Distant hero

In Shanghai, the birthplace of Chinese cinema, people watched the Academy Awards out of interest in director Ang Lee: with admiration, but a sense of distance. 'Lee is an American who won the award for making an American film,' said Wu Ming, an editor at a city publishing firm. 'If he had made a film through the eyes of a Chinese, he would not have won. The Oscars are part of American culture.'

On March 6, Lee became the first Asian native to receive the Oscar for best director, for his movie Brokeback Mountain. The official press here called him 'the pride of Chinese people all over the world and the glory of Chinese cinematic talent'.

But, in reports in the official media, censors removed from his speech his thanks to Hong Kong, Taiwan and the mainland, since they did not like these being referred to separately.

The general public here paid little attention because the censors have not approved - and are not likely to - the import of the film that deals with homosexuality, including explicit sex scenes. But the intellectual class has been watching it on pirated DVDs for more than four weeks.

'Lee has been a success in the west because he has a western sensibility,' said Wu. 'Eight out of 10 Chinese dislike Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as it was made for foreigners. We have our own history, our own stories and our own way of telling them. A mainland director could not win an Oscar because he has a Chinese outlook.'

What is remarkable about Lee is that he belongs to an extremely traditional Chinese family. They came from Jiangxi province , where one of his relatives was a county chief under the Kuomintang government.