All language subtitles for I Wish I Knew (Jia Zhangke, 2010) Part 2 ENG

So we met again

And then, it was nearly midnight

And most of them went out to celebrate

The upshot was

my husband to be and I were left alone

He asked me to write to him

I refused

He spent an hour persuading me
A taxi was waiting downstairs

Later he wrote to me
And I replied

My impressions of Shanghai were formed

when I worked on Flowers of Shanghai

Before, I had no idea about Shanghai

I went to Shanghai in
search of locations

By that time, the city was changing
A lot had been demolished

No real possibility of location filming

So we decided to focus instead

on interior we could shoot in Taiwan

The novel Flowers of
Shanghai is very fascinating

The man who wrote it

came from one of those 'flower houses'

He was there from his earliest years

The book has many characters
and each is very individual

China used to be a patriarchal society

It wasn't necessary for men to fall in love

As for marriage

They marry through matchmakers
Children followed after the marriage

Sex was basically not a big issue

There was no social occasion
which encouraged men to fall in love

It became popular after the
founding of the Republic of China

The motif of men romancing
women falling in love

Seemed really nice to me

And very interesting

Flowers of Shanghai /
Hou Hsiao Hsien /1999

At the end of the Qing dynasty,

many riches came to the concessions
to avoid the army of Taiping

From then on, Chinese and
foreigners living together.

Shanghai became a prosperous city

Yuyuan Garden Shanghai

Chung Kuo Cina/ Michelangelo Antonioni /1972

In 1972, in the Cultural Revolution
my boss gavee me an assignment

A very famous European director, Antonioni

was coming to China To make
a film about China

I heard that he'd been invited
by Premier Zhou Enlai

So it was up to us to meet all his needs

So on the second day of filming

We were shooting on Nanjing Road

It struck me that he was
filming a lot of bad things

Things that reflected our backwardness

It seemed totally unfair

When it kept happening,
I made a protest

I said, if you keep on like this,
I'll have to stop you

He said Everything
I've seen is very good!

What do you think is not good?

He thought everything was fine

The way I saw it,

they were far from fine

We have very good things,

but you just shoot such backward stuff

Our standards were so different

Two years later, Out of the blue

Our work unit's military rep arrested me
He took me from home to the TV station

Then he spelt it out

Antonioni's movie, China

The leaders of the Cultural Revolution

Such as Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao,
Yao Wenyuan and so on

They had watched the film and advised

It is an anti China, anti communist
and anti people poisonous weed

I later heard that the 'Gang of Four'

were using the case as
a pretext to attack Premier Zhou

and confessions,

even publicly criticized

Back then, we came here

to attend a criticism meeting

We went to all the places
where he'd filmed

Such as Shanghai Oil Refinery

And everywhere we went, we were
criticized and denounced

I was called a small traitor,
a small spy

A counter revolutionary! And so on

At that time, I was just 30 years old

How could I be so politically mature?

Even now I have no clear idea

about what exactly Antonioni had shot

I've never seen the film

To this day,

I don't know exactly what's in it

One day, in 1955 or early 1956
The general union instructed me

to attend a forum

At the door, Liu Shuzhou,
the then deputy mayor of Shanghai.

The chief of United Front Work
Ministry They were waiting for me

You're late, the Chairman is already here

I thought they meant the forum
chairman I said I'd hurry

So I rushed in, left my coat
in the cloakroom

I drew open the curtain and the door,

and saw Chairman Mao standing
up Mayor Chen Yi also stood up

I was completely dumbfounded

I was so shocked It felt as
ifl were dreaming

Nothing was making sense
I didn't know what I was doing

I just clasped his hand,
and gazed at him

That was all I could do

I was dumbfounded and weak
at the knee

Chairman Mao found it improper
that I kept hold of his hand

He told me to take a seat

Then Chairman Mao asked me

Where do you come from?

I said I was Shanghainese

I was from Pudong He said
Pudong is a good place

He asked what I did I told
him I was a spinner

He said Great! Textile
workers are very important

People all across the nation
depend on you for clothing

Spin more, so all of
us will have clothes!

It was after nine o'clock
We went to the theatre

It was an opera performed in a cinema

Chairman Mao watched the opera

I sat beside him

He was very attentive.
He even read the brochure

The actors were so nervous

because Chairman Mao was there

The actors were tumbling
One somersault after another

Suddenly one of them
somersaulted off the stage

How nervous everyone was

Right away, they did it again

Then, in 1959 I attended
the World Youth Festival

That was held in Vienna

We stopped traffic on
the streets of Vienna

They were excited at seeing Chinese
They hadn't seen Chinese people before

Chinese people look lovely to them

They expected us to look like
the photos in the museum

With pigtails and little bound feet!

We looked nothing like that

They felt they had seen the real Chinese

All Vienna was agog

They gavee us a big thumbs up

China! China! Hurrah!
Everyone gavee us a thumbs up

At that moment, I felt

very proud to be Chinese

So when I came back to work
I put my efforts to increase production

I later played myself in a movie

Comrade Huang Baomei

You want to see me?

Are you Huang Baomei?

Yes

A humble person who had suffered

becomes a national Model Worker

Respected by others

What a huge change!

Huang Baomei / X ie Jin /1958

I was no more than 14 years old
when I started working here

The factory was named Yufeng Mill
It was run by the Japanese

After Liberation in 1949,
it became Shanghai No.17 Cotton Plant

I went abroad for further study in 1960

After that, I came back to work

until I retired in 1987

I've always been a staff of this plant

One January, I heard from my
elder sister in Shanghai

A letter asking me to come to Shanghai
because she had something to tell me

My elder sister never summoned me like that

So I took a train to Shanghai

She's in the Conservatory of Music
A student in the Vocal Department

She lived on the campus

When I arrived at the Shanghai
Conservatory of Music

She was very pleased to see me

She took me to her piano room

Then she closed the door.
Hugged me, and burst into tears

Seeing her cry, I understood

I didn't need to ask something
had happened to my mother

My mother was Shangguan Yunzhu

She was born in Jiangyin

In 1938, during the anti Japanese
war she fled to Shanghai

At that time, my mother

was no more than 19 or 20 years old

Like all country girls come to Shanghai

nowadays, she had to find a job

And she found one on the Huaihai Road

It was called He's Photo Studio

She worked on the till

The studio was run by He Zuoming

A photographer at Shanghai Film Studio

He managed the business himself

My mother worked there as billing clerk

Movie stars came in to take their photos

Jin Yan, Gu Yelu, for example
They all had their pictures taken

My mother got to know them and
asked if she could work in movies

They were polite. They told her,
You can if you speak good Mandarin

So she went on to study at an acting school

Two Stage Sisters / X ie Jin /1964

Isn't that the former 'queen'
of Yue Opera, Shang Shuihua?

My mother's first husband

was the art teacher at her high school

His name was Zhang Dayan

Zhang Dayan disapproved

of her new profession

There were some arguments. Finally
he divorced my mother

She and Yao Ke married and
she gavee birth to my elder sister

Next, they organized a theatrical
tour of northern China

The troupe performed in Tianjin
and Beijing for several months

Due to transport difficulties
in getting back

So she went to northern China with
my elder sister and her nanny

When she got back to Shanghai

found that Yao Ke was being unfaithful
He had a love affair with someone

So my mother divorced Yao Ke

After the divorce, she lived
with the actor Lan Ma for a while

In 1950, at the Lyceum Theatre

She appeared in the play Song of Red Flag

And got to know my father Cheng Shuyao

I was born to them in 1951

It was on November 22, 1968

that my mother jumped from the 4th
floor of her apartment building

She jumped in the early morning

In the place where she jumped
there was a food market in the street

She fell into a basket of vegetables
She wasn't killed outright

Some people tried to save her
She could tell them the apartment number

But she died soon after reaching the hospital

Because she was a counter revolutionary

Nobody actively tried to save her

She was left to die

So she passed away very soon

My sister asked me to come to Shanghai
one reason was to tell me about this

But also, as a college student

she was being sent to work on a farm
She was about to leave Shanghai...

couldn't be sure she'd ever get back

My elder sister and I had different fathers,

but we'd been very close since childhood

So this could have been a farewell meeting

We'd be in different places

Not sure if we'd be able to meet again

So those were the cicumstances
I learned of my mother's death

She told me how she'd dealt with the funeral

Her boyfriend a classmate named Yan Kai

at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music
helped her with the arrangements

But Yan Kai was

In 1971

During the factional in fighting
of the Cultural Revolution

he was labeled an ultra radical Red Guard

He committed suicide in custody
He was only 24 at the time

It was another heavy blow to my sister

After his suicide, my sister was
interrogated for a month

Because she'd been so close to Yan Kai

Once they let her out

she was very emaciated

At that time, she often visited my father

They kept up a good relationship

She'd long thought of him
as her real 'father'

And he treated her like his daughter

Their relationship was solid

At my father's place

she met a boy 10 years younger
They fell in love with each other

And she got pregnant

she felt she couldn't stay in Shanghai

She had no work assignment, no income

The two of them talked it over
The boy's mother was in Hong Kong

My sister's father Yao Ke was also in Hong Kong

So they decided to sneak into Hong Kong

They traveled to Shenzhen, and
tried to get into Hong Kong

During the attempt, the boy was caught

Being pregnant, my sister waited
for the boy in a hotel

So she was not caught

But her attempt couldn't be kept secret

The Conservatory brought her back

and publicly criticized her.
She was denied any work assignments

In Shanghai, she gavee birth to the child

But it was sent out for adoption
while she was still in the maternity ward

Hong Kong 2009

My family name is Miao

Many people pronounce it Mou

My original name was Miao Mengying

Back home, I was part of a large family

I am the third among the girls

And the fifth among all the children

At that time, my father was

My grandfather was a Cantonese tea trader

He was a businessman

We moved from Zhongshan to Shanghai

I left high school was the year

Japanese started the Pacific
War by attacking the United States

At that time

I did not want to study any longer

As it happened, the troupe led
by Huang Zuolin and Fei Mu

was recruiting new actors
I auditioned for them

At that time, there was

the best film investor in Shanghai

His name was Wu X ingzai

His business was making dye,
with a nickname The King of Dye

But he was fond of the arts

When we staged a drama Mr.
Fei went to the Carlton Theatre

To discuss how to divide the profits

It was Mr. Wu bargained for the share

Mr. Wu believed there should be a studio

for the film company.
So Wenhua bought its studio at X ujiahui

You used to live in Shanghai.
Lu Jie was the boss of the studio

Lu Jie was the boss

At that studio, they were
preparing a project by Cao Yu

Cao Yu (Wan Jiabao) said

his script wasn't finished yet

He needed another month.
A month and a half

Huang Zuolin had just finished
a film So the studio was empty

Mr. Wu then asked Director Fei to help

He said, Mr Fei

We need to shoot something,
otherwise it's too expensive

to keep the studio open

He asked him to come up with
something to fill the gap

So Spring in a Small Town was
the film made to fill that gap

Everybody told Fei Mu

Mr Fei, Wei Wei isn't suitable for the role

How can she play Zhou Yuwen? Think about it!

He said of course she can play it!
Wei Wei is all woman...

despite what you think

Director Fei had confidence in me

Then, he talked to me about the role

He said bear in mind

the following words

Inflamed emotions

must be kept under control

He also gavee me a task
I can talk about it now

The actor Li Wei he'd never
acted in a film before

And he was very young

He apparently didn't have a girlfriend
And never have love affairs

Director Fei had no idea
whether Li Wei had had girlfriends or not

He just asked me

You must give some impact on Li Wei,
to help him capture the mood of the film

Otherwise your own performance
won't work in the film

I wondered how I should react to that
But things started to go out of control

When you play a role in a film,
you have to be able to leave it

But Li Wei couldn't do that

Eventually, I had to escape from him,
ran away from Shanghai to Hong Kong

I feel completely helpless

on this ruined, empty wall

lfl were to ask you to leave with me now

Will you again say: Up to you?

Will you ask?

Spring in a Small Town / Fei Mu /1948

At that time Spring in a Small Town

wasn't very well received

It was a time of national crisis,
and the film was considered

too soft

Also, the film was seen as very

It could be said the film was too gloomy

However

It can be said nobody understood Fei Mu

What weighed on my father's mind

At the beginning of 1949

tensions were building in Shanghai

Prices skyrocketed As I recall,
we used golden dollar

And silver dollars So
we were running out of money

It was all very difficult

Then my uncle, Fei Yimin

A newspaperman in Da Kung Pao

The paper wanted to set up
a Hong Kong branch

To publish a Hong Kong
edition of Da Kung Pao

He was asked to take
charge of the project

He said to Fei Mu

"Bring your children to Hong Kong
and stay there for a while"

So when he arrived in Hong Kong

we'd made no preparations to stay long

Just waiting for the dust
to settle in Shanghai

Of course, we misjudged the situation

Anyhow, that was how our whole family

came to Hong Kong from Shanghai

When we arrived

we settled in as best we could
We rented a house

And I resumed practising my piano

Father went back to Shanghai again

And on to Beijing

He always had his film career in mind

But at that time, the situation was chaotic

Everything happened

in a lawless, unsystematic way

His stay in Beijing was quite unpleasant

He encountered some people
who were hostile to him

So he was getting negative responses

Unhelpful feedback

It all made him very

frustrated

So he came back to Hong Kong again

Today, the old guy invited me to tea

He saw that my health wasn't great,
asked me to go to America with him

Days of Being Wild / Wong Kar Wai /1990

I know very well... at my age...

It's hard to find a man I really like

My family came from Wuxi

But I was born in Shanghai
and brought up there

I'm Shanghainese

These days, I don't say I'm from Wuxi

I am a native Shanghainese

Well, I moved to Hong Kong At the outset

I had no plan to learn Cantonese

I thought I was just passing through

I wouldn't be staying here long

And I would go back to Shanghai

My mother and I came to Hong Kong together

Because

All along, I've said that

I like what they call the old society
But there's one thing I never liked

My father

had a concubine

Chinese people did this
strange thing back then

When a man

did really well in life

More often he took two or three wives

Foreigners do this kind of thing too

Not a foreign woman becomes concubine

She's called a lover or girlfriend

In China, such a woman is thought of
as a wife, the 2nd wife, the 3rd wife

And that was the case with my mother

In 1949, everything changed in Shanghai

A new era began, my mother
brought me to Hong Kong

It was time to make a choice.
My father had to choose

In the new situation,
he could have only one wife

I think this was quite a good thing

Anyhow, at that time my mother

voluntarily gavee up
her status She left my father

That's when she came to Hong Kong

To start with, my mother did
all kinds of things

It was quite funny

You know black marketeer?

It means selling goods secretly

She managed to get by okay

But it was a kind of'gray area',
not exactly legal

It was a kind of

But suddenly

it was made illegal, outside the law

Everything we had was confiscated

So I began making a living by singing songs

I think I am a really filial daughter

The reason is

It's because my mother went
through so many unhappiness

As I see it, she was very unlucky

She married very young

But my father soon lost interest in her

He moved on to other pleasures

My mother was not educated,
so many things she didn't know

But she was very smart

She taught herself many things.
She was good at needlework

For example, Knitting wool and
preparing small dishes

She was an average, traditional housewife

But I don't think
her life had been much fun

So when she got in her later years

Her retirement was quite happy by then

I was old enough myself
She wasn't that much older than me,

just sixteen years

So she and I looked like sisters
And we were good friends

She told me everything
So I know a lot about her

That's why I say I don't
mind getting old myself

It's only now I've reached this age
that I have such experience

I have a sort of love
for many young people

These feelings include

a concern for

their future

Young people not able to
have such feelings

Because they never experienced

The one I love

has smiling face

Deep in the autumn, she can

No one

may take away

the light of my spring

No one

may take away

the hopes I have now

It's ages since I sang it
Can't remember all the lyrics

Victoria Harbour Hong Kong

Shanghai 2010

As you can see, I'm doing well now

But, back in 1988 I was completely broke

Very poor

Many problems

I just wanted to improve my life

Just imagine

I had

a son to bring up

My wife and I earned only 72 yuan a month

And we lived in different places

In one year, all we could
save 4 yuan per month

Forty eight yuan in the whole year

With 48 yuan

all I could afford was rail fares

So, on March 28th, 1988

I quit my job

And then on April 21 st,
I began speculating on securities

I went to the first
securities exchange in Shanghai

It was at No.101 X ikang Road

to find the listed price of treasury bonds

In the morning, they were 104 yuan

There were only six cities in
the country which traded T bonds

The opening and closing prices

reported in the Shanghai Communist paper

So I went to Shanghai Library to check it

I found the information
I needed In Hefei, Anhui Province

he morning price was 92 yuan
And the closing price was 96 yuan

I went to Hefei that night

And I spent the whole 20,000
yuan on T bonds

I bought them at 96 yuan each

Then I sold them in Shanghai
for 112 yuan each

A 14 yuan profit

I invested 20,000 yuan,
made 2,800 yuan profit overnight

I couldn't sleep that night

For the first time in 38 years,
I had a sleepless night

At that time in Shanghai

the daily turnover of T bonds
totaled only 2 million yuan

My trade represented 700,000 yuan of that

I went to Shanghai Public Security
Bureau to get some muscle

I told them

the Reform had made me rich

I wanted to do business
elsewhere But I was scared

The police had opened its own

company, I hired a couple of guards

I paid each of them 600 per month

Why did I do that?

At that time, no cheque
book or credit card

I was carrying 1 million in cash

And it was very problematic

My case was scanned at
the railway station

When they found it
filled with banknotes

they thought I must be
a robber or a thief

I must be a bad guy

Another time, in Luoyang,
I checked in to a hotel

When I opened my case,
someone saw it was full of banknotes

Back then, there's no 100 yuan note

So it was all in 10 yuan and 5 yuan.
The case was heavier than 50kg

The police car was there within moments

I received a summons.
It was really agonizing

Of course, this affected my business

But once I had the guards with me
and carried a letter of introduction

all these problems were solved

Shanghai World Expo Park

For the glory of the nation,
host a great Expo

I was born on September 23rd, 1982

In Shanghai's Jinshan Zone, Tinglin Town

Back then, my girlfriend got
into the best high school

I was afraid they wouldn't admit me

So I tried to figure out my strengths

And I realized I was good at running

I didn't really know this before

Anyhow, that high school admit me

because of my skill as a runner

I can say I had two real strengths

One was running

And the other was I could write well

I wasn't willing to give up my free time,

so I had to write during classes

As a result, I failed many classes

Because, to be frank,
I overestimated my intelligence

I thought I could sail
through all those exams

even though I hadn't put in the hours

I gradually realized science
subjects were much harder

in senior high than they'd been in junior high

Eventually, I gavee up

Finally

I thought I would have to quit school

The teachers were about to tell me

that I would be expelled

So before that happened

I applied to withdraw from my studies

One teacher asked me:

You cannot be an anti social element

how do you plan to make a living?

My answer was I planned to
live on royalties from writing

All the teachers laughed at me

I laughed along with them

I received my first royalty
payment in Beijing

Triple Doors had a print run of 30,000

I was given 30,000 yuan in royalties
Not enough to buy a car at that time

A few days later, publisher told me
the 30,000 had were sold out

They were printing another 20,000

I thought Great, I'll make 50,000 yuan

I started wondering what car
I could afford

I checked out the market,
no car was priced at 50,000

So I decided to go for an used car

The publisher contacted me again,
they had printed another 50,000

So I would get 100,000
yuan in total I was very pleased.

But I still couldn't afford to buy a car

Debate raged on the web about
the three leading brands,

Fukang, Santana and Jetta,
which was the most powerful?

These were the only available
And I couldn't afford any of them

I was particularly fond of
the Beijing Jeep 2020

I didn't know what it cost

There's no official website back
then So I couldn't find its price

But I guessed it would be
between 100 to 200 thousand yuan

So I waited until the print run
of my novel reached 200,000

I took all that money and went to buy one

I was carrying about 200,000 cash

My dream was going to come true

I eventually found a top line car retailer

I asked how much the Jeep cost

I was so nervous

They told me it would cost 40,000

Then I had second thoughts and didn't buy one

It is mere vanity.

If it cost 190,000 I'd have bought one

Later

I made some careful comparisons
I bought a Fukang

I'd looked into it carefully

Jetta wouldn't be a choice, They were
used as taxis in Northeast China

Meanwhile, Santanas were used
as taxis in Shanghai

I thought I couldn't be seen
driving a car used as a taxi

I needed a more individual choice

So I went for a Fukang, drove
the car to Beijing for refits

And there I found out Fukangs
were used as taxis in Beijing

Later, I approached a racing team

called Shanghai Volkswagen 333

It was the strongest team in China

The boss said

If you join us at least you'll
be a help with our publicity

We won't care about your
results in the races

This was my first racing car

That year, I won two. Two championships

lfl can win a lot of
championships. If one day

I finally win a grand
championship that I really want

I'll definitely be
happy to tell everyone:

I'm actually a writer.

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