New Year's In China

New clothes are often worn on New Year's Day in China. This year, my clothes will not only be new, but tailor-made. Ready-made clothing in Europe appears to have started with the sailors. Tailors (the word in English dates to 1297) kept a stock on hand for those who were literally in town just long enough to get supplies. For everyone else, clothes were made to order by the tailor or the women at home. How ironic that in the 21st century it is again chic to have clothes made to fit, especially novel items like a custom-made qipao, usually in red silk. High mandarin collar. Short-sleeves. Form-hugging top. Long and high slit down the side. Add a tapered cigarette holder and it's the embodiment of 1930s Shanghai, or at least of its singsong girl advertisements. But while the tailors who made them were from Shanghai, the qipao itself is not, at least not originally. The 'banner gown' is actually named after the 'Banner People,' that is, the Manchu of Last Emperor fame. In their native north, the qipao was an ankle-length, tube-shaped over garment just perfect for their farming, semi-nomadic lifestyle. After the establishment of the Qing dynasty, the qipao's modest predecessor began to replace the traditional long skirts Han women had worn for more than two centuries. The influence of Western fashion affected the length and fit to emphasize women's figures and ultimately substituted nylons underneath for the more traditional cloth leggings. The Hongbang ('red band') Tailors of Shanghai probably made a lot of the qipao that ended up adorning movie stars from the 1920s and 1930s. The Hongbang Tailors were first in the city to establish a Western suit shop, make the first Western suit, the first Chinese tunic suit, and also set up the first school for Western suit design. They were probably also among the 2,000 Shanghai tailors who struck for 8 days in October 1895 for more rice, pork and fish in their meals, a 15 cent raise in daily wages, an increase in meal expense budgets, and double pay for night work. The strike was successful and the Hongbang Tailors, at least, are now part of a museum exhibit in nearby Ningbo about China's history of fashion and textiles that I hope to visit soon. But as tailors they no longer exist, so I went instead to a shop following in the same tradition. The shop designs Western apparel for discerning Chinese customers and makes them to order. The three women took on my Western suit and pair of pants project as a favor, but found my clothing demands downright boring. Maybe so, but my new clothes began with a stroll among the bolts of silk, cotton, linen, cashmere, corduroy and even sequined fabrics of the cloth market on Dongjiadu Road. Bartering was cordial. Several cloth sellers offered advice on which fabrics were best for pants, shirts, or suits, before deftly measuring out the fabric with a ruler and slicing it free. Cloth in hand, I then went to the shop to get measured and identify the pattern for the suit. I supplied a pair of pants as a sample of the style I wanted. I modeled them so that they could see the fit. The verdict? "Too short. Too loose." The suggestion? "The pant leg should go down further." She bent down and adjusted it so that it was just above the floor. "Or here." A little higher, it was now just above the sole of my flat dress shoe. She stood, looked in the mirror and nodded. Her hands now free of pins, she then bent down to grab one pant leg from behind, bunching up the pant leg so it hugged my form, as if the cotton slacks had Lycra in them. "And like that." It was actually sort of funny. Western fashion had made the qipao sexier by having it hug the body, but now I was insisting that the slacks should hang flat, rectangular. Her expression said it all. The plain jacket I initially picked also didn't meet with her approval. "That way, you look like an old woman." So we compromised with a slightly larger, lower collar, and more V-shaped cut at the bottom. The material for the suit was a weave, so I needed it lined. "Just in the front," she concluded, then explained that women here found a lining that went all the way around the leg too bulky and confining. On the other hand, I don't wear long underwear in the winter so maybe that was a factor, though I didn't ask. I held up the cloth to the light to show how it was see-through and the idea of a complete lining was quickly approved. We briefly discussed jacket buttons and then she measured me. A week or so later it was time for a fitting. The jacket only had one sleeve, with the other side still open like a vest. The pants already had their zippers but were fastened on top with a temporary cloth-like Velcro. And of course there were pins everywhere holding things in place so that adjustments could be made. Like to the pant legs, which were too long. And there was another problem: I didn't have enough cloth for the rest of the suit. She showed me the chalk marks on the black cloth I had brought. The material for the vest had already been removed. One pant leg was sketched out, but there wasn't enough material for the other one. I had asked the cloth seller how much material to buy in order to make a suit and had even bought a little extra in order to avoid this problem. I didn't understand all the details of why the cloth turned out not to be enough, except that she was blaming herself for not measuring the last time. But no big deal, I had gotten name cards from the cloth sellers for just such an emergency. I gave her the information and we were able to get more of the same black material. I can't see any difference in the color, so it might even be from the same bolt. Just last week was the second and final fitting, really more of a final check just to make sure that everything was okay. I asked to quickly replace the faux diamond-and-gold buttons on my new black business suit with black buttons, and voila! My new look for a new year. Whatever your new look, I wish you all the best in 2006!

Pizza . . . and . . . Cut - The Movie Industry in China

INT. BEDROOM - NIGHT On a bed not yet slept in is a box of partially eaten pizza. Nearby, the open window is a portal into black silence. At the desk, a WOMAN stares into the white-blue glare of the computer screen. She is the CONTEST WINNER, but she has 50 more pages to go first. Her fingers never stop typing. There is no sound except for the CLICK CLACK CLICK of the computer keys and an occasional CURSE. The real history of film in China begins in 1896; just one year after the Lumiere brothers presented the first projected, moving picture short films to a paying audience. A Beijing photographer established the Daguanlou Cinema in 1903. Two years later, he essentially shot a concert video for the then contemporary King of Beijing Opera—a ten-minute, silent version of "Conquering Jun Mountain." By this time, the Qing government was on its last legs but could still issue regulations. In June 1911 it decreed that cinemas were to have licenses, separate seating for males and females; and to close by midnight. In 1930, to much controversy, the Daguanlou Cinema broke the ban against men and women sitting together. Beijing might have been first on the Mainland film scene, but Shanghai's economic might during its good old bad days of the 1920s and 1930s, plus the abundance of shady characters quite literally on its doorstep, quickly helped the Paris of the East surpass the capital. J.G. Ballard, the writer whose childhood experiences in Shanghai were filmed as "Empire of the Sun," remembers hundreds of hunchbacks outside the cinema to promote the debut of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." As far as I could determine, Shanghai's oldest surviving cinema is the Daguangming Cinema (Grand Cinema), designed by a German architect and constructed in 1928. There were certainly earlier locations used to screen films, though. The city’s first open air screening of a ‘half sound’ film was in 1908, in the garden of the Astor House Hotel, founded in 1846 and still located at the corner of Huangpu and Daming Roads near the Bund. It’s not clear if the Shanghai Concert Hall was originally built in 1930 for movies, but it was supposedly the best cinema until it became primarily a concert hall in 1959. Shanghai didn't actually need good acoustics for its films until after 1936 anyway. While Hong Kong switched to sound almost immediately, it took Shanghai five years. Experts on the subject attribute the difference to the importance of Cantonese in Hong Kong, but in any case, Shanghai was off and filming. Copies of Chinese films from the city's heyday can be found in the street vendors’ assorted DVD collections. Recently, when I bought one such film, the middle-aged vendor complained that the only people who ever bought those films were foreigners. The young in China only had eyes for Hollywood. Despite China's recent celebration of the 100 years of Chinese cinema, the Shanghai film industry seems to be just waking up from a long sleep. The Shaw Brothers' film empire, which dominated Southeastern Asian film for two decades well into the 1960s, actually began in Shanghai in 1925. It relocated to Hong Kong in 1937 because of the Japanese invasion. Many of Shanghai's filmmakers and major stars went with them, but between 1937 and 1941, Shanghai still managed to make 230 films. The Japanese occupation tried to inveigle the remaining filmmakers into making propaganda for them. Meanwhile, some Chinese filmmakers in Chongqing were busy making propaganda films _against_ the Japanese. Most films made just after 1949 were about the civil war or China's war against the Japanese. However, the quality of filmmaking steadily deteriorated until, by the early 1960s, most of the filming being done was documentaries and news. The wars had made things difficult for the Shanghai film industry, but it was the Cultural Revolution that really killed it. And it was no accident. It was murder. Her birth name was Li Yunhe and under the name of Lan Ping, she was a minor actress in Shanghai between 1934 and 1937. But it was as Jiang Qing that she got her biggest roles: first as Mao's wife and then as a member of the Gang of Four. Initially Jiang targeted Beijing opera, promoting her own ‘model operas’ instead. After consolidating her power, she returned to Shanghai to direct the downfall of its film industry. Between 1973 and 1976, she reduced the city’s film industry to a mouthpiece for the Gang of Four. China’s renaissance of ‘fifth generation’ filmmakers like Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige came out of Beijing in the 1980s, not Shanghai, which has never really recovered. But, there is hope. Shanghai seems to have recently been added to the list of locations considered by Hollywood moguls. The Mission Impossible series recently made a visit and move ‘The White Countess’ was both filmed in and set in Shanghai. Hopefully this is just the beginning and the international vogue will encourage local Chinese to take camera in hand. Exactly what a recent amateur competition encouraged a typically international collection of Shanghai residents to do. Seven teams took on the challenge of making a 3 to 8 minute film that had a list of required elements including a surprise ending. The resulting films were all fascinating and are supposed to be on the sponsor's website at some point. However, I subjected myself to the private torture of the feature length screenplay contest that ran at the same time. Overall, I learned that the level of creativity in Shanghai is amazing and the future of film here looks promising. Just don’t say the word ‘pizza’ around me, please. Posted by Beth Epstein epsteinb@ureach.com Beth is a member of SVAMA who is currently working in China.