EASTERN PROMISE I started college just as China was opening up. I had always loved European history but I felt that Europe was the past and Asia the future. One-quarter of all people are Chinese but no one knew about this place. Studying Chinese must come in handy [I thought]. So, in 1981, I spent 10 months in China, including four months travelling all over the country by train, and fell in love with the place. I fancied myself as a romantic explorer and traveller.
WORD OF MOUTH I'm just your average hyper Jewish guy from New York, but in China I realised I could entertain people simply by opening my mouth. After Tiananmen, I got a small role in a [Chinese] movie as a white face. I returned in 1996 wanting to see the changes in the country and do something in entertainment. I asked Wang Jingshou, a professor of folk art at Peking University, how I could get into xiangsheng [traditional stand-up comedy that originated in Beijing] and he introduced me to Ma Guirong, who had won awards for writing xiangsheng scripts. Ma said I should join her xiangsheng classes for eight-year-olds.
FIRST BIRTHDAY They were natural little smart-ass Beijing kids who could talk their pants off, and they accepted me as one of their own from day one. At that time, I was officially studying at the Beijing Film Academy - basically a visa scam. I met a female student from a family of film directors who had been commissioned to make a documentary. We decided it would be a fun project to make a film about me studying xiangsheng with the kids. This turned into the first version of My Beijing Birthday, which was shown on Beijing TV.
CHINA LIGHT I made the film for myself, but I also wanted to show foreigners that China is a normal place where people eat, have fun, enjoy birthday parties, just like everywhere else. Films made by Chinese and watched in the west, such as Zhang Yimou's films, were all so heavy, melodramatic and full of death. I wanted to show westerners and non-Chinese my experience in China. People had so many negative impressions. They thought there were machine guns on every street corner, but actually everyday life was pretty free.
SECOND BIRTHDAY I always thought it would be interesting to see how my young classmates had grown up, so I came back to China this year to update the original film, which was made 12 years ago. I wanted My Beijing Birthday to be a heartfelt and humorous look at the rapidly changing lives and new dreams of a group of young Beijingers.
The film has no political point, except indirectly in refuting the mostly negative coverage given by jaded journalists in the western press. There are issues in China but people are also possibly freer than they have ever been. I still think there's a woeful ignorance and lack of knowledge about China in the west, even after the Olympics.