Teahouse – From Stage to Screen

Teahouse is a feature film produced by the Beijing Film Studio, directed by Xie Tian, and starring Yu Shizhi, Zheng Rong, and Lan Tianye. It was released in China on February 1, 1982. 

The film is adapted from Lao She's play Teahouse, written in 1956. Set against the rise and fall of a large old-style Beijing teahouse called Yutai, the film portrays the social landscape of Beijing and the changing lives of people from various walks of life over a period of nearly fifty years.

In order to bring Lao She's play to the screen in a three-dimensional way, director Xie Tian paid special attention to three aspects of camera work and staging. First, he wanted to break the audience's illusion of "watching a play in a theater", so he showed details that could not be seen on stage and made the viewers feel that they could "freely" observe the events from all angles. Second, he respected the stage blocking and the actors' movements and positions as in the original play, so that the actors did not have to change their performance style just to suit the camera, which would have disrupted their long-developed feel for their roles. To achieve this, Xie deliberately adjusted the camera positions and props so that the actors did not need to worry about where the camera was pointing. Third, he used long tracking shots to guide the audience's attention to specific parts of the scene that he wanted to emphasize, drawing them into a sense of participation. 

In 1983, the film received the Special Jury Award at the 3rd China Golden Rooster Awards and the Special Award for Outstanding Film of 1982 from the Ministry of Culture. In 2022, it was honored with the "Century's 100 Best Films" award at the New Era International Film Festival · Golden Poplar Awards.