General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Beijing Bastards (北京杂种)

Beijing Bastards (北京杂种, Beijing zazhong) is a 1993 Chinese drama film directed by Zhang Yuan (张元), made outside the state studio system and widely described as one of the first, and often the first, independently produced feature films in China.¹^•² It follows a group of marginal young people in early-1990s Beijing, with the rock musician Cui Jian (崔健) playing a version of himself, and it was banned in China after screening at international festivals without government permission.³

Key fact	Detail
Director and writers	Directed by Zhang Yuan; written by Zhang Yuan, Tang Danian (唐大年), and Cui Jian¹
Year and format	1993; 35 mm widescreen; drama; Mandarin dialogue⁴
Runtime	88 minutes per IMDb and Chinese databases; 95 minutes per the Rotterdam and San Francisco festival listings⁵^•²
Principal cast	Cui Jian (rock singer), Li Wei (Karzi), Yu Feihong (Mao Mao), Zang Tianshuo, Dou Wei, Wu Lala¹
Music	Cui Jian, Dou Wei, and He Yong⁴
Awards	Locarno Film Festival jury special mention (1993); Singapore International Film Festival jury prize; Rotterdam festival most promising director award⁶
Status in China	Banned; made or submitted to festivals without government permission³

Spoilers

Story and style

The film is built from fragmentary, parallel episodes rather than a single plot. Karzi (Li Wei) searches for his pregnant girlfriend Maomao (Yu Feihong), who left him after an argument over whether to have an abortion, and later reappears holding a newborn baby. Cui Jian and his band struggle to keep rehearsing as they lose their rehearsal space and cannot pay rent. The writer Daqing and the bookseller Huang Yelu chase a con man who cheated them out of money, and the pursuit collapses into infighting.⁹^•⁶ The characters are rock musicians, painters, art students, and drifters, described in the film's own terms as people who live as they please and are society's misfits.⁴

Zhang described the film as an attempt to mix reality, fantasy, imagination, and reminiscence, "a film that breaks all the rules."² Critics have noted its free-form, semi-documentary texture, interlacing the small stories with concert footage of Cui Jian, whose songs carry much of the film's mood.¹⁰ The camera also registers the city itself: Tiananmen Square, Chang'an Avenue in the rain, neon at night, subway stairs, children's games in the hutongs, and a delivery room.⁴

Production

Zhang Yuan began work on the film in 1992 without a complete script. In a later interview he said that he, Cui Jian, and Tang Danian started shooting from a few pages of simple outline, and that the project, like his debut Mama, was made in search of a feeling of freedom rather than with a set purpose.⁷ The film received financial support from sources including the Hubert Bals Fund attached to the International Film Festival Rotterdam, where a non-subtitled copy of the rough cut was screened in 1993; the producer of record was the Beijing Bastards Group, and the Rotterdam listing credits Christopher Doyle with cinematography, while Chinese databases credit Zhang Jian.²^•¹ The film was a China–Hong Kong co-production, with Shu Kei's Creative Workshop in Hong Kong among the producing parties.²^•⁸

The Chinese title is a term of abuse that, according to Zhang, means something like "the marginals" or "the gang"; choosing it was itself a break with the dominant culture, and the word also carries a secondary sense of mixed race that hints at the film's hybrid sources.²^•⁸

Censorship and festival conflicts

The film was made outside the officially sanctioned studio system and was shown abroad without government permission, which made it contraband at home. In September 1993, Chinese delegates cut short their participation in the Tokyo International Film Festival and returned to Beijing in protest after Beijing Bastards and Tian Zhuangzhuang's The Blue Kite were screened there; an embassy official called the films illegally made and said Beijing Bastards had no permission to be shown in China or overseas. Festival director Yasuyoshi Tokuma said the screenings could not be canceled because they had already been officially announced.³ The Tokyo episode, together with The Blue Kite, led that festival to subsequently show only works that had passed Chinese censorship.¹¹

When the Locarno Film Festival included the film in its 1993 main competition, the Chinese authorities withdrew their national contribution as a counter-measure.² In the same period, the film authorities announced bans on the directors of seven films with violations, including Beijing Bastards, The Blue Kite, and The Days.¹² Zhang later said that films like Beijing Bastards, Sons, and East Palace West Palace could not be released publicly in China at the time.¹³ Despite the ban, the people involved in the production were not blacklisted and were able to continue making films in China.¹⁴

Place in Chinese independent cinema

The film is generally treated as a founding work of Chinese independent film. Chinese sources describe it as considered China's first independently created feature,⁹ and the Rotterdam festival notes it "has been called the first 'independent' Chinese film."² Zhang himself points out that his earlier Mama was already independently financed, though it later passed censorship under a state studio's label, so the claim of first status depends on how independence is defined.¹⁵ Alongside Wang Xiaoshuai's The Days, also 1993 and also shown abroad in violation of Chinese law, it helped crystallize the Chinese underground film into a recognizable genre for international audiences.¹⁶

The film also documented a specific moment in Chinese rock. 1993, the year of its release, is considered the beginning of the end for the Chinese rock boom, as the genre commercialized and authorities limited public concerts and television play.¹⁷ In Japan, where Chinese rock had a following, the film was screened in cinemas in 1994 through the producer Fuseya Hiroo at Ogawa Pro.¹¹

Zhang returned to the subject two decades later. His 2013 film Beijing Flickers (《有种》) was conceived when, preparing a photography exhibition, he thought of Beijing Bastards and decided to make a similar work about contemporary Beijing youth; he has said that on the subject of youth nothing has changed, while life for young Beijingers has become harder.¹⁸

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Musical and music films (individual works) › Musical films of the 1990s and 2000s

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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