Chen Jianbin: I can at least say I have done something to popularize Xinjiang dialect by producing a powerful and high-quality Xinjiang dialect movie called "A Spoon".
Once you are stuck in a city either because of work or the kind of life you lead, you may likely see your hometown as a place of no return. The town may still be the source of your strength, but it may not give you incentive to live there again because you’ve been away so long that you don’t seem to fit in anymore.
However, late at night, when I saw pictures of hometown delicacies posted by friends on WeChat, I would be overwhelmed with self-pity and lament: How many good meals I have missed! Although I can have all kinds of fine cuisines from every corner of China, deep in my heart, none of them can ever match my hometown delicacies. Entertaining such thought could easily put me in a melancholy mood. In life, we frequently have to give up one thing for another, something nice and enjoyable that could be summarized as hometown. My hometown is Xinjiang.
I was born in Urumqi and lived in a residential area called Xiao Xi Men. My dad was a man of character who worked at the Municipal Sports Commission. An “A” student in high school, he wanted very much to go to college.
However, because of his good physique, he was enlisted for training as an athlete and, by the 1950s, he became an excellent one. I later went to college and graduate school because I wanted to fulfill his dream on his behalf.
Nice and meek as they are, my parents did not spare me the rod when I was a child. I was a very mischievous daredevil. It makes me shudder even now when I recall many of the things I did back then. For example, while digging in my family courtyard with friends, we discovered an air-raid shelter and I went in with torch in hand. We had a great time until I came out and saw my mom at the entrance. She let me have it, big time.
The compound I lived in was shared by families of different ethnic backgrounds, so my playmates were diverse. The most impressive family was a Russian family with a boy of about my age whom I enjoyed playing with. One day, when the boy’s grandma was washing clothes in the courtyard, some of my friends and I decided to tease him. “Go give your grandma a kiss,” one suggested. He ran to her and kissed her right away. We all burst out laughing. In retrospect, I realized I found the boy funny simply because I was from a reserved family where open expression of intimate feelings was not encouraged. As a matter of fact, lack of body contact such as kissing and hugging could be a communication barrier.
Because I grew up in the compound of the Municipal Sports Commission, I frequently encountered athletes, some of whom were city, regional, or even national champions. Maybe because of their influence, I also thought about becoming an athlete. As a teenager, though, I fell in love with movies and my interest in sports took a back seat.
At age 17 or 18, I was so engrossed in movies that I wrote a movie script and tried shooting a movie. I asked several friends from a Xinjiang TV station for help. One was a cameraman and the two others were an actor and actress. However, once we had everything set up, I had no idea how to begin. My mind went embarrassingly blank and it dawned on me that I needed to systematically learn everything to be professional. In those days, movies were seen more as leisure entertainment than a real profession. No wonder my dad was dismayed when I told him I wanted to be an actor. Driven by passion, I gave little thought to how much it would cost me. The price I had to pay included abnormal working hours, being away from my parents and the comforts of home, and a lonely, modest life in Beijing from age 20 to 30. It was tough and I asked myself: How did I end up giving up so much for so little?
In 1990, I was admitted to the Performing Arts Department of the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing. My Xinjiang classmates included Li Yapeng and Wang Xuebing, and we were all supposed to work for the Xinjiang Modern Drama Troupe upon graduation. At the beginning of the first semester, my classmates typically asked me where I was from and where my family lived in Xinjiang. My classmates all thought we traveled by camel and lived on the prairie in Xinjiang. While at college, I had a love for rock music and was in a band called Little Donkey. We called ourselves donkeys because donkeys are known for their drive and waywardness, and are common in Xinjiang. Our favorite song was Girl in the Greenhouse by Cui Jian.
After graduating from college in 1994, both my Xinjiang classmates put their belongings in Beijing because they had decided to return to the capital. I, alone, went straight to work at the Xinjiang Modern Drama Troupe as per prior agreement. I told myself I’d return to Beijing on my own terms. I wouldn’t want to be a drifter in Beijing.
I felt lonely in Urumqi and craved talking to people, either about my specialty or anything that pleased me. When thwarted in your plan to do something, you find tremendous joy just talking about it. Lang Chen, a graduate of Beijing Film Academy, was working at Tianshan Film Studio. I visited him frequently in his home, we talked about movies and Beijing, and I got to know myself better.
At that time, I made only 300 yuan a month and was offered a role in only one stage performance the whole year, which I turned down because it was unsuitable to me. Thereafter, I spent all my salary on a graduate school prep class in an attempt to pass the requisite exams. Upon passing, I returned to Beijing in 1995 and began my graduate program at the Performing Arts Department of the Central Academy of Drama. I was 27. By then, all my high school classmates were married with children and some college classmates were already working as known movie or TV drama directors.
Every month during graduate school, I received money from home, which embarrassed me because I was already an adult. The good part was I didn’t have to work to get by and could concentrate on school. Looking back, I am very thankful for the great learning opportunity I had. I could read many good plays and other books, thus paving the way for my future success.
In martial arts, there are two approaches to learning. One is to practice those tricks that could be used right away while the other is to practice the basics, which are of no use for quite a while but become powerful once mastered. I’m lucky to have met great teachers who taught me how to master the basics in the beginning.
I experienced a lot of trouble and had a difficult time trying to fit into the studios during my acting career, partly because I didn’t learn how to deal with complicated interpersonal relations or to get along with different kinds of people, and partly because I didn’t realize its importance. Consequently, I was sometimes the odd one out among the cast. But I kept the solid foundation from school and it turned out powerful 5 to 10 years later, when I began writing my own scripts and directing my own movies. It was an awkward, silly process. Sometimes, I wondered if I should have learned to be smarter and simply merged with the crowd, but I couldn’t. I am not that type and I don’t like those approaches, which probably explains why I held my ground. My effort in the movie industry paid off and I gradually won recognition. As time passed, no one bothered to ask me about the prairie and camels of Xinjiang any more. People must first do a good job before their family or hometown can be proud of them. It’s always the people who make a name for the hometown. Without achievement, talk is empty. This is true for everyone. For example, since I make movies, all movie makers are my peers, regardless of race or national origin. We all stand together with one thing in common, which is the need to make good movies.
People worth their salt set a high standard for themselves. No matter where they come from, the standard is always to do better. Those who do best stand at the peak of the industry. It’s that simple. Such standards do not change based on family background or place of origin. Doing one’s best is the one and only never-changing standard.
Chen Jianbin and celebrated writer Wang Meng at a promotional event marking the release of the documentary I Am from Xinjiang
I love Beijing because I have lived here over 20 years. I love it because here you don’t have to tell people where you come from, or even who you are. As the saying goes, a hero is a hero wherever he comes from. When I was fresh out of school, I had neither a job nor income. Every evening, when I walked the streets and saw lights in various buildings, I longed for a home of my own. I lived alone in a rented apartment. It was scary. I loved working overtime at the studio because it was the best way to avoid the horror of loneliness in that apartment. Even so, I never thought of leaving the city because I was determined to fight for a warm, well-lit room of my own. To be honest, when I left Xinjiang, I didn’t have any dream or ambition to do anything for my hometown. Not until I finally had a chance to make my own movies did I start doing what I could for it.
Times are changing. The only thing that does not change is the voice asking whether we should learn to be smarter. What does “smart” mean? I think it means maturity. As children, we tend to be more persistent about what we hold dear, but as we grow older, most people we meet increasingly see that persistence as silly. So, we slowly numb ourselves and accept that our dreams are foolish, meekly shelve them, quickly find a job, and lead a normal, smooth life. Most people are like that. However, a limited few persist in what they are after. They may suffer many blows and setbacks during the process, but if they withstand, they could eventually fulfil their dreams. Undeniably, it is the limited few who realize their dreams because it’s much easier to give up and do something else. Take myself for example. My classmates' children are in college while mine are younger because I worked on my graduate program while my classmates were dating and getting married. In the eyes of “normal” people, I must be nuts, or as we say in Xinjiang, a “spoon” (fool).
My honest, trustworthy father is often seen as a fool. It bothers me when I hear people call him that. Are nice, honest people bound to be bullied and looked down upon? I don’t think so. It’s gross abuse and a social malady. My movie, A Spoon, is a story of a recognized fool who chooses to believe in how he does things. In fact, his very foolishness was a motivating factor for me to shoot the movie. Another factor was that the movie’s background was Xinjiang, though it wasn’t shot in Xinjiang.
In my memory, Tianshan Film Studio used to produce movies in Mandarin only. Because many actors and actresses speak no Mandarin, they had to seek voiceover help from the Shanghai Film Studio. As a result, the movies all sounded like foreign movies. Why have Xinjiang dialect movies never been shot, yet you can watch Hong Kong movies in Cantonese and the comic shows of Zhao Benshan in dialect?
Today, when I ask myself what I did for my hometown, I can at least say I did something to popularize Xinjiang dialect by producing a quality, influential movie in Xinjiang dialect. At the Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan, when the announcer declared “The award goes to Chen Jianbin for A Spoon,” the audience probably didn’t know the movie title is a colloquial term for “a fool” in Xinjiang dialect. At that moment, in the hall of fame of Chinese language movies, I gave Xinjiang dialect the limelight and knew I did something my hometown could be proud of. A Spoon could have been shot in many other ways. It could have been more elegant and more beautiful. It’s easy to do. But honestly, it’s what it is today because of me: I wanted it that way and I want to be the “spoon” kind of person.
