From near Changchun’s central train station we waved down a cab to take us to the site of Changchun’s cinematic claim to glory in China, the Jilin province city’s pioneering film studios. Although it looked fairly close on Google Maps it took an eternity to get to the former movie site of CFS, Changchun Film Studios. Road distance in China is measured in the conventional way by metric length, but also by the number of motor vehicles they’re are between point A (where you are) and point B (where you want to go).
The setting for the film studios is an impressive one. From the street front you enter a big green park and walk up a grand, sweeping drive. At the top of the drive is the film studio complex, but before you reach the studio entrance, you have to contend with Mao Tse-tung. There he is, “the Chairman” standing erect, as he was in life, larger than the life of any one Chinese person. A gigantic, white statue of Mao, waving benignly at every human figure passing within the shadow of his massive, immovable image※.
It was quite late in the day by now but we were still keen after travelling that far, to see inside the CFS Factory/Museum. The callow youth on the turnstiles gate had other ideas…he point-blank refused us entry because it was after 4 o’clock, less than an hour till the museum closed. Unable to dissuade him, we went away disgruntled but decided to explore the outside parts of the site anyway.
This bore unexpected fruit as we discovered a nice little courtyard adjacent to the factory with an overt military touch (statues of heroic patriotic types and other martial figures, battle-green painted artillery guns, etc). The factory’s military theme is continued in the forecourt which exhibits a fighter plane of 1950s vintage.
Before leaving altogether we chanced a quick look-through of the CFS gift shop which was still open. This proved a fortuitous diversion on our part…while unenthusiastically perusing the shop’s uninspiring assortment of predictable souvenirs on the shelves we noticed a side door ajar which we took advantage of by slipping through it and into the exhibits area. Thus, through a combination of arse-lucky opportunism and devious initiative we did gain entry to the factory after all and for gratis!
The public CFS Studios display comprised a long, darkly-lit corridor which threw the lighted exhibits down one side into relief. These exhibits were a miscellany of items reflecting the film company’s past productions, the result undoubtedly of a raid on the props department and the costume wardrobes (old military weapons, uniforms and paraphernalia), old style 35mm film cameras and sound recording machines, etc.
The military theme of the factory exhibition was further underscored in the choice of film posters to display…war movies galore! The impression that CFS’ most popular movie genre was war was hard to ignore on this evidence.
Peaking inside a few of the rooms running off the main corridor revealed that the complex was still a hub for contemporary film-making. Production tech staff could be seen working on documentary and TV projects using modern technical equipment (not the antique stuff in the corridor).
Another room off the corridor held a small viewing theatre…surprisingly to me the projector was running a 1930s British B & W film starring Larry Olivier (not dubbed into Chinese and no one watching!). Elsewhere in the room there were pictures and bios of Chinese film-makers, dubbers and other behind-the-camera personnel who had made a contribution at CFS Films during its halcyon days.
The props displayed were for the most part interesting and authentic-looking (authentically old too!), but I did find the stuffed tiger mounted and encased in glass right at the end of the passageway rather incongruous and something that didn’t add to the CFS collection.
Changchun Film Studio Group Corporation (Ch: 长春电影集团公司) (to give it its formal title) was the first film production unit registered by the PRC in 1949 after the communist victory. Changchun Film Studios was chosen to fill the cinema production void left by the Japanese Manchukuo Film Association and the Northeast Film Studio. The Corporation also operates the somewhat maligned Changchun Film Theme Park elsewhere in the city.
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※ Mao’s Goliath-proportioned statue and other plaques in the park are propaganda pieces for the government commemorating the communist state’s establishment (October 1, 1949)
Very many cities in China have a Zhongshan Park 中山公园 (perhaps the most famous is Beijing’s Zhongshan Park near the Forbidden City). In honour of the Chinese Republic’s first president, Sun-Yat-sen, it became a standard practice to name public parks after the revered Dr Sun, who within China is better known by the name Sun Zhongshan. 
Dalian’s Zhongshan Park is certainly one of the most chilled-out and slow-paced of the parks named in celebration of “the Father of Modern China”. Entrance to the park is from Huanghe Lu, one of Dalian’s busiest, traffic-heavy roads. Once you come under the canopy of its large trees you only need to penetrate the park’s perimeters by the smallest of distances to put the constant noise and shuffling of traffic on Huanghe behind you. 
The first thing that my eyes lit on as I followed the park’s curving pathway was the rich variety of plant life in the park’s garden. It had lots of different Chinese natives but interspersed with these were some exotics like, of all things, pockets of the unforgiving prickly-pointed Mexican yucca (below). Seats, tables and and the occasional gazebo can be found within the park. I liked some of the (minimalist) sculptures too. 
Of Zhongshan Park’s many patrons using the park, two groups were of most interest to me. The park’s central square bordered by neat hedges, Weeping Willows and Conifers, was the setting for numerous games of cards – people engrossed in playing cards being watched by equally engrossed onlookers. I noticed, here and elsewhere in this city, the penchant for card games by the locals (cf. the preferred pastime for Liaoning’s other principal city, Shenyang, which is checkers). The card players in the park seemed wholly serious about their games, notwithstanding the fact that no money appeared to be waged on the outcomes.
Meanwhile, diagonally across from the numerous, endless “no stakes” games of poker, or whatever the preferred Chinese card game is in this region (it wasn’t Mah-jong they were playing, I could see that!), an assembly of local seniors were hard at it constructing a commendable Sino-version of “Dad’s Army”, or so it appeared to this unenlightened Júwàirén
First we had to join a lengthy queue to get in to the museum, a popular site (we spent 10-15 minutes in the hot late summer sun alternately admiring the elegantly attractive edifice of the museum and snapping pictures of the nearby phallic-suggestive Friendship Tower). 
Once inside though, it was worth the temporary discomfort, it was a neat and compact little museum of Lüshun art history and archaeological pre-history. I was drawn to the museum’s collection of regional artefacts, ceramics, figurines, statuettes, vases, Buddhist artworks and its anthropological holdings. But what took my eye in particular were a couple of large, very ancient-looking stone writing tablets. I also took a shine to the large and very dramatic historic battle painting in one of the rooms. 
Outside again, we were given enough time to use the close-by, rusty old Russian-era gun emplacements as a mood-capturing backdrop for half-a-dozen selfies. After that, we barely had time to admire the site’s well-maintained gardens before we were whisked off back to the tour bus to explore other, less historically significant parts of the district.
After a busman’s lunch (on the bus!), the next time-wasting activity on the agenda at Lǚshùn was a boat ride arranged for its own sake. We filed out of the tour bus and aboard an old boat and handed a slim satchel of sausage (prompting an instant misunderstanding: I thought the paltry offering of protein was for us to consume on the ride). The boat, carrying fifty or sixty Chinese nationals and myself, charted an oblong-shaped course, going out one side of the harbour and then returning the other thirty minutes later.
I have no notion of, nor was I enlightened as to what the purpose of the boat ride was. We were shown no notable sights or landmarks, saw nothing but empty stretches of water inhabited by other passing vessels some engaged in the same futile, unspecified mission as ourselves. All this leads me to conclude that the purpose was a nihilistic one, an existential muse on nothingness…or perhaps the real reason lay in the small portion of meat we were all given at the start. Everyone else on the boat quickly divested themselves of their piece overboard where it was gratefully snapped up by the swarming flock of seagulls which had been shadowing our boat’s course. With nothing else to do I duly followed suit. Clearly, the the boat trip was part of a supplementary feeding program for the local colony of seagulls in Lǚshùn.
In a twinkle we shape-shifted from clueless, futile wanderers in the Yellow Sea to gimlet-eyed consumers on a warehouse shopping junket. We were enticed with sparkling opals, beads and precious other gemstones. In a showroom an adolescent Chinese “Joe the Gadget Man” sales dude went through a “show and tell” routine demonstrating how either genuine the precious stones were or how expensive they, I couldn’t be sure which. The Chinese tour party seemed quite engrossed by his highly animated showy spiel, to me it was all a bit ho-humdrum. We moved to the food section of the building where we inspected rows of the dried fish delicacies and all manner of other comestibles that Chinese consumers like to stock up on in large quantities. 
Our final Lǚshùn stop to waste an hour or so was the saddest experience of the day. It involved a trip to a Chinese “drive through” zoo. Not an enlightened zoo like Western Plains Zoo which places the animals’ welfare and happiness at a high premium by allowing them the distance, space and relative freedom to move – as only an open plains environment can do. No, this was more like the bad old western zoos of the 1960s which doubled down on confinement and captivity, corralling the creatures, mainly here Eurasian bears of various kinds and a few tigers, into tiny, unsanitary cages, so they could be stared at through the bars. Bored and immobile, they were pathetic sights.
The only animals given a bit of space and exercise were the zoo’s Bengal tigers and tigresses. These big cats were allowed to prowl round a dusty strip of turf, albeit a fairly restricted one. We, the humans, were permitted to take photos as we circled round the mainly listless tigers from a good, safe distance. Occasionally an attendant would throw them slabs of meat from a truck.
The last of the animals on display for the public’s enjoyment were a pair of large brown bears. Ostensibly, they were better off than their caged compatriots because they were sitting in a large pond of water. But I think that was just for the benefit of paying customers, so they can see them frolicking in a riverine environment. When the gates close for the day I suspect they get shuffled back into their 4 x 3 cages. In any case the water quality in the pond didn’t look all that flash, it looked a bit dirty, and this was not helped by visitors in the buses chucking water bottles into the pond to get the Ursus arctos to stand up so they can take better photos. 
Having wasted enough time in Lǚshùn, some enjoyable, some so-so, we started back to Dalian and our digs at the ubiquitous Jinjiang Inn.
