Zheng Xu

During the Tang Dynasty’s era of “Zhen Guan” (era name during rule of Emperor Taizong), the young Xuan Zang monk, in his quest for the knowledge in Buddhism, embarked on a journey to India, that is fraught with perils and dangers, natural disasters, and sees the sufferings of the common people. Soldiers gets in his way, his disciples betrays him, he struggles through deserts, runs short of food and water, all in the quest for Buddha’s teachings. He finally arrives in India, and studies Buddhism in earnest. By the time he returns to China, he is already 50 years old.Read More »

Being shelved for four years over censorship issues sounds like a death knell for any film, and yet in the case of Ning Hao’s No Man’s Land, it may actually have been a considerable boon : indeed, the four-years delay meant that the film came out after the comedy Lost In Thailand, which starred two of the leads of No Man’s Land (Xu Zheng and Huang Bo), and thus became positioned as their follow-up to what is still the all-time highest-grossing Chinese film in China. It did however lose its potential status as China’s very first modern-day set western – with Gao Qunshu’s Wind Blast having been released in the meantime – though in truth it is closer to a film noir than a western, with moody voice-over and a cynical outlook on human nature. It tells of an arrogant big city lawyer (Xu Zheng) who travels to the far west of China to plead the case of a falcon trafficker (Togbye), then tries to rush back to the city to close a book deal on that very case.Read More »