China was one of the earliest countries to have the pleasure of viewing movies on the screen. Early film pioneer Louis Lumiere sent one of his employees to Shanghai in 1896 with an assignment to show his recently-produced short 'actualities.' The port-city Shanghai soon morphed into the capital of Chinese filmmaking, producing its first film in 1905 as well as its first feature movie in 1921. American film technicians were hired during that span to teach their Chinese counterparts on the intricacies of movie equipment and film production. All of which makes the earliest surviving movie in China, March 1922's "Laborer's Love," all the more fascinating to view.
The Shanghai film industry suffered a crippling blow during the 'January Incident of 1932' when the Japanese leveled portions of the city, including its major film studios storing a number of archival treasures of produced movies. Little of China's celluloid films survived the destruction. Zhang Shichuan and his colleague Zheng Zhenqiu, primary founders of China's largest film company, Mingxing Films in 1922, may have suffered a great loss in their studio, but their written and directed comedy "Laborer's Love" miraculously emerged from the destruction relatively unscathed.
The short 22-minute film about a lovelorn fruit seller whose booth was next to his girlfriend's doctor father, a practice in need of patients, took comedic elements from Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton to create an amusing tale of a romantic pursuit with stipulations. Much has been made about the transformative societal elements of the movie reflecting China's traditional conservatism move towards a more liberal environment. This is seen in the fruit seller's attempt to woo a prospective wife by the doctor's (played by scriptwriter Zhenqiu) requirement he must get him more patients to win her hand. The fruit seller constructs a Keaton-like staircase seen in his 1921 'The Haunted House' to try to achieve that goal. Under Shichuan's guidance, the movie displays a sophistication of special effects, continuity and editing comparable to Hollywoodian techniques.
"Laborer's Lost" served as a springboard to Mingxing Film's pioneering firsts in Chinese cinema. In 1928, Shichuan produced the first martial arts movie, the now lost 'The Burning of the Red Lotus Temple,' as well as China's first sound film, 1931's 'Sing-Song Girl Red Pony.'