More Treasures from the People's Repubic of YouTube

Here's a rare find: Xiao Juan (before she became famous at Shaw Brothers under the name Ivy Ling Po) singing a cover of Patti Page's "Changing Partners" in the Amoy-dialect Shrews from Afar (1958), directed by Wong Tin-lam.

The next two clips are courtesy of Dev Yang, who has recently launched a YouTube channel to accompany his blog The Golden Age of Chinese Cinema. I'm very eager to see what other rarities he can pull out of his sleeve!


The one and only Bai Guang in Blood Stained Begonia (1949). It's an absolute shame that none of her films are available on DVD.


I never thought I'd see this: the opening scene of Calendar Girl (1959), featuring the enviable Peter Chen Ho sandwiched between the fetching Helen Li Mei and Diana Chang Chung-wen. Calendar Girl has long been a "holy grail" film of mine. It's the movie that set the mold for the Eastmancolor Mandarin musicals of the 60s, from director Tao Qin's own subsequent efforts — like Les Belles (1961), Love Parade (1963), and The Dancing Millionairess (1964) — all the way to Inoue Umetsugu's Hong Kong Nocturne (1967) and Hong Kong Rhapsody (1968).