HAPPY TIMES

China, 2002, 102 minutes, Colour.
Benshan Zhao, Jie Dong, Lifan Dong.
Directed by Zhang Yimou.

During the 1990s, Chinese master director, Zhang Yimou, made a series of films with Gong Li that were masterpieces of film-making, amongst others Raise the Red Lantern, The Story of Qui Ju, To Live, Shanghai Triad. He then moved to more modest stories, Not One Less and the moving The Road Home. Most of these films won international festival awards. This will not happen with Happy Times. It has a modern Beijing setting and tells a story that we are more used to seeing as a telemovie. Not that it is not entertaining. It is a mixture of raucous comedy and sentiment and tears.

The central character is a retired factory worker who becomes engaged to a large and dominating widow. In the meantime, he has a brainwave to turn an abandoned bus into a rendezvous for young lovers, The Happy Times Hotel. When the authorities remove the bus, he agrees to give a job to the widow's blind stepdaughter but has to pretend, getting his fellow retirees pretend that they are clients for her massaging. The core of the film is the friendship that develops between the girl and the old man, but it also takes the opportunity to raise issues of unemployment and poverty in today's Chinese cities. While it is often feelgood, there is a melancholic tone and we know that fate will not allow these two characters a happy ending. Dong Jie, like Gong Li and other actresses before her, gives a very attractive performance. Zhao Benshan is a well-known Chinese comic. Happy Times is modest and low-key Zhang Yimou.


1. Chinese film of the 21st century? Changes in China, society, ideologies for the 21st century?

2. The work of the director, his classics of the 80s and 90s, his moving into martial arts films after this film? The modesty of this film, small, smaller characters, local settings?

3. Beijing, the locations, the city, the poorer areas, the bus, the dilapidated building, homes? Musical score?

4. The retired factory worker, his life, his friends, his hard work, finances? His attraction to the woman? Her blind daughter and his feelings of obligation?

5. The fiancee, large, dominating, her daughter, the father abandoning the family? Her feelings towards her daughter – as well as being callous?

6. The idea about the bus, the Happy Times Hotel, the clients, prosperous?

7. The renovation of the district, the demolishing of the bus? The owner, his dilemma, his friends, the fiancee?

8. The idea about the massage parlour, the old building, dilapidated, renovating? Installing the blind girl?

9. The inventiveness of the group, the range of clients, organised so that she was protected? The fiancee content?

10. Everything seemingly going well, the touch of fate, the owner, the fiancee, but the blind girl and her future?