Sun Jinsan (1914–30 August 1962) was a Hong Kong screenwriter active in the 1950s. He first attended the Tsinghua School and later graduated from Tsinghua University. He then became the first Chinese student to use a Boxer Indemnity Scholarship to study drama at Harvard University, the scheme dating from the American decision in 1908 to return part of the indemnity to fund Chinese students going to the United States; only a small number of students travelled abroad on it. After Harvard he toured Europe and America to observe theatre, and on returning to China became a professor of drama and foreign literature at National Central University in Nanjing. While teaching he edited a purely literary magazine, Shiyu Chao Wenyi, promoting drama and literary writing. In 1955 he was recruited to Hong Kong by International Film Distribution, a company later reorganised as Motion Picture & General Investment (MP & GI), a major Mandarin-language studio established in the territory by the Cathay organisation of Singapore and Malaya, and one of the two principal studios of that market alongside Shaw Brothers. There he served as a script reader on the studio's vetting committee for screenplays, responsible for appraising and writing scripts; the committee gathered cultural figures such as Yao Ke, Stephen Soong and Eileen Chang, and Sun joined it with his Western training in drama. His arrival in the mid-1950s coincided with the boom of Hong Kong's Mandarin film industry, as post-war émigré writers and filmmakers gathered in the territory and studios expanded, creating strong demand for scripts and screenwriters. During this period he wrote the screenplay Till the End of Time (1961), filmed by director Yi Wen with Li Mei and Lin Cui among the leads; the picture was well received on release. A scholar of drama who had taught in Nanjing and run a literary magazine, turning in middle age to reading scripts for a commercial studio, was then an unusual combination; MP & GI adapted a great deal of literary and stage material in the same years, and such academically trained readers fitted its needs. Sun died in Hong Kong on 30 August 1962, aged only 48, after just a few years in the city, leaving only a handful of Hong Kong screenplays.
Bringing a Harvard drama education into a Hong Kong studio's script department, Sun Jinsan introduced an academic style of script assessment into contemporary production practice; reading scripts alongside Yao Ke, Stephen Soong and Eileen Chang at MP & GI and writing the screenplay Till the End of Time, he typified the 1950s émigré intellectuals who entered the Mandarin film industry.
Achievements
- 1955 · Joined the Hong Kong studio International Film Distribution (later MP & GI) as a script reader on its vetting committee, responsible for appraising and writing screenplays.
- 1961 · Wrote the screenplay Till the End of Time, filmed by director Yi Wen.
- 1962 · Died in Hong Kong on 30 August, aged 48.