By Xu Zhongyou

Film director Feng Xiaogang arrived in Hangzhou on July 3, 2009 with the cast and crew of “Tangshan Earthquake”, his latest blockbuster scheduled for screening on July 28, 2010 on the 34th anniversary of the killer quake that rocked China in 1976.

The feature film is adapted from “Tremors”, a novel by Zhang Ling, a Chinese Canadian whose ancestral roots are in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province. The story is set against the killer quake that wiped out the city of Tangshan and killed more than 200,000 people. The story is about a girl named Wang Xiaodeng saved from the earth quake by PLA soldiers and later adopted by a couple in Hangzhou. Thats partly how Feng Xiaogang came to Hangzhou to shoot some first scenes of his next big thing.

He came to Hangzhou again also because his last blockbuster in 2008 called “If You Are the One” was partly shot in Westbrook Wetland, a national wetland reserve in the west suburb of Hangzhou. The film put Westbrook on the map of China again, for it used to be a national tourist attraction for hundreds of years. That blockbuster reaped more than 300 million yuan within 19 days from the box offices across the country. The grateful city government named a villa at the picturesque wetland park after Feng. The villa is now turned into a studio for the director.

July 7th, 2009 witnessed the team begin filming. Some shots were taken at Nanshan Road, a lakeside boulevard flanked by shady plane trees. A few shots were taken on the campus of Zhejiang University, where the orphan girl in the film is now studying. The next scene saw Wang and her boyfriend visit a Buddhist temple and pray for blessing. Another few shots were taken at Rose Garden, a high-end villa compound on the Qiantang River.

Feng Xiaogang, a director famed for his blockbusters screened in celebration of New Year Days over the past years, says that “Tangshan Earthquake” is not a New Year Celebration movie. Instead, it will be a movie in honor of the tragedy and the people. It pays homage to those who died in the earthquake and aims to show to the world how the city stands up again.

After spending more than ten days in Hangzhou, Feng Xiaogang and his team moved to Tangshan on July 28 to start the earthquake shooting. They will come back to Hangzhou in November to wrap up the shooting.

Feng Xiaogang started his New Year movies in 1988 when he tried to produce a short sequel to “Stories of the Editorial Department”, a blockbuster television sitcom in the 1980s. The three-episode sequel was created to celebrate the New Years Day. It caused a stir. Feng saw the market potentialities of the genre during the New Year celebrations. He started to make films that cater to that niche. Many of his New Year movies are blockbusters. His movies have netted an aggregate of 1.032 billion yuan at box offices across the country, making him the first director on the mainland who has ever hit the revenue threshold. □