On Sunday, Nov. 10, I went to the Bradford Auditorium and watched the film

The Goddess

presented by the F.I.L.M. series.

The Goddess

is a silent Chinese movie made in 1934, but this version presented at Hamilton is a re-edited work by Min Xiao-Fen, a pipa soloist, vocalist, and composer. The film was accompanied by Min Xiao-Fen and guitarist Rez Abassi as they played the background music.

The movie talked about a woman trapped in the sex trade. Because of the threat of a hooligan and the pressure of survival, the woman had to sell her body to raise her son and herself. As her son grew up, she realized the importance of education and used the money she hid to send her son to school. However, other parents soon found out about her occupation, and urged the school to expel her son, a child from a disgraced family. At the same time, the hooligan found the woman hiding place, so her wish to take her son to a place where nobody knew them could not come true. Alas, angry and distraught, she killed the hooligan, and her son was sent to an orphanage.

In the 1930s, China still considered women to be inferior to men, not to mention how prostitutes were considered. This film was courageous in that it tried to tell the story of a prostitute. The film did not portray the protagonist as a disgraceful figure, as society commonly believed a prostitute to be, but rather the director created a woman who had a noble heart. Although her occupation was ignominious, her heart and will were beautiful. The title of the film also emphasized this contrast existing within the same person. As the word “goddess” also implied street-walker in Chinese, it shows the dual identity of the woman. For her son, she was a protective goddess who sheltered him in his childhood, while for society, she was a disgraceful prostitute who did the humblest jobs for survival.

During the Cultural Revolution in China, the original copies of the movie were destroyed, so Min collected pieces, edited them, reconnected them, and added the English subtitles according to the Chinese transcript. Compared to the original movie, this film was slightly shorter, but the main plot was complete, and the story was as moving as the previous version. To enhance the original movie, Min added background music to the new version. She not only used pipa and guitar for the background music, but also used vocal skills and beat box skills to reflect the emotions of the characters in this otherwise silent film.

After the show ended, Min talked about her experiences making this movie, and the difficulties she faced. I was impressed by her passion for that decade, the 1930s, in Shanghai, China. During that decade, although the technology was unenlightened, the environment of creativity was thriving — it was a golden age for Chinese art. Although the technical skills were dated, and there were no special effects, this old silent movie still had realistic meanings nowadays, as people never stop blaming those suppressed by society for their problems.

I felt overwhelmed by mixed feelings because it was such a special experience to get connected with my culture in the US, almost half an earth away from my home. Here, in another country, I got a chance to look into a history I did not know about.