Heavy snow has plagued Shanghai for several days, but film director Chen Kaige feels that it arrived too late.

Chen was in Shanghai filming a biopic on late Peking opera master Mei Lanfang, which included a snowy, 1930's Broadway scene. An artificial winter landscape was created weeks ago on the Shanghai set with the help of ten snow generators.

Producing the artificial snow cost hundreds of thousands of yuan, which would have been saved if the scene had been filmed now, a crew member with Mei Lanfang joked to the Wen Wei Po newspaper.

The current snow has adversely affected the filming, confining the cast members to indoor scenes only. Several other projects currently being filmed in Shanghai, including Florian Gallenberger's World War II feature John Rabe, have also been affected.

On Tuesday, central China's Hunan Television announced the cancellation of its Chinese New Year's gala on Thursday due to the blizzard.

(CRI January 31, 2008)