I read that the Chinese censorship board ordered you to delete some scenes from the movie. Which ones, and why?
Several scenes were cut. One scene showed corpses in the streets on first day Japanese troops entered the city. It was very brutal. Another scene showed a lot of corpses of naked women on the street. A third scene portrayed Japanese officers in a somewhat sympathetic light. But to be honest with you, I was very happy with what they chose. The day I got the list of scenes they wanted me to cut, I felt great because I was expecting much more. Of course I pretended to be very sad, but inside I was happy because their changes didn’t affect the spirit of the movie. It’s a bit of a game, this dance with the censors. But these were changes that just touched the hair of the movie, not the heart or brain.

Plot-wise, there are similarities between Schindler’s List and your movie. Which Holocaust movies did you look at, and was there anything you wanted to do differently from those movies?
Schindler’s List has a particular place in my heart because it helped me pass the exam to get into the Beijing Film Academy. I love Spielberg’s movies, and Schindler’s List in particular. Before taking the entrance exam, I watched it six times and analyzed it shot by shot. I had no knowledge about movies back then, so I just watched this one film over and over to discover a lot of secrets about movie-making. In my opinion, the first part of Schindler’s List is pretty much perfect, it’s amazing. But I find the ending a bit commercial, a bit Hollywood-happy. I think real life is more desperate, and I wanted to make a movie that felt a bit more raw and closer to real life.