Laborer's Love () is a classic silent comedy short film produced in China during the Republican Era, which officially premiered on 5 October 1922 at the Olympic Theater in Shanghai.Huang, Zhiwei. Old Shanghai Movies (In Chinese). Shanghai: Wen Hui Press, 1998, p.5. It is also known as Romance of a Fruit Peddler or Romance of a Fruit Pedlar (). Even though filmmaking in China began in the 1890s, Laborer's Love is the earliest complete film from China's early cinematic history that is available today. The film was also one of the earliest productions of the soon-to-be prolific Mingxing Film Company and was directed and written by Mingxing co-founders Zhang Shichuan and Zheng Zhengqiu. Notably, the film has both Chinese and English intertitles, indicating that at this early point in Shanghai cinema history, films were tailored to both Chinese and Western audiences. In addition to the English intertitle cards, the short film further showcased Western influence in Chinese filmmaking, such as taking inspiration from American silent film comedians Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. A subtitled version of the film, which represents differences between the Chinese and English text of the intertitles, is available on YouTube.Chinese Film Classics: Laborer's Love (1922): https://chinesefilmclassics.sites.olt.ubc.ca/course/module-1-laborers-love-1922/
Plot
As the film begins, a man named Carpenter Zheng from the Guangdong Province has just come back to Shanghai after living in Nanyang in Southeast Asia. Upon his return, he decides to change professions, becoming a fruit peddler. His business attracts a lot of attention from neighborhood children and Carpenter Zheng is kept busy by his work, in contrast to the struggling medical clinic across the street. The clinic is run by Doctor Zhu and his daughter Miss Zhu, and a romantic attraction quickly develops between the young woman and Zheng. The platonic duo communicates with each other by connecting the fruit stand to the medical clinic via a string, along which they transport baskets filled with objects back and forth to each other, which is also known as the fruit-throwing connection (). Later, Miss Zhu visits Zheng's fruit stand and he helps her to get rid of a few local ruffians who have been harassing her. Eventually, Miss Zhu and Zheng fall in love, but Doctor Zhu opposes the relationship because of Zheng's lower socioeconomic status. However, in the face of his financial hardships, Doctor Zhu agrees to let Zheng marry his daughter if the younger man can help revive his failing medical business. Zheng is dismayed, believing this to be an impossible task, but soon he comes up with the idea to modify the staircase of a gambling club near the doctor's office. He alters the staircase so that he can transform it into a sliding ramp at will; after this, he merely has to wait for unsuspecting customers to leave the club and promptly slide to the bottom of the staircase, injuring themselves at the bottom. He repeats this numerous times, creating a huge new client base for Doctor Zhu to the point where the old man can barely keep up with the demand, requiring Zheng to step in and provide his services as well. With the medical clinic prospering once again, Doctor Zhu gladly approves the marriage between Miss Zhu and Zheng.
Cast Zheng Zhegu as Carpenter Zheng (the fruit peddler) Zheng Zhengqiu as Doctor Zhu Yu Ying as Miss Zhu (the daughter of Doctor Zhu)
Title As the earliest surviving film from the last century in China, "Romance of a Fruit Peddler" also known as "Laborer's Love," although a silent film, would still be interesting to watch today. In Chinese, "Romance of a Fruit Peddler" means gaining a relationship by throwing fruits. One would not understand the meaning of throwing fruit until one watched the film. "Romance of a Fruit Peddler" or《掷果缘》is not the wrong name, but Carpenter Zheng who is turning to the fruit business, falls in love with the daughter of Doctor Zhu. Carpenter Zheng uses a string that connects with a basket to throw the fruit to Miss Zhu to express his love.
Film background Laborer's Love is considered the earliest complete, Chinese-made film but is not cited as the first Chinese film. Since the 1890s, China had already experimented with and produced actualités and staged vignettes. However, these earlier films were lost as a result of material degradation, domestic unrest and war—notably the January 28 incident of 1932, in which Japan bombed the city of Shanghai, hitting Mingxing and other film studios. Besides, while Laborer's Love completely survived, it is not perfect with margins cut off, celluloid poorly preserved, as well as frames missing.
In the making of this film, director Zhang Shichuan takes from the cinema and social movements of Modern China.
In 2007, the Australian ensemble Blue Grassy Knoll composed a new score for Laborer's Love and performed it live in Shanghai and Beijing as a part of the Australian Theatre Festival.
Social influence Laborer's Loves survival is a product of luck, as many films made during the same period did not survive or were severely damaged due to social unrest and war. As a result of these unfortunate events, Laborer's Love is now the earliest complete film to come out of China, essentially making it a historic document and a representation of early Chinese films. The Star film industry, the commercial pass event, the movie theatre department, the Shanghai film and television company, and the Hong Kong Guangya company have used Laborer's Love as a model for short comedy films and were able to release a vast amount of such films.
The ideological change from old ideas to new brought on by the May Fourth Movement in 1919, influenced Laborer's Love. In the film, Carpenter Zheng asks Miss Zhu to marry him, an action that was incompatible with the traditional thought process regarding marriage practices at the time. In light of the social changes, filmmakers sought to navigate the boundary between traditional and moral values through the concept of arranged marriage, while also advocating the modern ideas about free, inconsequential love.
Cultural references
One of the alternative titles of the film, zhì guǒ yuán, meaning "fruit-throwing love connection," is a reference to an old Chinese folktale that is referenced through how the film balances old traditions with innovations in social norms. The film's narrative adapts this traditional motif in the lovers' use of a string to send objects back and forth to each other in a distinctly modern love story.
What is unique about Laborer's Love is that it does not contain the demeanour that is common in early Chinese slapstick comedies, and even uses a connecting device between Carpenter Zheng and Miss Zhu, to allude to the equality between men and women. Compared with previous comedies in China's male-dominated society, it is rare for Chinese love stories in this period to apply this kind of "friendly" drama to the love between a man and a woman. Moreover, the fruit basket which was made by the Carpenter Zheng, contains two functions: one is that it is used as a connection device for the doctor's daughter and the carpenter/vendor to communicate love with one another. The second function is that the basket adds a comedic element, as a mischievous device to fool the doctor.
Laborer's Love contains additional references to traditional Chinese culture; for example, the scene where Carpenter Zheng breaks open a watermelon. This is a reference to an old Chinese idiom called 破瓜之年(pò guā zhī nián), meaning that the girl is at an age where she is "ripe" or mature enough to marry and bear children. In the film, Miss Zhu, who is the love interest, is at an age where she is ready for marriage, this is implied when the watermelon is broken in two or split by Carpenter Zheng. The significance of the splitting of the watermelon alludes to Carpenter Zheng's sexual desire for Miss Zhu.
The function of Carpenter Zheng's staircase outside the nightclub raises debate regarding moral principles. The carpenter's actions are considered immoral due to the injurious consequences that occur to innocent people for his benefit. However, as an element of comedy, it is normal to see these actions toward those who are considered as bad in society as a form of "moral justification."
The thick pair of glasses worn by the Doctor is a status symbol of his professional respectability and paternal authority, in addition to a sign of his laughable pedantry and senility. It implicitly reflects that the modern cultural views aim to abandon the old "pedantry and senility" in China.
The theme of parental objection to marriage is uniquely depicted in the film. It draws on struggle based on gender and social class, through Carpenter Zheng, a man of low socioeconomic status wanting to marry a doctor's daughter. Carpenter Zheng and Miss Zhu resist normative marriage practices while also complying with social expectations by way of Carpenter Zheng finding ways to gain acceptable work to gain paternal approval. Despite the trickery, the young laborer becomes accepted by the father when he helps in the clinic, which consequently alters his social identity: from a laborer to a doctor, thus making him suitable for marriage. By making their marriage possible, they directly undermine Miss Zhu's father's authority, which speaks to modernism, patriarchy, gender, and socio-economic differences. The marriage of a tradesman and a doctor's daughter is significant as it calls out socially constructed bounds that are upheld by cultural norms and values to limit the movement of individuals' socioeconomic status.
Influence from Western films While Laborer's Love is now canonized as the earliest surviving complete Chinese film, short comedy films were looked down upon by 1920s Chinese audiences and did not do well at the box office, meaning that the film is not an accurate representation of the film culture at this point in Chinese history. In the 1920s, 90% of the films released in China were American films, which greatly influenced both Chinese filmmakers and the Chinese film market. Many of the jokes and visual themes in the work were inspired by American silent film comedians Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton, who are among the most famous comedians in the silent film field.
For instance, Doctor Zhu wears glasses in a similar style to the ones characteristically worn by Harold Lloyd. One scene has Carpenter Zheng come into possession of the glasses and try them on in a shot that imitates the iconic image of this popular actor. This results in a blurry point-of-view shot that emphasizes the difference in perspective between the two characters, with Carpenter Zheng representing modern social views and Doctor Zhu representing traditional ones. The film's romantic narrative provides further commentary on how traditional Chinese values were changing in the shift to the modern era, from its depiction of increasing social mobility to the negotiation of marriage and family through feudal and patriarchal codes.
Another Lloyd-style motif is from the scene where Carpenter Zheng and Miss Zhu communicate using a container in a line. This scene is similar to Harold Lloyd's Never Weaken (1921).
Along with referencing Harold Lloyd, the film incorporates the surprise slide staircase, which was a gag popularized by American silent comedian Buster Keaton in his film The Haunted House (1921). This appears in the film when Carpenter Zheng modifies the staircase to a nightclub into a slide that he can activate at will.
Evidently, Mingxing Film Company had its roots in part in the United States, and its English title suggests that Chinese films also exist in the culture of English-speaking audiences.