Black Snow (本命年)

Black Snow (本命年, Ben ming nian) is a 1990 Chinese drama film directed by Xie Fei (谢飞), written by Liu Heng (刘恒), and adapted from Liu Heng's novel Hei de Xue (黑的雪, "Black Snow"). It follows Li Huiquan (李慧泉), a young Beijing man released from a labor-reeducation term, as he tries to rebuild his life in the hutong where he grew up, and it won the Silver Bear for outstanding artistic achievement at the 1990 Berlin International Film Festival and the 1990 Hundred Flowers Award for Best Feature Film.^{1 • 2}

Title and adaptation

The film and the novel originally shared the title Hei de Xue (黑的雪, "Black Snow"). During shooting, no snow fell in Beijing, and artificial snow effects looked poor, so the filmmakers judged the original title no longer fitting. Jiang Wen proposed Ben ming nian, asking Xie Fei whether he looked 24; the character Quanzi is 24 in a Dragon year. Xie Fei accepted, finding the new title's fatalistic color compatible with the old one. By coincidence, 1990, the year of the Silver Bear, was both Xie Fei's own ben ming nian at 48 and Liu Heng's at 36.⁵

Liu Heng's novel had itself been retitled: it was first called Hong Wo (红涡, "Red Vortex"), evoking the protagonist living inside a whirlpool of blood, but the publisher's editor found the name hard to understand and changed it to Hei de Xue.⁵ Xie Fei moved the story's period from the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, as in the novel, to the late 1980s of the filming, keeping a strongly realist style that presents the social conditions and political background of the time.¹

Production and creative team

Xie Fei, born in 1942 in Shaanxi, is counted among the representative figures of China's Fourth Generation of directors. He graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in 1965 and has taught there since; Ben ming nian opened his international reputation, and he later won the Golden Bear at Berlin for Woman Sesame Oil Maker (香魂女) in 1993 and Best Director at Montreal for The Black Stallion (黑骏马).¹

The crew joined generations. The scholar Wang Hui, then at Tsinghua University, observed that the team itself was worth examining: director Xie Fei at 48, a leading Fourth Generation figure; cinematographer Xiao Feng at 29, a Fifth Generation cameraman who had shot One and Eight and Arc Light; screenwriter Liu Heng at 35, among the most noted young writers of the day; and lead actor Jiang Wen at 26. In Wang Hui's reading, the pairing of director and cinematographer made the film an artistic union of the Fourth and Fifth Generations.⁶

Xie Fei had returned in 1988 from study visits to Europe and the United States and was considering his next project when someone recommended Liu Heng's novel; scripting and shooting began the following year.⁶ Casting took time: after seeing Jiang Wen in Hibiscus Town, Xie Fei assumed he was in his forties and nearly passed, until the assistant director reported that the actor was only 26. Jiang Wen accepted on the condition that he be given at least three months to familiarize himself with the life and character. Xie Fei called the film effectively a one-man show in which every scene contains Quanzi, and said that casting Jiang Wen was half the work of creating Li Huiquan.⁵

Reception and awards

At the 1990 Berlin International Film Festival, the jury's citation described the film as "a moving film portraying Chinese reality." Xie Fei recalled that the film became the sole Asian representative in competition that year, after the West German photographer Moritz de Hadeln's festival leadership pressed for a mainland Chinese entry despite objections. The jury praised the lighting and cinematography and especially Jiang Wen's distinctive performance, though some journalists doubted the film's depictions of urban Chinese life, such as drinking German beer, wearing toad sunglasses, and watching Sylvester Stallone films.⁷ The Paper's retrospective records it as the first Chinese realist-themed film to win an award at the Berlin festival.⁶

Domestic distribution began slowly. At the August 1990 print-booking conference in Beihai, Guangxi, Xie Fei personally pitched the film and about 36 prints were ordered nationwide, later raised to 44. By year's end, showings in Beijing, Tianjin, and Nanjing drew enthusiastic audiences: a single Beijing print ran 240 screenings, a single-print record that year, the two major Beijing cinemas played to roughly 90 percent occupancy, and Tianjin audiences voting among 18 films ranked it first with 1,523 of 2,000 votes.⁶ The film also won the 1990 Hundred Flowers Award for Best Feature Film, awarded by the China Film Association.^{1 • 8}

Political context and interpretation

Shooting began in March 1989, and the film's meaning changed with the season that followed. A Washington Post report in March 1990 described Black Snow as "in many ways a play within a play, a metaphor for the larger drama that was played out on the streets of Beijing last spring," centering on a young man's release from prison and attempt to remake his life in a reforming Beijing. Xie Fei told the paper that Li represents "a lost generation of young people who rebel against the ideals of their forefathers and the traditions of their country," adding that the Cultural Revolution had destroyed old beliefs and that everyone in China now sought a new ideal.⁹

The film's circulation was touched by the aftermath of the June 1989 crackdown. It had been scheduled to screen at China's first national film festival but was withdrawn; sources cited by the Post suggested the withdrawal was meant to keep top leaders from seeing and banning it, and a Western diplomat speculated that the "political impurity" of its cast played a role. Cheng Lin, who plays the pop singer, had been living with the songwriter Hou Dejian, who had tried to negotiate safe passage for students out of Tiananmen Square on June 4; Cheng Lin left for Australia in early June 1989.⁹

Chinese critics engaged the film on literary and aesthetic terms. Dai Jinhua, a professor at Peking University, wrote that the film stays faithful to the novel while letting a social critical consciousness surface within an orderly, refined, and calm narrative, and that Xie Fei infused it with the tenderness characteristic of Fourth Generation directors and an attachment to a utopian "old days." Wang Hui placed the film in the same generational frame as the crew itself.⁶ Xie Fei later recalled that contemporary artistic opinion was divided, defining it as a tragedy of an urban marginal youth, written too heavily, realist rather than revolutionary realist.¹⁰

Style

The film opens with a Steadicam shot in which Li Huiquan emerges from a dark subway station, and the Royal Asiatic Society's screening notes describe a handheld camera following his steps through the narrow hutong lanes on his walk home from prison, into a cramped room that is his refuge from a changed world, with an edgy, restless atmosphere.^{6 • 8} The Taipei Golden Horse Festival notes single out Jiang Wen's performance of youthful repression, loneliness, and alienation from society, delivered before he became a director himself.¹ 1905.com's retrospective places the film among three 1990 Chinese films about disoriented youth, and reads it as the Fourth Generation filmmakers' last major impact on the Chinese screen and a curtain call for 1980s Chinese cinema.²

References

1. 本命年 Black Snow, Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival
2. 本命年 (1990), 1905电影网
3. 本命年（1990年谢飞执导的电影）, Baidu Baike
4. 本命年 (1990), GoldPoster
5. 度新春 聊京味 听谢飞讲《本命年》那些往事, 人民网
6. 想当年丨谢飞谈《本命年》：这是我对当时社会的思考, 澎湃新闻
7. 人民日报 1990-03-07 电子版
8. Ben Ming Nian (1990), Royal Asiatic Society China in Shanghai
9. "'Black Snow,' China's Film for the Lost Revolution," The Washington Post, 19 March 1990
10. 第十三届"学生导演奖"特别展映单元丨谢飞导演回顾展&导演系公开课, 搜狐

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

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