The life of Ang Lee: before Hollywood fame
The modern motion picture industry has been dominated by the U.S. and Europe. Taiwan’s film industry has developed a bit slower. In that context, the director Ang Lee, who successfully broke into Hollywood and whose films have been roundly praised, is truly "the Pride of Taiwan." In this first installment of a three-part report, we meet one of Taiwan’s greatest artists, and tell his story from the very beginning. Our Sunday special report.
When the KMT retreated to Taiwan in 1949, former education ministry secretary Lee Sheng and his wife Yang Si-chuang were among the refugees, and became high school teachers in Chaozhou, Pingtung.
Their first son, Ang Lee, was born five years later on Oct. 23, 1954.
His name, “Ang,” was chosen to commemorate the ship “Yun’an” which brought them to Taiwan, as well as their ancestral home De’an in Jiangxi, China.
When Lee was a toddler, his father was appointed the head of Hualien Normal College. The family moved to Hualien, and stayed there eight years.
Ang Lee
Director
As far as I’m concerned, my upbringing began in Hualien. My earliest memories are from Hualien. It was a simple, earthy time. The environment around me was full of people who were recent immigrants from China. Lots of soldiers, civil servants and teachers. I received an experimental U.S.-style education. It was quite sophisticated for Taiwan, at that time.
The lush landscapes of Hualien, and the inspiring education at the normal college elementary school, provided a backdrop for a happy childhood. When Lee was in fourth grade, aged 10, his father was reposted, becoming principal of Tainan Second Senior High School. The family relocated to Tainan.
Lee was now in a city of history and culture. He was also introduced to exam-factory education, corporal punishment and relentless tests.
Ang Lee
Director
I think it was a math exam. Everyone who had gotten a certain question wrong had to line up on their knees outside the classroom, and the teacher went along boxing their ears. A slap for each question wrong. The first time I was beaten, it felt like the world was ending.
Lee was a slow bloomer, quiet and introverted. He often suffered corporal punishment because of imperfect math scores. But he excelled in Chinese language classes, and became a different person on the stage, frequently triumphing in Chinese competitions. He was even elected “Children’s Mayor”.
Huang Chung-chia
Teacher of Ang Lee, National Tainan First Senior High School
I heard from his mother that Lee used to perform as a child. In elementary school, he wrote theater plays, directed plays, and even played the lead. He led his classmates in putting the play on.
Chen Chi-ho
Teacher of Ang Lee, Tainan Municipal Yanping Junior High School
He was quiet, gentle, moderate, not naughty, paid attention in class. He knew how to persevere. He wasn’t a cheeky troublemaker.
In the 1960s, junior high admissions required an entrance exam. Lee was stronger in humanities than sciences. He got into Yanping Junior High, his second choice, and then Tainan First Senior High, his first choice. But the joy at getting into the top school was quickly replaced by stress and pressure. The school principal was his father. His father’s example, and the eyes of onlookers, felt oppressive for the young and shy Lee.
Ang Lee
Director
I avoided him at school, I’d take the long way if I saw him coming. Should I call him dad? Or principal? Or make a formal greeting? I didn’t know how to act.
Chang Cheng-liang
High school classmate of Ang Lee
He was very well-behaved then. His classmate, Tang Kuo-ting, and I used to fold our school hats into wing shapes. Lee never dared fold his hat. He feared his father’s scolding. He was a good little boy.
Lee Sheng had high hopes for Lee, to excel at school and follow in his own career footsteps. The school itself was highly competitive. It was hard for Lee to meet his father’s standards.
Ang Lee
Director
I was the oldest son, and in traditional Chinese upper-class families, as well as Taiwanese families in the Japanese colonial period, you were meant to study. Good grades were the thing.
Huang Chung-chia
Teacher of Ang Lee, National Tainan First Senior High School
I think that Lee had two sources of stress during high school. One was his dad being the principal, which meant he wanted to do well. The second was, it was a science-oriented school. He told me once that during school exams, his palms would start to sweat, cold sweat, as soon as he read on the paper the words, “Tainan First Senior High Science Exam.” So I think it was very stressful.
But this stress led to the opportunity that propelled Lee towards film. Whenever he felt sad, Lee would hide from the world by watching Western films at a dollar theater.
Movies became a psychospiritual refuge, and cinema arts began to subtly influence him.
Ang Lee
Director
I saw one movie each weekend, more or less. Normally I had to attend cram school, so I didn’t have much time. And there was summer vacation. I watched movies during vacation. In those days, there weren’t as many ways to have fun as there are now. Watching films was my only real nourishment, on a spiritual level as well as entertainment.
At the end of high school, Lee’s grades didn’t put him in the top 15% of students who got into college. The first year he missed the grade by six marks. The second year, he scored just 0.67 in math, missing the college grade by one mark. He couldn’t seem to catch a lucky break. His failure to get into college two years in a row was a devastating setback.
Chang Cheng-liang
High school classmate of Ang Lee
Of course it was a blow. His dad was the First Senior High principal. Were Lee’s grades that bad? No, not much worse than anybody’s. His general performance at high school would make you think he’d definitely get into college. But he couldn’t pass the exams.
Khan Lee
Younger brother of Ang Lee
The second time was even worse, of course. He disappeared. I rode my bike over an hour, to the seaside at Kunshen, and found him there. He was there, the sun was setting. He walked home, back to the sunset. There was nothing I could say. But we went home together.
In the end, Lee enrolled in the National Arts School, in the directing class of the film and theater faculty. It wasn’t ideal, but at least the class suited his interests. However, his parents, with their background in the scholar-official class, were very disappointed.
Khan Lee
Younger brother of Ang Lee
Ours was a scholar-official family, and they say, “All work is lowly. Only studies bring glory.” But my dad was very enlightened, when the whistle blew, no matter how reluctant he had felt, in the end, if you decided something, he would support you. That’s how our family was.
Filmmaking opened up a new world for Lee. In his first year at college, he played the lead for the first time, in a play directed by a classmate. Lee found himself onstage.
Ang Lee
Director
I was 18, and I was in a play. The first time I got up on the stage…I didn’t realize it during rehearsals, but on the first night of performances, I knew it straight away. It changed my life. I realized that my life was over there! It belonged to the stage.
That play was just the first of many wherein the quiet, reserved Lee would trip the boards. He acted in at least 15 stage plays during his three years of college. In 1974, he won “Best Lead Actor” in the college’s theater department. This was also when he started writing and directing.
Kuo Chien-hung
College classmate of Ang Lee
When Lee was at school, he looked pretty much how he does now. He was a young oldster at school. We called him “little oldster.” He was so polite and civilized. He played all the “good guy” roles.
Ku Nai-chun
College teacher of Ang Lee
He wrote and directed his own plays too. So he also impressed us in that area.
Alongside his theater, Lee got serious about films, learning how to appreciate and critique them seriously. More importantly, he started making them, handling lighting, scripts, art direction and camerawork.
Kuo Chien-hung
College classmate of Ang Lee
To improve his aesthetics for cinematography, he learned about art from his friends. He wrote scripts, acted, directed. When we lit our films, he paid attention, he arranged the lighting himself.
Ang Lee
Director
There’s a lot of stuff, technical and academic stuff, that I only really learned properly in the U.S. But I think that I found a space that inspired me at the National Arts School. That was really special, in those days.
Lee graduated from the National Arts School in 1975. His father still hoped he would go into academia. He urged him to go abroad for further study after completing his national service, and to aim for a career as a theater arts professor.
At the age of 25, Lee got into the directing course at the University of Illinois Theater Department. Two years later, he continued his directing studies at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. He completed five films as a student at NYU. They won him scholarships, as well as the honor of first place in his Master of Arts class. At 31, the world was his oyster.
Chou Hsu-wei
New York University classmate of Ang Lee
He was already very highly rated as a student filmmaker. When his student films were shown publicly at NYU, he got a contract with an agent.
The rising star signed on with an agent and waited for opportunity to come knocking. To his surprise, it was a long wait of six years.
Join us next Sunday in FTV’s Sunday special report, as we follow the twists and turns of Lee’s filmmaking journey.
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2024-07-28
