AsiaNews Magazine Jan10-16,2014 ( Jan 1-7,2014) | Page 42

CULTURE

January 10-16, 2014

"These venues are not just
collective homesteads of antiquity,
but still have many functions.
A new arrival can stay there,
and get help in job hunting
or even obtaining loans for
a business startup. After you
make it big, you can donate to
the organisation. Many of the
big halls run schools and other
nonprofit activities. In Malacca,
a town with a small population,
it is like a senior citizens'
entertainment centre, where
people sip tea and sing karaoke."
Many of the customs can be
traced back to the Ming Dynasty
(1368-1644), but tanghao probably
originated in the Song (960-1279)
or even earlier Han Dynasty (206
BC-AD 220), analyses Zhou. "It
refers to your ancestral root. So,
you'll see posted on some doors
place names, such as Yinchuan
or Dunhuang far in northern
China. Young people in China
have never heard of such a practice
or even the name tanghao."

Not only are Zhou's
documentaries richly informative,
but they employ a film language
that is lavish and engaging. "One
of my collaborators is a graduate
from film school and I share with
him the notion that our work
should resemble a European art
film in visual style," he says.
In South of the Ocean, made
for a total cost of 24 million yuan
(US$4 million), some of the images,
including the aerial shots, are so
eye-catching they would not be out
of place in a big-budget feature film.
Ten years ago, Zhou made The
Forbidden City, a 12-episode
documentary that made extensive
use of dramatisation and computer
imagery. The enormity of the
project and its huge influence
turned it into a milestone in
Chinese documentary filmmaking.
"We had been trying to learn
the creative model of National
Geographic, and by 2003 we had
the chance to work with them.
We designed The Forbidden City

to appeal to a global audience,"
Zhou recalls. "If we want Chinese
arts and culture to be accepted
by mainstream Western media,
we have to find out, in concept
and technique, the international
way of communication."
When making South of the
Ocean, the techniques and
technologies had advanced, but the
concept remains the same, such as
the visual style, the quality of the
shots and editing and narrating
skill should be up to the par of a
good feature film, says Zhou.
However, in the decade of
exploring a global market,
Zhou has found that there is no
single "Western market". Every
country and every channel has
its own distinctive features.
"Take the pace of storytelling and
editing. Documentaries shown
on American channels are the
fastest. France and Germany
are somewhat slower. NHK
of Japan is the slowest, even
slower than those in China."