'The Beast was set loose and I ran for my life'

by Mark Evans

One of the many beauties of travel is its transient spontaneity: The way carefully laid plans can be hijacked by the emergence of more intrepid opportunities and left discarded by the wayside on nothing more than a mere whim.

On a gloomy wet morning in Kunming, South West China, I was persuaded to discard my train ticket to Guizhou province and postpone my trip to the Miao communities in favour of an appearance in a Chinese movie, as an evil British soldier. It was an easy choice! Later that evening, two French guys, an Aussie and myself boarded the bus envisioning private trailers, VIP treatment, Coke, Champagne and groupies. How wrong we were to be.

After 15 hours of bouncing about my coffin-like sleeper compartment on the bone-jarring road to Leiku, we arrived at 'one of the poorest but most beautiful parts of China' as a local had described it. I certainly wouldn't disagree. The area was made up of lush green interlocking valleys and some of the most incredible sculptured landscape I've ever seen, a real triumph in primeval farming techniques.

The location was beautiful. Gushing rivers bisected the valley, while beautiful patchwork rice terraces and corn plantations lined the seemingly insurmountable terrain. From the mountains the rays of sunshine piercing the occasional cloud scattered metallic light upon the valley, giving it an almost heavenly quality. Magical. It was like a scene from a film.

However, the marvel in which I held the area's natural beauty was not matched by my admiration for the government-appointed film crew. In short, they were amateurs. The whole endeavour was plagued by continual catastrophe. Firstly the production team deemed it a good idea to shoot the film in the rainiest part of China in its rainiest season. So we pretty much did sweet FA for the first four days waiting for the weather to clear up. When it eventually did, we all set off for the set to find out, after we arrived, that the morons had completely lost one of the main actor's costumes! So after exchanging abuse for an hour and a half the costume department and production team decided to send some poor plebe on a four-hour journey to the nearest town to buy a new suit befitting an evil British governor. Six hours later he returned with probably the girliest tuxedo I've ever seen: What was he thinking? it was sky blue and was adorned with lace frills!

It really was one disaster after another, running out of film in the middle of a shoot, mislaying props, leaving important actors at the hotel and so on, but as you can probably imagine it was piss funny and we still got paid regardless.

The funniest part was the screw-up that occurred filming the elephant scene. It was a cheap, tacky stunt, but the basic idea was that we, the British soldiers, would try and attack a village but, instead, would be thwarted by a stampeding elephant. The scene would be included in the movie's fitting climax. So before the shoot we were told by the producer that when the elephant begins the chase we should 'run for our lives' (as if we needed telling). But it would be ok, we were told, because the elephant would stop after 5-10 seconds, due to the fact that the pyrotechnics had attached firecrackers to its back, which, in their wisdom, they believed would scare the elephant into ceasing the chase. Anyway, 'ACTION' was called and the beast was set loose. I, like I was told, ran for my life (I really did) and after the agreed period the firecrackers went off ... but instead of scaring the elephant into stopping, the 5000-pound monster went apeshit and trashed the whole set! Like I said, amateurs!

The film was rubbish. It was basically state-funded propaganda, propagating the tale of how the Lhissa minority people were such great friends with the Han Chinese (who in actual fact used to massacre them) that they collaborated to throw the evil British imperialists out of China. It was like a bad 70's TV show, disjointed, stiff acting, cheap stunts but very funny. Unfortunately, having left China, it's likely that I'll never come to possess a copy of 'Moon Stone' to prove my five minutes of fame.

However, if the production team are correct in their assumption, their sorry excuse for a film will be screened at Cannes next year! I can picture me now, dressed in a slick tuxedo, walking down the red carpet with a babe on my arm, stopping to pose for photographs ... Fantastic! But let's just say I'm not betting my testicles on it.

Copyright © Mark Evans 2003