(JIN BO)
09/18/2002
Ashort scenic film about China that has been dazzling
visitors to Walt
Disney World in Florida, the United States, since 1982 is
to be updated
to showcase many new changes in the nation.
"Wonders of China" has been on show at the Epcot
Centre in a 360
degree cinema that makes viewers feel they are seeing
sights first-hand,
as if they are in the country itself.
"There has been a lot of changes in China over the
past 20 years,"
said David Katzman, a director of production of Walt
Disney
Imagineering.
"We are looking forward to working with the Chinese
Government
to give Walt Disney World guests a glimpse of modern
China."
In early September, a crew of American filmmakers and
their Chinese
counterparts from the China Research Institute of Film
Science
Technology began filming in Beijing, the first leg of
their two-month
trip, to capture new footage in seven Chinese cities.
Fresh spots
To add "modern elements," the crew have been
quite sensitive
in choosing locations to shoot.
In Beijing, the footage of Beihai Park, the Great Wall and
Tian'anmen Square will be renewed.
There is one scene of Nine-Dragon Wall (Jiulongbi), which
is located
inside Beihai Park.
"The reason we are filming the Nine-Dragon Wall again
is because
20 years ago most people were walking past it in blue and
grey. Now
people are dressed more colourfully," said director
Jeff Blyth, who
also directed the film 20 years ago.
The film will include some major additions such as footage
of Hong
Kong and Macao, which returned to China in 1997 and 1999
respectively.
In a bid to provide fresh views of city life of modern
China, the
crew will capture new footage of Shanghai, which has been
transformed
as a city.
The footage of Shanghai will include scenes on the Bund
and the
Nanjing Road.
"We are also doing small images of places such as the
People's Park,
some areas in Pudong, all those banks and the Stock
Market. Many
Westerners do not know Shanghai has a stock market like
New York,
and the film will give them a surprise," said Steve
Spiegel, show writer
at Disney who wrote the play of the new version.
Over the following two months, the crew will also go to
Urumqi, the
capital city of Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur
Autonomous Region.
There they will screen a wonderful night market featuring
a distinctive
style of minority people in the autonomous region, to give
the audience
a better understanding of the diversity of China.
But it is a tough mission to include in seven minutes all
the changes
China has gone through over the past 20 years, because the
changes
have been so unimaginably great.
Blyth, the director, was deeply impressed with what he saw
20 years
ago - and what he can now see 20 years later.
"I noticed that young people are taller, they are
healthier, they are
happier. I just see a general enthusiasm in people.
"In the early 1980s, there were not many tourists
from the United
States in China, so people who come to see the film will
say
'Oh, it is China'."
But in the past 10 years, more and more American and
European
tourists have been to the Far East. Those who had their
own
experience of China felt unsatisfied with what they saw in
the film.
According to Blyth, people would ask questions such as:
"Have
you seen Shanghai lately? It has been changing, not like
what's in
your film."
Meanwhile, the number of Chinese tourists is also
increasing.
They were also unsatisfied with the scenes shown in the
film.
According to Guo Zhong, government relations manager at
Disney's Beijing Representative Office, a tabloid in
Beijing even
charged the film as "uglifying China" in a story
published a couple
of months ago.
Disney, of course, has long realized the problem.
The Chinese Government also expects the film shown at the
world-class entertainment and recreation destination will
reflect
a real and more modern China to draw more visitors.
Co-operation seemed natural as a result and it won their
full support.
Great changes
"The biggest difference is that 20 years ago we had
permission to
film on these locations, but people did not really
understand what
we were doing. We did not get as much co-operation as we
are
getting now," said Blyth, adding that people did not
even
understand what the camera could do.
But 20 years later, the camera is no longer a novelty.
"There is no technical problem at all during
co-operation,
" said Li Shuping, senior engineer at the Film
Science and
Technology Institute. But Li admitted there had been
"minor
friction" because of different styles in how
Americans and Chinese
do business.
Over the past several years, Li's institute has shot
several
Circle-Vision films of their own.
Although China of 20 years ago was rather backward,
Blyth liked the country after he finished shooting
"Wonders of China."
Back in the United States, he named his company "Mei
Guan Xi,"
which means "It doesn't matter" in Chinese.
Two years ago, Blyth came back to China to work on a
documentary
film of the world heritage sites in China.
The differences of just two years, said Blyth, are already
significant.
"I know it is a time of great changes in China. Every
time I came back
to China, it is almost a different country which has
reinvented itself,"
said Blyth.
"In 1949, Mao said that the Chinese people had stood
up. By 1982,
the Chinese people were walking, and this year the Chinese
people
are running at full speed," the director joked.
With the nine cameras he uses to shoot the Circle-Vision
film, Blyth
hopes to share these vivid experiences with viewers, and two
American tourists he met in the elevator of a Beijing
hotel boosted
his confidence.
When the tourists knew that Blyth and his colleagues were
here to
work on the film "Wonders of China," they said:
"We watched that
film and although it has taken us 15 years to come here,
we wanted
to visit China on the basis of that one film."
Blyth said: "That is very typical. A lot of people
saw the film and
decided to come to China 20 years ago."
In the old film, actors were employed to act as casual
tourists: two
sisters, a nuclear family, a group of primary students
guided by a
teacher, an old couple and two lovers whispering to each
other on
a bench.
Li Bai, a renowned poet in the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907)
who
"narrated" the original "Wonders of
China" film, will remain the
narrator of the new version to remind people of the
country's
splendid ancient culture.
The new version is scheduled to premiere in the cinema at
the
Epcot Centre next July.