We Had 49 Questions About the Children's Legend of the White Snake. Producer Gao Xiang Answered Every One

Audiences love the show. But does that make it good?

In early October, a children's version of The Legend of the White Snake went viral online.

The show is tiny: 20 minutes an episode, five episodes in all. The cast runs from 7- and 8-year-olds up to a 12-year-old.

From the acting to the sets, costumes, props and even the musical numbers, this children's Legend of the White Snake reproduces the 1992 Zhao Yazhi series The New Legend of Madame White Snake. The story, though, is heavily condensed. Because the cast are all children, the producers cut most of the romance.

Novel and nostalgic at once, the children's Legend of the White Snake needed only a short while after it aired to become a subject of online argument.

Between October 2, when it began airing, and October 18, the show drew 170 million views on a single platform in half a month. On its Douban page, 5,400 people have left reviews and the rating stands at 8.7 — close to the original The New Legend of Madame White Snake's Douban score of 9.0.

The Legend of the White Snake was made by Little Master Actors (《小戏骨》), a program on the Hunan TV Drama Channel. Before this, the program had made children's versions of Jiao Yulu, Third Sister Liu, Mending the Pot, Red Guards on Honghu Lake and The White-Haired Girl. Children played every part, and the approach was the same as with The Legend of the White Snake: copy the original as closely as possible.

Since late 2015, these shows, along with behind-the-scenes footage from the shoots, have aired every night on the Hunan TV Drama Channel. So far, though, only The Legend of the White Snake has drawn attention.

One reason is the platform: the shows go out on a terrestrial channel, and before The Legend of the White Snake, none of the earlier ones had ever streamed online, so viewers outside Hunan could barely find them. Another is that the earlier shows were mostly what's called "red" material — revolutionary subjects, which could never pull in young viewers the way The Legend of the White Snake did.

After The Legend of the White Snake took off, Little Master Actors plans to keep going with Journey to the West, Mulan, The Long March, Shaolin Temple and The Legend of the Condor Heroes. Beyond the remakes, the production team says it may also try riskier original shows, contemporary subjects included.

The Little Master Actors team has seen the demand and is scaling up. But should that demand be met simply because it exists? To put it another way: should the producers be the ones teasing it out in the first place?

The producers say they make these shows to promote traditional culture in a form people find easy to accept. In The Legend of the White Snake, "traditional culture" is explained as "the bond between father and son," "the bond between mother and son" and "a family reunited." The producers say nothing about karmic retribution, brute power, or the story's cartoon-flat sorting of good from evil.

Some wary viewers have spotted other problems. Whenever the controversy around the children's Legend of the White Snake comes up, they reach for Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death and The Disappearance of Childhood. The audience's love and adulation deserve suspicion: does the real world need a show like this, or does television entertainment need it?

We drew up 49 questions about Little Master Actors' The Legend of the White Snake and put them to Gao Xiang, the program's chief producer. His answers follow.

Q: QDaily

G: Gao Xiang, chief producer of Little Master Actors

Q: When did you first think of making Little Master Actors? Was there some trigger?

G: Before this program we had another children's show, I'm Going to Put On a Play (《我要来演剧》), which also had young actors performing. It gave us the idea — if kids can act out scenes, why not whole shows? So we tried it.

We'd had a program before that one too, called Heart's Delight (《心得乐》), also about children: we documented the stories of kids from poor families. Our channel, the Hunan TV Drama Channel, seems to have a knack for children.

Q: Why make a show about children?

G: I felt we ought to bring out China's traditional culture. We'd noticed that a lot of kids born after 2000 sit in front of a computer all day and have left traditional culture far behind.

Before we shot Jiao Yulu, they didn't even know who Jiao Yulu was. Afterwards they knew he was a great man. Everything they've grown up with is fairly Westernized, so there's a disconnect.

A lot of the music in Little Master Actors comes from Third Sister Liu, and all of it is lovely. Kids seldom hear music like that; they listen to pop. When they do hear it, they discover how good it sounds, and it goes down easily. Audiences at home see that, and their own kids get drawn in too. That's one reason.

The other is that the idea really belongs to our general director, Pan Liping — he's the one who pushed for it. He's a wildly inventive man, always full of ideas, and he loves children. Why make this show? Passing on traditional culture, I suppose.

Q: Pan Liping proposed it first. Who at the station objected, and how did you talk them round?

G: For the pilot we shot a scene from Mother (《娘》), the drama Siqin Gaowa starred in. It came out very well, and the station's review screening went very well.

Why? Because nothing like it existed — kids playing adults. Everyone found it fresh, so it clicked at once. Fresh, odd, a brand-new species on the market, you could say. Nothing but praise.

That experiment worked, and afterwards we made a whole run of them: Third Sister Liu, Jiao Yulu, The White-Haired Girl, Red Guards on Honghu Lake.

Q: From the first idea to actually making it, how did your thinking change?

G: No big changes. After the screening we decided it was workable, that we could do it on a large scale, and once the direction was set we built up the Little Master Actors team fast. The first one, Third Sister Liu, came out at the end of last year. Once we'd settled it, we rolled it out.

Q: The earlier ones were all revolutionary classics. Why do The Legend of the White Snake, which isn't one?

G: We'd done too many revolutionary classics, and we wanted something that suited younger tastes. Critical praise doesn't always fill seats, so we tried something young people could take to as well, kids born after 2000 included.

Q: This show belongs to a program called Little Master Actors. When you started it, who was the audience you had in mind — adults, or children?

G: The audience has shifted. At the start we aimed at two groups, adults and children. The early shows were all revolutionary dramas, and they had songs in them, which kids take to easily.

Later we tried some new things. The Legend of the White Snake was one, and its audience is much younger. Why are the online view counts so high? Because the people online are young — kids born after 2000 — and they have a particular fondness for this.

That's a shift, and we'll keep at it. With Mulan, which we're shooting now, we've adjusted the audience positioning slightly too, again based on market demand. The audience will take in more kinds of viewers, but the original purpose won't change. Our purpose in making this show won't change.

Q: You say Mulan's audience positioning has shifted slightly as well. Is it aimed at young people the way The Legend of the White Snake is, or is the adjustment different?

G: Young people should like it too, but it isn't only for teenagers — its audience will probably be a bit wider.

Q: Now that The Legend of the White Snake is streaming, is there data on which age group likes it most?

G: We haven't looked at that yet.

Q: Hunan TV has run two reality shows about children before, Where Are We Going, Dad? and First Grade. Is this program connected to them? How much do the crews overlap?

G: Not at all. Those were the Hunan TV team; Little Master Actors is Pan Liping's team.

Pan Liping is a veteran producer in broadcasting. He now runs the Drama Channel, a terrestrial channel. He's its director.

Q: Why do you think the story of The Legend of the White Snake is worth filming again and again? You keep talking about traditional culture — do you think the values it carries look out of step with the times in any way?

G: Not really. When we chose the story we did wonder whether children could understand it, and it turned out that once we talked it over with them, this was the easiest one for them to take in.

Why? Because the story is about the bond between father and son, between mother and son — mother and son parted, father and son parted, a family that can't be whole again. Children find those feelings easy to accept and to understand.

When we talk it through with them, we want them right inside the scene, as though the character's spirit had entered them; that way the recreation is closer to the original. We were afraid that once it was shot we'd wreck a classic or get the feeling wrong, so we watched that especially closely. We spent a long time discussing it beforehand.

Q: So you still don't think its values look out of step with the times?

G: The values aren't a problem — it's all genuine feeling, isn't it?

Q: You mentioned that worry yourself: making a children's version is actually riskier. So what did you change about the story when you shot it?

G: Nothing major, just condensing. We pulled out the parts suited to children.

Anything to do with romance or violence, for instance, we cut without hesitation, and kept what was good for children.

We have one test for this. When you watch a show, if I'd be willing to let my own child at home watch it, it's fine. If I wouldn't want my own kid watching, it isn't.

Q: What do you think is the biggest problem with children's and family shows on the market now?

G: There are a lot of children's reality shows, and the complaints against them are loud. They make children bear things they shouldn't have to bear.

We're different in that respect, because drama and reality TV are very different things. Remaking a classic carries none of that negative social effect. With children's programming, as long as you hold to one thing — pointing them in the right direction, doing nothing that wounds a young heart — I don't think there's much of a problem.

Q: Is there anything you have to keep reminding yourself of on this project? Any particular moments when you need the reminder?

G: Two things.

The main one is that the acting has to come from real feeling. That's the essence of Little Master Actors. If kids play kids, it turns into child's play. If kids play adults, they have to carry an adult's weight; every gesture has a demand behind it.

When people watch the show, they shouldn't see children — they should see adults. That's what makes it Little Master Actors. If it looks like kids playing house, it isn't Little Master Actors anymore. That's also its hardest problem.

The other thing is keeping control of the direction, including the choice of subject. And then costume, makeup and props, which have to fit exactly what the script needs. In remaking The Legend of the White Snake, the sets, costumes, makeup and props all had to come very close to the original. We can't get to a hundred percent, of course, but we push toward it.

Q: What were you worried about while the show was in production? And now — anything still worrying you?

G: We weren't overly worried. We'd already seen hope in the pilot, so it was a matter of gathering experience: how to do it, what it should look like. There were things to work out about positioning, about what we asked of the actors.

What worried us most was whether the actors could take it. This show needed a lot of young performers, and whether they could meet what the show demanded was probably the hardest question then.

Q: Besides the episodes themselves, I noticed Little Master Actors also runs behind-the-scenes footage, something like a reality show. You already have the drama — why add that? What do you want it to do?

G: Right, right. That footage comes in a few kinds.

Once a show is greenlit you face all sorts of choices — actors, locations, costumes, makeup, props, recording — and the whole process gets recorded, the shoot included.

There's a lot of fun in there that audiences are interested in, and we wanted a record of it ourselves, including for the children and their parents to see; it moves them too.

When we shot The White-Haired Girl at Hailuogou, for instance, in that extreme environment, the footage was stirring to watch. Those kids faced enormous difficulty and still had to act well.

Keeping that record raises the program's quality, and audiences are very interested in it. When the episode itself comes out on the back of that footage and those previews, expectations for the show actually run higher.

Q: The Legend of the White Snake took a month to shoot and more than five months of preparation. What went into the preparation, and which parts were the most trouble?

G: Every stage is trouble, starting with casting. For The Legend of the White Snake, more than a thousand candidates tried out for Bai Suzhen alone. Any role with lines asks a great deal of the actor; that's what it takes to get a show like this.

Preparing the performances takes a while too. We show the young actors the original first, then move to rehearsal — they rehearse at home on weekdays and together on weekends. That runs fairly long, one month, two, three, it varies. We don't start shooting until we think it's ready. The kids have schoolwork, so we have to fit rehearsals into the gaps.

That's one part. The sheer number of songs also eats time, because there are many the children can't reach. Their vocal cords, their singing technique, their ear — all of it asks a lot. Recording takes comparatively longer. The rest of the preparation, locations and costumes and makeup and props, is easier by comparison.

Q: Why did it stream on Tencent and not Mango TV?

G: That was an opportunity too. We'd put our trailer on Tencent Video and it got a lot of views, so Tencent came to us, and we thought why not, since it's a comprehensive platform.

Q: And future releases? Those will stream on Tencent as well?

G: Possibly, but it isn't settled. The later shows haven't been made yet, so it hasn't come up.

Q: What's your standard for casting?

G: There are many standards. Mostly we cast to the role — the centipede demon, for instance, has to look like a centipede demon. The White Snake has to resemble her somewhat and act reasonably well. The standard comes down to looks and performance; there's nothing else to it.

Q: In an earlier interview with another outlet, general director Pan Liping named two standards, comic appeal and looks. Looks are easy enough to understand, but why stress comic appeal?

G: Comic appeal just means being endearing, having a rapport with the audience. Our Xu Xian and Xu Shilin are both very endearing. Looks aren't simply about being handsome; it's a charm that comes through in the performance. It has many sides, and appeal and looks support each other.

Q: When do you usually lock the cast?

G: Once a show is settled, casting comes first. A few days if it goes fast, half a month, even a month if it goes slowly.

Q: I see the actors all have talent agencies. What's your relationship with those agencies, and when do they come in?

G: Xiao Yingtao, who plays Bai Suzhen — when we found her she was already signed to an agency as a young artist. The rest are local Hunan children. We thought these young performers were a very good fit for Little Master Actors, so we signed them.

Xiao Yingtao has loved performing since she was small, which is why she already had an agency. We searched through all kinds of channels in Ningbo and finally found her. Signing actors for Little Master Actors isn't about manufacturing child stars, and it isn't for economic value; we're doing it for social value.

Q: On Moments I saw some very adult-looking glamour shots of Tao Yixi, who plays Madame White Snake, posted by her agent De Xiaoxing. Have you seen those promotional photos?

G: We hadn't seen anything like that before we found the child. We had various channels at the time — phone sign-ups, recommendations from training schools, recommendations from schools — and finding her was something of an accident.

Later, over the shoot, we learned a bit more; some of it is on her Weibo and WeChat too. It probably has to do with how her agency packages her. There's nothing for me to say about it, since it's a personal matter.

Q: Which scenes are hardest for these young actors?

G: The hardest are the ones where the gap between actor and character is wide — a 7- or 8-year-old girl playing an old grandmother, say. That doddering, toothless old age is hard to do.

Q: Can they understand the story of The Legend of the White Snake? Which plot points were relatively hard for them to grasp while acting? And how did you solve those problems in the end?

G: Sometimes they can't. The Legend of the White Snake is fairly easy to understand as a whole; the story is close to life. Flesh and blood parted, a family that can't be whole, missing a father, missing a mother — that's easy enough to grasp. Jiao Yulu, by contrast, was a distant figure for children and hard for them to understand, and when they couldn't understand something they'd imitate what they saw in the original.

That's why Little Master Actors has a coach for the original version and a coach on set, explaining the scenes from several angles to reach the final result.

Q: How do they balance the shoot with school and daily life?

G: Rehearsal time comes in a few kinds: after school, in the evening when they have time, they rehearse at home; then Saturdays and Sundays they gather to rehearse together, since most of their scenes are played opposite someone else.

And because shooting happens in concentrated blocks, we bring professional tutors to the set to coach them on their schoolwork.

Q: Some of the young actors have become very popular. Did you see that coming? Will you keep working with them?

G: We saw it coming long ago. We paid attention throughout the shoot — these children are all adorable, and we were moved by them ourselves while filming.

They're well-behaved, they're endearing, and their performances turned out so well that you can't help being affected. So once it aired, that same power came through for audiences.

Q: So you'll keep working with them, most of them, including Tao Yixi, who plays Madame White Snake and has an agency?

G: Yes, and we'll work with Xiao Yingtao again — in the coming Journey to the West she'll play Princess Iron Fan. In casting a role we pick the right one, not the expensive one.

As long as someone fits the part especially well, even an extra who has never faced an audience could play a lead in the next production. Casting follows the role, entirely.

Q: On Mulan, which you're shooting now, is the lead a former extra?

G: Not this one. Mulan is played by Liu Dai'en, the actor who played Xiaoqing. In fact many of the actors in The Legend of the White Snake had already been in plenty of earlier Little Master Actors shows.

Q: Some commentary invokes Postman's The Disappearance of Childhood — television needs material, and audiences have an appetite for novelty that can never be satisfied. Those critics think putting 10-year-olds in a romantic legend destroys children's innocence and feeds a thoroughly warped adult taste for the sensational. Do you want to answer that criticism? How?

G: Personally, I think shows where children play adults are a good thing. They let children learn more about life.

Take our earlier Jiao Yulu, the version Li Xuejian starred in: there's a scene where people starve to death, and the children couldn't understand it at all, because life is so good now. So after shooting it they did some thinking of their own.

They'd think, "I've been wasting food like that at home," and they'd learn to value it. That's a good thing. We've paid some attention to this sort of doubt, but we think it's a minority voice.

I think the people saying it haven't watched the whole of The Legend of the White Snake. They see the write-up or the trailer and decide these children look precocious. Watch the whole thing and you'll be moved, because the children in it are adorable, plainly full of a child's innocence.

I'd say that after watching, audiences think more of the children, not less. That's part of why we made the show. Everyone sees it differently, of course, but there's no question of children losing their innocence or anything of the sort.

Above all, Little Master Actors is creating a kind of social value: helping people understand traditional culture, understand gratitude and how to value what they have. That's my own view.

Q: You cut the childbirth and the love scenes, but the plot is still the plot — the romance and the worldly scheming are still in there. When they meet again on the boat and their eyes lock, that's still adult psychology being reproduced, and children acting it comes off as strange. Some viewers posted bullet comments saying it felt awkward. On a public platform, are children really suited to scenes like that?

G: We tried our best to avoid that while shooting. The boat scene in The Legend of the White Snake is simply too famous. We did cut the wedding, the childbirth and so on. But the boat scene is too important; cutting it would have been too great a loss. It's also mostly sung, so with the camerawork we steered away from those problems as much as we could.

Q: When you've answered this before, you've said there's nothing unsuitable about it, because the children are spreading good culture. But that still doesn't settle whether this particular version is suitable, because getting your content across doesn't require a form this novel.

G: Because all our subjects right now are classics. We haven't done anything original, and we haven't done any contemporary drama.

Part of why Little Master Actors is such a hit is that we're standing on the shoulders of giants. These are works already recognized at every level; every show we've remade was a genuine classic. But to children they're completely unfamiliar. So how do you pass those classics down, or even get children to take them in?

Forcing them to watch at home, or some other method, may not work. Use a child's way of seeing and a child's methods, and their capacity to absorb it grows much stronger. Having children do it makes a shared public response easier to build, and it keeps the classics from being forgotten.

Take Third Sister Liu, The White-Haired Girl — the songs in them are so beautiful, and when children perform them, children take to them, and the general public takes to them too. I'd call it a pretty good way to spread this material.

Q: From what you've just said, was the show leaning more toward children as its viewers at the start?

G: Children watching is one part of it, but children watch under the influence of adults. You could say the children are the vehicle. If it were aimed a hundred percent at children it would be a cartoon. This positioning leans toward the young adult; adults, or older viewers, hear it and feel the sentiment of those years.

The children have never heard these songs, but because children are singing and acting them, they're willing to watch too. After each show airs we do some market research and get a sense of what audiences think.

Q: All kinds of commentary followed this show. What frustrates you most? Or is there ever a moment of frustration?

G: Radishes or cabbage — everyone has their own taste, their own view. As long as something fits the mainstream, fits the trend, fits what the times need, there are bound to be all kinds of voices. People hold different opinions, and criticism is certain to come; I don't mind it, and it doesn't affect the work.

Q: Since the show aired, what contact have you had with the actors and their parents? Any feedback?

G: A great deal of contact — the parents keep close to us. Developments, interviews, attention on the children, interviews with the parents; they talk with us and respond promptly on all of it. The children are all brought to the shoot by their parents, so our relationship with them is very close.

Q: Are the parents anxious, or pleased? Since the show aired, what's the more common attitude?

G: It's fine, I think, because we've talked with them. What I say to them most often is: don't make too much of what the show does to your child, keep an even mind about it.

The children don't fully understand this yet, of course, but we've talked it through with the parents. Don't let it weigh too much on the children's development, because schoolwork still comes first at this stage.

Q: One interview described the actress Tao Yixi's mother as pleased by some of the changes in her daughter — more independent, stronger. "Sometimes I worry the shoot is wearing her out, and instead she comforts me." That reaction seems very unlike a child. Is that what acting has done to her?

G: You see it in all the Little Master Actors children. Most children now are the only one in the family, so the family makes a great deal of them. Before The Legend of the White Snake our shows were mostly revolutionary classics — The White-Haired Girl, say, where the character suffers so much. Through that process the young actors learn thoughtfulness and gratitude.

I think that's a good thing. They're usually 8 or 9, 12 at the oldest, and they become quite sensible. Little Master Actors isn't out to manufacture child stars; it's aimed at social value. We still think of it as a media responsibility.

Q: Search the news online, or search the show's name on Weibo, and praise dominates. But in the bullet comments on the Tencent Video player there's plenty of praise and also a fair amount of criticism and abuse. That makes people suspect the show hired paid commenters to push the conversation. How do you answer that?

G: We don't rule out any kind of voice; with any show some people like it and some don't. As for hiring paid commenters, no, we didn't.

We never thought about working with online platforms on this show. We never thought about a partnership on any of the earlier ones either, or about finding influencers and big names to push them. It's just that once we'd finished the National Day episodes, we thought we should drop a trailer online to warm things up, and it took off immediately.

I think it comes down to people's feeling for The Legend of the White Snake — the White Snake already has a great many fans. The trailer, out before National Day, got a real response, and we even thought of holding a fan meeting, but there wasn't time; the meeting only happened yesterday. It happened that we'd put the video on Tencent, and that's how we came to sign with Tencent Video. I don't recall the exact date, but it should have been after National Day.

Q: Where Are We Going, Dad? can no longer air on Hunan TV. On the Hunan TV Drama Channel this kind of show isn't restricted. But once yours became a hit, did the government regulators ask anything of you?

G: No restrictions. If anything we've been praised highly, including by the provincial Party Propaganda Department, which likes it very much. Little Master Actors was already getting high marks before National Day. CCTV's evening newscast Xinwen Lianbo came to interview us, so a report should be airing.

Q: What will you make after this?

G: Mulan, Journey to the West, The Legend of the Condor Heroes, My Fair Princess, Fist of Fury, The Long March...

We'll try short serials too, writing our own scripts. There'll be some different attempts — contemporary, revolutionary, youth-oriented.

Q: Will you do the Four Great Classical Novels? Which story would be hardest as a children's version, and which easiest? Why?

G: Not necessarily. Among the classics, some suit children and some don't. That's a fairly plain matter, and it's a principle we hold to.

Q: Will anything about the casting process change?

G: Not much. Our pool of actors keeps growing, so we have more to choose from.

Q: Will you still copy the classic versions? Will the approach stay as it is?

G: Yes, basically unchanged. Dream of the Red Chamber, The Butterfly Lovers — children absolutely cannot act those, because they aren't suitable for children to touch.

Unless it's original material, which is a different approach altogether. That involves feeling our way, because there's risk. It could be an old show with small alterations, or it could mean large ones. We haven't fixed the direction yet, but what it teaches children is the thing we have to watch especially closely.

Q: As you go on making these shows, will the main criticism so far — that you use children as tools to feed an adult taste for novelty — affect your decisions?

G: We won't mind it. We have a clear judgment of our own about what's suitable to perform and what isn't. And we have our own standards for the acting.

Q: Looking at the whole thing from the start until now, where did expectations and results part ways? What surprised you?

G: Both expected and unexpected. Part of it is that The Legend of the White Snake already had a wide public base. But we joke with people that The Legend of the White Snake is only one side of it. Little Master Actors was like a ten-month pregnancy — a lot of earlier shows laid the ground, and that's what let The Legend of the White Snake burst into the open.

Q: What has the response taught the station, and what effect has it had?

G: It's given us a new appreciation, I'd say. Watching these children act, people feel a kind of astonishment.

They're a talented group, naturally gifted. And I find something odd. When children play the piano well, everyone calls them prodigies. Acting deserves the same recognition; it's a talent too. It shouldn't be that only piano, dance and singing count as talents worth recognizing.

People have a misconception that children acting in this kind of drama looks too fake. That's a prejudice against children's acting. People should see clearly that acting is a talent as well.

There are already quite a few children's programs, reality shows among them. For the station I don't think there's much effect; it's more of a prompt — the market potential for children, for Little Master Actors, is large, and if the market recognizes something as good, you should put more force into making it. That's what we're preparing to do next.

Q: If you're putting more force into it, will your team grow?

G: We used to have five or six teams shooting at once, and we still do. Everyone's more practiced now, so the work goes faster.

There are plans to add people, but not temporary hires, because they can't do this work. We'll probably take people from teams around the channel. It still depends on the particular show, though, and for now we haven't added anyone.

Images are stills from the TV series.