Master Jiao San is a well-known suona king in Wushuang Town, and people in all eight villages would ask him to bring his disciples to play at a red or white event. When four people go to a function, it’s called four stages; plus those who play the shofar, flute, drums and huhu, it’s called eight stages. It was a big scene, with a high momentum, and everyone admired it.Master Jiao San’s suona is a masterpiece, and one of his best pieces is called “Hundred Birds Towards the Phoenix”. “Only the leading suona masters are capable of playing this difficult tune. In the whole Wushuang town, only the famous Jiao family class master, Jiao San master, can play “Hundred Birds Facing the Phoenix”.
This song is the suona maker’s mastery, and I heard that only one generation of disciples can pass it on to one person. This person must be highly gifted, good virtues, to learn this song is a very honorable thing.
At the beginning of the film, a teenager, You Tianming, is taken by his father to the door to find Master Jiao to be his teacher. Because becoming a suona maker was his father’s unfulfilled dream, he pinned his hopes on his son. Later on, a young boy (Lan Yu) was also taken by his father to see Master Jiao as his teacher, and the master set up various puzzles to test them, but both children slowly passed the test and began to learn in earnest.
The learning process was very hard, practicing various methods every day, such as using a reed pole from the river to put one end in the water and the other end in their mouths to suck the water from the river bay. Day after day, they sucked it out. They also continued to learn various tunes and learn to use the suona to blow the sound of a hundred birds, etc. The more they practiced, the better their skills became.
Master Jiao was getting old and desperately needed to train a successor, after all, the class had to be passed on from generation to generation. In the end, Master Jiao chose Tianming and gave up the more talented Lan Yu, just because Tianming was kinder, more down-to-earth, more stable and knew how to hold on. As Master Jiao said, “The person you choose is not just a matter of how well he plays the suona, but more importantly, whether or not he can blow the suona into the bones, and only those who blow the suona into the bones will be able to fight for their lives to keep the job going.” Only those who have fused suona into their bones and blood can bear the responsibility of passing it on.
Since then, the Jiao family class has become the You family class. Times have changed, and the suona has been declining under the impact of foreign instruments, so it’s hard to continue with the youka class. Fewer and fewer people are hiring suona players, and the money they pay is getting smaller and smaller, and people now don’t take suona players seriously.
It was hard to get a family to hire a suona player, but it turned out that they couldn’t get enough people together. The master was so angry that he scolded Tianming at his door and went to find his disciples himself, but those disciples were all planning to go out to make a living due to the pressure of life, and finally, together with Tianming’s father, they were barely able to get enough people together.
Master led the way, took the initiative to the deceased Dou village chief blew a hundred birds towards the phoenix. “Hundred birds towards the phoenix” general people are not worthy to enjoy, because this is also a kind of evaluation of the life of the deceased, only the highly respected people are eligible to receive.
Master blowing bleeding midway, Tianming took the master to see a doctor, only to learn that the master has not much time. Master sold the cow, but not to cure the disease, but to buy a new set of guys for Tianming, wanting him to put up the tour family class again.
Later, the family came to the county cultural bureau director, said the county to engage in intangible cultural heritage, that is, folk culture, would like to invite you Gaban to play a suona, ready to record it.
When Tianming went to the city to call his brothers, he found two brothers who had a finger cut off by a chainsaw in a lumber factory; one had a bad cough from working in an asbestos tile factory, and they couldn’t play suona anymore. In the city, there was a suona player sitting on the side of the road with a begging bowl on the ground. The previous Lan Yu has stayed in the county to work, doing quite well, he advised Tian Ming not to go back, stay in the province to work than stay in the countryside to play suona, but Tian Ming said, I took an oath with the master.
At the end of the movie, Tianming is alone at his master’s grave, blowing a hundred birds to the phoenix for him. In front of the ever-evolving times, the tide is like a huge wave, slapping everything in the past into pieces. This is an inevitable process, no one can escape from the times, and neither can suona, but there are always people who are still holding on, like the master, like Tianming. This film is the last work of director Wu Tianming. It tells the story of two generations of suona masters, their heritage and confusion, and on the other hand, the realm of skill.
There is a part in the film that really touched me: when Tianming came to see his master after his first job, he happily took out his box of suona after drinking and said he would pass it all on to Tianming, and told him not to focus on the few tickets in his hand, but on the suona in his hand.
The master picked up the suona and blew, especially spontaneous, his face was and suona into one intoxicated and joyful. The suona is not for others to hear, it is for oneself to hear.
The master calls himself a suona craftsman, not an ordinary craftsman, but a craftsman who is highly skilled and always maintains the belief in excellence. The master’s realm is to forget all results and everything around him, and to pursue his skills with excellence. This realm of skill, this artisan spirit, is well worth learning for everyone.
I was moved to tears the first time I saw “A Hundred Birds of Prey”, so I decided to lead a team of volunteers to gather the strength of the community and colleagues in the industry to do my best to promote director Wu Tianming’s last film. I am very similar to director Wu Tianming, we are both very capricious people. I was in tears after watching “Birds of a Feather”. I love this film so much, it is about the heritage of culture, the persistence of ideals, the freedom and pursuit of the heart. A Hundred Birds of Prey is a movie within a movie, and such an excellent work cannot be buried. Wang Luodan had previously played a father-daughter pair with Wu Tianming in the movie “Flying Over the Old Man’s Home Extra – The Old Man’s Wish”, and they bonded over their cooperation, so it was incumbent upon them to support Wu’s father’s masterpiece. At the same time, Wang Luodan said she was also very moved: I hope more young people can go into the cinema to watch this film. For me this film has a cross-generational significance, it shows the collision of many new cultures and traditional Chinese culture. If it weren’t for this film, we might not realize that such a generation of craftsmen is slowly disappearing before our eyes, which is happening every moment. If I realize this after ten or twenty years, it will be too late. This film tells us what being human should be like – what kind of person you want to be, just go ahead and stick to it. At the event, director Wu Tianming’s daughter, Wu Yanyan, presented Fang Li and Wang Loudan with volunteer honorary certificates on behalf of the film “A Hundred Birds of Prey” to thank them for their support and dedication to the film.
