Family a 'fairy' tale in filmmaking

Famed novelist father keeps stories true to his books as he guides director son on adapting the characters and narratives for the silver screen, Xu Fan reports.

Hazardous weather, unforeseen accidents, and ballooning budgets — these are challenges often faced during filmmaking.

When director Zheng Yaqi, the son of China's "king of fairy tales" Zheng Yuanjie, began shooting his latest film, Shuke and Beita: The Miniature Humans, he was prepared for potential obstructions. What he did not anticipate, however, was a more personal obstacle devised by his father.

Zheng Yuanjie, long known for his maverick temperament, paid a visit to the set with a surprise: a written test for the entire crew. The exam assessed their knowledge of the story's titular heroes — two anthropomorphic mice, one a helicopter pilot, and the other a tank driver.

"I set some traps. For example, one question was, 'Who is Shuke's uncle?' But Shuke doesn't have an uncle in the novels," Zheng Yuanjie says, bursting into a broad smile.

Released across theaters on the Chinese mainland on Jan 24, the film marks the second cinematic feature in the long-running franchise, which has been etched in the minds of Chinese readers for several generations.

First published in a magazine in 1982, the franchise later spawned a series of books and collections, a 13-episode animated series in the late 1980s, a five-season animated reboot comprising more than 200 episodes since 2019, and its first feature film, Shuke and Beita: Pentagon UFO, in 2023.

The franchise was born from a subversive premise: mice — traditionally stereotyped in Chinese folktales as thieves who steal people's food — become heroes under Zheng Yuanjie's imaginative pen.

For those familiar with Zheng Yuanjie's temperament and literary style, such a reversal is hardly surprising. Turning 71 in June, Zheng has earned widespread popularity not only for his fairy tales but also for his sharp commentary.

Fans often recount his defining anecdotes: a rebellious spirit from an early age, and the self-made novelist who served as the sole writer of the popular magazine King of Fairy Tales for 17 years, made an equally bold decision for his son. He allowed Zheng Yaqi to leave primary school and wrote textbooks totaling 4 million characters to educate him at home.

This kind of hands-on, one-on-one home education also nurtured Zheng Yaqi's sensitivity to artistic creation.

Born in 1983, Zheng Yaqi established a company in 2010 to manage all copyright-related business for his father's works. These range from the Shuke and Beita series to the Pipi Lu and Lu Xixi franchise, which recounts the campus life of a precocious brother and his younger sister.

Despite serving as the director of the 2019 rebooted Shuke and Beita animated series and the 2023 film, Zheng says that recently he came to understand something his father once described.

"When I was in elementary school in the 1990s, my father wrote at home. Every evening at dinner, he would tell me about the stories he wrote that day," Zheng Yaqi recalls.

"He often said that when writing a long-form piece, he would start by shaping the characters' personalities and experiences — but as he went on, it was no longer him writing. Instead, the characters began deciding their own fates. He said it felt as though the roles were guiding him," adds the director.

Back then, Zheng Yaqi was perplexed by his father's words. But he now understands what his father meant and tells his animators exactly how Shuke and Beita would react, move, and speak, as if the two characters had come to life and were performing their own adventures on the silver screen.

"I even feel that it was not me but Shuke and Beita who directed this film," adds Zheng Yaqi.

Judging by the two mouse heroes' cinematic talent, the pair rescue the day once more in the new film The Miniature Humans.

The story imagines the Mouse King plotting to use an evil technology invented by a crazy mouse scientist to shrink all humans and seize control of their city, Mofang (Magic Cube). Shuke and Beita, aided by a human friend and several allies, rise to the challenge, thwart the threat, and even help establish a harmonious relationship between humans and mice.

Zheng Yaqi, who calls his father "Lao Zheng" rather than "Dad", describes their collaboration as highly professional.

"We keep clear accounts despite our close relationship: contracts are duly signed, and licensing fees are paid accordingly. The contract specifies that he must review and approve the script before filming can proceed," says the son.

His father echoes this: "When my son was little, he saw people come to our home to buy the film and television adaptation rights. Most of the time, I would decline because I felt as if my own children were being operated on. I didn't want my works to be casually altered."

Thus, the foremost rule for Zheng Yuanjie in authorizing adaptations is complete loyalty to the original stories — a promise Zheng Yaqi upholds. He writes the scripts, shoots most of the scenes as depicted in the books, and preserves the core elements of his father's work.

"In his novels, themes like eliminating prejudice, kindness, justice, and equality — these values always resonate with people," Zheng Yaqi shares.

Zheng Yuanjie also demonstrated an imagination far ahead of its time. In the early 1980s, the novelist conceived a storyline in which Beita invents a piece of software that generates a movie once character descriptions and plotlines are entered. The idea closely resembles what many artificial intelligence applications do today: creating videos based on written prompts.

Describing himself as an enthusiast of AI tools over the past five years, Zheng Yaqi believes that advances in cinematic technology point toward a more promising future for the film industry.

"In the past, you needed a large team just to visualize a script. Now, if you have a good story, it can easily be seen by audiences," he says.

For the director, the timing is fortunate. Of the 705 fairy tales written by Zheng Yuanjie, only 37 have so far been adapted for films and animated series — a vast reserve of stories that, for Zheng Yaqi, remains largely untapped.