BEIJING – Global cinema has seen a growing presence of the Chinese movies this year, as more and more of "something about China" is found in Hollywood movies and becomes a favorite subject of big star like Tom Cruise.

    Tom Cruise, in the latest Hollywood blockbuster Mission Impossible III, even chose the setting in the metropolis of Shanghai and Xitang, a waterside town in east China's Zhejiang province. This eyeball attraction had nearly 20 percent of its contents shot in China. Shanghai's futuristic Oriental Pearl TV Tower will both be featured in the movie with Cruise's breathtaking performances on them. And the elegant scenes of Xitang, entitled "Venice of East" by Cruise, will also be spotlighted.

    The film will present the world a "real and spectacular China, "Cruise earlier told Xinhua, adding that the film is also the first mainstream Hollywood blockbuster to shoot in China without any negative implications.

    This year is the centennial of Chinese cinema, which underwent hard evolution with the dramatic social changes over the past century.

    "Something about China," such as Chinese actors, stories, sceneries, Kungfu and Chinese herbal medicine all came through a long journey to cast on the world's screen.

    Chinese martial arts, widely known by Westerners as "Kungfu", best epitomizes the long march of the Chinese cinema. Bruce Lee first brand marked the Chinese martial arts in Hollywood, followed by Chow Yet-Fat and John Woo, and later Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Although their names and faces are familiar to Western audience, few of their films could win the box office.

    This situation of the Chinese cinema mostly with the selling point of "martial arts" did not change much till 2001, when Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" became the black horse of the 73th Oscar Award. The film, featuring the Oriental style romance of the martial arts world, scored in one hit four respective Oscar prizes, and a box office of 128 million US dollars, atop any foreign language movie cast in the United States.

    The same year, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", along with other three Chinese language films, are listed among top ten superb movies by the U.S. Times magazine.

    From then on, "something about China", especially "Kungfu", became most popular cuisine among Hollywood makers, seen in "Matrix" and "Kill Bill".

    When making "Kill Bill II", Quentin Tarantino spent much time in showcasing the state-of-art Kungfu, even portraying a white-haired man with unbelievable "Kungfu". The film also made a spectacular box office of 25.6 million US dollars, atop the North America cinema box in its opening weekend.

    Contented to see its audience having the same curiosity and enthusiasm to a myth-like China, Tarantino take the film "salute" to the Hong Kong-made martial arts movies.

Hollywood, of course, has certain reason for a rising enthusiasm in "something about China", as observed by New York Times in a report titled "Hollywood sees a future in China" on July, 4. "Like the rest of U.S. industry, Hollywood has seen the future, and it is China. Some of the biggest movie studios are now scrambling onto the mainland and planning to invest more than 150 million USD over the next few years in China's burgeoning film industry," the newspaper said.

    "Hollywood executives also say they are making plans to produce and invest in movies with a Chinese theme or Chinese-language movies that could later be exported. And U.S. studios are laying the foundation to produce movies solely for China's domestic market," it added.

    "The Secret of the Magic Gourd," the first film co-produced by the Walt Disney Company and the Chinese filmmakers, will be screened in China next year.

    "Chinese cinema has taken the world by storm in recent years," said Dick Cook, chairman of the Walt Disney Studios. "And as China celebrates a hundred years of movie making in 2005, it is a perfect time for Disney to bring its wholesome family entertainment expertise to this rapidly growing market as part of the Walt Disney Company's focus on expanding our presence in China."

    He also revealed that the film is of great significance for Disney to win a big market with 1.3 billion populations.

    Such positive signals from Hollywood and overseas market was well received and understood by the Chinese film makers. "Hero" and "House of Flying Daggers", though blamed for selling big setting and meaningless struggle, still demonstrates the confidence of the Chinese film makers for overseas market. And it has been proved with the two films hitting 190 million US dollars in box.

    Despite a series of commercial successes for the Chinese blockbusters, Chinese movies with diversified narrative styles have rebuilt an image of China to the Western audience. The Chinese traditional costume in Wong Kai-Wai's films, the "Pusa" (Chinese version for "Buddha") in Feng Xiaogang's "A World without Thief", and the old Shanghai in Stephen Chow's "Kung Fu Hustle", once again aroused Western people's long-existed inquiry into Chinese culture. And the "Peacock" by Gu Changwei that replayed China's social changes, provided a new perspective for Westerners to look at China.

    Local filmmakers came to see the advantage of "Something about China" and began to learn how to make good use of them, said Wang Zhimin, a professor with the elite Beijing Film Academy. This move is powered by the Chinese people's recognition and confidence of the Chinese culture, which differs totally from the time when China first opened to the outside world.

    However, he stressed, the frustrated box office in domestic market of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Hero" also taught Chinese film makers that "Something about China" should not be "too Chinese" to the audience in China but be "very Chinese" for Western audience.

    It is no doubt that the global cinema eyes great potential in "something about China", Wang acknowledged, which is conducive to the national film industry, yet in the same time demanding more efforts from the local filmmakers.