Tuesday, August 10, 2021

Young People - David Chiang (1972) - Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin

I was walking around Sham Shui Po the other day and noticed a video vendor had some old Shaw Bros films for sale (the Celestial DVD releases from the early 00's) and decided to have a look at Young People. It's a contemporary (relatively speaking) Chang Cheh film about a bunch of students who overcome their conflicts to become best of friends. It's not his best film but at least there are some nice clear shots of some familiar locations including the main exterior location at CUHK. If there are any alumni from this place (CUHK or the earlier established Chung Chi College) feel free to leave a comment about the buildings seen below.

The film starts with a view of the campus from the vantage point of Tai Po Road, which runs along the hillside above the campus.


The next part of the sequence (it's filmed from a moving vehicle and so is a bit bouncy at times) sees us going under the arch of the Chung Chi College pai lau and then down the hill into the campus grounds.
  

The car drives down the road and we get a brief glimpse of what is now called the CUHK ELizabeth Luce Moore Library and the two halls of residence (background right hand side) which are called "Hua Lien Tang" and "Ming Hua Tang" (according to Centamap). All these buildings are still around.


The library gets a bit more of a closeup as Agnes Chan runs out to tell off Ti Lung for whacking a baseball through a window. She looks across to the Lingnan Sports ground where they are playing baseball.


The final building to show is the Chung Chi Tang building with its triangular structure. There are some scenes supposedly filmed inside, but I think the interior was actually a very convincing studio set constructed at Shaws because the scale and details are slightly off. But anyway, here is the gang as they leave the main entrance.


The is basically the extent of the are used for filming, but obviously there are a lot more angles on the film that are too numerous to include on the post. Anyway, if at some point the universities here get reopened to the public (they were ALL secured following the student demonstrations in 2019) I will go and get some modern comparison shots.

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