Zhang Yimou outdoes Olympic opening for G20

Artists perform during an evening gala for the G20 summit at the West Lake scenic zone in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, Sept. 4, 2016. (Xinhua/Zhang Duo)

Famous Chinese film director Zhang Yimou has done it again. The man behind the awe-inspiring opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games, presented a dazzling visual extravaganza telling various Chinese stories with nearly 1,000 performers for world leaders attending the G20 summit in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province last Sunday.

Zhang built the show around the theme of water, a natural element worshipped by adherents of China's ancient Taoist philosophy, and also based on the "Impression West Lake," an outdoor musical production created by Zhang that has long been a major evening attraction in Hangzhou.

The G20 evening gala, named "Most Memorable Is Hangzhou," a title taken from a work by the Tang Dynasty poet Bai Juyi (772-846), highlighted the city's rich cultural legacy.

Zhang described Sunday night's show as even more difficult and challenging than the Olympics opening ceremony. The director and his team worked for a year with many sleepless nights to produce the first grand gala on such a large scale in China to be presented on an outdoor stage.

In an accompanying "behind-the-scenes" documentary, Zhang said: "From symphony, choir, children's choir, solo artist, solo instrument player to the show as a whole in the natural environment, we have to present them all by using high-tech means without any sound distortion.

"We have to ensure the sound and light, and everything else, is beautiful and well-synchronized. This was very hard, and it was very hard at a world level to stage such a show," he added.

The platform was engineered to lie three centimeters below the water surface so it would seem as if the actors were dancing on water. The ballet "Swan Lake," along with traditional Chinese music, folk songs, Yueju Opera and traditional dance, as well as a fireworks display, were designed to highlight the combination of Western and Chinese arts.

Artists dance during an evening gala for the G20 summit at the West Lake scenic zone in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, Sept. 4, 2016. (Xinhua/Wang Jianhua)

The "Swan Lake" performance also used digital laser hologram technology, presented for the first time outdoors, to enhance the spectacle." The performance was very special. And we had a joke, saying this was the first time 'Swan Lake' performers actually danced on a real lake," Zhang said.

But it was very difficult for the ballet dancers who eventually coped with performing on water by wearing skid-resistant dance shoes.

"I was stunned when I saw the stage for the first time," said the renowned baritone Liao Changyong, one of the performers. "It was so beautiful, and it really did feel like we were performing on water."

Liao told China Youth Daily that, in every rehearsal, the performers would get wet from head to toe, and "many caught a cold." To ensure the show would be perfect, everyone had to undergo at least 10 full dress rehearsals.

But Hangzhou's hot, wet weather caused big problems for the musical instruments and even for the microphones. "We had to constantly adjust the strings of various instruments, and the wet environment had a bad influence on wireless mikes, resulting in many experiments to cope before it was eventually decided to use wired mikes to achieve the best sound effects."

Liao said the vast outdoor environment was so challenging, forcing Zhang and all his staffer to spend many hours working on the fine details.

Yi Ming, the longtime collaborating stylist of Zhang, said they had more than 100 meetings with the director to decide how to handle the makeup for the show. For example, he said, his 50-person stylist team had hand-made 200 wigs for the performers over a two-month period when they found it impossible to buy proper wigs on the open market.

Artists perform during an evening gala for the G20 summit at the West Lake scenic zone in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, Sept. 4, 2016. (Xinhua/Zhang Duo)

"It also took the construction team two months to complete the lighting project. To add more Chinese traditional elements, we hung lamps resembling stars on all the trees surrounding the lake. Thanks to that, West Lake now looks like a landscape from a traditional Chinese painting," said Sha Xiaolan, the producer of G20 summit evening gala.

However, the most challenging part was the weather. On the eve of the gala, it rained in Hangzhou. Director Zhang watched the rain and became silent. The team even considered Plan B, which was moving the show indoors. Fortunately, the rain stopped before the show, though there was wind, which also would affect the presentation requiring a beautiful reflection in the water.

When the gala officially started, the wind had died down. Zhang was happy.

After it was over, his wife Chen Ting posted on her microblog account on Weibo, "Thank you everyone, thank you the crew and staff and thank God. Everything went smoothly."

However, Zhang was still critical of himself, feeling he could have done better, although he gave his team a perfect score of 100. Regarding the purpose of presenting a show during the G20 summit, Zhang said, "Telling Chinese stories to the world, telling them the good, I think that is the most important aspect. I want them to feel China in the hour of performance."

His will to tell good Chinese stories will continue, as his big-budget Chinese-American co-production film "The Great Wall," starring Matt Damon and Andy Lau and mixing Chinese elements and action scenes, will also debut at the end of this year.