Yani together with the 11 blind artists on location

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Sometimes, Yani says she feels that she has jumped into a bottomless “pit” of Zuoquan County, Shanxi Province, and at the end of the rugged mountain road that winds through the “pit,” there are 11 men with no eyes.

 

Fading memory of the hostess
“Men with no eyes” is the popular name of blind artists living in seclusion in the Taihang Moutains to the east of Shanxi Province, but it was also the designation given to a blind publicity team during the Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression.

They wandered and sang, carrying their chamber pots, kettles and clothes in the manner typically adopted by the army while on maneuvers. They even followed the practice of hanging their polished chamber pots on the right side of their bedrolls.

But as time goes by, their stories are gradually being forgotten and were seldom mentioned until Yani decided to shoot a film about these blind artists in the hope of preserving this moment in history.

When Yani decided to shoot the film, Zhejiang Satellite TV (ZJSTV) where she formerly worked as a famous hostess, was in a period of transition. Yani, who once ranked among the top 10 anchors in China and won the prestigious Golden Microphone Award, had multiple career options, including establishing a new TV show called “Chinese Ambassador” or hosting entertainment programs. Regardless of the path she took, her career would likely have been a big success.

But Yani has been absent from the screen for 10 years, choosing instead to make a movie about blind folk artists. Most of her time was spent seeking potential investors to raise funds for the project.

Because of its subject matter, the movie is definitely on the fringe, so it was hard for Yani to find investors. To obtain enough funds, she even sold her own house and took out loans.

Many people have a hard time believing that a popular anchor like Yani has no money, but the fact is that she was forced to borrow money from different banks because the film crew alone cost 56,000 yuan a day. And her assistant often bargained with rural villagers over whether a dinner price should cost 500 yuan or 200 yuan.

While ZJSTV has had success with popular shows like “Running Man” and “Sing! China,” people have all but forgotten Yani, and she has not completely climbed out of the “pit” due to lack of money.

 

Untainted singing
There is not a single famous star in this film, and the 11 men with no eyes are the only characters. When Yani tried to film a scene of a river crossing, they were constantly bogged down in the water and rotating in one place since the blind actors could only feel their way forward through the water using a cane. She had to jump into the waist-deep water and use her voice to direct them.

These 11 men are not professional actors, and often failed to differentiate between performance in the movie and reality. For example, when Yani was shooting a fight scene, a blind artist named Laba was badly hurt, beaten until his ear drum ruptured by another blind man named Guangming.
 

 

Yani’s pet phrase is, “When I have completed filming, I will…” Although sometimes she says that she would definitely refuse to shoot the film if she could go back and start all over again, such unease disperses when she recalls the story of how she first met these 11 men who have no eyes.
When they met, the men were sitting on the archaic drama stage of the village and singing joyfully in a high pitch. Overflowing with tenderness, freshness as well as unrestraint and ruggedness, their songs, unsophisticated and placid, were really a pure delight to the ears.

Later on, she learned from her friends that this group of blind men, who could play as many as five or six instruments, carried on the cultural legacy of Liaozhou tune, a type of folk song in Western China. The group has the most complete repertoire rendered true to their traditional forms.

“The recording of intangible cultural heritages is related to the survival and inheritance of Chinese culture, which not only relies on folk artists but also on the public intellectuals whose appeals are important,” Yani said.

Her friend Cui Yongyuan, also a noted journalist, thinks highly of what she did: “Some rural communities and folk customs are on the brink of disappearance every day. They form an integral part of the whole cultural system, and the loss of them bit by bit will wreak heavy damage on Chinese culture.”

In fact, the history of these blind artists was already on the verge of being lost forever in the year when Yani met them. Simple information about them could only be found in the local chronicles of Zuoquan County: “The blind publicity team was established in 1938. They went from village to village, singing in the tour of performances to publicize the knowledge of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression in the enemy-occupied area.” Also, according to the old ladies from the village, they usually listened to the songs of these blind men once a year for the past decades. More detailed information about them was hard to find.

“The past episodes of the war—the rarely known emotions—are what concerns humanity and human nature, which is worth recording,” said Yani. This was what motivated her to dedicate her career to making these men who lived in solitude known to people outside the Taihang Mountains and sharing their minds, songs as well as the legend of their life.

 

Ordeal
She thus embarked on a journey that was full of ordeal—spending 10 years tracking down footage of the blind team and following the steps of these inheritors of the Liaozhou tune.

She became increasingly immersed in filmmaking. Before her daughter left for America for overseas study, she could hardly spend any time with her. She was only able to stay with her for a few hours in the airport before returning to filming in the mountains.

Similar hardships dogged Yani throughout the filmmaking process but all of them evaporated when the stories in real life were committed to film.

In June 2016, the launch ceremony for the book The Eyeless by Yani was hosted in Peking University and the film with the same name will also be released.

Some people do not understand Yani’s choice to withdraw from her successful TV career in her prime and live like a hermit for the past decade. They say she is either muddleheaded or deceptive.
“Someone asked me about my true motive for shooting the film, but I have to say that what stirred my passion for the story of these blind artists was just that I want more people to experience the sunlight that shone bright onto the land of untouched nature as well as the freedom and happiness that are untainted,” Yani said.

Her friend Cui Yongyuan commented this way: “What China still needs are not female stars and hostess but more people like Yani.”