Opium Wars...The Saga!
Anonymous
One day, while on our long Area Studies trip to Beijing and Xi�an, I got my chance to be star for a day. We stayed at the Jing Hua Hotel in Beijing which catered to foreigners. The downstairs lobby had a bulletin board with the usual touristy stuff posted on it, but it also had a small add written in broken English requesting foreign males to be extras in a Chinese movie the next day. It went on to say those who volunteered would receive lunch and 100 RMB (about $12). As soon as I saw it, I knew it would be a pricelessly fun and amusing opportunity.

I was on the mini bus the next morning at 7AM. There were about fifteen foreign males who�d decided to show up, including me. My fellow actors were from all over the world and ranged in age from sixty to nineteen. We were indeed a motley crew composed mainly of young travelers on a budget, but there were also foreign newspaper correspondents and an Asian securities analysts. I was the only China Center groupie to go. From the hotel we drove to a site about an hour outside Beijing to a movie set in the middle of no where. The surrounding landscape was nothing but farm and grazing land. The structure we pulled up to looked something like a an authentic replica of a stone Chinese fort. Shaped like an "L", it was, I later found out, built such that cameras could be positioned to shoot it like the Great Wall or a 19th century fort complete with large swinging gates, cannons and battlements. Upon arrival we were all ushered into a barren concrete room at the base of one of the adjoining walls where the costume crew told us to take off our clothes and put on some sort of costume. It was a scary first impression� what kind of movie was this?

A man then came in followed by several assistants carrying large wooden crates. The casting director entered as well and briefed us on the plot of the production, our roles and the shoot schedule for the day. The show was a TV mini series roughly translated as "Opium Wars: 1865". There were twenty episodes each an hour long with one airing each week in the spring of �98. The cast and crew had been shooting for three months in Shanghai and Hangzhou to the south and were finishing up with the grand battle scenes today and in the week to come. The plot focused on a young British officer and his campaign to end the Opium Wars, freeing the Chinese people from the oppressive and addictive opium imported from foreign countries, especially Britain. The Opium Wars are of the utmost importance in recent Chinese history, and in the minds of the Chinese people. Generally speaking, Britain took control of Hong Kong and China experienced major European colonialism for the first time, deeply resenting the effects and actions of those imperialist countries. As a result, many historical films and TV productions have been quite successful focusing on this period in China�s past.

I listened to the casting director, but I was still curious about the content of those large wooden boxes that looked more and more like coffins. Inside were our costumes. We were going to play the British soldiers led by our dashing and righteous officer. As soon as we pulled them out of the box it was obvious they had never been washed. Many of my fellow "soldiers" instantly barked about the possibility of lice and bed bugs. I just shook mine out really well and hoped for the best. We had a matching navy blue jacket and a pair of what looked and felt more like dance leggings than trousers. We were also given a white shirt much like what one would wear with a tuxedo. It was cold and overcast that day so we simply slipped the uniforms on over our clothes. We looked more like bus boys than soldiers and we were all laughing so hard we could barely get dressed� voguing� striking poses here and there� showing each other how tight or loose our respective suits were. We had the casting director laughing as well. It set a great tone for the day and I still think some of the guys I was with should have been standup comedians.

Back outside, we were given a hat and a movie musket. I was really excited at this point as visions of epic Civil War battle scenes danced through my head. A second crew of costume people then came around and gave us wigs. Many of the guys had short or shaved hair because of the ease of care while traveling and I guess "everyone had long hair at that time," according to the director so on they went. The inside label said "Ms. Clairol" and everything. They were woman�s wigs in the timeless Mrs. Cleaver style. I have relatively long red hair and they wanted that captured on film, or so they said, so I was the only one who wasn�t given one. At that time I also got my first chance to look around. The fort/Great Wall complex looked quite authentic, but it was still out of place with farmland quite close on all sides. There were also about 200 young Chinese men dressed up as Taiping enemy soldiers of the time. I quickly realized they weren�t people off the street like us, but rather they were actual soldiers in the People�s Liberation Army of China (PLA). They arrived before us in their big army transports and their uniforms were stacked in neat rows on the flatbeds. They were having as much fun "dressing up" as we were and we happily poked fun at each other and took a round of photos.

We were all ready to get in some good screen time at that point, but it wasn�t to be. The team left us just sort of standing there and they went off to another part of the complex to shoot some scenes that didn�t involve us. We sat around all morning adjusting our uniforms and fidgeting to keep warm. We weren�t allowed to watch because "we would interfere with lighting," or something like that. I�d heard from friends who�d tried their hand at bit TV parts in the States that acting was a hurry up and wait kind of thing, but hoped my experience would be different. While we were all goofing around our fearless leader, the British officer, strolled from his trailer followed by a makeup artist dabbing peach-colored powder here and there. His name was Frederick (Fred). He was a young actor from Sweden who spoke broken English. He later told me language wasn�t a problem because almost all Chinese production of this magnitude are professionally dubbed. His physical features and appearance were indeed striking with long curly blond hair to his shoulders and a muscular build on his 6�2�� frame. He was wearing a well tailored officers suit unlike our bus boy conglomerations. He greeted us warmly and explained again what was going to happen that day. If it turned out I was going to "die" he looked like a good enough guy to lead me to it.

Lunch arrived in another mini van and it was absolutely disgusting. The "meal" consisted of the usual white rice followed by a sticky, flavorless roll made from bleached white rice flower. The entr�e was then a hot soupy concoction of chicken, seaweed and celery. I just ate a couple containers of rice and a granola bar I had in my bag while I watched my colleagues try to salvage something edible. At about 2 o�clock we got the call. We were to go around to the outside of the fort and shoot our first scene. The front of "our" fort was being attacked by the Chinese soldiers and we had to open a large wooden door at which time Fred would ride through on a beautiful black horse and we would charge out after him. The only problem was there were no Chinese soldiers to attack, at least at that point. We shot the scene, but had to pretend we saw the enemy and run, charging with our guns halfway up a large hill toward "them". It was exhilarating and we shot it in two takes. The scene with the charging Chinese soldiers was going to be shot the next day, we were told, when they would have 500 PLA soldiers all dressed up carrying pikes. The China Center group was leaving Beijing the next day and I knew I could not come back, but I wanted to knowing what it would be like seeing 500 screaming, angry soldiers come running at full speed towards you. Talk about a time warp!

Right after the door scene we stayed out in front of the fort while the pyrotechnics team went to work. The 500 Chinese soldiers were "attacking" us with cannons and they were going to shoot some scenes with the cannon balls "hitting" the fort. Styrofoam was lit on fire giving off thick black smoke and the director yelled, "Action!" Instantly, a series of eight huge explosions went off, none of which I was prepared for even as a spectator, and colored bits of cork, fake body parts, and chunks of light rock went flying into the air. It really did look like the battlements were being pelted with cannon fire. For some reason the first take wasn�t a success, unbeknownst to us, and we all had to collect the bloodied fake body parts, rocks and cork to reload at the special explosion sites for a second take which went well.

From there it was out into the fields for our big charge scene. The director wanted more British soldiers. It didn�t take a rocket scientist to see that there were about 15 of us and 500 of them, even if we did have muskets. So, the director told several of the PLA soldiers to then change costumes. They put on the bus boy uniforms along with the Mrs. Cleaver wigs and hats. It was absolutely hilarious and the entire crew was laughing with us leading the whoops. Again, the PLA soldiers were great sports. The plan was for us to charge down the hill with the westerners in front and the Chinese behind so that if the camera got a face shot, it was hopefully be a westerner. Again Fred led the charge on his trusty stead and we all ran yelling -- even though it was going to be dubbed over -- into battle holding our muskets ready to fire and then to be used as weapons in close combat. Like during the first shoot, the director told me to take off my glasses because British soldiers at that time "did not have glasses," he said. Whatever. I�m not blind without my glasses but let�s just say I can�t pass the driver�s test without them. I charged, sans glasses, but I was more worried about tripping than giving a good performance. During the first take I almost ran into Fred on his horse where he stopped on the fringe of the battlefield to gave orders, but I managed to maintain my composure and I think I made it look as if I knew what I was doing. Looking back, the director called for a second take, so who knows.

After our gallant charge we shot our third and final scene of the day. We were to run up to the top of a small bluff in three rows of seven, fire our muskets and run down allowing the next line to come up while we hypothetically reloaded. The pyrotechnics crew loaded our muskets with small, electronically-setoff charges that made some noise and blew out lots of smoke from the barrel. We shot that scene twice. Each time I did my best to shoot in the right imaginary direction. Several of the guys said they�d look out for me and yell to me if I was pointing my musket off to the side or something, but I did just fine

It was getting dark and the "light was bad" so we called it a day. Tired, we all undressed, turning back into mild-mannered Clark Kents. When the wig lady came back around to collect her Ms. Clairols, she pointed at me and then reached up and grabbed my hair. I let out a yell and quickly explained in Chinese that it was mine and not a wig. It was the last good laugh of the day and she apologized profusely. Fred and I had had several good conversations throughout the day between takes and we�d become as good of friends as two can be in one day. I got my picture taken with him and told him to be sure and look me up if he ever made it to Hangzhou again. On the bus home we were paid and told we�d done a good job. We�d worked ten hours for less than five minutes of usable footage which was somewhat disturbing, but I came for the experience and left with a great one. Several of the guys went to universities in Beijing and they were planning on coming back the next day, but I could not. It was a fun day, but I don�t really think acting is for me, at least not until I get contacts.
 
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