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RR 99/220 Encyclopedia of Chinese Film Yingjin Zhang and Zhiwei Xiao
Routledge
London and New York, NY
1998
xxiv + 475 pp.
ISBN 0 415 15168 6 L85.00
Keywords China, Film, History
A Chinese legend that might have caught Shakespeare's imagination tells how the Taoist sage Zhuangzi suspected his wife of unfaithfulness, feigned his own death, and set about seducing his "widow" in the guise of a prince. The first feature film to be produced entirely in Hong Kong was Zhuangzi Tests His Wife (1913), the work of one of the founders of Chinese cinema, Li Minwei (18931953) and his brother Li Beihai (1889-1950). Minwei's wife Yan Shanshan (1896-1952), who played a serving girl, became China's first film actress.
Zhuangzi crops up at several points in this encyclopedia, in which 11 contributors aim to provide "comprehensive coverage of Chinese film in its historical, cultural, geopolitical, generic, thematic and textual aspects". The...