In July and August 1994, the film crew of the romantic tragicomedy film "Journey to the West", directed by Liu Zhenwei and starring Zhou Xingchi, Zhu Yin, Wu Mengda and Karen Mok, came to the Zhenbeibao Western Cinema in Ningxia and completed the filming of the first and second episodes in more than 100 days. Later, "Journey to the West" became one of the most popular masterpieces of Chow Xingchi's film career.
What few people know is that the Zhenbei Fort West Cinema was created by a writer. His name is Zhang Xianliang.
Zhang Xianliang's life is full of legends.
Zhang Xianliang's ancestral home is Xuyi, Jiangsu, and he was born in December 1936 in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. Zhang Xianliang became famous at a young age, began to write literature when he was in middle school, and at the age of 21 published the poem "Song of the Great Wind" in the famous literary journal "Yanhe". It was also because of this poem that he was sent to Ningxia for labor reform for 22 years.
This experience was later written into many novels by Zhang Xianliang and became his rich creative material. Among them, one of Zhang Xianliang's representative works, the short story "Spirit and Flesh", was adapted into the movie "Wrangler" in 1982, directed by Xie Jin, and was widely popular after its launch. In the early 1980s, when the ticket price was only 1 cent a piece, "Spirit and Flesh" set a box office record of 100 million yuan. This is equivalent to saying that every Chinese buys a ticket to the cinema and sees it again. The male and female protagonists Xu Lingjun and Xiuzhi are familiar to the majority of readers.
In addition to "Spirit and Flesh", Zhang Xianliang also created "Green Tree", "Half of Men are Women", "Descendants of the River", "Dragon Species", "Adolescence", "One Hundred and Sixty Million", "The Old Man and the Dog" and other long, medium and short stories. Zhang Xianliang has a special fate with film and television dramas. He has adapted a total of 9 novels into movies and television on the screen, and has achieved good responses.
Perhaps, this gave Zhang Xianliang the confidence to establish the Zhenbeibao Western Cinema.
Located in Yinchuan, Ningxia, Zhenbei Fort was built during the Hongzhi period of the Ming Dynasty as a border fortress. In 1740, an earthquake occurred in Ningxia, and Zhenbei Fort was destroyed by the earthquake. The Qing court built a new fort not far from the north fort of the town, which was the south fort of the town. The north fort of the town was deserted. After the 1950s, Zhenbei Fort became a steelmaking site.
In 1969, when Zhang Xianliang was still undergoing labor reform in Ningxia, in the process of buying salt at the market, he accidentally discovered the Zhenbei Fort, which, in Zhang Xianliang's own words, was "far away and suddenly saw the ruins of two ancient castles towering on the desert." It is like two forces bursting out of the yellow earth, giving people a desolate, majestic feeling. ”
Zhang Xianliang developed a keen interest in Zhenbei Fort and wrote it into his novella "Green Tree". Of course, Zhang Xianliang at that time never dreamed that he would become the master of this desolate castle more than 20 years later.
In 1980, Zhang Xianliang ended his life as a labor camp and was transferred to the Ningxia Federation of Literature and Literature to work in literary creation. Not long after, Xie Jin adapted his short story "Spirit and Flesh" into the movie "Wrangler", and Zhang Xianliang strongly recommended Zhenbei Fort to Xie Jin as one of the locations of the film. After the movie was released, it was a hit.
Interestingly, in the film crew of the movie "Wrangler", there is a young photographer named Zhang Yimou. Years later, Zhang Yimou filmed "Red Sorghum" and involuntarily sent the film crew to the north fort of zhen.
After the release of "Red Sorghum", Zhenbei Fort has produced greater popularity, and even Japanese tourists have come to Ningxia Zhenbei Fort specifically to shoot the small house left by the film crew of "Red Sorghum".
Yuan Jinlin, the director of the Zhenbei Fort Forest grass test site, saw the huge business opportunities contained in Zhenbei Fort and proposed the idea of building a film and television drama shooting base. However, everyone was not familiar with this new thing, and they had no bottom in their hearts, so they found Zhang Xianliang. Zhang Xianliang "mortgaged the foreign exchange royalties of his translation to the bank, plus a small amount of funds raised a total of 780,000 yuan", and founded the Zhenbei fort western cinema.
The year was 1993.
Zhang Xianliang is an excellent writer, and his reputation in the literary world is no less than that of Jia Pingwa, Mo Yan, Chen Zhongzhong and others. However, after the 1990s, Zhang Xianliang rarely had new works. The reason, to a large extent, is that he has devoted almost all his energy to the western cinema of Zhenbei Fort.
Writing and doing business are two different fields. Many good writers have made a mess in business. Zhang Xianliang has performed very well in both fields. He is good at using his status as a "famous writer" to carry out business. Many tourists come to the western cinema of The North Fort to meet him. He came up with a lot of amazing ideas, one of which was to sell yellow river water to the market, 2 ml of yellow river water for 10 yuan, which sold well.
Since the 1990s, studios have blossomed all over the country, but most of them have not made money. Zhang Xianliang's Zhenbeibao Western Cinema has always maintained a profitable state. Nowadays, Zhenbeibao Western Cinema has become a national 5A-level tourist attraction, one of the top ten film and television bases in China, and has been rated as "50 Views of the Yellow River in China". Zhang Xianliang himself, also because of the Zhenbeibao Western Cinema, has earned a lot of money and is known as "the richest Chinese writer".
In 2001, the 65-year-old Zhang Xianliang was specially approved to get a driver's license and bought the first BMW C Series. After that, every time Zhang Xianliang went to Beijing for a meeting, he drove himself and listened to the record all the way to Beijing.