Changchun's old film studio: sound stages, dubbing rooms, and the Mandarin they made

Most travellers reach Changchun and immediately leave it — a night's sleep before the Changbai Shan (长白山, Chángbái Shān) slopes, or a transfer further north. Two blocks off Hongqi Street, a low grey complex explains why a whole century of Chinese film sounds the way it does.

A studio that stayed a studio

The Changchun Film Studio Old Site Museum (长影旧址博物馆, Chángyǐng Jiùzhǐ Bówùguǎn) is not a replica of anything. The oldest halls went up in 1937 as a working film plant; after 1945 the site became the Northeast Film Studio, and from 1955 it carried the Changchun name. You walk through actual sound stages — brick, high ceilings, catwalks overhead, the floor scarred where sets were bolted down — rather than a street built to be photographed from one angle.

Yizhipian, the rooms where foreign films learned Mandarin

Changchun's other trade was 译制片 (yìzhìpiàn), foreign films remade in Mandarin. The dubbing rooms are kept with their scripts, cue sheets and mixing desks, and the exhibits play the results: a Soviet drama, a Japanese thriller, a Mexican romance, all in the flat, precise studio Mandarin that an entire generation of viewers heard before they heard the originals. The studio's own productions hang alongside — 《五朵金花》 (Wǔ duǒ jīnhuā, 1959), 《刘三姐》 (Liú Sānjiě, 1961) — on posters printed when the halls outside were still booked solid.

Do not confuse it with the theme park

Changying Century City (长影世纪城, Chángyǐng Shìjìchéng) is the studio's entertainment arm, out in the Jingyue district some twenty kilometres southeast: 4D theatres, rides, effects demonstrations. It is a reasonable half-day with children and has almost nothing to do with the old site.

长影旧址在红旗街，长影世纪城在净月，相距二十多公里，买票前先看清地址。

Come in the shoulder months if you can. Changchun in January is genuinely cold and the walk between halls is outdoors; May and September give you the brick, the tree-lined avenues the city is known for, and one of the country's few surviving tram lines rattling past a few blocks away.