In the second instalment of his article, Sam reflects on the rehabilitation and reassessments of the First Emperor in the 20th century, spearheaded by Mao Zedong and continuing on after his death into late 1990s cinema.

Remake after remake concerning the role played by China’s northwestern guerrilla fighters during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-45) show a cinematic tradition that is still going strong in the 70 years since its inception: in this article, Staff Writer Bingbing Shi reviews Railway Heroes (2021), a remake of Zhao Ming’s 1956 classic, Railway Guerrilla, as well as the evolution of the Chinese ‘resistance genre’ as a whole.

Staff Writer for East Asia, Bingbing Shi, writes about the blurring of fact and fiction in Lou Ye’s Saturday Fiction (2019), starring Gong Li. Set in Shanghai during the war, Lou Ye’s espionage thriller is proving to be both popular and controversial in China.