I have on my shelf a copy of the film Titanic in the form of three CD roms, packaged in a glossy cover depicting Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet in intimate contact. It is of course a pirate edition, though of passable quality, bought on the street by a friend for 30 yuan, less then £3.
Despite the cheap pirate copies, audiences are paying 70 yuan to crowd into the 16 top cinemas in Beijing to enjoy the full impact of the most expensive film ever made. "If I were on the ship I would have died with them," said a girl as she emerged sobbing from a theatre. Six Chinese passengers, probably students travelling in the third-class section, did drown when the Belfast-built ship went down in 1912 after it hit an iceberg, according to the Chinese media.
The Hollywood blockbuster which won 11 Oscars is all the rage in China, and has even got an endorsement from President Jiang Zemin, who told colleagues he was impressed with the movie (though Gone With the Wind is still his favourite Hollywood weepie). "You should not imagine that there is no ideological education in capitalist countries," he informed his comrades. "Titanic speaks of wealth and love, the relationship between rich and poor, and vividly describes how people react to disaster. I told my comrades in the Politburo to see this film."
Everywhere in Beijing, magazine covers and billboards advertise Titanic, and street vendors are selling soundtracks and related bric-a-brac, such as watches featuring the hero and heroine, Jack and Rose, on the dial. It is likely to become the biggest box-office success ever in China, where cinema-goers have been declining in numbers, fed up with the standard fare of propaganda movies.
And therein lies the significance of the success of the Titanic. Its triumph here coincides with signs of a cultural thaw in China, in parallel with the glimmerings of a political springtime. The strident editorial voices which a year ago were warning the Chinese masses against the evils of American cultural imports have largely been silenced. The promotion of the Titanic by the President is a strong signal that western movies are OK.
As ideological fervour cools in China and discontent over unemployment and other social ills simmers, the leaders may feel that the people need a little cultural opium.
There is a marked change in the theatre too. Most of the scripts written in China in the past few years lack artistic content, as the writers are eager to project stereotyped images of socially-conscious cadres, workers and ordinary citizens. That last sentence is not mine but is lifted verbatim from the official China Daily newspaper, which this week carried a long groundbreaking article in praise of foreign plays.
One of the most talked-about dramas in Beijing at the moment is an unusual amalgam of Chekhov's The Three Sisters and Beckett's Waiting for Godot. Without changing a line of the two plays, the Chinese-language production creates an atmosphere of longing, showing how people spend their lives waiting in vain for something to happen.
It works like this: as the three sisters yearn for the chance to go to Moscow, they watch actors playing the two tramps waiting for Godot. Since opening night on April 9th in the Drama Workshop, director Lin Zhao hua has invited the audience to stay behind each evening to discuss the production with the actors and theatre staff. Many patrons complain that it is awfully boring but others comment eagerly that they have waited years for the chance to see such plays.
Western-type drama is a recent historical phenomenon in China. Before the 20th century everything in the theatre was sung. In the first half of the century European shows were popular in the foreign concessions of cities like Shanghai, where Sean O'Casey's plays were staged in the 1930s. Since liberation in 1949 however, almost all theatrical productions have either been Beijing opera - an acquired taste - or propaganda plays.
Things began to change in the 1980s but foreign plays were still the exception rather than the rule until recently. Since last December the box-office successes in Beijing have included Death Without Burial by Sartre, Knock by Jules Romains Blue- bird by Maeterlinck and Pavel Korchagin by Ostrovsky. The Threepenny Opera by Brecht is in rehearsal. By contrast, only two Chinese plays have been staged in the last four months.
"I would like to put on more Chinese plays," said Wu Xiao jiang, who recently directed Ibsen's A Doll's House in the China National Experimental Theatre, "but I won't put up with bad Chinese scripts."
The China Daily article on the revival of western drama ended pointedly with a quotation from an unidentified theatre-goer who voiced the opinion after watching The Three Sisters - Waiting for Godot, "I like classical foreign plays but I also wish that I could see a Chinese play that presents a broad portrayal of today's social life."
The message is clear. The people have had enough of communist propaganda posing as art. They want a renaissance in the Chinese theatre, as well as more movies like Titanic, whatever their artistic merit.