices over decades. Zhang Yimou understands how power wants others to see China, and he is willing to use the craft he spent a lifetime practicing to help power complete this picture. When looking at his reds, square formations, and fireworks in the future, one must not only ask whether the visuals look good, but also ask: whose voice is it speaking for, and who is it hiding away? That is all for today.
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