Chen Xiaojun, who works at the country's largest real estate developer, China Vanke, figured getting a year-end bonus was hopeless during this market turmoil, but she still wanted some holiday fun.

Illustration by Zhou Tao

In December, she watched four Chinese blockbusters, including Forever Enthralled, a biopic about a Peking Opera master Mei Lanfang, and Feng Xiaogang's comedy If You Are The One.

"Every time I went to the cinema, it was packed like a sardine can. People seem to want more fun despite the economic turmoil," Chen said.

Watching domestic blockbusters during the winter holiday season has become an annual ritual in China over the past decade. The holiday film habit started with the 100 million yuan (US$14.3 million) comedy The Dream Factory, directed by Feng in 1997.

A dozen domestic films debuted at the end of last year and the box office nationwide was encouraging. But how substantial is the boom?

From late November to the end of the week-long Lunar New Year holiday in early February, the Chinese mainland market will screen around 25 new year films, of which nearly 20 were made in China. Gao Jun, vice director of the Beijing New Film Assn, said the new year film season showed that domestic films were flourishing.

Gao predicted total box office would definitely exceed 1 billion yuan (US$146 million) during the "golden season," which includes Christmas, New Year's Day and Chinese Lunar New Year.

Wu Hehu, vice director of the Shanghai United Circuit, said consumers were in the mood to spend at the end of a year, and "it has become a habit to go to cinemas for new year films."

The film market hasn't been affected by the global financial crisis, so far at least. Take Guangdong, for example, the province hardest hit by the crisis because of its huge export manufacturing sector.

Box office receipts in most cinemas were up 30 percent year-on-year, and the province's total box office last year was the largest in China at 600 million yuan.

But Zhao Jun, general manager of the Guangdong Provincial Film Co, warned the crisis might have delayed effects on the industry and said Chinese films would face great challenges in 2009.

Wang Xiaofeng, a film critic and major writer for the popular Sanlian Lifeweek magazine, said that in economic hard times, worried and depressed consumers would seek comfort in culture.

Beijing's largest cinema, the Capital Cinema, was packed on New Year's Eve and stayed open until 1a.m.. Guo Renlin, 76, took his wife, her daughter and her granddaughter to see the 11p.m.show of If You Are The One. Guo only goes to cinemas once in a year.

The new year film season, according to the cinema's vice manager Yu Chao, started with Luck in Love on November 20 and reached a high point during the run of Forever Enthralled about Mei Lanfang.

Domestic films have improved in quality and marketing in the past two years, Yu said. Guo Weiling, another cinemagoer who saw Forever Enthralled, said she preferred imported films.

"Domestic films are often low-quality and disappointing. But we don't have many choices for the new year, so all I can do is pick a film that is 'not so bad' from many low-quality domestic films."

Some previous years' new year films were criticized by audiences, but most films this year had good word-of-mouth promotion, Gao Jun said. "Chinese film companies have been practicing marketing and commercialized operations in the past five or six years."

But critics said many people just enjoyed going to cinemas, even though they had few choices except domestic films.

"The box office success of domestic new year films was achieved under protection and without competition. In the long run, it's not a good thing for the domestic film industry. Domestic films and marketing are still far from satisfactory. Chinese audiences are easily fooled," Wang said.

(The author is a senior writer at Xinhua)

(Shanghai Daily January 9, 2009)