''Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy'' () is a Chinese film from 1970, during the height of the

Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. Its stated go ...

. The film was directed by

Xie Tieli Xie Tieli (27 December 1925 – 19 June 2015) was a Chinese director. In 2011, China Film Directors Guild Award awarded him the Lifetime Achievement Award.

and was based on a contemporary

Beijing opera Peking opera, or Beijing opera (), is the most dominant form of Chinese opera, which combines music, vocal performance, mime, dance and acrobatics. It arose in Beijing in the mid-Qing dynasty (1644–1912) and became fully developed and recognize ...

, one of the

eight model plays In People's Republic of China (1949–), revolutionary operas or model operas (Simplified Chinese: ''yangban xi'', 样板戏) were a series of shows planned and engineered during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) by Jiang Qing, the wife of ...

allowed during the Cultural Revolution. The story is based on the novel ''Lin hai xue yuan'' (), and tells the story of an incident in 1946, during the

Chinese Civil War The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China and forces of the Chinese Communist Party, continuing intermittently since 1 August 1927 until 7 December 1949 with a Communist victory on main ...

. ''Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy'' has been identified as one of the most watched films of all time. Official Chinese government statistics claimed a total audience of 7.3 billion through the end of 1974, meaning every citizen of China had seen the film at least seven times. The large audience can be attributed to the fact that few films were produced during the Cultural Revolution, and almost all earlier films were banned; nevertheless, the average village held ten film showings per year, and failure to attend could have been seen as a sign of political deviation. Hence, Chinese citizens would have been expected to see the film multiple times during the Cultural Revolution era.

References

External links

* 1970 films Chinese war drama films 1970s Mandarin-language films 1970s musical films Chinese propaganda films Maoist China propaganda films Chinese musical drama films {{musical-film-stub