China’s First Film, Dingjun Mountain

In 1895 the Lumière brothers first screened films publicly in Paris, marking the birth of cinema. Films soon reached China, and in 1896 “Western shadow plays” were shown at the Youyicun in Shanghai’s Xu Garden. Early films had images but no sound and were called silent films. In 1905 Ren Qingtai, owner of the Fengtai Photography Studio in Beijing, decided to make a Chinese film. He invited the Peking Opera star Tan Xinpei and filmed scenes from Tan’s Dingjun Mountain, including “Asking for Orders,” “Wielding the Sword” and “Fighting.” Drawn from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, it tells how the old Shu Han general Huang Zhong defeated the Cao Cao army at Dingjun Mountain and killed Xiahou Yuan. It was shown at the Daguanlou theater by Beijing’s Qianmen to crowds. As the first film made by Chinese, it makes 1905 the birth year of Chinese cinema, and the Fengtai studio and Daguanlou are called the “cradle of Chinese film.” In 1913 Zheng Zhengqiu and Zhang Shichuan made China’s first short feature, The Difficult Couple, in Shanghai. In 1931 China’s first sound film, Singing Girl Red Peony, was completed by the Mingxing Film Company. In the 1930s Shanghai became China’s film center, with fine works such as Song of the Fishermen and Street Angel, and the theme song of the film Children of Troubled Times, March of the Volunteers, later became the national anthem of the People’s Republic of China. Film enriched cultural life and became an important tool for spreading new ideas.