In the history of Chinese-language gangster movies, which one is most like the gangster classic "Once Upon a Time in America"? Is it John To’s "Gunfire" or "The Underworld"? Or John Woo’s "The True Color of Heroes"?
If you want to talk about the character setting and growth experience, the master director Hou Hsiao-hsien, directed by Xu Xiaoming, the Taiwanese film "Youth, Peace!" The charm and context can be called the Chinese version of "American Past"!
The latest good news is that this movie, which is "legendary" to many fans, is finally going to be digitally restored and re-released. This should be a big event worth telling among Chinese fans!
This film, released in 1992, was produced by Hou Hsiao-hsien and produced by Zhang Huakun, so almost all the actors in the film were related to Hou Hsiao-hsien.
Starring as Big Brother Gao Jie, Hou Hsiao Xian’s royal actor, he was born with a magical power to play the underworld big brother. Gao Jie was only 34 years old at the time.
The actress Wei Xiaohui made her mark in the Taiwanese film industry from this film, and then starred in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s "Good Men and Good Women" and "South Country, Goodbye South Country", but after her role in "Flowers on the Sea", she stopped being an actress.
One of the male protagonists, Yan Zhengguo, Hou Xiaoxian’s royal child star, turned 18 after the film was filmed, but disappeared from the film industry.
It turned out that Yan Zhengguo later fell into drug abuse and committed a felony and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. After his release from prison, he reformed, re-entered the film industry as an actor, and became a director with a box office of over 100 million in 2018 with "Corner 2: The King Rises Again".
And Big Brother Gao Jie happens to be an important figure in the universe of "Corner Head".
"Young Man, Calm Down!" was the last film of actor Tan Zhigang’s life, and he was only 17 when he made it.
Speaking of Tan Zhigang, it really makes people feel sorry.
At the age of 13, when "Guling Street Youth Murder" recruited young actors, Tan Zhigang, who had experience in children’s programming on TV, went to audition for the role of Kitten King. Yang Dechang preferred him to play Kitten King. But the preparation period for the movie was too long, so Tan Zhigang went to shoot other movies first.
"Middle School Girls"
The winter vacation is long enough.
At the age of 15, his family was going to take Tan Zhigang to immigrate to the United States, but he still thought about "Guling Street", so he stayed in Taiwan to shoot "Guling Street" and run a karaoke bar. When he came to Yang Dechang again, because it had been more than two years and he had grown a lot taller, Yang Dechang had to replace Wang Qizan to play Kitten King, and Tan Zhigang played another very important role – Pony.
Tan Zhigang performed with Zhang Zhen that year.
In 1991, Hou Hsiao-hsien’s production of "Youth, Peace!" was looking for actors. Hou Hsiao-hsien and director Xu Xiaoming met Tan Zhigang with a mixed-race face at the test film of "Guling Street", and customized the role of "Youth, Peace!" for Tan Zhigang "Adou Zai".
Tan Zhigang and Aunt Chen Shufang played opposite each other in "Youth, Peace!" at that time, Aunt Shufang was only in her early 50s.
Chen Shufang became a box office actress in Taiwan last year at the age of more than 80 with "Lonely Flavor" and "Dear Tenant". "Lonely Flavor" is the box office champion in Taiwan.
In 1992, "Youth, Peace!" was released, and Tan Zhigang was about to leave for the United States. However, "Youth, Peace!" was planning a sequel, and Tan Zhigang stayed in Taiwan to wait for the filming to start. On September 4, 1993, Tan Zhigang and his friends went camping in the mountains and encountered a car with a flat tire. Tan Zhigang and his friend Liu Zhimin drove a car down the mountain to ask for help, but when they turned the corner, the car fell into a 100-meter deep valley. Tan Zhigang died on the spot. When he died, he was just 18 years old and a month old.
If there are so many "ifs" in the world, what would happen if Tan Zhigang didn’t die and went to the United States to study movies?
Unfortunately, there are not so many ifs in the world. The restoration of "Young Man, Peace!" is the best memorial to Tan Zhigang.
In addition to the movie classic, the original sound of the music is also a milestone. It is the first film in Taiwan to use rock music as the soundtrack of the whole film.
That year, 24-year-old Wu Junlin (Wu Bai) sang the theme song of the same name and "Lighting Cigarettes" in "Youth, Peace!"
This is Wu Bai’s first time in the original sound of the film, even before his first solo album "Falling in love with others is a happy thing".
Wu Bai was also invited to participate in the ceremony of the restoration and launch of "Youth, Peace!".
"Youth, Peace!" is also the first film that the famous Taiwanese film composer Lin Qiang collaborated with Hou Hsiao-hsien, even a year earlier than his first appearance in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s film "Dream Life".
Lin Qiang sang three songs in the original soundtrack, including "The Silent Place" with Hou Xiaoxian. This song composed by Wu Bai later became a famous song when Wu Bai took it and sang it.
Lin Qiang’s first album "Going Forward" in 1990 is a landmark work in the history of Hokkien rock.
Lin Qiang met Hou Xiaoxian, who came to visit the class, when he was shooting the MV of the "Go Forward" album. The two hit it off and began their cooperation for many years.
It is well known that director Hou Hsiao-hsien can sing two voices, so in "Young Man, Peace!" he also sang a song "Dream Man" by himself.
There is also a band called Baboo in the original sound, which is composed of Lin Weizhe, Li Xinyun, Li Shouxin and Jin Muyi.
Lin later became a famous rock producer and music company owner (manager). These days, Wu Qingfeng’s choking incident is caused by Lin Weizhe and Wu Qingfeng’s copyright lawsuit (Qingfeng finally won, and he can finally breathe a sigh of relief). Li Xinyun later became a pop music and film and television soundtrack, and was the winner of the Golden Melody Award and the Golden Horse Award. Li Shouxin is now the top drummer of Chinese pop music, especially jazz drums. Bass player Jin Muyi is from Japan, and later became active in the Chinese pop music circle. He and Fan Xiaoxuan Zhou Junwei formed the Fu Lushou group.
"Youth, Peace!" is the first feature-length work directed by Xu Xiaoming, who also made "Last Winter" in 1995, starring Wei Xiaohui and Xi Xiang. This Xu Xiaoming is not the Hong Kong director Xu Xiaoming.
In 1997, Director Xu Xiaoming’s "Looking Home" won several international awards.
Xu Xiaoming has since supervised the production of a number of well-known Chinese-language films, such as "Seventeen-Year-Old Bike," "Love You and Love Me," "Blue Door," and "Love in May," starring Liu Yifei and Chen Bolin in 2004, is his most recent feature film.
After "Love in May", Xu Xiaoming worked in films in mainland China, and was the producer of several Chinese business cards, such as "Second Brother", "Court on Horseback", "Rizhao Chongqing", "My Tang Dynasty Brothers", "Summer Unspeakable" and so on. In the 2020 hit documentary "Stick! Youth", Xu Xiaoming served as the editing director of the film together with Liao Qingsong and Zhou Qiang.
"Young Man, Peace!" was produced by Mr. Zhang Huakun, known as "Brother Kun," who was also the producer of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s early and mid-term films, including the most important and best-known "Sad City," "Childhood Past," "People from the Air Cabinet," "Love the Wind and Dust." Zhang Huakun died in December 2020 at the age of 67.
Zhang Huakun discovered and led Gao Jie to debut from "Daughter of the Nile".
Looking forward to the early restoration of this movie!
Some of the images in this article are from the Internet.
