General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20268 min read

Zhang Side

Zhang Side (张思德) is a 2004 Chinese black-and-white biographical film directed by Yin Li (尹力) about Zhang Side (1915–1944), the ordinary soldier whose death in a charcoal kiln collapse at Yan'an prompted Mao Zedong's speech "Serve the People" (为人民服务). It was produced by China Film Group and Beijing Forbidden City Film Company to mark the sixtieth anniversary of that speech, premiered at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on 5 September 2004, and went into nationwide release on 8 September 2004.¹^•² The film is a leading example of a "main melody film" (主旋律电影), an uplifting production made within the Chinese state system to convey officially approved messages, and it was premiered to mark the sixtieth anniversary of Mao's speech of 8 September 1944.³^•⁴

Key fact	Detail
Subject	Zhang Side (1915–1944), a soldier at the Yan'an base camp who guarded Mao Zedong and later led a charcoal-making team; he died when a kiln collapsed and buried him alive¹^•³
Commemoration	Made for the 60th anniversary of Mao's "Serve the People" speech, delivered on 8 September 1944, three days after Zhang's death⁴^•¹
Director and writer	Yin Li (director), Liu Heng (screenplay); 102 minutes, shot in black and white²
Cast	Wu Jun as Zhang Side, Tang Guoqiang as Mao Zedong; the supporting cast includes Zheng Hao, Song Yuncheng, and Liu Jin as Zhou Enlai²
Production schedule	Script completed 30 April 2004; filming began 15 May 2004 at Yangjiagou, Mizhi County, Shaanxi⁵
Box office	About 30 million yuan nationwide in 2004⁶
Awards	Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor at the 28th Hundred Flowers Awards in 2006⁷

Spoilers

Story and style

The film is set in the later stage of the War of Resistance, during the Great Production Movement at Yan'an, and follows Zhang Side in his work as Mao's service soldier. It contains no battle scenes, a choice that Julian Ward, Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Edinburgh, reads as a deliberately measured approach to the still-sensitive subject of relations with Japan.³

The narrative centers on the relationship between the ordinary soldier and the chairman. Mao is introduced in a pre-credit scene writing out wei renmin fuwu (serve the people), and the film portrays him as authoritative yet approachable: he lends his car to the base camp nursery, chats with market traders, and gives Zhang a pair of good shoes so he need not go barefoot. Set-piece speeches punctuate the film, with Mao's calls for hard work intercut with footage of Zhang running several miles to fetch a replacement tire for Mao's official car.³

Zhang himself is drawn through small episodes: standing on bricks to match the height of his chorus line, diving into a river after an old woman's escaping pig, befriending a mute veteran by writing the character for "home" on a wall and declaring himself the old man's son, and coaxing a traumatized orphan boy back into speech. Ward notes that the portrayal departs from the flat hagiography of 1950s model-soldier films by including humor and human weakness, such as Zhang's inability to hold a tune and a scene in which he drinks too much at a banquet and vomits.³

The death is handled with restraint: no shot of the dying Zhang, only the collapse of the hillside followed by three brief shots, and his comrades laying mementoes beside his body, including the sandals Mao gave him. A single splash of color appears when the mute veteran places a pile of red dates on the black-and-white image, before the film returns to full color for a final shot of Zhang running through the hills.³

The historical figure

Zhang Side served in the Communist base camp at Yan'an in Shaanxi province during the War of Resistance against Japan, first as one of the soldiers guarding Mao Zedong and subsequently as the leader of a team making charcoal for winter heating. He died on 5 September 1944 when a kiln suddenly collapsed and buried him alive. Three days later Mao spoke at his memorial service; the speech, "Serve the People", and the slogan it contains acquired canonical status after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, and the text was later included in Mao's Selected Works.³^•¹ In 1944 Zhang led a team to make charcoal in Ansai County for the heating of the central organs; at the memorial service Mao said that the ranks of the army were full of such ordinary people, unnoticed like the grass on Qingliang Mountain, yet the very people who carried the cause.⁸

The film's subject belongs to a group of resolutely ordinary figures used as role models during Communist Party rule, the best known being Lei Feng, a soldier who died in 1962. For both men, the biographical details that are wholly verifiable are scanty, which left the filmmakers scope for embellishment and artistic license.³ On 14 September 2009, on the sixtieth anniversary of the People's Republic, Zhang Side was named one of 100 heroes and model figures recognized for outstanding contributions to the founding of New China.²

Production

The film was a deliberately fast production. Han Sanping, general manager of China Film Group and the film's chief producer, wrote that when the idea was proposed in 2004 the project consisted of nothing but Zhang Side's name and the title of Mao's speech; he approved it immediately because the anniversary year made an ideal release window. From the decision to produce to release took less than six months, with the script written, actors cast, and sets built in parallel.⁹ The screenplay was finished on 30 April 2004, and shooting began on 15 May 2004 at Yangjiagou in Mizhi County, Shaanxi, where the crew bowed three times toward the caves where Zhang Side and Mao had worked.⁵^•¹ Director Yin Li later recalled that from Liu Heng's research to the finished script took 45 days, that the crew shot 96 scenes at locations including Mizhi, Suide, and Yan'an over 66 working days, and that postproduction took another 37 days of continuous overtime, with the completed print delivered on 26 August.¹⁰

Screenwriter Liu Heng, known for The Story of Qiu Ju and The Happiness of Zhang Damin, spent about forty days investigating in and around Yan'an before writing. He described the central difficulty as "building a tower on flat ground": creating a convincing story and character from very little source material.¹^•²

Black and white photography. Yin Li shot the entire film in black and white, which doubled the cost of film stock; he said the intent was to "restore a boiling Yan'an" and convey the texture of the period.¹¹ The actor Wu Jun, cast after working with Yin Li on the television series Wuhui Zhuizong, lost 27 jin (about 13.5 kg) in twenty days, eating only three small apples a day while climbing hills and jumping rope, and tanned himself daily to match Zhang's dark complexion; barefoot running scenes across mud, sand, and grass left his feet blistered.¹² Tang Guoqiang played Mao Zedong for the first time as a middle-aged chairman in a feature film, a performance Yin Li described as a qualitative leap from physical resemblance to captured spirit.¹⁰

Reception and awards

The film was distributed with commercial methods unusual for a state-backed main melody production: Beijing's two main cinema chains jointly released it without circuit or run restrictions, with 44 prints playing in 48 cinemas from 5 September, 390 illuminated advertising billboards across the capital, and a Beijing box-office floor set at 10 million yuan.¹³ Nationwide it earned about 30 million yuan, alongside the 25 million yuan of the companion tribute film Zheng Peimin; both were among the 2004 national key films issued as tribute pictures for the 55th anniversary of the People's Republic.⁶ By 30 September 2004 its box office had reached 12 million yuan.⁵ The Organization Department and the Propaganda Department of the CCP Central Committee later issued a notice organizing viewings of the film.⁵

Directors who saw a preview screening, including Zhao Baogang, Hou Yong, Xia Gang, Lu Chuan, and Ning Ying, remarked that it felt more like an art film than a formulaic propaganda picture, praising its restraint and its use of small details.¹⁴ The film won the Best Chinese-language Feature award at the Changchun Film Festival, Best Film at the fourth Beijing Literature and Art Awards, the Jury Grand Prize at the 2005 Beijing Student Film Festival, and Huabiao Awards for Outstanding Film, Outstanding Director, and Outstanding Actor in 2005.¹⁵ At the 28th Hundred Flowers Awards in Hangzhou in October 2006, decided by 99 audience jurors voting on stage, it took Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor.⁷

Place in Yin Li's career and later adaptations

Yin Li, a member of the Fifth Generation (the first class to graduate from the reopened Beijing Film Academy in 1982), followed Zhang Side with Yunshui Yao (2006) and Iron Man (2009), a run that Chinese industry commentary calls his "main melody trilogy" and that earned him the saying "for main melody, find Yin Li".³^•¹⁶ The subject returned to television in May 2025, when the 20-episode series My Name Is Zhang Side (我叫张思德), produced by Sichuan Radio and Television, premiered in the CCTV-8 prime-time slot, tracing the future soldier from his boyhood in Sichuan to Yan'an.¹⁷^•¹⁸

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 political, royal, military, and criminal figures › Military and war biopics

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

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