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Zhang Shichuan
Zhang Shichuan (; 1889–1953 or 1890–1954), also credited as S. C. Chang, was a Chinese entrepreneur, film director, and film producer, who is considered a founding father of Chinese cinema. He and Zheng Zhengqiu made the first Chinese feature film, '' The Difficult Couple'', in 1913, and cofounded the Mingxing (Star) Film Company in 1922, which became the largest film production company in China under Zhang's leadership. Zhang directed about 150 films in his career, including '' Laborer's Love'' (1922), the earliest complete Chinese film that has survived; '' Orphan Rescues Grandfather'' (1923), one of the first Chinese box-office hits; '' The Burning of the Red Lotus Temple'' (1928), the first martial arts film; and '' Sing-Song Girl Red Peony'' (1931), China's first sound film. After the destruction of Mingxing's studio by Japanese bombing during the 1937 Battle of Shanghai, Zhang Shichuan made films for the China United Film Production Company (Zhonglian) in Japanese-o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zhang (surname)
Zhang (; ) is the List of common Chinese surnames, third most common surname in China and Taiwan (commonly spelled as Chang in Taiwan), and it is one of the most common surnames in the world. It is spoken in the Chinese tones, first tone ''Zhāng''. It is a surname that exists in many languages and cultures, corresponding to the surname 'Archer' in English for example. In the Wade–Giles system of Romanization of Chinese, romanization, it is romanized as Chang, which is commonly used in Taiwan. Cheung is commonly used in Hong Kong as a romanization. It is the 24th name on the ''Hundred Family Surnames'' poem, contained in the verse 何呂施張 ''(Hé Lǚ Shī Zhāng)''. Zhang is also the pinyin romanization of the less-common surnames (''Zhāng''), which is the 40th name on the ''Hundred Family Surnames'' poem, and (''Zhǎng''). Today, it is one of the most common surnames in the world at over 100 million people worldwide. Zhang was listed by the People's Republic of China's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Battle Of Shanghai
The Battle of Shanghai ( zh, t=淞滬會戰, s=淞沪会战, first=t, p=Sōng hù huìzhàn) was a major battle fought between the Empire of Japan and the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic of China in the Chinese city of Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It lasted from August 13, 1937, to November 26, 1937, and was arguably the single largest and longest battle of the entire war, with it even regarded by some historians as the first battle of World War II. It resulted in the Japanese capture of the city and heavy destruction to the city. It was the first of the twenty-two major engagements fought between the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic of China (ROC) and the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) of the Empire of Japan at the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese eventually prevailed after over three months of extensive fighting on land, in the air and at sea. Both sides accused each other of using ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Didacticism
Didacticism is a philosophy that emphasises instructional and informative qualities in literature, art, and design. In art, design, architecture, and landscape, didacticism is a conceptual approach that is driven by the urgent need to explain. Overview The term has its origin in the Ancient Greek word διδακτικός (''didaktikos''), "pertaining to instruction", and signified learning in a fascinating and intriguing manner. Didactic art was meant both to entertain and to instruct. Didactic plays, for instance, were intended to convey a moral theme or other rich truth to the audience. During the Middle Age, the Roman Catholic chants like the '' Veni Creator Spiritus'', as well as the Eucharistic hymns like the '' Adoro te devote'' and '' Pange lingua'' are used for fixing within prayers the truths of the Roman Catholic faith to preserve them and pass down from a generation to another. In the Renaissance, the church began a syncretism between pagan and the Christian didacti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ren Jinping
Ren Jinping () was a Chinese businessman and filmmaker. Active in journalism from the mid-1910s, Ren joined Zhang Shichuan, Zheng Zhegu, Zheng Zhengqiu, and Zhou Jianyun in establishing the Mingxing Film Company in 1922. He handled much of the company's advertising, while also directing a film in 1925. Ren established his own company, Xinren, in 1926 and directed several films for it. Xinren closed in 1928. By 1949, Ren was a theatre manager. Little information about him has survived, and he has generally received little discussion in studies of Chinese cinema. Biography Early life The cinema scholar Yoshino Sugawara writes that Ren's date of birth is unknown, while the film historian Huang Xuelei provides a year of birth of 1896. Ren traced his heritage to the Zhejiang region, and others of Ningbo heritage remained in his business networks through the 1920s. Ren attended the Minli Junior High School in the late 1900s, finishing his studies at the beginning of the followin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zheng Zhegu
Zheng Zhegu ( zh, t=鄭鷓鴣, s=郑鹧鸪, p=Zhèng Zhègū, 1880–1925) was a Chinese actor and entrepreneur. The son of a Qing official, he served in the military before joining the anti-Qing movement. Forced into hiding, he joined the Republic of China military after the 1911 revolution but left government service and moved to Shanghai after growing disillusioned. Long interested in Peking opera and other forms of drama, Zheng joined several troupes while also gaining a reputation as a stage performer. In the late 1910s, he also became involved in publishing through the Xinmin Library. In 1922, Zheng co-founded the Mingxing Film Company together with Ren Jinping, Zhang Shichuan, Zheng Zhengqiu, and Zhou Jianyun. While heading the company's screenwriting department and teaching at its film school, he starred in several of its early productions, making his film debut with the simultaneously released '' The King of Comedy Visits Shanghai'' and '' Labourer's Love'' (both 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zhou Jianyun
Zhou Jianyun (, 1883–1967) was a Chinese dramatist and film entrepreneur. Born in Hefei, Anhui, he travelled to Shanghai in his youth for school before entering the city's drama community through the Qimin New Drama Society and press through the '' Emancipation Pictorial''. With his fellow dramatists Zhang Shichuan and Zheng Zhengqiu, in 1922 he established the Mingxing Film Company, variously serving as its manager, finance director, and film distributor. He spearheaded the establishment of the Liuhe Film Distribution Company in 1928, and in the early 1930s he hired several Communist screenwriters. Mingxing was closed in 1939 during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and although Zhou established several further companies, these were short-lived. Biography Early life Zhou was born Zhou Yafu () in Hefei, Anhui, in 1883. Studying first at the Shangxian Hall in Beijing, he later transferred to the Jiangnan Arsenal Ordnance Middle School in Shanghai. Zhou read extensively as a youth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Film Stock
Film stock is an analog medium that is used for recording motion pictures or animation. It is recorded on by a movie camera, developed, edited, and projected onto a screen using a movie projector. It is a strip or sheet of transparent plastic film base coated on one side with a gelatin emulsion containing microscopically small light-sensitive silver halide crystals. The sizes and other characteristics of the crystals determine the sensitivity, contrast and resolution of the film.Karlheinz Keller et al. "Photography" in Ullmann's Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry, 2005, Wiley-VCH, Weinheim. The emulsion will gradually darken if left exposed to light, but the process is too slow and incomplete to be of any practical use. Instead, a very short exposure to the image formed by a camera lens is used to produce only a very slight chemical change, proportional to the amount of light absorbed by each crystal. This creates an invisible latent image in the emulsion, which ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Asia Film Company
The Asia Film Company was the first film production company in China. History The Asia Film Company was established in Shanghai in 1909 by Russian born Jewish American businessman Benjamin Brosky (1877-1960), and was the first company to produce dramatic films in China. They were all short films, which were the fashion at the time. The studio made four films in 1909 in Shanghai and Hong Kong, the only surviving one being ''Stealing a Roast Duck'', shot in Hong Kong. Brosky left Shanghai in 1912 and sold his assets to two other Americans, Yashell and Suffert. They continued the work of the company, collaborating with the Xinmin theatre company, led by Zheng Zhengqiu and Zhang Shichuan. The company was dissolved in 1914, when the First World War caused a shortage of film stock. Brosky went on to co-found, with Li Minwei, Hong Kong's first film studio, Huamei (Chinese-American), in 1913, which made a single film, '' Zhuangzi Tests His Wife''. Brodsky left China in 1917 and briefly wo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Comprador
A comprador or compradore () is a "person who acts as an agent for foreign organizations engaged in investment, trade, or economic or political exploitation." An example of a comprador would be a native manager for a European business house in East and South East Asia, and, by extension, social groups that play broadly similar roles in other parts of the world. Etymology and usage The term ''comprador'', a Portuguese word that means ''buyer'', derives from the Latin ''comparare'', which means ''to procure''. The original usage of the word in East Asia referred to a native servant in European households in Guangzhou in southern China or in the neighboring Portuguese colony at Macao - such persons went to market to barter their employers' wares. The term then evolved to mean the native contract-suppliers who worked for foreign companies in East Asia or the native managers of firms in East Asia. Compradors held important positions in southern China - buying and selling tea, silk, co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Silkworms
''Bombyx mori'', commonly known as the domestic silk moth, is a moth species belonging to the family Bombycidae. It is the closest relative of '' Bombyx mandarina'', the wild silk moth. Silkworms are the larvae of silk moths. The silkworm is of particular economic value, being a primary producer of silk. The silkworm's preferred food are the leaves of white mulberry, though they may eat other species of mulberry, and even leaves of other plants like the Osage orange. Domestic silk moths are entirely dependent on humans for reproduction, as a result of millennia of selective breeding. Wild silk moths, which are other species of ''Bombyx'', are not as commercially viable in the production of silk. Sericulture, the practice of breeding silkworms for the production of raw silk, has existed for at least 5,000 years in China, whence it spread to India, Korea, Nepal, Japan, and then the West. The conventional process of sericulture kills the silkworm in the pupal stage. The domestic s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Character
Chinese characters are logographs used to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represent the only one that has remained in continuous use. Over a documented history spanning more than three millennia, the function, style, and means of writing characters have changed greatly. Unlike letters in alphabets that reflect the sounds of speech, Chinese characters generally represent morphemes, the units of meaning in a language. Writing all of the frequently used vocabulary in a language requires roughly 2000–3000 characters; , nearly have been identified and included in '' The Unicode Standard''. Characters are created according to several principles, where aspects of shape and pronunciation may be used to indicate the character's meaning. The first attested characters are oracle bone inscriptions made during the 13th century BCE in w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Courtesy Name
A courtesy name ( zh, s=字, p=zì, l=character), also known as a style name, is an additional name bestowed upon individuals at adulthood, complementing their given name. This tradition is prevalent in the East Asian cultural sphere, particularly in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam. Courtesy names are a marker of adulthood and were historically given to men at the age of 20, and sometimes to women upon marriage. Unlike art names, which are more akin to pseudonyms or pen names, courtesy names served a formal and respectful purpose. In traditional Chinese society, using someone's given name in adulthood was considered disrespectful among peers, making courtesy names essential for formal communication and writing. Courtesy names often reflect the meaning of the given name or use homophonic characters, and were typically disyllabic after the Qin dynasty. The practice also extended to other East Asian cultures, and was sometimes adopted by Mongols and Manchu people, Manchus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
