Chang Hsin-yen (born 17 June 1934) was born in Zhenhai, Ningbo, Zhejiang, and became a Hong Kong film director, producer and editor. His family belonged to the Zhang lineage of Zhuangshi in Zhenhai, with his grandfather and uncle well known in Shanghai business circles; the family declined after the war with Japan, and he studied first in Ningbo and then finished secondary school in Hangzhou. In 1950, aged sixteen, he came to Hong Kong to work in films, entering the Nanyang studio in 1951 to learn film processing and later specialising in editing; in 1957 he joined Great Wall Movie Enterprises as an editor and assistant director, and during those years he handled the editing of many films in the Wong Fei-hung series, gaining experience in action and staging. He began directing in 1960 with Heart's Desire, co-directed with Li Qiming; in 1966 he co-directed with Fu Che the new-school wuxia film The Jade Bow, adapted from Liang Yusheng's novel, one of the works that first made his name. He directed the Cantonese film Bus Adventures (1978) and The Bride with White Hair (1980). In 1982 his The Shaolin Temple boldly cast the then under-twenty martial artist Jet Li in the lead, was shot on location at the Shaolin Temple on Mount Song in Henan, and featured several national martial arts champions including Jet Li, Yu Hai and Yu Chenghui; released by Chung Yuen Film Productions, it grossed roughly 160 million yuan on the mainland, sparked a boom in kung-fu films and won a special award for outstanding film from the Ministry of Culture in 1982. He followed it with Kids from Shaolin (1984) and Yellow River Fighter (1988). In 2014 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 33rd Hong Kong Film Awards, and in 2021 the lifetime achievement honour for film artists of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles at the 34th Golden Rooster Awards. In recent years he has retired to Hong Kong.
Chang Hsin-yen's The Shaolin Temple made a star of Jet Li and brought real martial arts and location shooting into the kung-fu film, fuelling the genre boom of the 1980s. Having earlier edited many Wong Fei-hung pictures at Great Wall, he later received lifetime-achievement honours from both the Hong Kong Film Awards and the Golden Rooster Awards.
Achievements
- 1966 · Co-directed the new-school wuxia film The Jade Bow with Fu Che, adapted from Liang Yusheng's novel
- 1982 · Directed The Shaolin Temple, which grossed about 160 million yuan and won a Ministry of Culture special award
- 2014 · Received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 33rd Hong Kong Film Awards
- 2021 · Honoured as a lifetime-achievement film artist by the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles