China Traveler’s Blog: Hengdian by Actor/Filmmaker James Z. Feng

Introduction(Who Am I?): I’m quite lazy, so please click on this —–> James Z. Feng <– introduction to who I am. Don’t wanna click it? Ok, fine, basically, I’ve been in China for past two years after I graduated college making films(mainly acting and directing) and did A LOT of traveling.

OK! Let’s get this baby started!

Hengdian, where is that? Many of you China touristy-amateurs are wondering why I would even bother bringing up Hengdian since you’ve never heard of it before. Let me ask you this, have you seen that new Jackie Chan/ Jet Li movie “The Forbidden Kingdom”? How about these films: ”Hero”? ”The Curse of the Golden Flower”? “The Promise”(Don’t watch it, trust me on this one)? Catching my drift? Great, congrats on your IQ and superb intellect(please pat yourself on your back, you are now officially in my book of smart)! jk. Yes, all those films were filmed in Hengdian, China.

Why are all these movies made in Hengdian? besides the scenery?

Well, the answer to that question is because IT’S FREE!!!

Hengdian does not charge these film crews $$$ for using their locations. The only stipulation the city has for films being made in Hengdian is that you use their main hotel “Du Jia Cun(the village of family Du)” for all your crew’s stay, and that’s it! I talked to a city official who was the commissioner of film there, and he said that Hengdian is not developed yet, so they are trying to attract all this movie business to build up the city both financially and also commercially. Their vision is one day Hengdian becoming the next Hollywood next to LA and Bollywood. The official said they now have a film school there in Hengdian for film/tv/broadcasting and he invited me to speak there, but I was too modest to accept that =P.

Traveling Tip- “How do I get to Hengdian?”: There’s a train that takes you from Shanghai to Wuye(closest city with train station), and then you have to take a taxi or bus to get to Hengdian. If you plan to visit Hengdian from Shanghai, I’d recommend you to just be a baller and spend 400rmb/day to hire a driver for two days and drive you there(the bus/train combo was not very enjoying…grrr… I’m still bitter). The drive from Shanghai is about 3-4 hours unless you get a flat tire like we did.

Introduction about Hengdian:

Hengdian is a very small boring town with one main street that is the main source of everything you’ll be needing to survive: restauarants(you can order delivery service to your hotel room and they don’t charge you delivery fee{all of China is like this}! the beauty of China! Some do have minimum but those are usually like $2), cafes(rip off U.S. wannabe cafes charge a ton for some lame sandwiches, I ate them everyday), shops, electronics(if your really cheap and stay at a hotel with no A/C and need to buy a fan) massage places(they hurt, a lot.), fruit shops, KTV,  and a police station in which I had the honor of visiting(we won’t go into why I was there).

Anyhow,the town itself is quite ghetto and buildings are mainly old; I’m biased because I had to stay there for a few days and got bored of it quick. Hengdian’s official title is “Hengdian World Studios: The Chinese Hollywood”. Don’t get turned off by all the bologna I just fed you, because people don’t come to Hengdian to visit the poor buildings I mentioned; they come to see the beautiful scenery where all those big-time films were filmed at!

I was fortunate enough to work on “Kung Fu Killers” with David Carradine and Darryl Hannah last year which was shot in Hengdian.

I’m not going to go into how beautiful the scenery is because I haven’t really seen it, hahaha, you all got tricked! What do you expect? I was there for work and had no time to really checkout the place. But I did take some pictures during my production so you can check that out.

Picture Time, YAY! Put your hands up!!! I know you all need it after staring at the computer for 10 days straight.

The set of “Kung Fu Killer”

This is for you green people out there.

I have no idea why I took this picture, lol.

Hey look, it’s Bill!

My hotel room, I know you didn’t want to see this, but too bad, haha.

Hengdian was so boring, this is what I did all day! This and massages by some dudes with powerful elbows and hands.

Ouch! That’s a lot of hickeys.

It rains a lot there, or maybe just when we were there, us peons had to walk through this w/plastic bags around our shoes to get to set, but Mr.Carradine had a car deliver him so he wouldn’t get dirty (Bill’s a very nice guy, I won’t bag on him, I’m just jealous).

BURN BABY BURN! A scene which required some fire action! Where’s Dennis Leary when you need him?

Extras in China make about 30-50 yuan a day= less than $10. Usually film more than 12 hours a day. Another reason why more and more American crews are shooting films in Hengdian.

Ok. it’s 12:43am and I got to sleep now, got to wake up in a few hours to direct a theatre show in Berkeley, CA =/ goodnight ya’ll. Travel Guides