General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

The Golden Era (黄金时代)

The Golden Era (黃金時代; 黄金时代, Huangjin shidai) is a 2014 biographical drama directed by Ann Hui (許鞍華) and written by Li Qiang (李樯) that portrays the life of the Chinese writer Xiao Hong (蕭紅), from her flight from an arranged marriage in 1920s Manchuria to her death in wartime Hong Kong¹^•². Tang Wei plays Xiao Hong, with Feng Shaofeng as the writer Xiao Jun, Wang Zhiwen as Lu Xun, Zhu Yawen as Duanmu Hongliang, and Huang Xuan as Luo Binji³. The film won Best Director at the 2014 Golden Horse Awards and five awards at the 2015 Hong Kong Film Awards, including Best Film, but earned only 36.4 million RMB at the mainland Chinese box office against a 70 million RMB budget⁴^•⁵.

Key fact	Detail
Director / writer	Ann Hui; screenplay by Li Qiang¹
Production	China and Hong Kong, 2014, color, DCP; 178 minutes per the Golden Horse archive, 177 minutes per the Film Society of Lincoln Center¹^•²
Principal cast	Tang Wei (Xiao Hong), Feng Shaofeng (Xiao Jun), Wang Zhiwen (Lu Xun), Zhu Yawen (Duanmu Hongliang), Huang Xuan (Luo Binji)³
Title source	Xiao Hong's 1936 letter from Tokyo to Xiao Jun: "this is truly a golden era, but lived in a cage"⁶
Major awards	Golden Horse 2014 Best Director; Hong Kong Film Awards 2015 Best Film, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design; Asian Film Awards 2015 Best Director and Best Supporting Actor; Golden Rooster 2015 Best Original Screenplay⁴
Box office	70 million RMB production cost; 36.4 million RMB mainland gross by the end of the October 2014 Golden Week, against a projected 200 million⁵
US release	Limited theatrical release October 17, 2014; gross $99.9K; 60% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer³

Spoilers

Subject and story

The film follows Xiao Hong (1911–1942), a Manchurian essayist and novelist now regarded as one of the important figures of 20th-century Chinese literature²^•⁷. It opens with her rebellious youth: she flees an abusive father and an arranged marriage, is left destitute, pregnant, and in debt by a lover, and is confined to a hotel in Harbin until an essay catches the attention of a literary journal, whose editors send the writer Xiao Jun to meet her²^•⁸. Her relationship with Xiao Jun begins in earnest after she escapes during a flood, and the two travel through China's literary circles, meeting figures such as Lu Xun, who supported the publication of her novella The Field of Life and Death (《生死場》)⁴^•⁸.

The story tracks her repeated displacement through war, from Harbin in China's far north southward to Hong Kong, and her separations from and reconciliations with Xiao Jun, followed by her flight with Duanmu Hongliang, whom she marries while pregnant with Xiao Jun's child¹^•⁴^•⁹. She dies in Hong Kong during the Japanese invasion; sources differ on the year, with the International Film Festival Rotterdam giving 1942 and the Film Society of Lincoln Center stating she died in 1941 at age 32⁷^•². Throughout, the film connects her experiences to her writing, including The Field of Life and Death and Tales of Hulan River (《呼兰河传》), which she wrote near the end of her life⁴^•⁹.

Narrative style

Direct address and fragmentation. The film departs from conventional biopic structure. Characters, including figures who knew Xiao Hong such as Ding Ling, Luo Binji, and Hu Feng, periodically turn to the camera and speak directly to the audience, recounting events or commenting on Xiao Hong¹⁰^•¹¹. A 2018 narrative study by Chen Hongqiao of Hunan University describes the film as an experimental, niche work whose storytelling is fragmented rather than tightly plotted, reflecting the filmmakers' particular understanding of historical truth; the direct-to-camera address creates an alienation effect while placing the audience in a position of having to converse with the characters¹⁰. The film also cites Xiao Hong's letters and works extensively, aiming at a documentary-like objectivity¹².

The story is told mostly chronologically but jumps forward in time for brief cutaways that contextualize her experiences with hindsight, and the narration is delivered elliptically, focusing on quiet moments between larger historical events⁸. Li Qiang said he deliberately rejected the straightforward, chronological biographical approach, wanting instead to explore time and space with a deconstructed, experimental method for a classic historical figure¹³.

The title

The title comes from a letter Xiao Hong wrote from Tokyo to Xiao Jun in 1936: "Free and comfortable, calm and leisurely, with no economic pressure at all; this is truly a golden era, but lived in a cage"⁶. Ann Hui explained the irony behind the choice: Xiao Hong and her contemporaries believed themselves miserable while China was at war and people were poor, yet in hindsight that period was their "golden era"⁶.

Production

Ann Hui's interest in Xiao Hong dates back decades. She read Xiao Hong's books in the 1970s and learned that the writer had died in Hong Kong, which she found personally resonant; various attempts to make a Xiao Hong film over the 1980s and 1990s came to nothing¹⁴. Around 2003, Hui and Li Qiang planned a film about two women writers, Ding Ling and Xiao Hong, but the project stalled, partly over concerns that Ding Ling's political identity would face censorship problems; after Hui's film The Postmodern Life of My Aunt, the producer Yuan Mei, a Xiao Hong enthusiast, revived the idea as a film about Xiao Hong alone¹⁴^•¹⁵.

Li Qiang spent roughly three years writing the screenplay, during which Hui shot other films including the two Way We Live (天水圍) pictures¹⁴^•¹⁵. The finished script ran to more than 300 scenes, of which about 200 were filmed¹⁵. Principal photography took about five months after roughly six months of preparation¹⁴. The production budget was 70 million RMB⁵. For the Harbin scenes, most props were sourced from Harbin's flea markets, and the props team sewed lace onto curtains and bed sheets for period Russian flavor⁶.

Hui said she chose to build the film as an ensemble portrait rather than a solo biography so that viewers would see Xiao Hong as one of many ambitious people of her era, with the spirit of the time expressed in the writers' mutual relationships, such as Lu Xun's mentorship and the help exchanged among cultural figures¹⁶.

Reception

Awards. The film won Best Director at the 2014 Golden Horse Awards, with nominations for Best Feature Film, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Original Screenplay¹. At the 2015 Hong Kong Film Awards it won Best Film, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Costume Design; it also took Best Director and Best Supporting Actor at the 2015 Asian Film Awards and Best Original Screenplay at the 2015 Golden Rooster Awards⁴.

Box office. Released in mainland China on October 1, 2014, the film earned 11 million RMB on its first day, then saw daily screenings and receipts fall, with its share of screenings dropping from 10% to 6%; by the end of the Golden Week holiday it had taken 36.4 million RMB, less than the 36.5 million of the animated McDull: Me and My Mom, and could not recoup its 70 million RMB cost⁵. A Sina Entertainment survey found its audience consisted mostly of university students, high school students interested in Republican-era literary history, and young couples⁵. In the United States it earned $99.9K in a limited release³.

Criticism. Reviews were divided. Richard Brody of The New Yorker praised Hui's poised, painterly shots capturing Xiao Hong's freethinking audacity, while Jessica Kiang of The Playlist gave a C−, calling the film an opportunity squandered³. The Film Society of Lincoln Center called it "a true UFO in contemporary Chinese cinema" and Hui's crowning achievement². Chinese critics noted that the film demands prior knowledge of Republican-era literary history: a People's Daily commentary observed that viewers familiar with Xiao Hong, Xiao Jun, Lu Xun, and their circle could construct their own reading, while audiences without that preparation found the long, fragmented narrative exhausting¹⁷. Hui herself later reflected that "the experiment of The Golden Era was rather costly; I should have thought it through better"¹⁸.

A five-episode, 150-plus-minute companion documentary, She Recognized the Storm (《她认出了风暴》), recorded the production's location shooting across more than 10,000 km, retracing Xiao Hong's route from Harbin, Beijing, Qingdao, Shanghai, Wuhan, to Hong Kong⁶.

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Films by genre, form, and subject › Documentary and biographical films › Biographical films of musicians, artists, and writers › Biographical films about writers and filmmakers

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

Notice something wrong?