Before Tsui Hark's new film came out at year's end, I, like macritics, was expecting a fiasco. How likely could it be that a filmmaker reared in a freewheeling capitalist system would be able to adapt a "revolutionary" work? The values would clash violently, I presumed.
在徐克的新電影年底上映之前，我，正像其他的評論者一樣，預期這會是一場慘敗。一個在隨心所欲的資本主義制度下長大的電影制片人怎么可能成功駕馭一部“革命”作品？一定會有激烈的價值觀沖突，我想。

Surprise, surprise! The Taking of Tiger Mountain turned out to be a runaway hit, not only at the box office, to the tune of 800-plus million yuan (more than $128 million), but by word-of-mouth. The Hong Kong director has accomplished the near impossible－he has brought new relevance to a relic of the "cultural revolution" (1966-76).
驚喜，驚喜！沒想到《智取威虎山》竟然大獲成功，不僅票房收入高達八億多元人民幣，口碑也相當不錯。這個香港導演完成了一件幾乎不可能的事——他將一個“文化大革命”時期的遺物賦予了新的意義。

To understand what Tsui has done, one has to have a firm grasp of China's cultural scene some 40 years ago. To put it bluntly, there was no culture as most would see it today. Almost all artists were sent into exile or labor camps. The whole population subsisted on only a dozen shows, which were filmed and screened repeatedly across the nation.
要想明白徐所做的意義，需要對大約40年前中國的文化生活有穩固的了解。說白了，那時候沒有像現在一樣大多數人所見到的文化。幾乎所有的文藝工作者都被流放或者發配到勞改營里勞動。全國人民能觀看到的只有十幾個節目，它們被拍成影片在全國各地反復放映。

There is a lot of misunderstanding about the so-called Eight Model Operas. First of all, they were not born during the "cultural revolution"; most had their first incarnations before 1966. They were handpicked by Jiang Qing (Madame Mao), who essentially served as the producer, or even director, giving specific instructions on every detail, during the metamorphosis into what people later saw en masse. Even Mao himself had a hand in changing the ending of Shajiabang－by supplanting a subterfuge with a direct attack on the enemy. There was also lots of shuffling in casting as renowned performers became the targets of denunciation and were hastily replaced with younger peers.
人們對于所謂的“八個樣板戲”有不少誤解。首先，它們并不是產生于文革時期，大多數作品在1966年之前都已經基本成型了。江青（毛澤東的夫人）精心挑選了它們，并基本上擔任了制片人甚或是導演，在作品蛻變為人們后來集體觀看到的版本的過程中，她對表演的每個細節都做了明確的指導。甚至毛澤東本人也參與了對《沙家浜》結局的修改——用對敵人的直接攻擊取代了計謀。演員陣容也大變，因為著名的表演者在當時都成了被批斗的對象，不得不倉促地重新選一批年輕演員。

Suffice it to say, only when the eight shows were filmed－some more than once－was it possible for them to gain a nationwide audience. They were re-adapted for the stage by local performing ensembles, often imitating every move of the screen version. Since they were the staple among a dozen films still permitted for public consumption and received numerous screenings, most people could recite every line.
不用說，只有當這八個節目被拍成電影——有的不止被拍了一次——它們才有可能被全國人民都看到。地方的表演團隊改編這些作品時，往往會模仿熒幕上的每一個動作，然后在舞臺上演出。由于這些作品是被允許公開放映的十幾個電影中的主要節目，被放映了無數次，大部分群眾甚至記住了每一句臺詞。

Second, the Eight Model Operas were not all Peking Operas. Two of them were ballets: The White-Haired Girl and Red Detachment of Women, often shown to foreign visitors as they did not need translation. Not all of them were equally popular. Raid on the White Tiger Regiment, an opera on fighting US soldiers in Korea, was so low on the public radar that another opera, The Azalea Mountain, from a later batch of model operas, was often mistaken for one of the original eight.
第二，“八個樣板戲”并不都是京劇。有兩個是芭蕾舞劇：《白毛女》和《紅色娘子軍》。因為不需要翻譯，它們經常用于向外賓表演。“八個樣板戲”也不是一樣地受歡迎。《奇襲白虎團》，這部講述朝鮮戰爭中打擊美軍的京劇，在群眾中反響過低，以至于從后一批樣板戲中脫穎而出的《杜鵑山》往往被認為是最初的八劇之一。

Third, these works were never officially banned after the "cultural revolution". The public was so sick and tired of them after a decade of extremely limited entertainment (even the word "entertainment" was frowned upon and the more politically correct "propaganda" was preferred), that they took to the plethora of music choices suddenly available. But one decade later, around the late 1980s, some started to feel nostalgia for the forgotten operas. Arias and scenes reappeared, soon followed by fully staged productions. But only those portraying pre-1949 stories made a comeback because the others run counter to existing government policies, like entrepreneurs being public enemies, as shown in the operas.
第三，文化大革命之后，這些作品從來沒有被正式禁止過。在遭受長達十年極其有限的娛樂禁錮后（甚至是“娛樂”這個詞在當時都會讓人看不慣，而在政治上更正確的另一個詞“宣傳”是首選），人們已經非常厭煩這些作品了，轉而大量享受突然之間遍地都是的音樂。但十年后，在20世紀80年代后期，一些人開始懷念起那些被遺忘的樣本劇。熟悉的調子和戲劇場面重新出現，緊接著便有了完整版的表演。但是只有那些描述1949年之前事跡的故事重返舞臺，因為其余的作品主題違背了現有的政府政策，如有的京劇會傳達出企業家是民眾公敵之類的信息。

The debate on the nature of the model operas has since flared intermittently. Some argue they were the products of the revolution and convey its excesses and its ideology. Others contend that they embody the collective memory of a whole generation. Besides, we should not give all the credit to Jiang Qing. Many top artists put their creativity into them.
自此以后，關于樣板戲性質的爭論也開始斷斷續續地爆發。一些人認為樣板戲是文化大革命的產物，傳達的是文化大革命的極端和它的意識形態。另一些人則認為樣板戲是整整一代人的集體回憶。此外，我們也不應該把所有的成就都歸功于江青，許多頂尖的藝術家們也貢獻了他們的創造力。

Jiang would pick filmmakers, who were released from detention and were shown films made in Hollywood－in a time when only a few top leaders had such access. They were supposed to learn Hollywood's art and craft and use it in filming the operas. Those artists had flourishing careers either before or after the revolution.
江青會挑選一些電影制片人，將他們從拘留中釋放出來，并向他們展示好萊塢制作的電影——在那個時候，只有少數高層領導有這樣的機會。他們被要求學習好萊塢的電影制作藝術和技巧并應用于拍攝戲劇。這些藝術家在文化大革命之前或之后職業發展都很好。