Resistance and Collaboration in Chinese World War II Films

Desmond Cheung

     The Second World War is undeniably a watershed in world history. For China, World War II began in 1937 when the Empire of Japan invaded and rapidly occupied the most prosperous urban and coastal areas. This 'War of Resistance Against Japan' (or 'Second Sino-Japanese War') came to be connected with the wider global conflict, but has its own history that brought untold suffering to millions of Chinese and continues to be remembered and contested in China, Asia, and beyond.

     China's World War II was epic in scale and had historic consequences in Chinese and world history. It was the longest conflict within what became the Second World War, lasting for eight years from 1937 to 1945. Some of its battles involved up to half a million men on each side. There were over three million military casualties and possibly between twenty and thirty million total casualties as a direct or indirect result of the war.¹ 80 to 100 million fled from their homes, many were separated from their families—often forever. For many refugees who survived, there was no home to return to.² Eight years of warfare and occupation brought devastation to much of China. China's most modernized cities, the industrial regions, ports, and transportation networks were destroyed or occupied by Japanese armies. China's burgeoning economy was almost destroyed. By the end of the war, China was more drained than ever, and divided between the contending forces of Chiang Kai-shek's (1887–1975) Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (KMT)³, and Mao Zedong's (1893–1976) Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which fought a civil war soon afterwards resulting in the victory of the CCP and founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

     The war also transformed China's place in the world and foreign powers' relations with it. Having suffered a 'century of humiliation' in which it was forced to surrender sovereign rights and economic and territorial concessions to foreign imperialist powers such as Britain, France, and Japan—and seeing the collapse of its own imperial system in the process—China emerged at the end of the Second World War on the side of the victorious Allies along with Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union. China was formally elevated to a place among the 'Big Four', largely thanks to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the American goal of 'keeping China in the war' to tie down over a half million Japanese troops and have a symbolically important Asian ally.⁴ Even though China was not really treated as an equal partner,⁵ Chiang did manage to secure the abolition of the unequal treaties and the postwar return to Chinese sovereignty of foreign concessions as well as Manchuria and Taiwan, though this also had a lot to do with American interests in curtailing the British Empire.⁶ However, despite these gains, China's civil war that immediately followed and the triumph of Communism in China alarmed democratic capitalist countries, contributing to realignments in geopolitics and the Cold War. As for China's relations with its wartime adversary, the brutalities and violence Japan inflicted during its long occupation caused tensions in Sino-Japanese relations which continue today.

     Despite the importance of China's World War II, it has until recently been relatively little known in the West. Few Westerners have heard of the names of famous Chinese battles or generals. Most western knowledge about the war concerns the exploits of Westerners involved in the war or the fate of European colonies in Asia.⁷ Indeed, China's role in the war was dismissed at the time and continues to be underappreciated today, to the extent that it has been dubbed a 'forgotten ally' or a 'bit-part actor' on a stage dominated by the Big Three Allies.⁸ This is a view that the People's Republic of China, now a major player on the world stage, refutes as it seeks to portray itself as a responsible great power—just as it had been in the Second World War.⁹

     Thankfully, within intellectual and cultural spheres, awareness of China's wartime experiences has been growing over the past few decades, thanks to the work of numerous scholars as well as more complex cultural representations of the war. Since the 1980s, there has been an outpouring of Chinese publications on many aspects of the war, notably the revisionist biographies of prominent figures such as Chiang Kai-shek. Scholars in Western academia as well as Japan have also made major contributions to the literature. Moreover, a number of international research projects involving scholars from all the countries concerned have fostered a greater mutual understanding and sharing of insights. In the last decade three single-volume overviews of the war have appeared in English – all written by prominent historians of modern China.¹⁰

     Films that address the Second World War in China have been made since the 1930s, arguably even before the war began, and there remains a significant interest in producing and watching such films today.¹¹ The academic study of Chinese films has also matured in recent years. There are now several English titles dedicated to films about the war in East Asia.¹²

     This article takes advantage of all of these developments to suggest how historical scholarship, Chinese films, and writings about films can be combined to teach China's World War II. Specifically, this article analyzes four Chinese films, focusing on the central themes of resistance and collaboration. Through discussion of these films and related historical debates, this article suggests how a thematic approach can help students gain an understanding of China's World War II and how it continues to be remembered and contested today.

     This article approaches films as popular depictions that can shape how a society remembers the war, as well as cultural representations that can bring the past to life in a vivid and powerful way for those who have no prior familiarity with the history. It is useful to note that there is an official public memory in coexistence with multiple alternative kinds of memory. Official memory of China's World War II has a prominent place. It is taught in schools as part of Patriotic Education. It is enshrined in physical sites like the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders. And, since 2014, September 3 has been established as the national day for commemorating 'victory in the Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japan', with a national ritual that has been presided over by President Xi Jinping himself.¹³ Yet official representations of the war have long been established on the silver screen as well, notably in films like Tunnel Warfare. What historical writing and increasingly more films have done since the 1980s is to help people to look beneath "the surface of state-sanctioned collective memory of Chinese nationalism and communist heroism" for "subtle, sometimes subversive acts of remembrance", giving rise to alternative depictions of history from a greater variety of perspectives.¹⁴

Pedagogical notes

     First some brief suggestions on pedagogy. The author teaches a ten-week course on the history of China's World War II through film. The course meets once per week, with each meeting consisting of an introduction to the film and its themes, the viewing of the film, followed by a discussion of the film. The course is firmly anchored in historical research and film scholarship. A single volume history of China's World War II (see note 10) is assigned for the course, supplemented by film readings and further historical studies.

     Students are encouraged to make three types of analyses in their interpretations of the films: 1) Historical analysis – how does the film compare with historical knowledge?; 2) Contextual analysis – when, in what context, and by whom was the film made, and what political or ideological messages did it contain for its target audience(s)?; 3) Cinematic analysis – how do the film's cinematic and aesthetic features affect its portrayal of war?

     The course takes a thematic approach. Students are asked to focus on particular themes when analyzing the films so that they will be better able to compare the films with each other and hopefully with films concerning war in other times and places as well. Sample themes include: the grand narratives and politics of war, including key events and battles; violence and wartime atrocities; social impact of war; meanings of war for individuals, communities, and nations; and resistance and collaboration – the topic of this article. The films discussed below are: Big Road "Da lu" (1934), an early classic that served as a call to arms; Tunnel Warfare "Didao zhan" (1965), a model film about resistance from the early Maoist period; and two contemporary Chinese films, Devils on the Doorstep "Guizi laile" (2000) and Lust, Caution "Se jie" (2007), that challenge and complicate the earlier works. They represent different styles of film and depict variant readings on the theme of resistance and collaboration. All of them were well received by students in the classroom.

Resistance and Collaboration

     In Chinese, the Second World War in China is most commonly referred to as the War of Resistance Against Japan (Kang Ri zhan zheng). Resistance is one of the most important themes in its history, as well as a prism through which that history is told, remembered, and assessed. The historical narrative and moral choice seem clear: either to resist the Japanese and defend China, or else to collaborate with the enemy and betray one's country.¹⁵ This unequivocal judgement, however, masks the messiness of the past because the options available to individuals were not necessarily so clear. Defending one's country could yield to personal survival as the expedient course of action. Resistance was often not the path chosen. Yet resistance remains at the forefront of how the war is remembered. It constitutes the orthodox, state-sanctioned memory. The very idea that the Chinese people, and especially those led by the Chinese Communist Party, resisted the Japanese lies at the heart of the CCP's "claims to national and nationalist legitimacy."¹⁶ This grand narrative of resistance remains central to Chinese readings of the past, even though it has never gone unchallenged. From the beginning, there were doubts over the Communists' dedication to resisting the Japanese, not least because Mao was believed to have said in September 1937 that the CCP policy for the war was "to focus 70% on expansion, 20% on dealing with the KMT, and 10% on resisting Japan".¹⁷

     Chiang Kai-shek was thus rightly suspicious of the Communists' intentions, though he himself was also criticized for being slow to resist Japanese aggression and for targeting the Communists instead—his stated policy of "first internal pacification, then external resistance"—thereby putting party interests ahead of the nation's. Following the Manchurian Incident of September 18, 1931, in which Japan effectively annexed China's Northeast, many newspapers and journals called for the Nanjing government to take a stronger stance against Japan. There were clamours for the government to use force to regain lost territory, complaints that non-resistance "actually invites the enemy to attack," and even accusations that the Nationalists were "the traitorous party that would sell out the nation".¹⁸ While there may be some question over Chiang's priorities, he was trying to build up China's strength, including its military with the help of German advisors, while hoping for further international assistance. When Japan moved to occupy North China in the summer of 1937, Chiang declared in a speech that "the only option that remains is to fight a war of resistance and be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice."¹⁹ To be sure, the Nationalists fought and lost against the Japanese more than the Communists did.

     If resistance is the righteous response to invasion, collaboration is the other side of the coin. Where patriotic resistance is to be praised, treacherous collaboration with the enemy must be condemned. Yet the word collaboration and its Chinese translations are complex. The use of the word as a political and historical term arose in the context of Vichy France working with Nazi Germany, before being transposed to Chinese and other histories.²⁰ The Chinese term hezuo, 'work together', or 'cooperate', would be the most literal translation of 'collaboration', but it does not carry the negative implications usually associated with 'collaboration' in a political context.²¹ The most common Chinese term for 'collaborator' in Chinese is hanjian, which is also translated as 'traitor'.²² It has both a more specific as well as broader range of meanings than the English term, however, with connotations of moral, ethnic, and sexual transgression. An authoritative Chinese dictionary defines it as "someone who helps a different race harm his or her own race", with the assumption that one has to be a Han, that is a Chinese, to be a hanjian, although the term was used more loosely before the twentieth century.²³

     In addition to determining the moral meanings of the Chinese terms for collaborator, historians have examined the phenomenon of collaboration at different political and social levels. Following Japanese Prime Minister Konoye's call via radio in November 1938 for Chinese to embrace opportunities and join Japan's new order in East Asia, various groups came forward.²⁴ Japan came to sponsor several collaborationist regimes throughout the war that co-existed and competed with one another. Many of them opposed Chiang Kai-shek's "resistance as foolhardy, driving China toward extinction", for them "collaboration was the only realistic means of ensuring the survival of the nation; resistance threatened to bring about its annihilation." As a result, numerous leaders of collaborationist regimes "invoked the rhetoric of national salvation to justify what they did … collaboration was for them a desperate response to the most severe crisis that the Chinese nation had ever suffered."²⁵

     The best known of these regimes was the Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China (1940–1945). Its president, Wang Jingwei (1883–1944), is often considered to be the arch collaborator and traitor in modern Chinese history. He had been a senior disciple and anticipated successor of Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925), founding father of the republic, but lost power to Chiang Kai-shek who relied on his control of the military to gain the highest office. However, they were able temporarily to put aside their differences after Japan seized Manchuria and Chiang invited Wang to become premier. But Wang subsequently responded to Japanese overtures to establish a rival regime in Nanjing, which he claimed was the only way to ensure China's survival and to end a war whose destructiveness was aggravated by Chiang Kai-shek's scorched-earth policy. Wang sought a Japanese commitment to troop withdrawal in his negotiations with his imperial masters, but ultimately he was a puppet and so able to win only limited support from compatriots and denunciation as a traitor by Chiang Kai-shek.²⁶ Wang Jingwei died of illness in November 1944 and was never put on trial. However, although he may have seen himself as a true patriot until the end of his life, he was condemned by history as a collaborator and traitor.²⁷

     The Japanese needed men like Wang Jingwei to front puppet regimes and assist them in governing their occupied territories. They also required collaborators at lower levels and across society at large. Emphasizing the political dimension of collaboration, Timothy Brook has explored cases of local collaboration in the Yangzi Delta from the bottom up. He finds that the local men who came forward to collaborate were mostly minor elites who dealt with mundane problems such as supplying food and organizing transportation—matters that local elites and officials under any political dispensation had to solve to maintain the local order and to stay in power.²⁸ Odoric Wou has similarly found a wide range of collaborators in his case study of Henan. In the area around the strategic county town of Gongxian, the Japanese enlisted local Chinese to work with them after they gained control of the area in May 1944. Although many did resist, others came to "collaborate (cooperating willingly) or cooperate (coerced compliance)" with the Japanese.²⁹ The distinction Wou makes might not always be apparent to observers, but is useful for understanding the real choices—or lack of them—that people made. Some members of local elites and marginal groups (including hoodlums) sought power and personal advantage, others merely self-preservation. Some Nationalist officers allied with the Japanese to oppose the Communists and prevent them gaining ground at their expense—a move that was ideologically difficult to explain and led to rank-and-file soldiers defecting to the CCP.³⁰ Businessmen collaborated to protect their assets and social position.³¹ For the people at large, many cooperated by meeting demands for labor or resources, or by sending their children to Japanese schools for free education and grain, or just continued to live—and merely survive—under occupation.³²

     Overall, people collaborated for a wide variety of reasons and frequently a combination of "personal ambition, material benefits, ideological concerns, sheer survival, fear of mass terror, and avoidance of losses and destruction." The reasons were varied, shifting, and often only temporary.³³ While there has long been the sense that just to live in occupied areas was itself shameful, carrying the whiff of collaboration, it is increasingly acknowledged that millions did, either because they could not flee, or simply chose to stay and try to survive. For many, it might be better to understand their decision as reflecting a need to "live with" the enemy's occupation rather than an active act of collaboration.³⁴

     These different perspectives on the theme of resistance and collaboration complicate our picture of the past. While acknowledging the importance of this more nuanced view, however, it is necessary to remember that absolute condemnations of people as hanjian—the very black-and-white judgments that historians have sought to complicate—resulted in the deaths of thousands and the persecution of many more. As historian Yun Xia has shown, hanjian was more than a term of opprobrium, it was a crime. Soon after the outbreak of war in July 1937 the Nationalist government issued the Regulations on Punishing Hanjian, which served as the legal basis for the anti-hanjian campaigns throughout the War of Resistance.³⁵ The regulations covered not only glaring crimes such as "plotting against the home country" or "poisoning drinking water or food for the Chinese military or people", but also much vaguer items such as "supplying, dealing, or transporting grains or other items that could serve as provisions"—an article that could and surely did implicate many whose collaboration may have been indirect at most.³⁶

     It is difficult to form an accurate estimate of the number of people accused and sentenced as hanjian in wartime because of the decentralized and frequently clandestine nature of the operations against them. But many suffered. The Juntong, or Bureau of Investigation and Statistics under the Military Affairs Commission, that is the Nationalists' intelligence service, was responsible for killing at least 930 alleged hanjian between April 1938 and 1945. The incomplete statistics on the postwar trials of hanjian indicate that between 1944 and 1947, the judiciary processed 45,679 hanjian cases, prosecuted 30,185 individuals, and convicted 14,932. Of these, 369 were executed, 979 were sentenced to life imprisonment, and the rest received varying prison sentences.³⁷ While many of these condemned hanjian may well have been actively serving the enemy for personal gain and little consideration for their nation's fate, for many others the picture was not so clear.

	Figure 1: Still from Big Road "Da lu" (1934)

Big Road (1934): a Leftist call to arms

     The first and earliest film to be discussed is Sun Yu's Big Road (1934), a classic of the 1930s and an example of the Leftist Movement that was concerned with "depicting the lives of the lower classes and arousing national patriotic sentiment and resistance against the Japanese invasion."³⁸ In Big Road six young men find themselves unemployed in the city and so decide to head inland to contribute to the construction of a highway that will be crucial for the transportation of the Chinese army defending the country against Japan. A local strongman, recruited by the enemy, tries to thwart the road-building work, first by bribing the six brothers to abandon the project, and then by capturing and locking them up when they refuse. But their friends, including two young women and the other road builders, rescue them and they manage to complete the project. Upon completion, however, almost all of them are killed in an attack by Japanese planes.

     The film's messages are clear: the workers are the heroes and the Japanese invaders and their Chinese collaborators are the villains. The use of different camera angles and lighting emphasizes these contrasting polar roles.³⁹ A commercial production that sought to attract and entertain crowds, the film features several stars of the day and there are numerous lighthearted comedic and romantic touches.⁴⁰ But the overriding message is political: the people must unite together against Japanese imperialism.⁴¹ Big Road was made in 1934 and released in 1935, and so, strictly speaking, came out a couple of years before the official start of the war in 1937. However, the fact that it was produced in the context of Japan's increasing aggression after it occupied Manchuria in 1931 added to the urgency of the film's message, which could be seen as a rallying cry to arouse the people's awareness of the situation in the Northeast and to resist the Japanese—just as the heroes in the film do.

     There are numerous cultural references to patriotism and resisting foreign enemies in Big Road. In one street scene, a storyteller performs the stories of the Yang Family generals, a famous family of patriots who, during the early Song dynasty (960–1279), helped to lead the Chinese resistance against the Khitans and Tanguts, two groups of non-Chinese northern peoples that invaded China and set up political regimes in the north.⁴² In another scene at the restaurant where the workers eat, Moli, a former flower drum singer who now works there, sings the "Fengyang Song", a folk song about the hardships of the people. The song relates the period of upheaval that saw Zhu Yuanzhang (1328–98), a Chinese peasant who rose through the ranks of a rebel movement, expel the Mongols from China and replace their Yuan dynasty (1279–1368) with the Chinese Ming dynasty (1368–1644).⁴³ The song tells of the suffering that people endured during this unstable dynastic transition with widespread turmoil and famine forcing people to sell their children to survive. Although the historical setting might seem distant from the time of Big Road, the suffering of the people is comparable as desperate people flee the land and 'the battlefield is littered with dead men.' While Moli sings, the audience sees contemporary scenes of the hardships endured by the common people flash up on the screen.⁴⁴ Big Road's audiences would have recognized the cultural references to these invaders in China's history and compared them with the Japanese threat of their own time—as well as the message to resist them.⁴⁵

     More immediate than Moli's rendition of the "Fengyang Song" is the "Big Road" theme song itself that is heard several times in the film, especially when the brothers are building the road. In the story, the song is written by Zheng Jun, the student who has fled the Northeast. It expresses the unity and solidarity needed to save China with its rousing lines: "Together we give our blood and toil! … Everybody put forth strength! Together, go fight! … Carrying the historical mission going forward, quickly we build the Big Road of freedom!⁴⁶ Understandably, the song became a popular leftist hymn embodying the spirit of the people.

     It is the words and deeds of Big Road's main characters that most directly bring attention to the dangers facing China and what all Chinese must do to save the country. Among the six brothers, Zheng Jun and Brother Jin play the leading roles. Zheng Jun is a college student from the Northeast who understands world affairs, while Brother Jin, though a laborer and son of a laborer who has toiled from the cradle, is the group's leader.

     Zheng Jun comments on the dangers facing China several times. His main interlocutor (or foil) is Zhang Da, a clumsy fellow who is mostly concerned with finding female company. At the start of the film, Zhang Da teases a few girls by throwing stones at them. Zheng Jun's reproach prompts Zhang Da to retort: "Hey old man, you may be a Northeast university student but you can't control everyone!" Zheng Jun replies: "It's not my intention to control you! It's just that if we continue to mess around like this, I fear that we will all become slaves without a country" (wang guo nu). The contrast is clear: Zheng worries about the nation's fate, while Zhang Da is oblivious to it and just wants to have fun. In another dialogue, Chinese soldiers announce that the Japanese enemy are approaching and ready to launch an offensive. Responding to this news, Zhang Da says: "It's so strange! Enemy troops have already taken a large territory, why invade here now?" Zheng Jun explains: "It is not at all strange, the enemy are insatiable, they wanted to invade from the start. They think that the earlier they attack, then the better their chances." Zhang Da represents the everyman, living in (willful) ignorance, while Zheng Jun makes clear to him the threat that Japan poses—not just to Northeast China, but to all Chinese.

     Zheng Jun may be the brother who enlightens the others about the nation's dangers, but Brother Jin is the leader. It is he who conceives of the idea to build the road in the first place, leading not only the six brothers, but a larger band of laborers to it. Indeed, Brother Jin's success as a leader is shown in his ability to lead the collective in participating in the resistance. When reports of approaching Japanese troops and cannon fire startle the workers, prompting some of them to contemplate flight, Brother Jin addresses them: "It's too early to flee, the enemy have not arrived yet. It is also too late to run now. Even if we had ten days head start, the enemy planes could catch up in an instant and shoot us down. The road will transport our troops to support us, we can help to resist the enemy!" Brother Jin's call to resist steels the workers' determination to stay to finish the project, declaring "We will not run!" Shortly after, Deputy Hu, the supervisor of the construction project who is ordered by a Japanese agent to prevent the road's completion, attempts to persuade Brother Jin and the others to give up their work by feasting them with a sumptuous meal and offering each of them a cash bribe. Brother Jin declares that if they take the money and save their own lives, "we fear that tens of millions will lose theirs!" He then rips up the payment and the other brothers follow his lead, resulting in them being locked up by Deputy Hu.

     In the final scene of the film, after escaping from Deputy Hu, Brother Jin leads the workers—now including Moli who was instrumental in their escape⁴⁷—to complete the construction project. Just as the road is finished, Japanese planes attack and kill the workers. Even so, just before he dies, Brother Jin manages to shoot down an enemy plane with a rifle. Brother Jin leads the resistance to the end and dies a heroic death. But it is not just Brother Jin, all the brothers, all these common laborers, give their lives in resisting the Japanese enemy. Although they may not have understood the nation's perils at the beginning, they are stirred to sacrifice themselves for the country. Their story exemplifies the heroism of the common people and what can be achieved as a result of collective action. Even after their death, their spirit of work and sacrifice lives on, as suggested in the vision of their ghosts rising up from their bodies, and working jubilantly as before.

     Big Road was released at a time when the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek was being accused of capitulating to Japanese demands and cowering in the face of the enemy's aggression instead of resisting them in war. From the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in September 1931 to the outbreak of war in the summer of 1937, the Japanese threat was the most important topic of public discussion—"perhaps the only time in all of Chinese history in which a sustained public discussion of the issue of going to war occurred."⁴⁸ A film like Big Road with its call to resistance and ordinary heroes setting an example would surely have added to this public debate, and hopefully stirred the people—and maybe even the country's leaders—to action as well.

	Figure 2: Poster for Tunnel Warfare "Didao zhan" (1965)

Tunnel Warfare (1965): a model film on resistance

     Tunnel Warfare (1965, dir. Ren Xudong), is a model film about resistance. It not only takes resistance against the Japanese as a major theme, but is an explicitly political film that trumpets resistance under the guidance of Mao Zedong's Chinese Communist Party. Indeed, it is so overtly political that it might be dismissed by many viewers today as a piece of propaganda. Yet it is valuable because it reveals a lot about how the war has been portrayed to and understood by millions, and also depicts key elements of the Communists' strategy of resisting the Japanese.

     The CCP presented Tunnel Warfare as a model film. It was a product of the early Maoist era, the Seventeen Years from 1949 to 1966, during which the party established control over production and exhibition, and sought, in the words of the prominent Communist intellectual Guo Moruo, 'to eliminate the poisonous imperialist films gradually and strengthen the educational nature of the people's film industry'.⁴⁹ Like many other works of art and literature, it followed the central tenets of Mao Zedong's 1942 "Talks at the Yan'an Conference on Literature and Art", which dictated that art should serve politics. The purpose was to harness the power of these cultural forms to serve political goals, as well as to rein in intellectuals to make sure that they did not promote ideas that contradicted the party's objectives.⁵⁰ In a careful analysis of films of the period, one scholar has detected a "distinct generic style" that reveals a "revolutionary romanticism" amalgamated with Socialist Realism. It was a "cinematic orthodoxy" that fully conformed with Maoist ideology.⁵¹ In this orthodox style, peasants, workers, and soldiers all strive to resist the Japanese or bring about revolution—under the guidance of Chairman Mao's Chinese Communist Party. And unlike earlier films whose aesthetics and messages may have been more sophisticated and subtle, there is no ambiguity in films like Tunnel Warfare, which adopt a colloquial language and fast-paced action and a cast of unmistakable heroes and villains to educate and entertain the masses for whom they were intended. A number of works that the party leadership and audiences deemed especially successful at achieving these goals became known as 'red classics'. This term was first applied to certain novels from the Seventeen Years, but later broadened to include more cultural forms including films, plays, operas and ballets, picture storybooks, and artworks.⁵²Tunnel Warfare was one of the films that attained the status of a 'red classic'. Indeed, it was produced for educating the people, together with Mine Warfare (Dilei zhan, 1962). The two war films were repeatedly shown, often at open-air venues, nationwide throughout the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) and unquestionably had a powerful effect in shaping how people, especially children, imagined the war.⁵³ Tunnel Warfare has been watched by millions of Chinese over decades and retains the power to entertain and inform audiences worldwide today.

     Tunnel Warfare is set in 1942 in Hebei Province in North China, where the people seek to thwart the mop-up campaigns of Japan's North China Area Army (NCAA) supported by their surrendered Chinese 'puppet' troops. The story centers on the peasant militia members of Gaojia Village and the Eighth Route Army and other Communist military units who guide and aid the peasants' efforts. It is a highly ideological film, and idealized to the point that not only is it clear from the outset which side will triumph, very few deaths of peasants are shown. Those that do die onscreen die bravely and in acts of heroic self-sacrifice. However, despite this unrealistic portrayal, the film is valuable for viewers today for at least two reasons.⁵⁴ First, the film exemplifies the theme of resistance of the Chinese people under Communist leadership. Second, although idealized and ideological, the film portrays many aspects of the historical context that illustrate realities affirmed by historical research, particularly how the Communists conducted guerrilla warfare.

     Gaojia Village's militia units are headed by Gao Laozhong and Gao Chuanbao, who are father and son. They are guided by the Communist Party in their efforts in resisting the Japanese enemy. Especially after the father's death, a number of CCP military commanders advise Gao Chuanbao on how to improve their strategy. The following summer, the Communist officers help the villagers unmask spies attempting to infiltrate them and learn the secrets of their tunnels. Soon afterwards they are able to inflict a major defeat on the enemy and win a final victory.

     Above the CCP and Eighth Route Army leaders is Chairman Mao Zedong himself. From the very beginning, Mao Zedong's thought and teaching are central to the story. In the opening scene, the elderly village head is carried back to the village seriously injured. As he lies dying, he bids his successors to study Mao's "On Protracted War", handing a copy of the text to Gao Laozhong, to guide them in their resistance. Thereafter, at several crucial moments in the film, the militia members and Communist leaders refer to the text and apply what they learn from it. For instance, when some militia members bemoan their setbacks and their lack of people and guns, another reads out a passage from Mao's text and points out that "once we can mobilize all the people, then we can overcome our shortcomings and difficulties." Later on Gao Chuanbao takes out Mao's book and remembers his father studying it. "In war, the first purpose is to kill the enemy, the second is to protect ourselves, it's only because we kill many enemies that we can save ourselves effectively." Reflecting on Mao's words, he realizes that they must be more aggressive. Accordingly, they adapt their tunnels from hiding places to places from which to launch attacks on the enemy.

     In case the role of Mao Zedong's thought is not absolutely clear, the film's unseen narrator frequently points out its importance. At the start of the film, the narrator says that everyone took part in the war against the Japanese "fighting under the flag of Mao thought". Throughout the film there are explicit references, some in the form of songs, to Mao's leadership and his place in the people's hearts "like the morning sun." At the very end, as the camera shows a scene of victory followed by the people's celebrations, the narrator declares: "This is the victory of Mao Zedong thought, the victory of people's war." In a sense, the CCP and Eighth Route Army leaders in the film as well as the narrator are all teachers to the people, both the peasants in the film and the viewers of the film. It is a didactic film about resistance under the guidance of the Chinese Communist Party, with Chairman Mao Zedong at the helm, leading the people to victory.

     As such an overtly political film, Tunnel Warfare might put off some viewers today. But aside from its value as a major cultural product of the early Maoist era, it contains many elements that reflect what historians know about the historical context.

     At the start of the film, with Japanese planes bombing the land, the narrator explains that the Japanese had taken a more aggressive stance to strengthen their control and reduce the Communist presence in North China. This was the infamous 'Three All' (sankô) strategy in which the Japanese sought to 'burn all, kill all, rob all' to defeat the Chinese resistance and to consolidate control behind their lines. From July 1941 to November 1944, the Japanese inflicted brutal and sustained violence on the North China bases, with 150,000 Japanese troops assigned to pacification duty, assisted by about 100,000 Chinese 'puppet' troops. They carried out large-scale operations in the core areas of the Communists, seeking to destroy their bases, their war material and supplies of grain. "Entire villages were razed, and all living things found in them killed."⁵⁵

     There were two complementary aspects of the Communists' approach in resisting the Japanese: building base areas and practicing guerrilla warfare. The base areas were the regions in which the CCP established a political and military presence, organized production and trained and armed the local population to assist them in their work. They formed consolidated bases farther—and thus safer—from the areas with a strong Japanese presence, while closer to Japanese front lines they set up guerrilla zones.⁵⁶ The Communists gradually built up a linked hierarchy of political and military power reaching downwards into local society. When an element of the Eighth Route Army (or New Fourth Army in Central China) entered an unfamiliar area, it worked with local people who knew the terrain and the enemy. The locals provided logistic support, intelligence, guides and shelter and were often organized into militia. Moreover, every level was a recruiting ground for the level above, as well as a source of training and manpower. In Mao's earthy phrase, the base areas were "the buttocks (pigu) of the revolution."⁵⁷  By the end of 1938 the Eighth Route Army had grown from 30,000 men to over 200,000. By 1940 it had reached 500,000 men, with 90 million under their control. They were thus a formidable threat to the Japanese.⁵⁸

     The guerrilla warfare adopted by the Communists became a hallmark of their strategy. It should be noted, however, that both the Nationalists and the Communists took up guerrilla warfare. Chiang Kai-shek ordered the adoption of guerrilla warfare in multiple war zones from 1938 and, after the fall of Wuhan and Guangzhou, even claimed that "guerrilla warfare has become more important than conventional warfare." But within two or three years, Nationalist efforts proved to be a failure as their troops behind enemy lines either surrendered to the Japanese, were wiped out or absorbed by the Communists, or forced to withdraw.⁵⁹ One reason that helps explain the CCP success and KMT failure was that the Communists were much better at building relations with and recruiting from the peasantry. This was absolutely crucial not only because China was still a predominantly agrarian country, but guerrilla warfare was by nature fought mostly in rural areas away from major cities, which were occupied by the Japanese and collaborationist forces. A second factor underlying CCP success was that it was able to adapt its military strategy and tactics to suit guerrilla warfare, while the KMT continued to fight in large units and seek to defend large territorial positions.⁶⁰

     Mao Zedong himself is credited for the Communists' success at guerrilla warfare. From 1930 onwards Mao had been developing guerrilla tactics against the Nationalists who were trying to encircle and destroy the Communists after driving them out of the cities. Mao grew as a theorist, writing treatises about revolution, military strategy, and many other important matters while he studied Marxism-Leninism. His most important military work was "On Protracted War", a long pamphlet published on 1 July 1938—the very text featured in Tunnel Warfare. Mao drew substantially on Clausewitz's On War among other texts, but while Clausewitz declared guerrilla warfare to be a "tactic of last resort," for Mao it was primary and would have strategic significance in attacking the Japanese forces across sprawling China. He confessed, however, that "the outcome of the war depends mainly on regular warfare, especially in its mobile form, and guerrilla warfare cannot shoulder the main responsibility for deciding the outcome." ⁶¹

     Tunnel Warfare depicts many Communist guerrilla tactics adopted to resist the Japanese. Part of the Japanese strategy for surrounding and attacking the Communists in the central Hebei base area involved building strongpoints and blockhouses—as many as 1,753 by 1943, or roughly one for every four and a half villages. Between these strongpoints, the Japanese removed trees, buildings, and mounds that obstructed lines of sight and fire. They also constructed more than 500 miles of railroads and highways to improve their communications while digging over 2,500 miles of ditches to restrict Communist forces. As depicted in the film, Communist guerrillas attacked Japanese who entered the peasants' villages and sometimes attacked blockhouses or communication lines. Working in concert with other villages, they ambushed the Japanese and their puppet troops on the march as well, usually in smaller units.⁶²

     Guerrilla warfare involved a variety of means to harass and disturb the enemy, including 'sparrow tactics', which involved blowing horns, setting off firecrackers, and making other noises to confuse and distract the enemy. Guerrilla tactics were intended to neutralize or reduce the advantages of a stronger enemy.⁶³ Mine Warfare, another classic war film, shows peasants and party soldiers planting primitive mines and booby traps. Tunnel Warfare has the people lure the Japanese into their village, leaving behind their cannon that give them a huge advantage in firepower. Once the enemy are inside the village, the Communists and militia members attack and shoot at the enemy from above and below, from towers and behind trees and hidden walls. Crucially the Communist forces and militia use a network of tunnels to attack the Japanese. The tunnels have hidden entrances, blind alleys, and ambush points underground to attack the enemy and frustrate them when they try to pursue. And when the enemy try to flood the tunnels or pump poison gas or smoke into them, the Chinese respond with diversion channels and simple air locks.

     In Tunnel Warfare these guerrilla tactics are presented as bringing a resounding victory for the Communists. In actuality, "to the Japanese, these actions were like numerous small cuts—painful, bleeding, and possible sources of infection … Guerrilla warfare against the Japanese cannot be assessed in conventional terms of battles won, casualties inflicted, terrain occupied. It must also be evaluated politically and psychologically, as Mao frequently emphasized." It was essential for their morale and legitimacy as well.⁶⁴

Collaboration in Chinese films

     The two films analyzed above depict collaborators and traitors as well as heroes resisting the enemy. In Big Road the main collaborator is Deputy Hu. Hu is a local strongman in the area where the brothers are building the road, and may also be identified as a member of the traditional elite since his home has a name plaque bearing the title "Presented Scholar's Residence" (Jin shi di).⁶⁵ At any rate, the Japanese seek his assistance in halting the project. Hu tries to bribe the brothers and, when that fails, locks them up instead. When his plot is foiled and he himself is captured, he is denounced as a traitor with proof of his treason shown for all to see.

     In Tunnel Warfare, the collaborators are the puppet troops and the spies. Dozens of Nationalist commanders and their troops defected to the Japanese during the war, numbering close to one million by war's end.⁶⁶ Japanese generals made widespread use of these puppet troops, as depicted in Tunnel Warfare. The villainy of the puppet troops is not in question. As with the case of the Japanese troops themselves, their appearance (uniform, bearing and, gestures), speech, and actions render their bad character absolutely apparent.⁶⁷ The Chinese spy who pretends to be from the Communist forces in order to learn about the villagers' tunnels and design a means to capture them is similarly drawn. The audience is shown his evil laugh, emphasized by the lighting, and when the real Communist forces arrive, they expose him as a traitor, a hanjian. There is little question as to how the audience should view collaborators in these classic films. That is not the case with the two contemporary films discussed below.

	Figure 3: Still from Lust Caution "Se jie" (2007)

Lust, Caution (2007): Targeting the Collaborator

     Collaboration is central to the 2007 film Lust, Caution by Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee (b. 1954). The film's setting moves between Hong Kong in 1938 and Shanghai in 1942. A group of patriotic college students in Hong Kong decide to contribute to the war against Japan by staging stirring plays that will arouse the patriotism of the people. They soon decide to make a bolder contribution by assassinating Mr. Yee, a special agent of the collaborationist Reorganized National Government that Wang Jingwei has set up in Japanese-occupied China. The students are unable to carry out their scheme in Hong Kong before Mr. Yee and his wife suddenly move back to Shanghai. Several years later, the students regroup and continue their scheme, this time under the direction of the KMT secret service, the Juntong. Their target remains Mr. Yee, who has advanced to become head of the secret police of the puppet government. Although Wang does not appear in Lust, Caution, he (and his wife) are mentioned and it is clear that Mr. Yee works for Wang and in a sense represents the collaborators who are to be abhorred by all Chinese—during the war and in the present too. Mr. Yee assists Wang by trying to gain advantage in the world of intelligence and espionage, murder and intrigue, with the rival political forces competing to enforce their 'states of terror'.⁶⁸ There are multiple references to Mr. Yee's work throughout the film. He investigates and interrogates captured enemy—that is nationalist, patriotic—agents, and tortures and executes them as well, often working late into the night.

     Surely, then Lust, Caution should be a straightforward story of patriotic Chinese resisting the Japanese and targeting the collaborator who has betrayed the country. As the plotters put it early in the film, it is an opportunity to "kill a real traitor … one of Wang's lapdogs". But as the title of the film suggests, the story is more complex. Central to the students' plot is Wang Chia-Chih, a bright young student who is persuaded to take on the role of the 'honey-trap spy'. At the start of the scheme, she is introduced to Mrs. Yee and soon becomes her regular social companion and mahjong playmate. Through that relationship she gains contact with Mr. Yee, whom she is to entice and hopefully create an opportunity to assassinate. Wang is successful insofar as Mr. Yee soon becomes attracted to her. It is not until the Shanghai part of the story, however, that their mutual attraction and lust leads to a physical encounter. Indeed, the film is known for its scenes of passionate and rough sex.⁶⁹ Through these sexual encounters the relationship between Wang and Yee deepens and complicates the assassination plot. Wang urges Kuang Yumin, the leader of the plotters, as well as Old Wu, the KMT secret service officer who directs them in Shanghai, to carry out the assassination as soon as possible because she can no longer take the emotional pressure, the pain from sex she feels inside her, or her conflicted feelings, while they "treat her body like a trap." But they urge her to stick with the mission out of loyalty to the party and country.

     What becomes apparent is that there is more to the relationship between Wang and Yee than passionate sex. Yee confides to Wang that he believes her though he "hasn't believed anyone for a long time." He reveals some of his innermost feelings to her. Though their sex is often rough, there are shots of them holding each other close, with Yee smiling at Wang and stroking her hair tenderly. After a late-night session of interrogating resistance agents, Yee confesses to Wang that while he was torturing them and smashing their bloody brains out, he couldn't help thinking about her. This may not be the most romantic declaration of love, but it highlights the violence underlying their relationship and the mission and circumstances that led to it. Towards the end of the film, Yee reveals his love for Wang in a much more romantic fashion: he buys her a rare diamond of her own choosing. Indeed, this is what ends this forbidden love. When they go together to try on the diamond ring at the jewelry shop, the site of the planned assassination, Wang is so moved by the love in Yee's eyes that she bids him to flee to safety with a simple "Go now!". In this way, the honey-trap spy not only fails in her mission, but overcome by her own passion and feelings for the collaborator who has fallen in love with her, she causes the capture and execution of herself and her fellow conspirators.

     At the very end we see Mr. Yee continue his work, personally signing the execution papers for Wang and the other plotters. He tells his subordinate he does not wish to interrogate Wang before their execution as he has "nothing to ask." However, we see that the spy chief, the collaborator, is still caught up in his feelings for his would-be assassin and lover. At the same time that the plotters are being executed at the quarry, Yee goes to the bedroom in his house where Wang had been staying. He sits on the bed, sad and forlorn. This powerful film certainly complicates how the audience might see the purpose of the protagonists, and makes more ambiguous the meanings of individuals' roles within the supposedly clear categories of resistance and patriotism versus collaboration and treachery.

     Lust, Caution was controversial. Ang Lee was attacked by critics and filmmakers in Beijing for being a "traitor" that capitulated to American capitalism—something that he probably anticipated, knowing that he was dealing with the 'wrong side' of Chinese politics in complicating ideas about traitors.⁷⁰ Above all, perhaps, was the notion that personal feelings and passion could trump patriotism when dealing with enemies and traitors—a view that could only bring condemnation given the orthodox assertions about resistance and collaboration. But the film was also attacked by those who sought to defend the reputation of the woman on whose life the story was loosely based.

     The film was in fact adapted from a short story by celebrated writer Eileen Chang (Zhang Ailing, 1920–1995), who took as her basis the life of Zheng Pingru (1918–1940) a beautiful and glamorous young woman and former magazine cover girl who was executed aged twenty-three by the pro-Japanese Shanghai Security Police. Zheng's case was widely reported in the popular press, especially when the post-war trial of Ding Mocun, a fearsome security chief-cum-gangster who was collaborating with the Japanese and the figure on whom Mr. Yee was based, revealed all kinds of sensational details of sex and spying.⁷¹

     Faced with depictions of Zheng Pingru as a spy of dubious morals and wavering political loyalties who used sex to entice her target, her mother and brother asserted that she was a virtuous young heroine from a family of loyalists who sacrificed herself for her country. In her mother's words, she had "a patriotic will that exceeded those of bearded men."⁷² The contested memory of Zheng Pingru arose again following the release of Lust, Caution in 2007. The controversy over Zheng Pingru's morality and political loyalty was rekindled, this time with a surviving sister and the people of her hometown trying "to restore her reputation," "rectifying the name of a hero."⁷³

     In effect, Lust, Caution both captures and contributes to the controversy over Zheng Pingru and her memory and the ambiguity over the roles of female spies. While the film may not be historically accurate in numerous details, as an adaptation of a short story that was only loosely based on Zheng's life in the first place, it was not intended to be. Nevertheless, the ambiguities and conflicts that unfold in the film reveal the tensions over the actions of individuals caught between personal feelings and motives, on the one hand, and political loyalties and expectations on the other. As such, it threatens the supposedly solid foundations of narratives of resistance and collaboration, patriotism and treachery.

	Figure 4: Still from Devils on the Doorstep "Guizi laile" (2000)

Devils on the Doorstep (2000): Living Under Japanese Occupation

     The themes of resistance and collaboration are also addressed in Devils on the Doorstep "Guizi lai le" (2000), a film by the acclaimed actor and director Jiang Wen (b. 1963). Like Tunnel Warfare, Devils on the Doorstep is set among peasants in rural Hebei Province, but a few years later in 1945 at the very end of the war. Whereas Tunnel Warfare showed peasants resisting the Japanese under the guidance of the Chinese Communist Party, Devils on the Doorstep contains barely any reference to the Communists, and the KMT forces appear only at the very end of the film to accept the Japanese surrender and establish the post-war order.

     The film focuses instead on the lives of the villagers of Rack Armor Terrace, who are living under Japanese occupation. The peasants seem to enjoy a mostly peaceful day-to-day existence although the occupiers are a constant presence. At the start of the film and at several points throughout, troops from the local Japanese naval unit march through the village to military music. Smiling Chinese children run out to greet them as a Japanese officer jovially hands them candies. This, in part, indicates the children's innocence; by contrast one of the villagers grumbles that he has to deliver water to the Japanese every day while addressing them as 'sensei'. But while there is no doubt that the Japanese have power over the villagers' lives, there is no indication at the start of the film that the villagers have suffered any brutalities from the enemy. Indeed, one of the women in the village, Eighth Auntie, declares that she's not been touched in eight years of occupation because her "conduct is proper."

     The peace of the village is disrupted when, one night, a mysterious man, who identifies himself only as "Me" (Wo), bursts into the home of villager Ma Dasan, who is in the midst of an intimate tryst with his lover, Yu'er, a local widow. "Me" leaves two men bound in gunny sacks with Ma Dasan, ordering him at gunpoint to look after them until he returns on New Year's Eve and to interrogate them in the meantime. "Me" does not reveal his identity, but is believed (by the villagers and later by the Japanese as well) to be a Communist operative. The two captives turn out to be Hanaya Kosaburo, a belligerent Japanese officer, and Dong Hanchen, a Chinese interpreter for the Japanese Army.

     This event puts Ma and the other villagers, who soon learn of it, on tenterhooks. They fear retribution from "Me" if they do not follow his instructions, but they also fear discovery by the Japanese living in the blockhouses and bases around them, or to be branded collaborators. The villagers want only to be rid of the captives so they can get on with their lives. Ma Dasan, assisted by Yu'er, looks after the prisoners while enduring many a sleepless night worrying what will happen. When "Me" fails to return on New Year's Eve and the villagers are still left with the prisoners six months after first being dumped with them, they resolve to kill them to end their torment. They draw lots to determine who will carry out the deed and Ma Dasan is chosen. But despite all their troubles, Ma cannot bring himself to kill the pair. Instead, he hides the two captives in the Great Wall, a ploy that is soon discovered by the other villagers to Ma's plea: "I couldn't kill them!" A comic episode ensues with the villagers enlisting the help of a supposedly skilled executioner, formerly of the imperial court, to do the deed on their behalf. Yet despite his reputation for having sent many to a swift and painless death, the executioner fails in the task and leaves.

     Running out of options, the peasants agree to a proposal from Hanaya, who promises that if the villagers return him safely to the Japanese military camp, they will receive two cartloads of grain as a reward. They agree to the deal partly because they discover that Hanaya is, in the words of Ma Dasan, "a peasant like us! a son of the soil!"—perhaps a case of "class solidarity overriding nationalist enmity."⁷⁴ Also, as the village elder notes, the peasants have treated the prisoners "like members of their own family" and so Hanaya should remember their kindnesses and make good on his pledge. Ma Dasan and other peasants take Hanaya back to the Japanese camp, where Hanaya's friend from the same village, Captain Sakatsuka Inokichi, a "twentieth-century samurai", is in charge. But Sakatsuka is not pleased because Hanaya has already been buried as a war hero. Returning now, a prisoner of peasants, he brings shame on his company and his village. Still, after giving Hanaya a sound beating, Sakatsuka agrees to honor the deal with the Chinese peasants because "unlike the Chinese, the Japanese are honorable people."⁷⁵

     The villagers take the grain back home to great excitement and delight, accompanied by the Japanese troops with Sakatsuka and Hanaya among them. Military music and cries of "Long live the Emperor!" are heard as they enter the village, and the celebratory gathering begins as if the "New East Asian Order", which words are prominently painted on a wall, might actually be realized. The Chinese peasants and Japanese soldiers are soon feasting, singing and laughing together. But things quickly turn grim when Captain Sakatsuka reveals his anger. He is angry that Hanaya's actions and agreement have led him to be feeding and feasting with the Chinese peasant "swine." He denounces Hanaya as the scum of the Imperial Army and calls for someone to kill him. He also attacks Nonomura, the naval officer based in the vicinity of Rack Armor Terrace for failing to discover the captives and for being too close to the Chinese, playing with the children "like their aunt." When Sakatsuka asks who captured Hanaya and the whereabouts of Ma Dasan, who has gone to fetch Yu'er, he does not get a satisfactory answer. He then releases his pent-up anger over the whole episode in which "the kidnapped Hanaya's survival and dalliance with the enemy represents an intolerable blurring of the moral distinctions between the ruling Japanese and their degenerate subjects."⁷⁶ It is also Sakatsuka's last chance to demonstrate the spirit of the Japanese army as he knows that the emperor has announced Japan's surrender—a fact that is soon revealed to all. "Militant to the core, but now feeling betrayed by his own emperor, and more loyal to the culture of battle than to his government" he begins the slaughter to "reassert proper military order."⁷⁷ Soon, the Japanese soldiers are massacring the villagers—young and old, men and women—to the sound of music. As Ma Dasan and Yu'er return to join the feast, they see the village in flames.

     If the villagers had been too naïve in expecting the Japanese simply to fulfill the agreement and let them get on with their lives peacefully as if nothing had happened, the victory that most of them do not live to see unfolds in a way that might have been difficult for them to make sense of as well. Major Gao, a KMT officer, soon arrives in the company of some American troops, to take command of the area following the Japanese surrender and to reassert the authority of the state. One of his first items of business is the execution of collaborators, including Dong Hanchen, who is swiftly shot after having his crimes read out in public.

     Ma Dasan, one of the few survivors of the massacre, witnesses this swift execution, but is determined to mete out justice of his own by killing the Japanese who murdered his fellow villagers. Ma forces his way into the former Japanese camp whose inhabitants are now held as POWs. Although he had been too afraid to kill Hanaya, Ma Dasan, seemingly transformed by rage, embarks on a killing spree, chasing down the Japanese soldiers. However, he is soon overcome by guards and arrested then brought before Major Gao for punishment. To the puzzlement of the peasants, Gao explains that Chiang Kai-shek has agreed to a deal with world powers concluding the war and establishing a post-war order. But Ma Dasan has violated that order. Although he carried out an act that would have been praised in a different context—"Who among our 400 million compatriots doesn't hate the Japanese?", Gao asks—circumstances have changed. Gao explains that Ma Dasan's act was not an act of resistance on the battlefield, but an act of "false resistance". Gao orders that Ma Dasan be executed for attacking POWs—an act that violates the new legal order. Gao decides that a Japanese should execute Ma, since his action was too despicable to merit death at the hands of a Chinese soldier. In the end, with more than a little irony, Hanaya, who had been cared for and spared by Ma Dasan, is chosen for the task. Furthermore, Hanaya carries out the execution with a swift strike of his sword, in just the manner that the celebrated imperial executioner was supposed to have delivered on Hanaya but failed to do so: Ma's head rolls nine times, then blinks three times, and smiles.

     As was the case with Lust, Caution, Devils on the Doorstep was also met with considerable controversy, despite winning international honors. In 2000 Devils on the Doorstep won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes. This prestigious award brought international and domestic attention to the film, though it had not yet been released in China.

     Jiang Wen's film was criticized from numerous quarters, including by the author of the story on which Devils on the Doorstep is based, as well as from the state. You Fengwei wrote the story "Shengcun" ('Getting By', or 'Survival') that inspired the film. There were significant differences between story and film, including Jiang's omission of the positive role played by the Chinese Communist Party. Moreover, according to You, "the villagers in Jiang's film were simply an unruly mob, docile and subservient to the Japanese, devoid of national consciousness, and lacking understanding of the anti-Japanese struggle."⁷⁸

     After the film's success at Cannes, China's Film Bureau criticized the film for being "insufficiently patriotic" and for distorting China's history. The film was not released in China and Jiang Wen was banned from making films in China for seven years.⁷⁹ Part of the problem was that Jiang does not present the hardships, horrors, and heroics of war with the certainties of Socialist Realism in the manner of Tunnel Warfare. Instead, he concentrates on the daily concerns of simple—and stupid—peasants. In addition, numerous comedic turns seem to undermine the seriousness of the subject matter. It could even be seen as a parody of the heroic codes in those revolutionary war films.⁸⁰ Despite the turn from light comedy to dark tragedy, the depiction of the Japanese enemy is ambiguous. While the film does concern resistance and collaboration, it has no clear message to offer. There is no indication that the peasants are concerned with actively resisting the Japanese in any way. The villagers do, however, seem to be aware of the dangers of being accused of collaboration—which would presumably bring trouble from the Chinese Communist or Nationalist authorities—for they mention and discuss the term frequently. Eighth Auntie brings up the term on numerous occasions, in one instance claiming that she would "rather die than be a collaborator" (hanjian). So often does she use the term that, when she wonders whether striking a deal with Hanaya could be considered collaboration, Ma Dasan tells her to stop "throwing that word around" and declares that a deal with the Japanese would not constitute collaboration because only "helping Japanese kill Chinese is collaboration."

     Evidently, the peasants do not wish to collaborate or to be seen as doing so. In the film, the only outright collaborator is the captured interpreter Dong Hanchen (whose given name ironically means "servant of the Han [Chinese]").⁸¹ Still, even this sole collaborator is presented as someone caught up in a situation beyond his control. Early on, Dong Hanchen appeals to Ma to spare him, saying "we are both Chinese, let me go." Fearing that the villagers are planning to kill him and Hanaya, he laments that if only he hadn't learnt Japanese, he would not be facing this predicament, and resolves to be reborn as a mute in the next life.

     Despite its humor and ambiguities, Devils on the doorstep deals with extremely serious topics. Jiang Wen was "keen to show the arbitrariness of war in which the villagers were given the task of looking after the two men for no real reason." As Julian Ward puts it, "the message of Jiang's film is that people do not always act honorably, but are for the most part concerned primarily with self-preservation."⁸² They may have concerned themselves with neither resistance nor collaboration, for their priority was the very serious business of survival.

Conclusion

     This quartet of films offers ways to rethink China's World War II through the themes of resistance and collaboration. Big Road is a clarion call to arms that emphasizes the collective role of the masses, resolute in resistance and self-sacrifice. Tunnel Warfare also shows a strong role for the people, but firmly under the guidance of Mao Zedong's CCP. While it reflects many aspects of the historical context, it is clearly an idealization of what the war meant—both to participants at the time and Chinese thereafter. Both works showcase how political—and propagandistic—a film can be.

     Lust, Caution and Devils on the Doorstep complicate and amplify visions of war seen through the themes of resistance and collaboration that challenge the orthodoxy embodied in the earlier films to the point of controversy. By way of conclusion, we might note one more similarity between the two contemporary works. On one level, the protagonists differ greatly. Lust, Caution's protagonists are college students who arouse the patriotism of the public then devise a complex plan to resist and attack the enemy. Devils on the Doorstep's peasants know little of the world outside the village. They have only muddied inklings of what collaboration means, they have barely heard of the famous Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908) whom their failed executioner supposedly served, and the post-war world order they are supposed to adhere to is far more than they can grasp. But ultimately, educated students and ignorant peasants are similar. Not only does Wang Chia-chih fail in her resistance because of her personal feelings, we also learn that Kuang Yumin, the students' leader, is especially eager to fight the Japanese to exact vengeance for his brother whom they murdered. Similarly, Old Wu, the KMT intelligence chief directing the students tells Wang Chia-chih that he is determined to kill Mr. Yee because Yee killed his wife and children. Personal revenge for family members is no less important than patriotic fervor. These educated resistance fighters are not so different from Ma Dasan, who was shaken from his rustic innocence and moved to violence against the enemy only after his village was burnt down and fellow villagers massacred. Ultimately, these films suggest, personal circumstances are more immediate drivers of resistance than any overarching political cause or meaning told in grand narratives of war.

Desmond Cheung is a historian of China and assistant professor at Portland State University where he teaches a course on studying modern China through film. He wishes to thank Diana Lary for her encouragement with this article and for teaching him so much about the war and modern Chinese history. He also thanks the students at Portland State University who took his classes on Chinese film and history.

¹ Diana Lary, "Introduction: The Context of the War," in Stephen R. MacKinnon, Diana Lary, Ezra F. Vogel, eds., China at War: Regions of China, 1937–1945 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), 1–2; Diana Lary, The Chinese People at War: Human Suffering and Social Transformation, 1937–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 1, 28, 173; Lloyd E. Eastman, "Nationalist China During the Sino-Japanese War 1937–1945," in John K. Fairbank and Albert Feuerwerker, eds., The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 13, Republican China, 1912–1949, Part 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 547. This is the range given by historical accounts and official figures, though precise and reliable ones do not exist. However, Eastman notes that the officially sanctioned Jiang zongtong milu (Secret records of President Chiang) records 3,311,419 military and over 8,420,000 non-combat casualties. The official Chinese figure for total wartime casualties (of the army) is 3,211,419 including 1,319,958 dead. Eastman, "Nationalist China", 569, n. 49. Official statistics showed that China's total population had declined from 479,084,651 in 1936 to 461,006,285 in 1947. See Lary, The Chinese People at War, 173, citing Hou Yangfang, zhongguo renkou shi, Vol. 6. Although these precise figures are almost certainly not accurate, they do show the magnitude of the decline of over 18 million. Mitter has 14 million, see Rana Mitter, Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937–1945 (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013; first Mariner Books edition, 2014), 5.

² In late 1945 a government estimate indicated that 42 million people had ended the war away from home. Government organizations helped no more than two million returnees. Countless homes were destroyed in the areas flooded by the Yellow River, or reduced by Japanese forces into 'no man's land' (wu ren qu), in addition to the destruction of battle. More recent calculations by one scholar suggest more than 95 million became refugees. In addition, 2.6 million Chinese laborers were conscripted to work in Japan, Korea, Mongolia, and Manchuria and had to be repatriated after the war. On the other side, over 2.5 million Japanese, Koreans, and Taiwanese were in China at the end of the war. Lary, The Chinese People at War, 161, 170, 175–176, 188–190.

³ Also rendered Guomindang (GMD) in pinyin romanization.

⁴ Hans van de Ven, China at War: Triumph and Tragedy in the Emergence of the New China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 166; Mitter, Forgotten Ally, 4.

⁵ Although Chiang Kai-shek was feted by Roosevelt at the Cairo conference in November 1943, China was excluded from the important strategic conferences at Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam that followed, emphasizing the Allies' Europe-first approach. Churchill in particular regarded China's elevation as an 'absolute farce'. Van de Ven, China at War, 172, 176. Chinese officials were even excluded from numerous meetings coordinating defense against Japan. This led Chiang Kai-shek to complain to a US diplomat that "China is regarded as an ally only in name." Van de Ven, China at War, 161–162.

⁶ Van de Ven, China at War, 157–8, 173–4.

⁷ Lary, "Introduction: The Context of the War", 1–3.

⁸ Mitter, Forgotten Ally, 4.

⁹ Mitter, Forgotten Ally, 7.

¹⁰ These are: Lary, The Chinese People at War; Mitter, Forgotten Ally; and Hans van de Ven, China at War. The bibliographies in these works provide a sound guide to the wider scholarship.

¹¹ One study lists 49 Chinese war films dating from the 1930s to 2000s and gives plots summaries for 34 of them. Michael Robert Stein, "The Chinese Combat Film Since 1949: Variants of 'Regulation', 'Reform' and 'Renewal'", PhD. Diss. (Murdoch University, 2005), 347–357. For a list of Chinese, Japanese, and international films about the Second World War in Asia, as well as television series and videogames, see Michael Berry and Chiho Sawada, eds., Divided Lenses: Screen Memories of War in East Asia (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2016), 281–290.

¹² Stein, "The Chinese Combat Film"; King-fai Tam, Timothy Y. Tsu, and Sandra Wilson, eds., Chinese and Japanese Films on the Second World War, Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2015; Berry and Sawada, Divided Lenses. For a brief overview of Chinese films on the war see Yingjin Zhang, "War, History, and Remembrance in Chinese Cinema," in Michael Berry and Chiho Sawada, eds., Divided Lenses: Screen Memories of War in East Asia (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2016), 21–39.

¹³ Van de Ven, China at War, 2–3. Situated near a site where thousands of bodies were buried, the Nanjing Memorial Hall was originally built in 1985, enlarged in 1995, and further enlarged with a huge new exhibition hall to almost four times the previous size in 2007 to mark the seventieth anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre. It opened at a cost of almost US$ 60 million. Diana Lary, "War and Remembering: Memories of China at War," in James A. Flath and Norman Smith, eds., Beyond Suffering: Recounting War in Modern China (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011), 267. See also Kirk A. Denton, Exhibiting the Past: Historical Memory and the Politics of Museums in Postsocialist China (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2014), chapter 6. Recent contributions to the rich scholarship on memories of war in Asia and Europe include Gi-Wook Shin and Daniel Sneider, eds., Divergent Memories: Opinion Leaders and the Asia-Pacific War, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016; and Daniel Chirot, Gi-Wook Shin, Daniel C. Sneider, eds., Confronting Memories of World War II: European and Asian Legacies, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014. See also Zheng Wang, Never forget national humiliation: historical memory in Chinese politics and foreign relations, New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.

¹⁴ Yingjin Zhang, "War, History, and Remembrance", 21–22, 27. Zhang follows Jay Winter in making a "shift from the term 'memory' to the term 'remembrance' "as a strategy to avoid the trivialization of the term 'memory' through inclusion of any and every facet of our contact with the past, personal, or collective" (quoting Winter's Remembering War). 

¹⁵ The black-and-white interpretation of war based on the diametrical opposition between moral resisters and amoral collaborators has been dubbed 'resistentialism'. Margherita Zanasi, "Collaboration, resistance and accommodation in Northeast Asia," in Richard Bosworth and Joseph Maiolo, eds., The Cambridge History of the Second World War, Volume 2: Politics and Ideology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 509.

¹⁶ Feng Chongyi and David S. G. Goodman, eds., North China at War: the Social Ecology of Revolution, 1937–1945 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 1–2.

¹⁷ Van de Ven, China at War, 146–147. The claim about Mao's statement originated with an April 1940 report by a defector from the Communist New Fourth Army.

¹⁸ Parks M. Coble, "Debating War in China: The Decision to Go to War, July-August 1937," in Peter Lorge, ed., Debating war in Chinese history (Leiden; Boston : Brill, 2013), 239–244.

¹⁹ Van de Ven, China at War, 32–43, 70–71. This was Chiang's 'The Limits of our Endurance' speech, given at Lushan on July 17, 1937.

²⁰ See Timothy Brook, Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), chapter one for a discussion and references.

²¹ Brook, Collaboration, 8–10.

²² Pantu literally means traitor, though not necessarily in the context of betraying one's country. Xia, Down with Traitors, 8.

²³ Frederic Wakeman, Jr. "Hanjian (Traitor)! Collaboration and Retribution in Wartime Shanghai," in Wen-hsin Yeh, ed., Becoming Chinese: Passages to Modernity and Beyond (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), 298–9. Wakeman also discusses the historical usage of the term and compares it with other terms, such as maiguozei, 'sellouts' or 'collaborators', which denotes political betrayal of one's country without the specific Chinese identification. Other Chinese terms for "collaboration" that do not specify ethnicity are tongdi (consorting with the enemy) and qin Ri (being close to the Japanese). Lary, The Chinese People at War, 68. In the nineteenth century hanjian was applied to those who helped foreigners (such as British traders) profit at the expense of the Qing Empire, whether they were Han Chinese or not: a hanjian was a Qing subject who was deemed disloyal. But with the fall of the Qing dynasty and a stronger conception of a Han-based Chinese nation-state, the term came to be more ethnocentric. Xia, Down with Traitors, 15–20. See also Peter Thilly, "Opium and the Origins of Treason in Modern China: The View from Fujian," Late Imperial China, Vol. 38, No. 1 (June 2017), 155–197.

²⁴ Van de Ven, China at War, 114.

²⁵ Timothy Brook, "Collaborationist Nationalism in Occupied Wartime China," in Timothy Brook and Andre Schmid, eds., Nation Work: Asian Elites and National Identities (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 159–161.

²⁶ Van de Ven, China at War, 117–122.

²⁷ Mitter, Forgotten Ally, 207. Wang Jingwei died in Nagoya and his body was returned to China and buried next to that of Sun Yat-sen. On his return to Nanjing after the Japanese surrender, Chiang Kai-shek made it a first item of business to use explosives to obliterate Wang Jingwei's tomb. Mitter, Forgotten Ally, 367.

²⁸ Brook, Collaboration, 7.

²⁹ Odoric Y. K. Wou, "The Phenomenon of Collaboration: The Case of Gongxian, Henan", in David Pong, ed., Resisting Japan: Mobilizing for War in China, 1935–1945 (Norwalk, CT: EastBridge, 2008), 175.

³⁰ Wou, "The Phenomenon of Collaboration", 183–190. This policy, meant to bring "national salvation by detour", was endorsed by the KMT provincial governor. Lary notes that in many county administrations "opportunists came to the top, along with the dregs of society". Lary, The Chinese People at War, 70–71.

³¹ ibid, 190–194. Some were also coerced by the Eighth Route Army to offer their secret support to the CCP.

³² Wou, "The Phenomenon of Collaboration", 195.

³³ Wou, "The Phenomenon of Collaboration", 199.

³⁴ Lary, "War and Remembering", 286, n. 24.

³⁵ Xia, Down with Traitors, 22–23, 26–26. In 1938 the Regulations were revised, resulting in much harsher punishments. For example, five-years imprisonment for those found guilty of lesser degrees of the hanjian crime was replaced with a life sentence or execution.

³⁶ Xia, Down with Traitors, 24. See Appendix A for a translation of the regulations.

³⁷ Xia, Down with Traitors, 6–7, 50–51. According to Juntong statistics, 404 of the 930 were police officers in the puppet government, 339 were low-ranking officers and soldiers, and the remainder served the enemy in a range of other roles.

³⁸ Andy Rodekohr, "Conjuring the masses: the spectral/spectacular crowd in Chinese film," in Carlos Rojas and Eileen Cheng-yin Chow, eds., The Oxford handbook of Chinese cinemas (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 530.

³⁹ Vivian Shen, The Origins of Left-Wing Cinema in China, 1932–37 (New York: Routledge, 2005), 97.

⁴⁰ Rodekohr, "Conjuring the masses," 530–1.

⁴¹ Readings of the film have extended to psychoanalytic interpretations that detect the sublimation of libidinal drives, directing them to the revolutionary cause. See Chris Berry, "The Sublimative Text: Sex and Revolution in Big Road," East-West Film Journal, Vol. 2.2 (June 1988), especially 78–80. For additional views on the sexual dimension, see Laikwan Pang, Building a New China in Cinema: The Chinese Left-wing Cinema Movement, 1932–1937 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), pp. 100–102; Shen, Origins of Left-Wing Cinema, 98–99.

⁴² These fictional works are based on the historical general Yang Ye (d. 986) and his descendants.

⁴³ Fengyang, Anhui province, was the ancestral home of Zhu Yuanzhang.

⁴⁴ This seemingly documentary footage of the suffering of the Chinese people also gives the film a realistic touch. Shen, Origins of Left-Wing Cinema, 97.

⁴⁵ However, in addition to the Mongol Yuan dynasty, the Khitan Liao (907–1125) dynasty and the Tangut Xi Xia (1038–1227) dynasty were both recognized among the legitimate sequence of political dynasties in Chinese history.

⁴⁶ The words of the song may be found in Shen, Origins of Left-Wing Cinema, 101.

⁴⁷ Moli's role in the rescue changes her status from a passive woman to heroine. See, Berry, "The Sublimative Text," 82; Shen, Origins of Left-Wing Cinema, 100.

⁴⁸ See Coble, "Debating War in China". The quotation is on page 237.

⁴⁹ Guo Moruo made his statement in 1950. Julian Ward, "The Remodelling of a National Cinema: Chinese Films of the Seventeen Years (1949–66)," in Song Hwee Lim and Julian Ward, eds., The Chinese Cinema book (London: British Film Institute, 2011), 87.

⁵⁰ Lyman Van Slyke, "The Chinese Communist Movement During the Sino-Japanese War 1937–1945," in John K. Fairbank and Albert Feuerwerker, eds., The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 13, Republican China, 1912–1949, Part 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 691.

⁵¹ Stein, "The Chinese Combat Film", 61–62.

⁵² Rosemary A. Roberts and Li Li, eds., The Making and Remaking of China's "Red Classics": Politics, Aesthetics and Mass Culture (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2017), viii–ix.

⁵³ Zhang, "War, History, and Remembrance", 27. The two films plus a third, earlier film, From Victory to Victory (Nanzheng beizhan, 1952), are sometimes referred to collectively as the three war classics. Tunnel Warfare was remade as the animated film New Tunnel Warfare (Xin didao zhan, 2009) among the post-socialist wave of revolutionary nostalgia. Lara Vanderstaay, "Families, Intellectuals, and Enemies in the "Red Classic" Remake New Tunnel Warfare," in Rosemary A. Roberts and Li Li, eds., The Making and Remaking of China's "Red Classics": Politics, Aesthetics and Mass Culture (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2017), 177–187.

⁵⁴ Facing the Japanese army's savage 'mopping-up' campaigns, defiance was just one possible response. For many helpless and hopeless peasants, the goal of self-preservation made them passively accept the Japanese presence rather than resist it. Lary, The Chinese People at War, 117.

⁵⁵ Van Slyke, "The Chinese Communist Movement", 679–681.

⁵⁶ Yang Kuisong, "Nationalist and Communist Guerrilla Warfare in North China," in Mark Peattie, Edward J. Drea, and Hans van de Ven, eds., The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 310.

⁵⁷ Van Slyke, "The Chinese Communist Movement", 624, 631–657.

⁵⁸ By comparison, the Communists' New Fourth Army in Central China started out in 1938 with 10,000 troops, and reached 90,000 by 1940, with a population of 34 million under their control. Yang, "Nationalist and Communist", 310–311; Gregor Benton, "Comparative Perspectives: North and Central China in the Anti-Japanese Resistance," in Feng Chongyi and David S. G. Goodman, eds., North China at War: the Social Ecology of Revolution, 1937–1945 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 192–193.

⁵⁹ Yang, "Nationalist and Communist", 308, 313–318.

⁶⁰ However, in the Battle of the Hundred Regiments, the largest Communist operation of the entire war that began in August 1940, the Communists conducted forms of conventional warfare including large-scale mobile warfare, assault operations, and positional warfare, as well as hit-and-run guerrilla attacks. Suffering many casualties against superior Japanese firepower, the CCP decided to restrict military operations to guerrilla warfare after this failure. Van Slyke, "The Chinese Communist Movement, 676–680; Yang, "Nationalist and Communist", 320–321.

⁶¹ Van de Ven, China at War, 134–143. Mao was also influenced by the Soviet army's Field Training Manual, Chinese Warring States philosopher Sunzi's The Art of War, and Erich Ludendorff's Der Totale Krieg.

⁶² Van Slyke, "The Chinese Communist Movement", 671–3; Yang, "Nationalist and Communist", 321–323.

⁶³ Van Slyke, "The Chinese Communist Movement", 697–698.

⁶⁴ Van Slyke, "The Chinese Communist Movement, 673.

⁶⁵ Jinshi, literally 'advanced scholar', was the highest level of degree awarded in the civil service examination system during the late imperial era.

⁶⁶ Eastman, "Nationalist China", 571. Many Nationalist generals joined the Eighth Route Army as well. Yang, "Nationalist and Communist", 316.

⁶⁷ Stein, "The Chinese Combat Film", 77–95. Tang Binghui, for example, appears throughout in a white suit and tie, a costume which "carries a dual sense of marginality and illegitimacy, highlighting both dangers of foreign assimilation (suit and tie as Westernised dress) and threats of cultural deviance (white as a traditional signifier of mourning in Chinese culture)," ibid, 87–88.

⁶⁸ For an account of the 'states of terror' exercised by the competing political regimes in wartime China, see Mitter, Forgotten Ally, chapter 15. The spy chiefs in Wang Jingwei's government were Li Shiqun and Ding Mocun, whose murderous activities also weakened the legitimacy of Wang Jingwei's regime. The character Mr. Yee is based in part on Ding Mocun.

⁶⁹ One student dubbed it 'Fifty Shades of Grey in wartime China'.

⁷⁰ Leo Ou-Fan Lee, "Ang Lee's Lust, Caution and its reception," boundary 2, Fall, 2008, Vol. 35 (3), 228–230. In Ang Lee's native Taiwan, however, the film was uniformly praised. Interestingly, Zhang Ailing, the author of the story on which the film was based, had also been attacked as a hanjian, though more for living—and thriving—as a writer in occupied Shanghai and for being married to Hu Lancheng, a prominent cultural official in Wang Jingwei's regime. Xia, Down with Traitors, 137–139.

⁷¹ For an account of the life and death of Zheng Pingru, and the contested memory of her from her death to the present, see Louise P. Edwards, "Negotiating sexual virtue: the glamorous, honey-trap spy, Zheng Pingru," in idem, Women warriors and wartime spies of China (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 137–157. Some Chinese commentators also claim that Mr. Yee is modeled in part after Hu Lancheng, a cultural figure in Wang Jingwei's regime with whom Eileen Chang was briefly married. See Lee, "Ang Lee's Lust, Caution", 231. There is a substantial scholarship on Lust, Caution, see Peng Hsiao-yen and Whitney Crothers Dilley, eds., From Eileen Chang to Ang Lee: Lust/Caution, New York: Routledge, 2014.

⁷² Edwards, "Negotiating sexual virtue", 146.

⁷³ Ibid.

⁷⁴ Jerome Silbergeld, "Body and the Beast: Devils on the Doorstep," in idem, Body in Question: Image and Illusion in Two Chinese Films by Director Jiang Wen (Princeton, NJ: Tang Center for East Asian Art; Princeton University Press, 2008), 132.

⁷⁵ Silbergeld, "Body and the beast", 98.

⁷⁶ Silbergeld, "Body and the beast", 100.

⁷⁷ Silbergeld, "Body and the beast", 100; Xu, "Violence", 51.

⁷⁸ Julian Ward, "Filming the Anti-Japanese War: The Devils and Buffoons of Jiang Wen's Guizi laile," New Cinemas, Volume 2 Number 2 (2004), 108, 113.

⁷⁹ Ward, "Filming the Anti-Japanese War", 108. Lust, Caution might have suffered a similar fate had it not been an international production, but Tang Wei, the actress who played the leading role of failed spy Wang Chia-chih, was herself banned from films. For an interesting analysis, see Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, "Tang Wei: Sex, the City and the Scapegoat in Lust, Caution", Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 27, No. 4 (2010), 46–68.

⁸⁰ Gary G. Xu, "Violence, Sixth Generation Filmmaking, and Devils on the Doorstep," in idem, Sinascape: Contemporary Chinese Cinema (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 59.

⁸¹ The name could also be rendered "China's/Chinese servant", but he is clearly the only Chinese explicitly serving the Japanese in the film. For a study of Chinese interpreters in the war, see Ting Guo, Surviving in Violent Conflicts: Chinese Interpreters in the Second Sino-Japanese War, 1931–1945, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

⁸² Ward, "Filming the Anti-Japanese War", 113.