Golden Rooster Awards (金鸡奖), created in 1981, is the most prestigious film award in the Chinese language world. While this year’s film festival is the 32nd, it is also the first since it has been upgraded to an annual event. Previously, the festival was held every two years.

On the opening ceremony of the festival, some excellent Chinese films were screened for the first time in China.

COMMENTS FROM MINDS:

rbli88
Is the Golden Rooster held every year in Xiamen?

All Things Chinese
It wasn’t but is going to be from this year. I heard it will stay in Xiamen for five years straight.

Eric
Interesting. I get a sense of the Chinese movie industry as an echo from Hollywood.

However, now Hollywood movies are all left propaganda and a rewriting of history and instilling “leftist progressive” propaganda about how wonderful everything was before the European settlers arrived and destroyed everything.

It is quite ludicrous actually, it tries to portray all the native tribes as peaceful and wise, while in reality they were killing and scalping each other over territory and resources, you know kinda like them thar white settlers began to do.

It is very difficult to be a white male with dignity these days as we are begging for forgiveness for our sins and carrying out acts of self-flagellation (whipping ourselves as punishment for our sins).

soxfan1957
If I’m correct Hollywood is trying to invest in the Chinese movie industry because it is a growing business there. I just hope they don’t ruin a good thing like the movie “The Great Wall”. I do have hope for the live-action Mulan due out next year.

All Things Chinese
“The Great Wall” is a disgrace. But still, I’m quite confident the Chinese movie industry will be less likely to be corrupted by Hollywood as it’s gradually matured.

Eric
Sure hope that is so.

Hollywood likes to portray the US as the greatest democracy ever. While I’m no a socialist I do believe in helping those in need, but Hollywood distorted tales are corrupting the thinking, and so many people are getting a very unfactual idea of history from these movies, Dunkirk, for example, gives the impression that it was only “the little boats” that did the evacuation of soldiers, while it certainly assisted greatly most were brought out by the larger ships of the fleet.

I have after watching movies looked deeper into history only to find it grossly exaggerated or misleading, but sadly the populace believes the movie version over actual events. The words “based on a true story” do not make it a true story. So I hope that Chinese Hollywood stays with presenting a story and stays away from distortion. Sorry guys it was that a long tirade. 😨

All Things Chinese
Hollywood is the propaganda machine of Wall Street and the US corporate ruling group, but it does an excellent job of telling stories, including lying, cheating and distorting when it is needed.

Chinese movie industry so far by and large is much worse.

Many Chinese films are morally corrupt, such as those praising the Manchu invasion and occupation of China, and those glorifying the shameful concubine system, and those narrating silly love stories originally made up by a pathetic woman writer from Taiwan island, and those portraying contemporary Chinese urban lives in a fake Westernised setting (to some Chinese writers and directors Western lifestyle represents advanced modern lifestyle).

While some are so self-loathing and full of hatred of their own history and nation yet forgot to realise (or too dumb to realise) they are part of the people who shaped that national character and the history, others would be over self-indulgent which is enough to turn the audience (especially non-Chinese audience) off.

Apart from the stories, the performance in the recent decade is also a problem. I found most Chinese actors in their twenties (some of them received no professional training in acting at all with low literacy skills) and many Chinese actresses in their twenties, thirties even forties do not know even do not care how to act but just try to make themselves look pretty on the screen, although the men (known as Little Fresh Meat in blue eyeshadow and red lipstick) looking more like kathoeys freshly walking out of a Thailand clinic or Australian night club and the women looking more like cartoon figures from Japanese animation films.

Having said that, there are still some excellent movies coming from China, such as those who received major awards at the Golden Rooster 2019, including The Wandering Earth, So Long My Son and The Wind Guardian, just to name a few off the top of my head, as well as The Wild Goose Lake which is scheduled to be released on December 6. I haven’t watched it but would like to see it if it is screened here. From what I learned, it reveals the true reality of some rundown and forgotten corners in Chinese society without preaching and without manipulation of perspectives.

Eric
Little fresh meat in eye shadow and red lipstick, a most amusing description. 😁😁

All Things Chinese
Have you read The Three-Body Problem? Obama’s favourite sci-fi trilogy by Chinese engineer Liu Xingci (also the author of The Wandering Earth)?

What interests me most about his writing is not the structure and the rules of the universe he illustrates because it’s far from the truth. What’s really fascinating is his portrayal of the human world.

Firstly, he describes a futuristic world (which shall become reality here quite soon) that is autorun by artificial intelligence with robots taking care of all the basic production and repairing works. Since housing, clothing, food and transportation needs are supplied by the community for free, people can choose to do whatever things or jobs they aspire or enjoy to for self-improvement or extra financial rewards. This is more than socialism. This is communism.

Capitalist media has painted communism as totalitarianism without freedom for individuals to act and think differently. But it is not what communism originally meant and should mean. By nature, it should be quite opposite. 

However, when this system was forced into being prematurely and when this premature baby was born into a world it did not belong therefore encountering hostilities all around, the anxious mother became overprotective and harsh to the point that’s bordering totalitarianism. Sorry, I got a bit carried away.

Back to the book. The second aspect that fascinates me in the book is the femininity of the male populations in that futuristic world and the dominant collective psyche of cheap and silly compassion, typically exhibited in the attitudes of a dumb and unprincipled mother with many kids, dominates the human society.

We’ve already seen that in the extreme leftists, radical feminists and “environmental terrorists” in today’s world. It’s a warning sign over the loss of yin-yang balance. When the world is overwhelmed by yin, humanity is in a spiritual recession and won’t be able to withstand attacks from outside.

Chinese Films that Won the Golden Rooster Awards 2019

The Wandering Earth, the Winner of the Golden Roost for Best Film.

It is a 2019 Chinese science fiction film based on the novel by Chinese engineer Liu Cixin, the author of Three-Body Problem that won the Locus Award and Hugo Award.

The story is set in the far future when the sun has aged into a red giant and is about to engulf the Earth. In order to save humanity, a united earth government initiates a project to move the planet out of the Solar System, and the move will be propelled by 10,000 engines installed across the planet.

So Long, My Son, the Biggest Winner of the Golden Rooster Awards 2019

So Long, My Son reveals how the detrimental One Child Policy and a reckless privatisation move in the 90s tore apart the social fabric and devastated many ordinary working people’s lives.

The leading actor Wang Jinchun and the leading actress Yong Mei won the Golden Rooster for Best Actor and Best Actress respectively. The film also collected the awards for the best screenwriter and the best supporting actor.

Operation Red Sea, the Winner of the Best Golden Rooster Director

Operation Red Sea, a Chinese film directed by Wang Chaoxian, narrates how Chinese troops fought against international terrorists. The film won Golden Rooster for Best director.

The Woman Porter, the Winner of the Best Golden Rooster Opera Film 2019

The woman porter, created and performed by Shanghai Baoshan Huju Troup, is a Shanghai Opera in which the singers talk and sing in sweet Shanghai dialect.

Porters are delivering food, linen, fuel and building materials to the top of Mt. Emei in Sichuan Province.

A Buddhist temple on the top of Mt. Emei in Sichuan Province.

COMMENTS FROM MINDS:

Eric
That’s where the porters take that stuff. Wow respect. 😊

All Things Chinese
Yes, otherwise there is no way to get those supplies up to the top. It’s a very hard life. I saw them in other mountains – I felt very sad to watch them struggling with the heavy loads carried on a shoulder pole.

soxfan1957
Do all the inhabitants share in the responsibility of getting supplies?

All Things Chinese
No, they paid for the local labourers to do the work, the people who have no other skills to find a better job.

In the Shanghai Opera “The Woman Porter”, a widow raised her three kids by working as a mountain porter. They are a group of people struggling at the bottom level of Chinese society but never giving up.

The story depicts a dating and marriage reform occurred in China in the 1950s. Since 1949, the concubine system and forced marriage have been declared illegal in mainland China, although such practices kept going on in Taiwan island and Hong Kong area for a few more decades.

COMMENTS FROM MINDS:

SleepingDragon
Thanks. I am studying the history of Chinese dialects. The film may be 1957 ( I didn’t check) but subtitles should not be written in simplified Chinese as it began simplification starting 1958.

Eric
This movie sure has that 50’s sound about it.

All Things Chinese
The film was released in 1957. Subtitles could be added late on.

With regard to simplified Chinese characters, they were not invented in the 1950s but used for hundreds even thousands of years in China. The so-called traditional Chinese characters are in fact less traditional than the simplified ones. They were deliberately selected as the official scripts by alien Manchus rulers.

Eric
Ah the good old days when one could have a concubine, lol.

I did not realise they had forced marriage in china, so it is not exclusive to India, although they term it arranged and it is still happening. It still kind of happens even in England among the elites and Royals to a degree, ‘below their station’. Mostly from remnants of the class system where a person of ‘high breeding’ and wealth can not marry a poor pauper.

All Things Chinese
The concubine system is horrible, which is the worst aspect of traditional Chinese culture.

Yes, traditionally it is also regarded as arranged marriage in China, but arranged marriages often turn into forced marriages when the people who arrange the marriage and the couple who get into the marriage have different ideas.

The Wind Guardians – the Winner of the Best Golden Rooster Amination Film 2019

The Wind Guardians is a film about a blind kung fu boy’s battle against a powerful beast from the jungle and a group of violent criminals from a neighbouring village in defense of the people living in the town.

The Green Great Wall – Best Chinese Documentary 2019

The Green Great Wall won the Best Golden Rooster Documentary Award 2019.

The Wild Goose Lake – Best New Films Screened on Golden Rooster 2019

Chinese crime movie The Wild Goose Lake (Nanfang Chezhan de Juhui 南方车站的聚会) directed by Diao Yinan and starring Hu Ge was selected to compete for the Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festiva early this year. Diao Yinan is one of the best Chinese directors whose Black Coal won the Golden Bear prize for the best feature film, while Hu Ge is one of the best Chinese actors who played the leading role in the most acclaimed Chinese TV drama Nirvana in Fire. The film is scheduled to be released on December 6.

A First Farewell

A Chinese children’s movie narrates how kids grow by letting go of what they know.

COMMENTS FROM MINDS:

Eric
I like that “letting go of what you know”. We know something should be in a certain way or outcome but our expectation blinds us to see the reality or truth, as in being present. 😊

All Things Chinese
Earthly manifestations become the hurdles preventing us from obtaining enlightenment only when we are obsessed with them and attached to them and refuse to let them go. Otherwise, they can be turned into wonderful tools for gameplay.

Dwelling in the Fuchun River

A Chinese movie discusses how people handle an aging society.