Autumn Rain Qiu Yu and Chinese Japanophobia
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1984, Yellow Earth charged in on the chinese movie scene, dispersing the 4th generation director’s communist propaganda, trumpeting the 5th and 6th generation’s modernist cinematography and censure-defying subject matter. 20 years later, the 4th generation may be peaking its head out on the battlefield one more time under the guise of Autumn Rain, director Sun Tie’s over-dramatic blend of love, war, family and Beijing Opera.
Mr. He paces up the platform in the train station, waving an inscribed placard. Patter, patter and down in front of him trips Qiao Laofan, the hello-kitty cute japanese girl he was waiting for. This isn’t the beginning of the love story. Mr. He is a 60 year old Beijing Opera professor whose effeminate hand flourish and motherly croon–remnants from years of impersonating women–make his new apprentice feel at home in the Beijing Opera school. The love story flashes in the same night when his disgraceful son Heniao (a businessman fiii!) ceremoniously kneels on his threshold and begs to be let back and start training opera again. He has reformed his ways, he can therefore be received.
Qiao Laofan’s puppy-eyed looks and Heniao’s small acts of heroism–a Beijing Opera cartwheel over a car enables him to catch up to Qiao’s stolen purse–quickly confirm the inevitable. Soon the two are enacting a Beijing Opera love story both on stage and off. That means a lot of violins, plush slow mos, beauty lens shots prolonged through a sudden horrifying revelation, tears, separation and more tears. The revelation comes in the form of an e-mail (that is not in the Beijing Opera) from Qiao’s 84 year old father. Here, in a nutshell, is what he says “my dear daughter, you have fallen in love with a chinese man but the past must be remembered in order for it to be passed on to the future generations (beats me). I was in the japanese army when I was young and I killed your boyfriend’s grandfather.” Well that’s enough to send the chinese people in the room throwing up, Qiao and He Niao’s relationship into bye-bye land and Qiao out the door the same night. At that point, I paused and played that scene over again just to make sure I hadn’t slipped by something very drastic, something that would justify such a collective reaction.
The day after, I talked about this with my chinese office mates, they found nothing extreme about it. That’s a difference between western people and chinese people, or between me and chinese people. Somehow I feel such a reaction isn t justified, that love should supercede the scars of the past, that time shields descendants from their ancestors’ actions. But chinese people see things otherwise, ancestors deserve respect, their memory must be defended for tens of years after they disappear. This belief pervades all stratas of the chinese population (at least, according to my interviews).
Maybe for this reason that the lead of a front page article in one of today’s local newspapers is “There are some japanese people that like more and more to make unwarranted remarks on China”(Notice the deliberatly vague yet suggestive “some japanese people”"more and more“. Or that most of the chinese people I meet–including my 11 year old english student– will at some points in our conversation grimace and snap out “japanese people are bad” without justifying themselves. The implicit justification being 1938, the year Japan invaded China, the two countries steadly worsening political ties or Japan’s economic advance over China.
Which brings me to the question, is Autumn Rain a manifestation of this Japanophia? Is it a propagandistic film like those of the 1960s? Autumn Rain is more subtle than 4th generation films. The Japanese girl is far from any incarnation of evil, she could not be more radiant and friendly, nor her love for the chinese Heniao more pure, her filial respect more genuine. And in the end, the two do get back together, on stage and so symbolically in real life. She escapes only to come back and surprise Heniao as he is performing their favorite Beijing Opera. She enters into the spotlight adorned in brilliant silk and a dazzling flowered crown, and Heniao, finally realizing it is her and not his usual stage partner first fixes her like a wounded fox stares at its hunter. Then he erases his frown and in the same sweep forgives the past. He entones their duet. Pan up above their sparkling feathered headware onto the full house. The end.
But no, there still remain those troubling ten minutes of war footage featuring the japanese soldiers executing chinese villagers and using their body meat as stuffing for their lunch pastries.
In the final performance, exactly what and who is forgiven? The Japanese father’s absolution remains in doubt. Qiao certainly has everyone’s blessing in the end, but this comes with her performance of the chinese opera. At that point, she is not japanese anymore, she is assimilated into the chinese culture and then only is she fully accepted. Verdict, Autumn Rain too hasn’t forgotten its ancestors and has inherited much more from them then it lets on.
