When the name Xiu Xiu is uttered, it instinctively conjures the sounds of Jamie Stewart's eponymous band for a certain subset of people and eclipses the fact that it is also the name of Joan Chen's directorial debut. The allusion isn’t lost on the actor—known for her roles in Twin Peaks (1989-1991) and The Last Emperor (1987)—though she isn’t overtly familiar with the tunes. The film in question isn’t screened often, but will soon play at the San Francisco International Film Festival as part of a tribute to Chen. I managed to catch a stream on YouTube, which presumably doesn’t do justice to the harsh beauty of its desolate landscapes.
Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl (1999) is a coming of age story that examines China during the Cultural Revolution, during which privileged urban Chinese youth were "sent down" to rural areas and compelled to learn from the working class according to Maoist ideology. It’s 1975 and the 15 year-old Xiu Xiu (Xiaolu Li) arrives in the steppes of Tibet to work as an apprentice to the weathered (and castrated) horse-herder Lao Jin (Lopsang). She indolently counts the days until she can return to flirting with boys her age back in Chengdu, failing to see the familial bond of love that has formed between her and Lao Jin. Chen paints this wind-bitten portrait of growing up with inconsolable melancholy. When Xiu Xiu’s time is up, no one comes to fetch her. With unwavering determination, Chen covertly filmed in Tibet and was subsequently temporarily banned from China for her efforts. I spoke with Chen about the makings of Xiu Xiu, which she’s currently looking to restore.
Elissa Suh: Have you seen Xiu Xiu recently?
Joan Chen: I went to check the print the other day. It was slightly faded, but still in pretty good condition and it touched me very much. Now more people are approaching me about digitizing and making it available on one of the platforms. I realized after the release of the film, and it's over, I never took good care of the elements. Now we're faced with the challenges, not only financially, but technically of how to digitize and make it into something that people can actually access. I'm facing that hurdle right now. If anyone happens to be in the field of preserving worthy films, try to find me!
ES: Geling Yang, who wrote the source material has had a few of her works adapted into movies by Sylvia Chang and Zhang Yimou. How did you first encounter the story?
Joan Chen: She and I were, are, good friends. She was living in San Francisco at the time and told me a real story of something that happened to a friend of ours. Then, a couple of months later, she’d written it into a short story, a novella, and I instantly saw a film in it. Except, of course, there was no part for me to play in it.
It was a story that I grew up with, that determined our generation's fate, and was very moving to me. It’s about my generation's sacrifice and back then, it had never been told. When I made the film, statistics said it was 7 million people who were “sent down,” but I got on Baidu yesterday, the Chinese search engine, and it’s more like 20 million people, which isn’t that shocking because it was like 10 years and an entire generation.
I started to think about it when I was a jury member at the Berlin Film Festival. It was close to the end of the century and there was a very pessimistic mood. A lot of the films in competition that year didn't know what to look forward to and I felt that I had a stronger story of a different kind to tell. On my way back, I started scribbling a script on the plane and by the time I got to San Francisco, I had a script that I showed Geling. I said, “I am going to make this.” She was very surprised. Back then, I had no experience with writing, directing, or producing. But I felt that if I didn't tell that story, then I wouldn't be able to go on telling any other stories.
ES: I know you grew up in China during this time. Were you able to avoid that because you were acting in movies at the time?
JC: I am exactly the same age as that character, which would’ve been the last group of people to be sent down… My brother was able to stay in Shanghai, so I was sure to go. But I started acting when I was 14 and avoided it. Since we were young, the whole family or neighborhood would talk about how to keep their kids in Shanghai. From a very young age, my brother was a fantastic painter, an artist. But my father knew people in sports—in swimming and in rowing—and made him into an athlete so that he could stay. I was so lucky I just got picked out of school to go to the studio. There was a sort of acting school in the studio that was taught, unbeknownst to me when I was little, by these movie stars because during the Cultural Revolution they weren't able to work. In that class, there were people who were sent down and talked to me about it. I was fascinated at this idea of being sent away to remote places I’d only heard of and there was also a sense of survivor's guilt. People either come back destroyed or never come back at all. That memory gave me the perspective of how I later decided to tell the story.
ES: You’re alluding to how the story is narrated by a character who doesn’t actually witness what happens to Xiu Xiu. It makes the film feel like a fable or fairytale. How did you decide on that perspective?
JC: That's exactly it. Looking back decades later, I realize I didn't actually need that artifice for the film. However, at the time, that's how I pieced together the story: as a fairytale. It wasn't a conscious decision or a theory I had; I simply liked that kind of tone, especially when it came to stories of gruesome tragedies. I found that when stories took on a fable-like quality, they became more universal. They transcended country borders and generations, and became stories that could apply anywhere. The beauty and horror also had to coexist. The beautiful dream of society—to go down and help build socialism—[and] the young people's enthusiasm in wanting to be a part of it, and their own fantasy of it, is also owed to the tone.
ES: The movie in some ways feels like an indictment of the Cultural Revolution and these policies that were going on. I’ve read that the film was banned because of permit issues and not because of the content of the film. Can you confirm this?
JC: I was very stubborn at that time. I wasn’t confident in my filmmaking at the time and I couldn't take any more revisions from higher-ups [in government]. I decided that I was only going to make the film that I'd written and in the way I wanted, so that meant I was going to make an underground film. They were prevalent and there were people from my generation, or slightly younger, who were actively involved in making them, so it wasn't a particularly unique thing to do.
ES: How was being in the director's seat for the first time and what did you take with you from your acting career? If I'm not mistaken, you also studied filmmaking in college. Was that helpful at all?
JC: I think it's more from my experience being an actor. Growing up, the set was my playground. The education was also nice and helpful. I remember I was fascinated with film noir and took a lot of classes, but we were taught practical knowledge. I was also a terrible student because I had started acting and I'd always take an incomplete time to leave and do some project. My crew is family to me, that part came naturally. And because this whole process started with a passion and the idea for this story of a particular landscape, of a particular slope with this broken down, dilapidated tent, I had a very strong vision of it so that wasn't all that hard.
The hardest part was the post-production. Once I had everything in the can, I'm like, okay, what do I do with it now? That was a very steep learning curve. But it's always the most exhilarating doing something you aren't sure about and you want to learn—I still crave that. I would like to learn and be forever a beginner at something. Luckily I had good teachers. The editor, Ruby Yang, who later on actually won an Oscar for her documentary [The Blood of Yingzhou District, 2006], was a really guiding force. The sound department was really, you know, one of the best in San Francisco.
ES: I was reading an interview that back when you were younger and leaving China to come to the United States, you had to do a lot of crying at the ministries in order to get your passport. Can you give a little context as to what that was like? It reminded me a little bit of how Xiao Xiao has to curry favors with people to try and get back home.
JC: I fell between two ministries because I was part of the film industry, but then I became a college student so [that was] the educational ministry as well as the cultural ministry. They each want the other to make the decision I did not perform when I was crying. I was really just desperate about how to get my passport. It was a difficult process because I was one of the most well known actors back then and the entirety of China’s little darling. Even today—I'm in my early 60s—and the people of my generation still come up to me and call me Little Flower. There was a sense that people would feel betrayed if I left. At the time, America was still so new an idea and foreign relationships had just been established with embassies in Washington and in Beijing. For many young people, going to America was like going to the moon or something—very, very special—so there are jealousies and hurt feelings involved that the higher-ups need to consider. They’d be losing their best actress, who was trained there and well loved there. They didn't want my leaving to be symbolic, like I've abandoned Chinese audiences.
After decades and decades looking back, I sort of understand that sentiment now. The audience’s love was incredible back then. It's only because of your films that they love you.
It's not like the fandom today where people look at your lifestyle and all that stuff.
Someone told me a story actually about how the film came to their village, a very remote region in the Tibetan area, on the high plateau with a very small group of soldiers. Somehow, after we won Best Picture, they were bringing the film reels in so they could see it. It was very cold and they had nowhere to film to—not even a sheet or something to project it on. The soldiers packed the snow to make a screen—a beautiful ice statue erected like the monument—and they saw the film there.
ES: It must’ve been a big shift from the fandom you experienced in China to the U.S. where you weren’t as well known yet. What was your reception like? After you started appearing in films, the media always referred to you as a sexy temptress.
JC: I didn't think I would be able to continue acting in the U.S. I was thinking about how I didn’t see Asian faces on the screen back then, so I didn't expect anything at all. I was working in a Chinese restaurant, trying to support myself through school, when I got to know a classmate of mine who was slightly older. She was a stunt woman in Hollywood and we got to talking. She said, “You won best actress in China and you’re working at the restaurant? It pays a lot better if you work in the film industry.” I told her I wouldn't know the first thing to do. She told me to find an agent and I didn’t know how, but a classmate of mine came back from a job one day and she gave me a little piece of paper. It said, “Bessie Loo Agency.”
Back then, all Asians were represented by that agency. I still didn’t know what to do. She helped me make a résumé—name, your phone number, and size, but I didn’t know. I never bought a piece of clothing. I didn't have money! I brought my clothes from China, where we wore clothes that were pretty loose or very loose. She said that was the most important part, they need to measure your waist, your hip for the agency. And so, one day I took the bus from Northridge all the way to Hollywood. It took me almost two hours to find that office and when I did, I found out Bessie Loo no longer worked there. Someone named Guy Lee was there in this run-down little office. I didn’t have an appointment, but no one was there so I was sent in and handed him a résumé. He looked at me as if I was crazy. He asked me for my headshot and I didn’t know what that was, so then he gave me a card for a photographer. It was almost like he didn't believe a word I said as this young girl, the best actress from China. The Cold War ended not too long ago and he'd probably never seen anybody from mainland China. My hairdo, my look, my everything wasn't conformed to what an Asian person was supposed to look like back then—basically like Anna Mae Wong. I had nothing of that, but that's how I started.
Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl screens on 35mm this Sunday, April 28, at the Premier Theater as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival’s “Tribute to Joan Chen.” Director Joan Chen will be in attendance for a post-screening conversation. The festival Opening Night Film, Didi, which stars Joan Chen, screens twice tonight, at the Premier Theater and Marina Theater, with director Sean Wang, producers Josh Peters and Valerie Bush, and cast members in attendance.
