The Red Era: Living in Seclusion in a Siheyuan as a Boss

Chapter 640: Left and right arms!!!

Zhou Wenhuai has cultivated superstars such as Li Xiaolong, Cheng Long, Xu Guanwen, Maggie Cheung and Hong Junbao, and founded the famous Hong Kong film and television company Golden Harvest.

He and Run Run Shaw are both regarded as the leading figures of Hong Kong films.

In Hong Kong, when talking about Zou Wenhuai, people always tend to tie him together with another film tycoon, that's right, TVB's chairman Run Run Shaw.

It can be said that these two are the ultimate bosses in the Hong Kong film and television industry.

The grievances between Golden Harvest and Shaw Brothers lasted for twenty years.

This kind of grudge and entanglement continues to this day.

Over the years, Shaw Brothers and the Asia Pacific Film and Television Company, which was established on the basis of Golden Harvest Company, have been fighting back and forth with ups and downs.

This also created the most glorious era of Hong Kong films today.

After "Liu's Overseas Investment" acquired Golden Harvest Company in the mid-1980s, Liu Shudong adhered to the principle of letting professionals do professional things and handed over the newly established "Asia Pacific Film and Television Company" to Zhou Wenhuai to manage.

Although Zhou Wenhuai reluctantly gave up "Golden Harvest" which he founded, it was really a helpless move - facing this stock market crash that was rare in decades, even business veterans could not escape this disaster.

When Liu Shudong extended the olive branch, Wrinkle's heart was filled with indescribable gratitude.

What made him feel gratified was that "Liu's Overseas Investment" showed rare business warmth during the acquisition process: not only did it retain part of his shares in "Golden Harvest", but it also continued to entrust him with the important task of general manager, allowing him to take charge of the film and television empire to which he had devoted half his life.

What is even more exciting is that the transformed "Asia Pacific Film and Television Company" has demonstrated unprecedented development potential.

This well-funded film and television giant soon acquired Hong Kong's long-established TV station "Rediffusion", thereby building a media empire spanning the entire industry chain of production, distribution, and broadcasting.

From then on, Hong Kong's film and television industry gradually changed from a two-way competition to a single dominant company, and finally moved out of Hong Kong to dominate the entire Southeast Asia.

Establishing a film and television media company in Hong Kong was one of the important tasks that Liu Zhiye originally assigned to Liu Shudong.

Others do not understand the importance of film and television media yet, but Liu Zhiye comes from the future and he knows the importance of exporting cultural works.

It is no coincidence that "Liu's Overseas Investment" was able to acquire "Golden Harvest".

In the mid-1980s, after Liu Shudong had completely established his foothold in Hong Kong, he began to investigate the current situation of the Hong Kong film and television industry.

After investigation, he found that by the mid-1980s, two major film and television empires had emerged in Hong Kong: Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest.

In line with this, the development of Hong Kong films cannot be separated from two people: Run Run Shaw and Zhou Wenhuai.

The former is known as "Sixth Uncle" and is a household name; the latter is far less famous.

But Zhou Wenhuai is definitely a genius in the film and television industry, which is why Liu Shudong has placed the acquisition in "Golden Harvest".

In fact, it was Zou Wenhuai who laid the foundation for the first thirteen years of Shaw Brothers Films and created the glory of Golden Harvest Films for more than thirty years.

Zou Wenhuai, who graduated from the Department of Journalism of St. John's University in Shanghai, moved back to Hong Kong from Lijiaopo in the 50s.

Zou Wenhuai, who was about to take over the family business at the time, accidentally saw that the newly built Shaw Studios was in urgent need of an assistant who was good at publicity and reliable.

Zou Wenhuai, who was nearly 30 at that time, was introduced by his colleague Zou and the well-known media person Wu Jiatang, and became one of the earliest veterans under Shaw Yifu's team.

From then on, Zou Wenhuai and Shao Yifu began their life of both enemies and friends.

Because of his familiarity with communication and unique work efficiency, Zou Wenwenhuai, who had just joined Shaw Brothers, was highly appreciated by Shaw Yifu, who even followed him closely for more than ten hours a day.

Just like many newcomers who threw themselves into their work with great enthusiasm, it was said that many good ideas of Shaw Brothers at that time actually came from Zou Wenhuai. Throwing himself into Shaw Brothers with passion and energy, and becoming Run Run Shaw's think tank was what Fang Gang's Zou Wenhuai was most interested in.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Shaw Brothers' main rival was Cathay (Dianmao).

Shaw Brothers, which was on the rise, needed a large reserve of talent to defeat its opponents, so Zou Wenhuai spared no expense to poach famous directors Yue Feng, Tao Qin, Yan Jun and popular actor Chen Bo from the enemy. Several leading actresses such as Lin Dai, Li Lihua and Lin Cuicui also appeared in Shaw Brothers' films.

The two sides fought fiercely, and the more Zou Wenhuai tried his best, the more he laid the groundwork for his later break with Shaw Brothers.

The genre that Shaw Brothers is most proud of in the film industry is the martial arts film.

When talking about martial arts films, we have to mention the great director Zhang Qie. His film "One-Armed Swordsman" made the unprecedented use of newcomer Wang Yu to test the waters. Unexpectedly, after the movie was released, the box office grossed over one million, and Wang Yu became the new generation "One-Armed Swordsman King" and martial arts superstar.

The era of "Shaw Brothers' martial arts" thus began.

Shao Yifu is a man who can endure hardships but absolutely cannot share wealth and is rather stingy towards his meritorious officials.

"First-class talent, third-class position, special power." This sad description is what director Zhang Qifa said about the injustice of Zou Wenhuai.

During the 13 years that Zou Wenhuai was at Shaw Brothers, he participated in publicity, production, and coordination, and made plans for Run Run Shaw. He was a rare talent in the Shaw Brothers, but over the years, Shaw Brothers had three general managers but Zou Wenhuai was never the one to take the position.

For this reason, Zou Wenhuai had also fought for it himself.

He once took the initiative to ask for dividends from the senior management, but was treated coldly by Run Yi-fu.

Soon after, Fang Yihua entered the Shaw management, and Zou Wenhuai felt that his power was reduced again...

Everyone has his or her own scale in his or her heart.

So, Zou Wenhuai's heart was completely chilled.

"I don't want to leave you here, I have my own place to stay!"

Wrinkle Huai has clearly felt a gap in Shaw's.

Therefore, Zou Wenhuai resolutely left the Shaw Empire which had nurtured him and made him feel disappointed.

The public explanation was that Shaw Brothers parted ways because they wanted to focus on the television industry in the future and their ideas were different from those of Zou Wenhuai.

But his good friends all understood that it was simply that Zou Wenhuai was excluded and did not get the credit he deserved.

Privately, Zou Wenhuai and his good friend He Guanchang once revealed that they believed they had hit the "glass ceiling" in the family-owned Shaw Brothers Company and there was no room for further advancement.

“When people stay in one place for a long time, they always want to change.

Moreover, Shao Laoliu and I are actually the same type of people.

There are two of us in one small piece of sky, it's really too crowded." Zou Wenhuai answered Liu Shudong about the reason why he left and set up his own camp.

Wrinkle Huai did not leave alone, he also took away the group of people he had trained.

Including He Guanchang, deputy director of Shaw Brothers' production department, Liang Feng, editor-in-chief of Shaw Brothers' publication "Southern Film", and others, they founded their own "Golden Harvest Films" with an initial capital of only 200 million.

No one expected that a small workshop would compete with Shaw Brothers like a lion in the next decade or so.

At that time, Hong Kong had the reputation of "Shaw Brothers' products are all excellent", and Golden Harvest successively launched a new generation of comedies and kung fu blood from Xu Guanwen, Cheng Long, Hong Junbao, Yuan Biao and others.

"Golden Harvest" tried new content techniques for genre films, truly figuring out what the audience wanted and liked to watch, and stayed consistent on its own path, becoming a very popular genre film at the time.

During the journey of entanglement with Shaw Brothers, the most well-known and influential one was the "Li Xiaolong dispute".

Li Xiaolong, who had just returned to Hong Kong from the United States, wanted to develop himself locally, but was unhappy with the demands of Shaw Brothers' senior executive Fang Yihua, who asked him to play a supporting role with a low salary.

Coincidentally, Zou Wenhuai, who saw Li Xiaolong on TV, took this "lost pearl" of Shaw Brothers under his wing. He recognized its talent and tailored a number of internationally acclaimed "actual combat" action films for it.

The joining of Li Xiaolong broke the monopoly of Shaw Brothers and also injected a shot in the arm to Golden Harvest, which was still relatively weak at the time.

When he saw Li Xiaolong, who was at the peak of his career, Shao Yifu realized that he had lost such a valuable general and wanted to spend a lot of money to poach him.

It is said that Zou Wenhuai was also sweating at that time.

Facing the strong competition from Shaw Brothers, Golden Harvest was no match at the time. In order to retain Li Xiaolong, Golden Harvest also introduced the "independent producer system" that had just become popular in the West at that time.

Wrinkles promoted Li Xiaolong from an actor to a screenwriter, director and other positions with multiple powers.

In addition, Xiehe Company was established to share profits with Jiahe, so that Li Xiaolong could get more vested interests.

Shao Yifu could not be as generous as Wrinkle Huai, and if he could, he would not be "Shao Laoliu".

So in the competition between Li Xiaolong and Wrinkle Huai, he won.

The wheel of time kept turning, and Shaw Brothers, aware of its own limitations, also wanted to step up its pace of learning from the West. Several attempts to co-produce or invest with foreign companies ended in failure.

On the other hand, after Golden Harvest was acquired by Asia Pacific Film and Television Company, it began to produce films completely according to Hollywood methods, and produced more than 20 films in two years.

Among them, "Cannonball Run", which cost 500 million US dollars as the salary, broke the world record at that time.

Last year, Asia Pacific Film and Television Company launched the live-action version of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", which ranked third among the world's best-selling movies that year.

In this move, Zou Wenhuai won the game of "breaking out of Asia".

In recent years, under the outstanding leadership of Zhou Wenhuai, "Asia Pacific Film and Television Company" has become the largest film and television company in Asia, and is ranked among the top ten in the world, with its influence increasing dramatically.

Wrinkle Huai has made countless celebrities famous, such as Li Xiaolong, Cheng Long, Zhou Yunfa, Zhou Xingchi, Li Lianjie, Zhen Zidan, Zhang Guorong, Hong Junbao, Aaron Kwok, Li Ming, Brigitte Lin, Wu Junru, Zhang Baizhi, Maggie Cheung, Moon Lee, Alice Lee, Wang... and many other Chinese superstars who are popular in Southeast Asia are all actors under the "Asia Pacific Film and Television Company".

"Asia Pacific Film and Television Company" has produced hundreds of classic films, including "Way of the Dragon", "Fist of Fury", "Police Story", "Initial D", "The Baby Project", "Kung Fu", "A Chinese Odyssey", "New Dragon Inn", "The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber", "Rumble in the Bronx", "A Chinese Ghost Story", "Armed Reaction", "Mr. Vampire" and so on, dominating the film and television charts of various countries.

Moon Lee is a popular actress cultivated by Wrinkle Huai, and she once shone on the screen with his support.

However, the action film market has been declining in recent years, and her acting range has been limited as a result.

In addition, as she is nearly 30 years old, many difficult action scenes are beyond her ability.

Wrinkle had long intended to have her develop behind the scenes. Just at this time, the headquarters issued a notice to select the chairman's secretary, which gave him an idea - if he could help Moon Lee become the personal secretary of Chairman Liu Shudong, it would be a win-win situation for both her career and himself.

After careful consideration, Zhou Wenhuai solemnly informed Moon Lee of this proposal.

Faced with this opportunity that could change the trajectory of her life, Moon Lee struggled internally - she still missed her acting career under the spotlight, but was also clearly aware that her star was gradually fading.

If I could become the right-hand man of business tycoon Liu Shudong, perhaps a broader world would open up for me.

"Ms. Li, this opportunity is not to be missed. I hope you can consider it carefully." Wrinkle said earnestly.

Moon Lee nodded slightly, a hint of determination flashing in her eyes: "Thank you Mr. Chou for your advice, I will carefully consider it."

Walking out of the headquarters building of Asia Pacific Film and Television Company, Moon Lee stood on the busy street, looking at the endless stream of cars, with an unprecedented confusion in her heart.

The afterglow of the setting sun stretched her figure very long, just like her chaotic thoughts at the moment.

She was reluctant to give up her successful acting career, but at the same time she was attracted by the opportunity that might completely change her life.

Didn't you choose the path of an actor in order to pursue a better life?
But the choices she faces now have put Moon Lee in an unprecedented dilemma.

"Sister Feng, what's wrong with you?" The concerned voice of assistant Miss Yang brought her back to reality.

The attentive Miss Yang had already noticed her frown and her frequent distraction, so she handed her a cup of warm coffee and said, "You have been absent-minded since you came out of Mr. Zou's office. Have you encountered any problems?"

Moon Lee took the coffee, and the warmth passed through the wall of the cup into her palm.

She took a deep breath, and the aroma of the coffee calmed her down a little.

"Ms. Yang," Moon Lee hesitated for a moment and finally said, "There is one thing I really can't make up my mind about. It's like this..."

Who would have thought that after Assistant Yang heard Moon Lee's words, she stamped her feet in anger and shouted, "Oh my God, Sister Feng, are you crazy? Of course, she should go to the headquarters to be the secretary of Mr. Liu!"

"This is a great job that many people would fight to get, and yet you are still hesitating!"

"Being a star is glamorous, but compared to being someone close to Mr. Liu, how can it be the same?"

"Let me tell you this," Assistant Yang raised his index finger and said earnestly, "The social status between the two is simply heaven and earth!"

"Haven't you noticed that all those little fairies in our company are trying to marry into wealthy families?"

After Assistant Yang's strenuous lobbying, Moon Lee was finally persuaded. With the recommendation of Wrinkle Huai, she came to the secretariat of the "Liu Overseas Investment" Group headquarters with great expectations to apply for a job.

At first, Moon Lee was full of confidence. She was confident of her outstanding appearance and the aura of a female star, and thought that this job would be easy to get.

However, the moment she stepped into the headquarters building, she realized how naive her previous thoughts were.

To her shock, the chairman's secretariat occupied an entire office floor, which was already crowded with people.

Looking around, hundreds of beautifully dressed beauties gathered together, and the air was filled with the fragrance of high-end perfumes.

What surprised her even more was that there were many female celebrities like her who were already somewhat famous, and each of them was trying their best to stand out.

Among this group of beauties, the most eye-catching one is Li Jiaxin.

Her every move was full of elegance, and her delicate facial features sparkled under the lights, making her the focus of the entire audience.

Li Jiaxin was looking around proudly when her eyes suddenly fell on Li Saifeng who had just arrived.

As two popular actresses under the "Asia Pacific Film and Television Company", they had met several times in the company.

"Hey, Miss Li, are you here to sign up too?" Li Jiaxin raised her delicate chin and walked over gracefully in high heels.

Among all the beauties in the room, she keenly realized that the one in front of her might be her real rival.

Looking around, the girls who were prettier than her were less famous, while those who were more famous than her were not as pretty.

Only Moon Lee is different - not only is her appearance equally beautiful as hers, but her every move exudes the aura of a top star and she has long been famous in the industry.

"Oh, Miss Li, I didn't expect you to come to participate in the selection!" Li Saifeng responded with a meaningful smile on her face, neither humble nor arrogant.

"Ms. Li, I heard that the secretariat will only elect three new secretaries this time. Who do you think has the best chance of being selected among us?" Li Jiaxin raised her chin slightly, a determined light flashing in her eyes, and a hint of pride in her tone.

Moon Lee chuckled when she heard this, and she elegantly played with her hair hanging down beside her ears with her slender jade fingers and said, "I can't say for sure.

But I think that the Secretariat will be extremely cautious in such an important matter as Mr. Liu's selection of a secretary, after all, there are many factors to consider!"

She paused and added meaningfully, "I think besides some obvious advantages, comprehensive ability is probably the real key to victory, right?"

Her words seemed polite, but in fact they were veiled, implying that Li Jiaxin was just a facade.

The air between the two of them was suddenly filled with an invisible smell of gunpowder.

"Hmph! Let's wait and see!" Li Jiaxin snorted in frustration, then walked away with the sound of "clicks", "clicks", "clicks" in her high heels.

……

"Congratulations, Ms. Li! You performed very well in today's preliminary interview and have successfully passed our preliminary screening." Deputy Director of the Secretariat, Niu Danxiong, stood up and shook hands with Moon Lee with a smile of approval on his face. "Tomorrow morning at nine o'clock, the chairman will personally conduct the final interview. Please be sure to attend on time. I wish you success!"

"Thank you so much, Secretary-General Shan! I will definitely be there on time." Moon Lee smiled gratefully, as if relieved from a heavy burden, with anticipation glittering in her eyes.

"Oh, you're too polite." Dan Yuxiong quickly waved his hand and corrected half-jokingly, "My title of 'Secretary-General' has the word 'Deputy' in front of it. Don't call you the wrong name in the future, otherwise I, the deputy director, will be very uneasy." His humorous words immediately relaxed the atmosphere in the office.

(End of this chapter)