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A peck that kissed off an on-screen taboo

(China Daily (US Edition))
Updated: 2010-09-16 13:50

Zhang Yu (left) in her new movie Love is the Last Word. Provided to China Daily

BEIJING - To most filmgoers today, it's just a peck on the cheek. But when the actress Zhang Yu was asked to kiss her film boyfriend for a scene in Romance on Lushan Mountain in 1980, she was so nervous and embarrassed that she asked for the set be cleared.

"It was really a huge thing," Zhang said. "I asked the set to be cleared and the director agreed, drawing up a 1-km barrier."

That was only 30 years ago, but that was the first kiss - between Zhang and actor Guo Kaimin - featured in a movie made after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Not only did it break the taboo on intimacy on the big screen, but it made the then 23-year-old actress an idol of filmgoers throughout the country.

And a small cinema where the film was made has been screening Romance on Lushan Mountain twice a day continuously since July 1980 (see sidebar).

Zhang said it was really a huge thing in 1980, even for the actors. "The kiss was not on script but something the director had improvised," she said.

"Both Guo and I had never been in a relationship and it took us hours to prepare ourselves to conquer our embarrassment.

"It seems really silly now to ask for the set to be cleared, but at the time the fire line was as far as 1 km."

Zhang tried several times, but she couldn't bring herself to let her lips touch Guo's face. The director pretended to be angry and told Zhang that she had to really kiss Guo's cheek.

And what appears in the film was the first time Zhang's lip touched Guo's cheek. The couple thought they were still rehearsing and did not know the camera was rolling.

"The blushes on Guo and my faces were real. It wasn't acting. We were both so nervous that we were trembling," Zhang said.

In those days, courting couples did not even dare to hold hands in public. "But people were encouraged by the film and started to express their love more openly," she said.

Zhang, who has since studied film production in the United States, has now directed the squeal to the film, called Love is the Last Word, in which she also stars. The film is due to hit the screens next month.

Romance on Lushan Mountain tells the story of a girl who grew up in the US and fell in love with a young man when she returned to her homeland. Love is the Last Word tells how the daughter of that couple chooses between a rich and a poor man.

Zhang said her motivation to make the sequel came partly from a visit to Lushan Mountain few years ago where she noticed that the cinema there had been screening only Romance on Lushan Mountain for years.

"It is a little boring for a cinema to have only one film and I decided to shoot a new one for them," said Zhang. "However, no matter how passionate the kisses could be in the new film, it won't be able to surprise audiences."

Since Romance on Lushan Mountain, screen attitudes in China have changed dramatically. In that year, a three-second lip-to-lip kiss appeared in Not For Love. In 1986, Hibiscus Town featured a kiss lasting four minutes and 23 seconds.

A year later, Old Well showed a short vaguely sexual scene. In 1994, the actress Ning Jing exposed her breast in In the Heat of the Sun.

Today, while China's films can sometimes be as almost as risqu as those from Hollywood, there is no ratings system and the full nudity is still not screened.

"People's sexual attitudes are so different today, but the pursuit for true love in Romance on Lushan Mountain is something we shall always hold," Zhang said.

"I hope my new film could help young people to have healthy view of love."

Zhang's embarrassments were not just from the kiss, but also the tight and fashionable dresses she wore in the film. She wore 43 dresses in the film, all especially bought from Hong Kong.

"They were tight, short and bright, which made me be afraid to square my shoulders," she said.

In those days, women's dresses was generally gray, dark green and blue, with "quite unfeminine" styles. Many fans had asked her where her dresses came from.

Zhang garnered more than 1.8 million votes to win the best actress title in the nation's Hundred of Flowers Awards. To vote in an age before the Internet, fans had to buy a magazine Popular Film, cut a form and post it back to support their idols.

Zhang said the film and the kissing scene were right for the times.

"As it was start of China implementing its opening-up policy, people's minds were starting to change, but no one else had dared to actually do something. We did it," she said.

Li Min, 55, a secretary in a gas company who has seen the film four times, said: "We were all excited to watch Romance on Lushan Mountain. It broke forbidden zones and liberated our minds from the repression.

"I had to wait in long queue to get a ticket as many people got up early to wait the ticket window open."

China Daily