Zhao Ting, the recent winner of the Golden Globe Award for Best Director, has stirred up controversy over her nationality and a statement she made years ago that “China is full of lies”. The poster for her award-winning film Nomadland was pulled from the Douban website on March 5, and became a banned topic on Sina Weibo. Chinese netizens, who had been proud of their connection with Zhao Ting a few days before, also changed their faces overnight.
The sought-after “Chinese director”
On February 28, the Golden Globe Awards, known as a pre-Oscar battle, were announced, and 38-year-old director Chloe Zhao made history with applause, winning two awards: Best Drama and Best Director for her film “Nomadland,” making her the first Asian-American woman to win the Best Director award. Her stepmother, Chinese actress Song Dandan, also posted a congratulatory message.
The official Chinese media CCTV, Xinhua News Agency and People’s Daily all wrote articles praising the “Chinese director” and the Global Times called her “the pride of China”. Chinese social media is celebrating, and the topic “Zhao Ting, China’s first female Golden Globe Award winner” has been read by more than 34 million people on Weibo.
Zhao Ting says “empathy” is her secret to telling stories in her films. She also recorded a video in Chinese, happily teasing that the film will be released in China on April 23, “This film brings together the passion, efforts, and Life stories of many people, and I hope that through their stories you will find your own life and become the author of your own life story.”
Once said “China is full of lies” caused controversy
However, within a few days of this frenzy of touting “Chinese director Zhao Ting”, the picture soon changed.
On March 5, netizens found that on the Chinese movie website Douban, the Chinese poster of “Land of the Unwanted” was suddenly removed and the release date in China also disappeared. On the 5th, this reporter found that the search for the keyword topic “Land of the Unwanted” and “Land of the Unwanted” showed no results, only “According to the relevant regulations and policies, the topic page is not displayed. “. This is usually a practice of Chinese social media to “limit” the flow of sensitive topics.
There is speculation that this is related to Zhao Ting’s past “insulting” comments being rehashed. I grew up in China, and it’s a country of lies, and I feel like I’ll never get out of it,” Zhao said in a 2013 article in Filmmaker, an American film magazine. There was a lot of information that I absorbed as a child that I ended up finding out was false, and it’s fed my rebellious nature ever since.”
The original quote from this interview has now been removed from The Filmmaker, and our inquiries as to why were not responded to by press Time.
In addition to Zhao Ting’s past comments, the issue of her nationality has also become the focus of controversy as Chinese netizens attack her.
Hao Jian, a visiting scholar at Harvard University and retired professor at the Beijing Film Academy, said Zhao Ting is a talented director, and he praised the film’s success. However, mentioning that there is no confirmation yet on whether “Land of the Unwanted” will be dropped in China, but Chinese film people are watching the matter.
Mr. Han, who works as a producer for a major Film and Television group in Beijing and did not want to be named for security reasons, told the station, “The distributor (of “Land of the Unwanted” in China) is positioning such a Beijing-born Chinese girl who went to the U.S. to make a film that exposes the struggles of the lower middle class of foreigners and won an award to bring glory to her country. Now when those comments (Zhao Ting’s criticism of China as full of lies) come out, doesn’t the persona collapse? Self-contradiction is fine, but what company would dare to take the risk of being offended? Of course we have to manage the crisis.”
The Cultural Revolution is on the rise again?
Zhao Ting was born in Beijing in 1982 and went to boarding school in London, England, during her middle school years, then to the United States, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and a bachelor’s degree in film from New York University.
Her father is Zhao Yuji, the former general manager of Beijing Capital Steel, and her stepmother is the famous Chinese actress Song Dandan.
Zhao Ting’s controversy was followed by a wave of nationalistic vitriol on Weibo. The microblogging site named “stock community” wrote, “The daughter of a Shougang executive, who remarried Song Dandan, is a couple that has benefited from China and the system to a large extent, and should have raised a child who is close to the country, but instead raised a liberal cynic who ran away to a foreign country at a young age and turned his head to spray their own country.”
The day before, Chinese netizens, who were proud of their connection with Zhao Ting, changed their faces overnight and called Zhao Ting a “traitorous female director,” an “insulter,” and a “foreign licker,” and threatened to boycott the film. They also threatened to boycott the film.
To Hu Ping, editor-in-chief emeritus of the American magazine Beijing Spring, the near-Cultural Revolution-style criticism reflected the overall regression of Chinese society. “There is nothing political about the film itself. How sensitive is the CCP now? This is a reflection of the vulnerability of the Xi Jinping administration today.”
A netizen named “Tasaki Sakichi” left a message on Weibo, which was taken down on the evening of the 5th, “I don’t even know what Zhao Ting said, but what she did here proves that she was right.”
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