Zhao Wei and Her Debut Film So Young: Nostalgia for the Innocent Adolescent

This chapter examines the filmmaker Zhao Wei and her directorial debut So Young (Zhiqingchun , 2013), which deals with the “good old days” of a group of good friends and college students. The success of the film has led to a trend in Chinese cinema for fi

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Zhao Wei and Her Debut Film So Young: Nostalgia for the Innocent Adolescent

Zhao Wei (b. 1976) is a popular entertainment idol, much loved by Chinese audiences. She became popular with the role she played in the 1998 TV drama hit, Princess Huanzhu (Huanzhugege, 1998), which was scripted by the famous Taiwan-based romance literature writer Qiongyao. Zhao Wei is a star in three distinct spheres of entertainment, being popular in film, TV and music circles. In 2007, when her career was flourishing, she enrolled on a Master’s course at the Beijing Film Academy to study directing, and her academic supervisor was the famous Chinese Fifth Generation filmmaker Tian Zhuangzhuang.1 After her studies in directing, Zhao Wei released her directorial debut (which was also her final assignment for her Master’s Degree), So Young (Zhiqingchun, 2013) in 2013,2 a typical work of “nostalgia for innocent adolescence” film subgenre that is currently proving popular within the Chinese-language film circle. The film proved extremely successful, achieving a box office income of more

1  Tian Zhuangzhuang is another important Fifth Generation director. Graduating from the directing department of the Beijing Film Academy in 1982, in 1985 he directed his early and representative film The Horse Thief (Daomazei, 1985), which depicts the traditional religious customs of the Tibet region. In 1991, he directed The Imperial Eunuch (Dataijian lilianying, 1991), which has been banned by the official censors. In 1992, his The Blue Kite (Lanfengzheng, 1992) was again banned as it touched upon the very sensitive topic—the Cultural Revolution. 2  So Young is adapted from the post-1980s female writer Xin Yiwu’s popular novel with the same title. It was the first contemporary youth novel to be adapted into a feature film. The theme song for the film is sung by the famous Chinese pop singer Faya Wong.

© The Author(s) 2017 S. Cai, Contemporary Chinese Films and Celebrity Directors, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-2966-0_5

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than 700 million RMB (a new box office record for a domestic Chinese love story film) and winning Zhao Wei numerous awards.3 This movie subgenre foregrounds the campus life of school or college students born in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. It is an analysis of friendship and love, with a particular focus on those more playful, disobedient, mischievous moments of young life. The experiences and memories of the youths are presented as being innocent, carefree, self-willed, romantic and optimistic. So Young is about a group of close college friends who were born in the 1970s, and it compares and contrasts their university experiences with their encounters in society after graduation. Following So Young, two similar themed 2014 films, Fleet of Time (Congcong nanian, 2014) and My Old Classmate (Tongzhuo de ni, 2014), portray the middle-­ school and university years of two pairs of student lovers, respectively. Both films recount the characters’ old days on the campus as they change from classmates to sweethearts. Although neither of t