Zeng Yulin

What marked the beginning of Chinese cinema a century ago was a black-white film version of a Peking Opera play named Dingjun Mountain. The beginning might appear quite obscure, but 100 years later, the western art is blooming even in a mountain area in central Zhejiang Province. The name of the town is Hengdian. The town used to be poverty itself. Today, the 100-km2 Hengdian is firmly on the map of China. It is the worlds largest producer and exporter of magnetic materials. And it is the worlds largest filming base. It is widely known as Chinas Hollywood.

Li Changchun, a member of the standing committee of the political bureau of the CPC, came to inspect Hengdian on the morning of June 7th, 2009. He spoke highly of the achievement of Hengdian due to its successful endeavors to create and maintain Chinas film production powerhouse through professionalism, commercialization, and industrialization.

History

Hengdian, in Dongyang City of central Zhejiang, was defined by poverty and backwardness for centuries until 1975 when Xu Wenrong, party chief of the production brigade under a peoples commune, led the local people in getting industrialized. The glory and wealth of todays Hengdian started with a small silk factory in 1975. The factory has grown into an industrial giant with a workforce of over 50,000 and the groups sales in 2008 topped 20 billion yuan.

Xu Wenrong hit upon the idea of building a filming base in 1994 when sightseeing at a filming location in Wuxi of Jiangsu Province. He saw huge crowds of tourists and became sharply aware of business opportunities. Shortly afterwards, he learned, on a business trip in Beijing, that a television studio was planning to shoot a long series of television drama and was looking around for an ideal location. Xu saw his opportunity and offered to build such a site for the shooting of the drama. The director of the television studio came to visit Hengdian and, after seeing what Hengdian was, dismissed Xus offer.

Xu Wenrong clung to his dear dream. His opportunity came again in the winter of 1995. Xie Jin, a high-profile film director, was totally frustrated by the painfully slow progress of the construction of a location site in the north for “The Opium War”, a film designed to celebrate the return of Hong Kong to the sovereignty of China in 1997. The film seemed doomed. Xie came to Hengdian on the afternoon of December 14, 1995. It was a shiny day. Xie Jin and Xu Wenrong shook hands on a deal that decided the fate of the film and Hengdian. The deal was signed on January 24, 1996. A few days later, a construction team began to work. A few months later, Guangzhou Street, a 100% imitation of an old street in 1840, took shape. The site measures 20 hectares. The shooting of the film started on August 8th, 1996 a scheduled. The film screened across the world on July 1st, 1997.

The miraculous construction of Guangzhou Street and the success of “The Opium War” put Hengdian on the map of the nations film industry. Xie Jin recommended Hengdian to Chen Kaige, who had been looking for a grand palace to shoot his “Assassinating the King of the Qin”. Xu Wenrong had an 110,000-square-meter palace compound built in eight months for the film. Director Zhang Yimou shot “Hero” at the site a few years later.

A palace compound of the Ming and the Qing dynasties, which measures 100 hectares, followed. In order to level the ground, Xu used large quantities of explosives. Many other imitation sites have been erected since the first street scene in 1996. Today, Hengdian World Studio represents an investment of billions. The site is larger than Hollywood or Bollywood in size. The design of Hengdian World Studios is so sophisticated that the site can be set for all kinds of films in ancient times. Films in various genres such as espionage, urban life, romances, kongfu, gun fights, and palace plots can be shot here. Many film and television blockbusters have been produced here.

Promotion

What makes Hengdian shine is more than its superb locations and architectures. Promotion has played a key part in what has turned Hengdian into what it is today. As a private business, Hengdian Group makes profit-oriented and long-term decisions. In March 2000, Hengdian World Studios announced that all of its sites and scenes would be free of charge for the use of shooting films and television dramas. The decision enabled Hengdian Group to dominate the market. Shooting crews flocked in for the sake of minimizing costs. Since August 2008, all the modernized studios in Hengdian have been free to all the shooting projects.

The free-of-charge policy has promoted the business dramatically. Hotels and restaurants under the Hengdian Group enjoy brisk business. Tourists flood in the hope of running into celebrated movie stars and peeping into highly publicized movies and television dramas in the making. And the Hengdian World Studios has a centralized service company that provides all kinds of services needed by filming crews. The company makes props and costumes, creates scenes, provides all kinds of things and equipment for rental, and provides special actors and small-time walks-on. The management team has a set of rules and regulations in place to make sure that no overcharging takes place.

Directors and producers love Hengdian, for Hengdian makes it possible to reduce costs greatly, and they keep coming back for their next big projects. Producers and directors from Hong Kong and Taiwan have used Hengdian for their blockbusters. And international directors and producers favor the site, too. Nearly 20 foreign films and television dramas have been made here.

After the 13-year development, Hengdian now represents a complete chain of film-making. With private capital and government policy support, Hengdian now provides a full range of services for film and television drama making. Producers can come to Hengdian with scripts and go away with finished films. The film-related business is flourishing. Professionals and tourists alike come to Hengdian to see exhibitions, get professional training, attend forums and conventions, seek consultancy, complete post productions, do sightseeing, and get entertained.

At present, Hengdian World Studios is trying to better use its resources created over the past 13 years and better develop tourism. On the drawing board is a large-scale theme park to display the cinema-related marvels and special effects.□