MLA Style Works Cited bibliographical citation - film, DVD, videotape:

To Live  [China: Huozhe, 1994 ]. Dir. Zhang Yimou.  Wr. Yu Hua and Lu Wei. [Based on the novel
         Huozhe by Yu Hua.].  Perf. Ge You [Fugui] and Gong Li [Jiazhen].  Shanghai Film Studios -
         ERA International, 1994. DVD. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Home Entertainment: World Films,
         2003.

MLA Style Works Cited bibliographical citation - novel:

Yu Hua.  To Live: A Novel.  [Mandarin Chinese: Huo zhe, 1993.] Trans. Michael Berry.
          New York: Anchor-Random House, 2003.

Yu Hua (b. 1960 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China)

"Yu was born in 1960 in the province of Zhejiang. After finishing high school during the Cultural Revolution, he worked as a dentist for five years, from the age of 18 to 23, “spending my most precious youth in examining people’s opening mouths.” Yu gradually became bored with his job and began to envy professional artists working for government-sponsored cultural centers because they did not  have to go to the office early and could always idle away time on the street. In order to escape from his job as a dentist, he began to write stories in 1983 and submitted them to literary journals around the country" (Xin Zhang).

Yu Hua on "the magic of writing"
"As Yu explained, he feels that the magic of writing is that it gives writers a chance to express emotions and desires in a fictional world that are usually not easily expressible through other means. Writing also makes it possible for writers to experience another life. Yu felt after he became a professional writer that his "true" life was becoming more and more routine and boring while the fictional world he created in his writing became increasingly exciting and rich. Yu talked about how his own understanding of writing has changed over time. In his early years of writing, he felt that the characters in his novels were just symbols whose personalities, emotions, and desires were all under the full control of the writer. Gradually, he felt that his characters began to gain a life of their own: once the writer creates the characters, they begin to have their own voices which the writer can no longer control. Along the same lines, Yu compared short stories and novels: characters in novels are more independent of the writer. Furthermore, novels are easier to escape from the writer's control, and compared to short stories they make it easier for the writer  to experience a different, fictional life. For these reasons too, novels have a much higher market value than short stories" (Xin Zhang).

       Zhang Yimou was in secondary school when the Cultural Revolution broke out in 1966. As the son of a former member of the Kuomintang (Nationalist) army and a woman doctor, his background was considered politically questionable; he was forced to suspend his studies and, like so many of his contemporaries, go to work in the countryside. [See 1968 "re-education" of zhiqing during the Cultural Revolution.]  For 10 years, between 1968 and 1978, he worked on farms in Shanxi province and subsequently as a laborer in a spinning mill. During this time he developed his talents as a designer by drawing portraits of Chairman Mao and discovered an innate love of photography. He sold blood to earn enough money to purchase his first camera.

The “Fifth Generation” in the 1980s

            During the Cultural Revolution, the Beijing Film Academy, the prime teaching institution for anyone aspiring to a career in the cinema, remained closed. The most significant development for Chinese cinema came with the reopening of the Beijing Film Academy in 1978, after more than a decade of inactivity. The Beijing Film Academy reopened in 1978 in makeshift premises, offering courses in direction, scriptwriting, photography, design and acting.   Many in the entering class, through from privileged backgrounds, had spent their teens and early 20s as farm or factory workers, or even as militant Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution.  Zhang Yimou took the nationwide exam for a place at the Academy and passed with honors. Initially, however, he was disqualified because, at age 27, he was five years too old. After two unsuccessful appeals against the decision, he wrote directly to the Ministry of Culture, pointing out that he was over-age for the course only because he had spent 10 years doing assigned labor during the Cultural Revolution. The strategy paid off and, two months later, he was accepted in the Cinematography department, from which he graduated four years later.

        The graduating class of 1982, the first post-Cultural Revolution students, became known as the “Fifth Generation” of Chinese filmmakers.  As filmmakers they wanted to overthrow Chinese film’s past narrative and stylistic formulas.  Fifth Generation filmmakers were assigned to regional film studios and collaborated extensively, working together in different roles to create a new visual style for Chinese cinema: a mise-en-scene of open landscape and the colors of land and sky, in place of what they saw as the artificial studio interiors of conventional Chinese film style. Zhang Yimou was assigned to the Guanxi studio, which had been founded in 1974, towards the end of the Cultural Revolution. Lacking any clear production policy, the studio was open to suggestions from its new recruits who, in 1983, advocated the establishment of a Youth Production Unit.  This recommendation was readily accepted, and a young production crew, including Zhang Junzhao as director and Zhang Yimou as photographer, embarked on their first picture, One and the Eight, based on a narrative poem set during the war against the Japanese. The film ran into considerable trouble with the authorities and had to be amended in terms of plot and characterization before securing a release. The look of the film, however, remained intact, and it was the striking photographic quality achieved by Zhang Yimou that attracted most acclaim.  Zhang has explained that his film crew consciously reacted against the uniform lighting of most contemporary Chinese films and sought a harsh, monochromatic appearance appropriate to the story of prisoners offered a "Dirty Dozen style" opportunity to redeem themselves.  This was achieved by using natural light and shooting on full aperture on very fast film stock.

Following One and the Eight, Zhang Yimou acted as director of photography on the first two films of his contemporary at the Beijing Film Academy, Chen Kaige (b. 1952).  The first of these, Yellow Earth (1984), directed by Chen Kaige, effectively launched the fifth generation outside China and was much commended for its innovative camerawork, in which small figures were photographed against vast expanses of sky, the work of Kaige's classmate, cinematographer Zhang Yimou.  Chen Kaige's second film, The Big Parade, underwent extensive censorship and revision but again Zhang Yimou's camerawork, capturing the agonies of "square-bashing" in the grueling sun this time in widescreen, was much admired.

Zhang Yimou had long wanted to direct himself and was able to do so by transferring in 1985 from Guanxi studio to the X'ian studio, then run by the imaginative and entrepreneurial Wu Tianming.  Wu initially invited Zhang to join him in X'ian (where he had been born) to photograph his own upcoming production Old Well.  Zhang agreed on the understanding that he could then direct his own first film. In the end, Zhang Yimou not only photographed Old Well, but played the lead role himself, winning Best Actor Award at the Tokyo International Film Festival. (Though acting is only a subsidiary pursuit of Zhang Yimou's, he has also played the lead in the 1990 Hong Kong costume drama A Terra Cotta Warrior, opposite Gong Li).

         Zhang Yimou later directed Hong Gaoling (Red Sorghum, 1987), using another classmate Gu Changwei (b. 1957) as his cinematographer.  Though Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou worked together with common collaborators, their styles differed.  Chen’s films use a moving camera, long shots, and long takes to focus on group activities in open spaces.  Zhang Yimou’s Red Sorghum and later film works are more melodramatic, treating the social context of private lives painted in a rich visual style of bright colors.  But with other members of the Fifth Generation, Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou shared a common purpose: to leave behind the political abstractions and symbolism of earlier Chinese filmmakers and depict the works of politics and ideology on a more human level.  They wanted to film the daily life they had observed in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution.  Both Yellow Earth and Red Sorghum are set in rural China of the 1930s.

       Fifth Generation films began to win international admirers at overseas festivals in 1987, and in 1988 Red Sorghum won the prestigious top prize at the Berlin film festival.  But these films came under strong criticism at home in China: they were regarded as insufficiently respectful of official dogma, at the least.  Their aesthetic concern for visual and narrative subtlety was regarded as elitist, overly sophisticated for Chinese mass audiences.  Chinese critics debated old questions:  Should films be propaganda or art?  Should they please the masses or impress the world?  By the late 1980s, Fifth Generation filmmakers were facing choices similar to those of many filmmakers of many countries.  Should they stay at home with inadequate funding and possible censorship, or go abroad where financing and critical respect were offered?  And if they went abroad, would their films lose the cultural detail and national specificity that made them important in the first place?  These hard choices were thrown into a tragic context with the Tiananmen Square “massacre” of June 4, 1989, when the Chinese army crushed student and worker movements for “democracy” that had broken out throughout China in the spring of that year.  The policies of cultural liberalization that had marked the decade after the end of the Cultural Revolution, had set the stage for both students being able to speak out for political reform and for creative artists like Fifth Generation filmmakers to express their artistic visions more freely.  Since June 4, 1989, however, more stringent controls over political and creative expression have been enforced. 

        In 1987, studios took up full financial accountability so films were made with more of an eye to the market and to their entertainment value.  During this time, many of the Fifth Generation filmmakers started to target their films more towards the international art film circuit, with large-scale epic sagas of China—think Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine, Temptress Moon, or Zhang Yimou’s To Live.  Large-scale revolutionary films like The Decisive Engagement (Da juezhan, 1991) and more commercials films such as urban comedies went into production, and studios began to write off the more obscure, arty films of the Fifth Generation directors. This period (late 1980s to the present) also marked the birth of independent or foreign-financed cinema, giving rise to the so-called Sixth Generation. Unlike previous ‘generations,’ however, this group of filmmakers did not share similar schooling nor did they usually collaborate on projects—if anything, their only common ground was the fact of being defined as "post-Fifth Generation." Some directors grouped under this rubric include Zhang Yuan (Beijing Bastards, East Palace West Palace), Jiang Wen (In the Heat of the Sun, Devils at the Door), Zhang Yang (Spicy Love Soup, Shower), Wang Xiaoshuai (Frozen), Jia Zhangke (Xiao Wu, Platform).

            Despite these changes in the political and cultural climate of the Chinese film industry after 1989, Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige have been able to continue making films in China because of their international reputations and their ability to attract foreign funding (filmmaking is, it is well to remember, an expensive form of creative expression.)  For example, Zhang directed Ju Dou (1990) with Japanese financing and Dahong Denglong Gaogao Gue (Raise the Red Lantern, 1991) was made ostensibly with backing from Hong Kong.  Both of these works were nominated for a Hollywood Academy Award in the category of best foreign film released in the U.S.  The territory where cinema meets politics is murky.  Hou Hsiao-hsien (b. 1947) appears as the producer of Red Sorghum, but Hou is known as one of Taiwan’s most important directors of the 1980s.  In fact the China/Hong Kong production company of this film was from Taiwan, though a Hong Kong entity was nominally listed so that the film did not appear to breach the official enmity between The People’s Republic and Taiwan.  Cinema was pioneering a collaboration where politics still openly feared to tread.  Zhang Yimou made another film in 1992, Qiu Ju Da Guansi (The Story of Qiu Ju), which earned governmental disfavor: the film is set in contemporary rural China and tells the story of a farm woman’s struggles with the bureaucracy.  This film was shot in a realistic style while retaining Zhang’s characteristic rich color, and used primarily nonprofessional actors.

PLOT SUMMARY (Film Notes) - The 1940's
Compare to To Live Novel Notes: Fugui's Story 1 (plain text, pp. 8-43)

To Live (1994) "is a big, strong, energetic film, made by a filmmaker [Zhang Yimou] whose vision takes in four decades of his nation's history, and who stands apart from all the political currents, and sees that ordinary people everywhere basically want what his heroine cries out for, a quiet life. It is exciting to see these new films as they emerge from China. They are history being written, celebrated, and mourned" (Ebert).  "To Live is a simple title, but it conceals a universe. The film follows the life of one family in China, from the heady days of gambling dens in the 1940s to the austere hardship of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. And through all of their fierce struggles with fate, all of the political twists and turns they endure, their hope is basically one summed up by the heroine, a wife who loses wealth and position and children, and who says, 'All I ask is a quiet life together'" (Ebert).

Film Notes: The 1940s:
Fugui’s gambling results in dual crises: (1) his wife Jiazhen, convinced that her husband will never change his erring ways, leaves him, taking with her their daughter Fengxia and unborn son Youqing; and (2) Fuigui ultimately gambles away what's left of the Xu family hereditary home to his opponent Long'er; Fugui's father honors his son's debt and ceremoniously signs away the Xu family home to Long'er; then erupts in an angry fit of trying to beat his son, has a heart attack, and dies. Fugui’s mother survives the Xu family’s dramatic change of fortune and follows her son Fugui into impoverished living circumstances, but then takes to her bed ready to die. Fugui is in despair, belatedly contrite but truly feeling the loss of his wife and children.

Reunion of Fugui's family, then another separation: Hearing of the Xu family's misfortune and, more importantly, believing that Fugui has finally given up his compulsive gambling, Jiazhen and the children return to Fugui and his mother in their poor hovel. Fugui's mother is heartened enough (temporarily) by seeing the family reunited to rise from her death bed; contrite and loving Fugui is overjoyed and vows to devote his life to his family's happiness and well being. Humble Fugui visits successful gambling rival Long'er, new owner of the Xu family home, seeking a loan to start a shop; instead, Long'er gives his shadow-puppets to Fugui to earn a living for his family. Fugui assembles a puppet-troupe including Chunsheng and they begin a lucrative touring show.  But on one of these tours, Fugui and Chunsheng are abruptly and involuntarily conscripted into Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist army (Guomindang).  Fugui has no opportunity to let his family know what has happened to him and is separated from his family for several years.

Historical Background:  From mid-1930s and to the end of World War II (1939-1945), much of China was invaded and occupied by imperialist Japan (which became part of the Nazi Germany and fascist Italy "axis").  During this period, the two main rival Chinese factions--the Communists led by Mao Zedong and the Nationalists (Guomindang) led by Chiang Kai-shek--temporarily ceased fighting each other and joined in fighting against their common enemy Japan.  It is probably at the end of World War II that Fugui and Chunsheng are conscripted into the Nationalist Army (Guomindang). However, after Japan's defeat in World War II and withdrawal from mainland China in 1945, the two warring Chinese factions resumed civil war for control of mainland China, which rages from 1945 to 1949.  In 1949, Mao’s army emerges victorious, though this Chinese civil war is ruinous for the country.  Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist (Guomindang) forces consolidate and withdraw to Taiwan, setting up a rival Chinese government.

Some time during the Chinese civil war (1945-1949), Fuigui and Chunsheng were taken prisoner by Mao Zedong's communist “Liberation Army,” the puppet troupe performs for the Red Army troops, and they are finally given the option to return home.  Fugui chooses to go home carrying a document attesting his service to the Communist Red Army, while Chunsheng elects to stay (presumably attracted by the prospect of being allowed to drive Communist vehicles).

Compare to To Live Novel Notes: Fugui's Story 1 (plain text, pp. 8-43)

CHARACTERS - Film Notes: The 1940's
Compare to To Live Novel Notes: Fugui's Story 1 (plain text, pp. 8-43)

Fugui's father, surviving patriarch of the Xu family, is disgusted by his son Fugui's compulsive gambling, loudly and violently berating Fugui as a disrespectful son.  The irony is that in his dissolute ways, son Fugui takes after his father, who has already lost most of the Xu family estate.  When Fugui loses the remaining Xu family home to Long'er, Fugui's father must honor his son's debt and ceremoniously signs away the family home to Long'er, then erupts in an angry fit, and in trying to beat his son, has a heart attack, and dies early in the film.  

Jiazhen (pronounced something like Jya-zhun) is the admirable long-suffering wife of Xu Fugui.  At the beginning of the film, Jiazhen and their daughter Fengxia are neglected by the dissolute Fugui, a compulsive gambler; and Fugui has broken his promises to stop gambling despite the fact that Jiazhen is now pregnant with their second child (Youqing).  After a humiliating and unsuccessful attempt to stop her husband's gambling, a heart-broken Jiazhen finally decides she must leave Fugui and takes their daughter and unborn son home to live with her own parents. Later, after Fugui has finally lost everything but because she believes her errant husband has at last give up gambling for good, Jiazhen and their children return to Fugui and his ailing mother.  Jiazhen explains that she wants only a quiet, peaceful life with her family - together, safe, and happy. 

Fugui’s mother survives the Xu family’s dramatic change of fortune and her husband's death, the Xu matriarch dutifully follows her son Fugui into impoverished living circumstances, but in despair, soon takes to her bed ready and waiting to die. Some months later, when Jiazhen and the children return to Fugui and his mother in their poor hovel. Fugui's mother is heartened enough at seeing the remaining Xu family reunited to rise (at least temporarily) from her death bed.  The contrite and loving Fugui is overjoyed and vows to devote the rest of his life to his family's happiness and well being. 

Later, while her son Fugui is away for a long time--first, abducted for service in the National Army, then detained for further service with Mao Zetung's Red Communist Army--Fugui's mother will die in his absence.

Long'er is the gambler to whom Fugui loses the Xu ancestral home.  Long'er evicts the Xu family, moves into the Xu mansion, and begins enjoying the privileged life of a "landlord."  Some time later, impoverished Fugui humbles himself before his old gambling rival Long'er, asking to borrow money to set up a shop so that Fugui can support his newly reunited family.  Tight-fisted Long'er refuses money to fund a shop, but instead gives his shadow-puppets to Fugui, who, had earlier displayed a talent for singing accompaniment to shadow-puppet folk opera in his past gambling hall days.  Humbled Fugui can only accept Long'er's gift, but uses it to launch a successful traveling shadow-puppet troupe, which thrives well enough to support his reunited family. 

Later, during a performance in the mid-1940s, Fugui and his troupe will abruptly and involuntarily be drafted into the Nationalist Army to fight against Mao Zedong's Red Communist Army. 
Even later in the 1940s, after Mao Zedong's Army emerges victorious in the post-World War II Chinese Civil War, Long'er, rather than Fugui, will have to pay the ultimate price for being a "landlord" in an ironic twist of fate.

Fengxia (pronounced something like Fung-shya) is the daughter of Fugui and Jiazhen. Fengxia suffers a serious illness, entailing a high fever, which leaves her unable to speak and hard of hearing while her father Fugui is away, involuntarily conscripted into the Nationalist, then the Communist army.  “In fact, she’s lucky” to have survived and be alive at all, Fengxia's mother Jiazhen later explains to her father Fugui.  

Fengxia's disability will draw harassment from bullying town boys, against which her brave, adoring younger brother Youqing will defend his sister.
       Later, her parents will collaborate with Mr. Niu in finding Fengxia a husband—but, unlike arranged marriage practices in the earlier dynastic eras, Fengxia is consulted and agrees to this course of action.  She is allowed to “check out” these prospective husbands, finally takes a liking to Wan Erxi, a Red Guard of the Cultural Revolution; and agrees to marry him, though reluctant to leave her parents.  Their child is "Little Bun."

Youqing (pronounced something like Yoe-ching) is the spunky son of Fugui and Jiazhen.  When Jiazhen and Fengxia first return to poverty-striken Fugui and his mother, Jiazhen tells Fugui that she has named his son “Don’t Gamble.”  Youqing adores his older sister Fengxia and defends her from bullies, in one memorable case retaliating by pouring a chili-spiced bowl of noodles on the head of the chief of her tormentors.  As his mother observes later, Youqing never enjoyed a good night’s sleep during his young life.

Chunsheng (pronounced like Chwun-shung) is first seen working in the gambling hall where Fugui loses his ancestral home and, because of his gambling habit, his wife and children as well…for awhile.  Later Chunsheng joins Fugui’s shadow puppet troupe, traveling throughout the region of their original town (which is never named) to entertain.  Chungsheng  is conscripted with Fugui by the Nationalist Army, and they are both eventually taken prisoner by Mao Zedong's communist army.  Fugui and his troupe serves and entertains first the Nationalist, then the Communist armies. It is Chungsheng who robs Nationalist army corpses of their coats and hats to save his comrades through a bitterly cold night:  “In times like these,” Chunsheng says, “the living are more important.” Apolitical Fugui believes "there's nothing like family" and eagerly returns home to his family when he is finally allowed to do so. But Chunsheng, enamored of driving, enlists to pursue a career with Mao Zedong's communists. 

Ebert, Roger. "To Live."  [Film review.]  Chicago Sun-Times 23 Dec. 1994. Rpt. Current Reviews,
         Suntimes.com 2004.  23 Feb. 2004
         <http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/ebert_reviews/1994/12/957385.html>.

To Live  [China: Huozhe, 1994 ]. Dir. Zhang Yimou.  Wr. Yu Hua and Lu Wei. [Based on the novel
         Huozhe by Yu Hua.].  Perf. Ge You [Fugui] and Gong Li [Jiazhen].  Shanghai Film Studios -
         ERA International, 1994. DVD. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Home Entertainment: World Films,
         2003.

"To Live: Film Screening and Discussion by To Live Author Yu Hua following the Screening
        of the Film."  2 Nov. 2003. East Asian Languages and Literatures, Notre Dame Univ.  23 Feb.
        2004 <http://www.nd.edu/~isla/ISLA/webpages/thearts/asianstudies/hua/>.

Xin Zhang.  "A Conversation with Yu Hua."  UCLA Center for Chinese Studies. 2003. 23 Feb.
        2004 <http://www.international.ucla.edu/ccs/newsarticle.asp?parentid=5470> or
        <http://www.international.ucla.edu/ccs/article.asp?parentid=5470>.