Song of Everlasting Sorrow

Genre: 1940s, nostalgic, women, drama, biopic
Production begins: July 22, 2004
Production completes: February 2005
Filming locations: Shanghai
Duration: 35 episodes
Investors: ????????????????????????????????????????????
Executive Producers: Jackie Chan, Albert Yeung, Willie Chan
Producer: Stanley Kwan Kam Pang
Director: Ding Hak
Screenwriters: Tseung Lai Ping, Chiu Yiu Fai
Production Designer: Ha Chi Chong
Art Directors: William Chang Suk Ping, Chiu Hoi
Costume Designers: William Chang Suk Ping, Lau Hoi
Cinematographer: Wong Tin Lun
Sound: Lau Siu Tung
Editor: Lau Miu Miu

Author: Wang Anyi
Critics and readers alike consider Wang Anyi one of contemporary China's most important literary voices, particularly for her depiction of China's huge social changes over the two decades she has been writing. Her status is cemented by the numerous government cultural awards bestowed upon her, including designation as "Best Female Writer in Modern China" in 1998, and by her two-year tenure as head of the official Shanghai Writers' Association.

Song of Everlasting Sorrow is Wang's most popular work, beloved for its rendition of life in Shanghai's old lane houses and for the tragic "typical Shanghai girl" Wang Qiyao.

Wang Anyi was born in 1954; her mother, Ru Zhijuan, is also an established novelist. Like many of her generation, Ms. Wang spent her teenage years in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. After she returned to Shanghai and began writing in the late 1970s, many of her early stories addressed the difficulties of sent-down youth like herself reacclimating to city life.
However, she quickly escaped the ranks of post-Cultural Revolution "scar literature" writers by exploring the grand tides of history. She did so by chronicling the commonplace idiosyncrasies of her characters' daily lives and by portraying the present as much as the past. Early successes starting with the 1981 short story, "The Rain Patters On," led to longer works, and she has since written about three dozen novels or novelettes, 11 volumes of essays and various other compilations, for a total of about five million books sold, according to her husband and manager, Li Zhang.

Ms. Wang's reputation is enhanced by her ability to remain relevant and prolific over the span of two decades. "Wang Anyi is hands-down the most important mainland Chinese writer of the past 20 years," enthused critic Liu Zhi in a recent profile in the Yangtze Daily. "Some of her contemporaries like Ru Acheng, Ha Shaogang, Mo Yan and Su Tong have had similar career arcs, but they lack Wang Anyi's vibrancy."

Source: Asian Wall Street Journal, May 16-18, 2003