January 4, 2007, just after the New Year holiday.
Through a gap in the heavy dark-blue curtains seeped the distinctive light of a Beijing winter morning—gray and murky, as though mixed with shards of ice.
The heating indoors was cranked up high, dry warmth enveloping everything in stark contrast to the bitter cold outside.
Shen Shanden only wanted to sleep a little longer. From the portion of his face exposed outside the covers, he wasn't stunningly handsome, but he was well-featured and easy on the eyes.
"Get up, you lazy pig. You're going to China Film Group today."
Da Mimi woke Shen Shanden.
Shen Shanden told her not to make trouble. "Tangtang—no, Tiantian—no, Yuanyuan—not her either. Right, Mimi, stop messing around."
"Are you trying to get yourself killed? Is that any way to act? No matter how often you say it, I'll never agree to you having a harem!"
Da Mimi sprang up like a compressed spring.
"Ah!"
Shen Shanden was fully awake. He sat up to look, but Da Mimi had already jumped off the bed.
Among the future big stars, she was the most generous.
Shen Shanden wasn't dreaming. He had been reborn, and he had been born in 1982.
In his previous life, he had been a construction man through and through. He had made his living in Qingdao, caught several waves of industry expansion, and done quite well for himself.
By middle age, his family life had fallen apart and he had divorced, but his career had taken off. Spotting an opportunity, he and some friends opened a re-export company and smuggled Cat vehicles and spare parts northward.
He had tasted the simple, unadorned joy of it.
Just as his second spring was beginning, happiness turned to disaster. While inspecting the market in Russia, he tried learning Russian with several Russian girls. His talent wasn't enough, and he ended up working himself to death.
He had been reborn to his university days, back when he had still been studying at Petroleum University.
They had been young classmates in the prime of their lives.
In this life, Shen Shanden wanted to live differently.
In the future, concert tickets would sell out in seconds. Museums, zoos, aquariums, and science museums would be impossible to enter without booking in advance.
Even the damn libraries would be full, and train tickets during Golden Week would be nearly impossible to get.
Wars were breaking out abroad, while people across the country were having the time of their lives. With the highly developed internet, good things that had once gone unnoticed and drawn no attention were dug back up.
Yet movies, which were naturally suited for social interaction, had vanished without a trace.
Later on, audiences had moved past disappointment, despair, anger, and every other emotion where movies were concerned. They simply no longer cared.
When movies were mentioned, people no longer thought of special effects or stories. They thought of what mission this bunch was carrying out again. The film industry's stereotypes had given audiences stereotypes of their own.
Unless a film could clearly tell audiences that, first, it was competent; second, it wanted to serve audiences rather than educate them; and third, it wasn't influenced by Western narrative frameworks.
Only then could it break out of its circle.
Like Nezha 2, which had come up with green plates, Soul-Devouring Pills, dollar signs, and turned the gaze back around.
Nezha 2 wasn't even unusual. Back in 2017, when Wolf Warrior 2 was released, Yu Qian had played a role that mocked a certain group.
To put it bluntly, it didn't need to be exceptionally good. It only needed to be "normal," in line with normal levels of economic and industrial development.
But even that was impossible.
A massive barrier had formed between the entire film industry and its audience, and film professionals themselves had built it.
Filmmakers had also tasted the bitter fruit of it.
Commercial films that once could gross over a billion yuan could now only make a few hundred million, because audiences were unwilling to learn anything about movies.
Only a film that shattered those stereotypes could bring audiences back.
When Nezha 2 was a hit, no one took it seriously. Some even thought it was crowding out box office revenue. Only after they came to their senses did they realize that audiences didn't even want to spare a glance for films that hadn't broken out of the circle.
It wasn't that audiences lacked demand. Quite the opposite: their cultural demand was extraordinarily strong. They had simply been burned too many times.
So Shen Shanden had made a decision that went against his parents and his family: he wouldn't enter the system.
After graduating from university in 2005, he had taken the entrance exam for the graduate program at the Beijing Film Academy Management Department.
In this circle, he didn't need to be all that amazing. He just needed to make some normal works.
Shen Shanden pulled on a pair of underwear and climbed out of bed.
He liked sleeping naked.
His nostrils caught the distinctive smell of the northern heating season, a mixture of dust and excessively dry air.
Besides the bed, the bedroom held a wardrobe and a desk. There were no theory books on the desk, only a messy pile of scripts for Embroidered Spring Blade: The Sun and Moon Reopen, along with several printed articles.
An old CRT monitor stood beside them. The bulky computer case remained silent, since it wasn't switched on.
After washing his face, Shen Shanden was truly awake.
When Shen Shanden finished washing up and left the bathroom, he saw Da Mimi coming in with breakfast.
Da Mimi urged him to eat quickly. "I bought soup dumplings and soy milk. Take me to school first—I have to rehearse for my annual performance class."
They were eating breakfast when someone knocked on the door.
"Who is it?" Da Mimi asked curiously.
"Probably Xiao Zhou," Shen Shanden said.
"I'll go change." Da Mimi hurried clumsily into the bedroom.
When he opened the door, it was indeed Zhou Qifeng.
Zhou Qifeng was in his first year of graduate school. He was Shen Shanden's junior under the same advisor.
They were going to China Film Group to discuss something today, and Shen Shanden had called him over to help run errands.
The moment he entered, Zhou Qifeng felt much warmer. Rubbing his hands together, he said, "Senior Brother, Sister-in-law, I'm a little excited. I can't believe I'm going to meet Han Sanping with you."
Their field of study was film industry management. If nothing unexpected happened, Han Sanping would officially become the head of China Film Group this year. Even now, he was overseeing business restructuring, asset integration, and reform of the property rights system.
Those in the know understood just how much power that involved.
Zhou Qifeng sincerely admired his senior brother. He was simply too impressive.
"Come eat with us." Being called Sister-in-law made Da Mimi feel good, and she invited him to breakfast.
Zhou Qifeng said he had already eaten. "Senior Brother, have you prepared all the materials?"
Shen Shanden wasn't as optimistic as he was. "It's still far from settled. It's a project worth over a hundred million. The chances of approval are very low."
Da Mimi, who was drinking soy milk, choked. "Over a hundred million? How come I didn't know?"
"See? This is exactly why I was right not to tell you," Shen Shanden teased.
Zhou Qifeng was quite confident. "Senior Brother, I think yours is far better than A Night to Remember or The Promise."
Ignoring the fact that an outsider was present, Da Mimi leaned closer. "Hurry up and tell me—can you give me the female lead?"
"We'll talk if it happens."
Shen Shanden was very cautious. "Don't tell anyone. There might be some hope, but once you say it out loud, there won't be."
Having lived two lives, how could he not know how difficult this was?
Getting the opportunity to meet Han Sanping had already been extremely difficult. It had only happened because one of his articles had caught Han Sanping's eye.
Two weeks earlier, while the New Year release season was in full swing, Shen Shanden had written a commentary piece that caused quite a stir within academic circles and even beyond them.
The Crisis of Chinese Cinema Under the Wave of Globalization
The turn of the year should have been a time to take stock of the harvest and look ahead to the future.
Yet when one looked back at the China Film Market in 2006, especially the costume blockbuster sector once seen as its "main pillar," a heavy chill filled the air.
Although Zhang Yimou's Curse of the Golden Flower had performed reasonably well at the domestic box office, Chen Kaige's The Promise and Feng Xiaogang's A Night to Remember had suffered a double defeat in both reputation and market performance.
Even more worrying, these three annual productions, which had gathered the nation's best resources and represented different forces—China Film Group, the Beijing Circle, and the Northwest Circle—had all gone cold overseas, especially in Europe and the United States, with their profits nearly cut off entirely.
This was not an isolated incident.
It was a dangerous warning sign at a critical threshold.
It declared that the costume blockbuster model of "Eastern spectacle plus Western core," initiated by Paperclip's House of Flying Daggers and brought to its peak by Zhang Yimou's Hero, had reached the end of its path in overseas markets.
The once-glorious "costume blockbuster" had now become a Sword of Damocles hanging over Chinese Cinema.
China Film Group's Blockbuster Strategy was in danger.
Where did the crisis come from?
At its root, it was because we faced a highly mature and aggressively competitive opponent—Hollywood.
Its operating model, financial strength, and global distribution network were far beyond anything our still-toddling Film Industry could compare with.
Many colleagues, including some decision-makers, seemed to have overestimated the "friendliness" of overseas markets toward Chinese Cinema and underestimated the brutality of market competition.
This was absolutely not some ideological siege. It was naked, pure commercial competition!
Hollywood understood this perfectly. In the early stages, it was happy to accept works with a certain Exotic Charm, cultivate specific audience groups, and establish a degree of market dependence, as with costume blockbusters.
Once the time was right—when Chinese Cinema had become overly dependent on that overseas "fertile soil" and poured in enormous investments expecting returns—they could simply tighten the purse strings.
With media cooperation, a little "guidance" from critics, an atmosphere claiming that "Chinese blockbusters are outdated and boring," and a few tricks in distribution, they could cut off the market and instantly push Chinese producers dependent on overseas returns into a crisis of broken capital chains.
This was "shutting the door and beating the dog" on the commercial battlefield.
Simple, efficient, and cheap.
How could Hollywood willingly give up such a vast potential market with 1.3 billion people?
Its goal had always been dominance, not sharing.
Looking back at ourselves, our Film Industry and its practitioners looked utterly naive in the face of globalization.
We had placed too much faith in the "overseas blockbuster" model.
We had gambled on illusory European and American box office revenue while overlooking the most fundamental foundation: Chinese audiences and the domestic market.
The industry's thinking was immature.
We lacked a mature system for handling international market competition and mechanisms for spreading risk.
Once a blockbuster failed overseas, even a small domestic box office setback could become a catastrophic disaster.
Mr. Han Sanping's original intention in promoting the Blockbuster Strategy was good, but relying on a single path had made its ability to withstand risk extremely weak.
The practitioners were immature as well.
Their expectations for overseas markets were too naive, and they lacked vigilance and countermeasures against Hollywood's competitive tactics.
When The Promise, A Night to Remember, and Curse of the Golden Flower failed to continue their overseas success, we appeared helpless and lacked the ability to make timely, effective adjustments.
The public outcry Chen Kaige faced because of The Promise, the laughter triggered by Ge You's line "Too cold-blooded" in Feng Xiaogang's A Night to Remember, and Zhang Yimou's overseas defeat with Curse of the Golden Flower all exposed the severe disconnect between creative and market expectations, especially overseas expectations.
The alarm had already sounded!
The collective "flameout" of 2006 was a heavy slap from the market.
It told us that overreliance on overseas markets was no different from placing our lifeline in someone else's hands.
Hollywood's "shut the door and beat the dog" strategy could appear at any moment. We had to recognize this clearly and remain one hundred and twenty thousand percent vigilant.
But crisis meant opportunity within danger!
The Blockbuster Strategy was not without a way forward. In fact, this was the proper course for the Blockbuster Strategy.
Every industrial category began with imitation, or rather, copying. The rise of American and Japanese industry had both followed that path.
Costume blockbusters had begun by imitating Hollywood's House of Flying Daggers. Now it was time to move from imitation to surpassing it!
The Blockbuster Strategy should shift from "making films" to "making good films," achieving an upgrade of the Film Industry.
The foundation of Chinese Cinema lay in serving Chinese audiences.
Our 1.3 billion compatriots were our strongest and most reliable base.
The first goal of film creation should be to satisfy domestic audiences' aesthetic needs, emotional needs, and cultural identity. Without the foundation of domestic audiences, any ambition to "go abroad" was a castle in the air.
Hero had been able to open the path toward marketization precisely because it first had the support of domestic audiences!
We urgently needed to improve the industry's maturity and resilience against risk.
We needed to explore diversified genre development, support low- and mid-budget local works close to reality, build a healthier market structure and investment system, avoid putting all our eggs in the single basket of costume blockbusters, and certainly not gamble only on overseas markets.
The emergence of Crazy Stone was a pleasant surprise, proving that low- and mid-budget films had enormous potential.
This could not be separated from China Film Group's support policies. In that regard, Mr. Han Sanping deserved credit as well.
The setback suffered by the costume blockbuster model might be precisely the opportunity for Chinese Cinema to return to its roots.
Director Paperclip would soon return with Paperclip, and the shift in subject matter itself foreshadowed a certain change.
Rather than chasing the already shattered dream of overseas blockbusters, we should calm down, cultivate the domestic market, tell stories Chinese audiences loved to watch, and improve production standards and industrial resilience.
Only then, when Hollywood truly launched an all-out assault, could we gain a foothold and perhaps find a genuinely sustainable international path for Chinese Cinema in the future.
Chinese Cinema, it was time to wake up!
Rooted in the Local, serving audiences, and striving for self-improvement—this was the only way to withstand the raging waves of globalization.
After breakfast, they cleared the table.
Da Mimi carried a small bag, while Zhou Qifeng held a canvas bag printed with the Beijing Film Academy emblem, stuffed with a laptop and several supplementary documents.
Shen Shanden drove a champagne-colored sixth-generation Honda Accord and dropped Da Mimi off at school first.
Jinxiu Zhichun Residential Area was very close to the school. The place they lived in wasn't rented; he had bought it from a family emigrating abroad.
The other party had sold several properties in one go, apparently not very optimistic about the prospects here.
Shen Shanden wasn't the sort to force himself to endure hardship. After being reborn, he had started copying songs and used the wave of ringtone music to solve his material problems. He now had both a car and a home in Beijing.
He still hadn't solved the household registration issue, though. He could spend money on it, but Shen Shanden felt he would definitely become a public figure in the future, so he would rather wait.
Shen Shanden found a place to park, then walked to Beijing Film Studio with Zhou Qifeng.
The instant they stepped out of the car, cold wrapped around their bodies.
"Cold."
China Film Group's building had begun construction in 2005 but was not yet completed, so China Film Group was still operating out of Beijing Film Studio, which was only a short walk from the Beijing Film Academy.
The two had deep historical ties. The Beijing Film Academy's predecessor, the Central Film Bureau Performing Arts Institute, and Beijing Film Studio had both been important founders of the new China's film industry.
They had countless connections in academic development, talent cultivation, and practical production.
Beijing Film Studio was also one of the most important internship bases for Beijing Film Academy students.
That was one reason Shen Shanden could meet Han Sanping. Besides the article he had written and his identity as a Beijing Film Academy student, the main reason was simply that they were nearby.
Once China Film Group's building was completed, it would become much, much harder.
Distance and location could change many things. At Beijing Film Studio, it was like being in the same compound, but at China Film Group's building, the gap in rank would immediately become apparent.
After entering Beijing Film Studio, they found a gateway that was not particularly grand but bore a strong industry identity. A sign above it read, "China Film Group Corporation."
In the winter wind, the entrance looked somewhat solemn.
The security guard checked their information and let them through.
Bare plane trees with twisted branches lined both sides of the road, like silent guards.
In the distance stood several square, old-fashioned office buildings with slightly weathered exterior walls, as well as several enormous soundstages with heavy doors. Their numbers could faintly be made out in white lettering against gray walls.
Several vans and box trucks bearing equipment company logos were parked by the roadside.
Beijing Film Studio, Production Department.
Shen Shanden waited until ten-thirty. After two hours, he finally met Han Sanping—a skinny old man whose authority was intimidating even without anger.
"Director." Shen Shanden jogged over to greet him.
Han Sanping was now not only vice chairman and deputy general manager of China Film Group, but also director of Beijing Film Studio. This was his stronghold, and Beijing Film Studio was also China Film Group's core production unit.
A person's status was not determined solely by their position; timing mattered as well.
If it had been twelve years later, after Lost in Thailand, even the chairman of China Film Group would have seen his power diminished in the same position.
Because Lost in Thailand meant that Chinese Cinema had escaped its life-or-death crisis. Without immense pressure from outside, that position could no longer wield the power to nearly unify all of Chinese Cinema's resources.
But at the beginning of 2007, when costume blockbusters were on the brink and Hollywood was watching hungrily, when Chinese Cinema stood at a life-or-death crossroads, Han Sanping had the power to mobilize every force connected to the Chinese Cinema market.
Han Sanping joked with a senior executive from the Production Department. "This kid is like a fortune-teller. He starts by telling me I'm headed for bad luck. If I don't listen to him, it somehow feels wrong."
Shen Shanden immediately said, "Director, I support the Blockbuster Strategy. It's just that costume blockbusters have reached a critical point. Our Big Three Directors have already lost, while Hong Kong Island directors are defeated generals to begin with. John Woo may be an International Great Director, but he is also a stray dog with nowhere to go. He absolutely cannot hold up costume blockbusters when they are in such grave danger."
"If we New Generation filmmakers do not shoulder the future of costume blockbusters, this genre will be finished!"
Han Sanping's heart stirred, but he said, "Why do you sound just like your mentor? Such a big tone. Hong Kong Island and we are one family."
Shen Shanden put on an appropriately chastened expression.
Once they were seated in the office, Han Sanping did not waste time. "All right. Let's talk about Brotherhood of Blades."
There were several reasons he had wanted to meet Shen Shanden. First, Shen Shanden was a student of the director of the Beijing Film Academy Management Department, making him half a junior. Then there was Shen Shanden's article on the industry, which had given him pause.
Most importantly, Shen Shanden had shown good sense. He had not gone through the administrative team, nor had he used his connections at Beijing Film Studio—though perhaps those paths had been impassable anyway.
Instead, he had brought in a film script about "upgrading the costume blockbuster industry" as a project. After it went through the Production Department's approval process, they found that it really was rather interesting.
Under such circumstances, Han Sanping did not mind meeting him.
What he truly needed now were young directors like Ning Hao to emerge—capable directors who were also willing to make commercial films.
Shen Shanden displayed his PowerPoint and introduced the Brotherhood of Blades project. This Brotherhood of Blades was Embroidered Spring Blade: The Sun and Moon Reopen, entirely different from the Brotherhood of Blades of his previous life.
The script would not be set during the Chongzhen era, but would instead focus on the founding period of the Ming Dynasty.
"Whether it is the Big Three Directors or Hong Kong Island directors, their costume blockbusters only skim the surface. Costumes are merely the exterior; history is what lies within."
"Today's films use Eastern spectacles with Western cores, throwing away our most precious treasure. Costume blockbusters should be rooted in history, especially the great dynasties of Qin, Han, Tang, and Ming."
"Leaders, I believe you all know about Hollywood superheroes and successful film franchises. In my view, when costume blockbusters focus on great dynasties, it is equivalent to making sequels to successful films."
"Because our audiences are intimately familiar with these dynasties and their people. Unfortunately, our production standards cannot bring them to life. That is the significance of upgrading the costume blockbuster industry!"
"With Chinese costumes wrapped around a Chinese soul, it may appear to be a major production, but it is actually low-risk. Combined with the director's Blockbuster Strategy, where risk is shared across the entire industry chain—from investment to production to distribution—the production risk is reduced even further."
"It looks like a major production with massive investment, but in reality, it is low-risk and high-return."
"The key is that the soul of costume blockbusters—their core—must be ours as well."
At those words, Han Sanping and the Production Department executives were all shaken.
Experts recognized the craft. That understanding alone was genuinely interesting.
Shen Shanden said, "For the story of Brotherhood of Blades, I want to use its characters as an entry point, like a war correspondent, to show the era from the late Yuan through the early Ming Dynasty."
"Chinese Civilization had been declining ever since the An Lushan Rebellion in the Tang Dynasty. That decline had continued for six hundred years—ten sixty-year cycles—far longer than the period from the end of the Eastern Han to the founding of the Tang Dynasty. By the late Yuan, under the tax-farming system, the elite had collectively sunk into decay. It was practically on its last legs, already stepping into the coffin."
"And Zhu Yuanzhang was the strongest bullish candlestick in that rebound from the bottom. He halted the decline of aged and rotten Chinese Civilization and drove it upward. Great Ming displayed a grandeur far surpassing that of the Han Dynasty, when Chinese Civilization had still been in its adolescence!"
"He brought China from an old man on the verge of death back into his prime, beginning a new cycle of sustained ascent. Zhu Yuanzhang was that soaring bullish candlestick rising from the valley floor."
"I want no criticism, no division, no uglification, no coded jargon. All I want is a new world where the sun and moon reopen!"
"With Great Ming's reopening of the sun and moon, we will reopen the skies for costume blockbusters and create historical epics that are uniquely ours!"
In his previous life, costume blockbusters had more or less died along with the collapse of the Big Three Directors.
By all logic, their moment had passed.
But Shen Shanden believed that the moment had not passed. The problem was simply that production standards and industry professionals could not meet the audience's needs.
If there was no trend to ride, he would create one.
If no one supported my soaring ambition, I would tread through snow to reach the mountain peak myself!
Once Shen Shanden explained the film's theme, the office fell so silent that a pin could have been heard dropping.
They were all stunned!
Han Sanping's eyes gleamed. The theme was grand, the vision lofty—this was the kind of blockbuster he had envisioned!
Before you continue