Hou Yao

Hou Yao (1903–1942) was a pioneering Chinese film director, screenwriter, and film theorist. He wrote and directed many films including The Discarded Wife, Romance of the Western Chamber (1927), the first Chinese film shown in Western countries, and Mulan Joins the Army (1928). He wrote Techniques of Writing Shadowplay Scripts, the first theory book on Chinese filmmaking. He founded the Culture Film Company, which was merged into a predecessor of the Shaw Brothers Studio. He has been called the Chinese Henrik Ibsen for his advocacy for gender equality, which he shared with his wife Pu Shunqing.

After the Empire of Japan invaded China in 1937, Hou Yao wrote and directed a series of patriotic films against Japanese aggression. In 1942, he was murdered by the Japanese during the Sook Ching massacre in Singapore.

Biography

Hou Yao was born in 1903 in Panyu, Guangdong province. In the 1920s, he attended Nanjing Advanced Normal School (now Southeast University) in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, majoring in education. He joined the influential Literary Association at the school, and wrote the stage play The Discarded Wife.

After graduating in 1924, Hou joined the Great Wall Film Company in Shanghai, where he adapted The Discarded Wife into a film, which he co-directed with Li Zeyuan. It was Great Wall's first film. He then wrote the scripts for the films In the Dream of Loved Ones (1925) and The Star-Plucking Girl (1925), and directed Cupid's Dolls (1925, co-directed with Mei Xuechou) and The Hypocrite (1926). Each of his films of this period sought to reflect a social issue, such as women's rights, marriage, and war.

In 1940, Hou moved to Singapore, where he continued to work for the Shaw Brothers. After the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941, Japan defeated Britain and occupied Singapore. Because of his history of anti-Japanese activism, the Japanese murdered Hou Yao in 1942, at the beginning of the Sook Ching massacre. In the 1930s, he married his assistant scriptwriter Wan Hoi-ling , who became one of Hong Kong's first women directors, but probably never formally divorced Pu.