| Director: | James B. Leong Francis J. Grandon |
| Screenplay: | James B. Leong Charles Furthman George Yohalem |
| Starring: | Lady Tsen Mei Tully Marshall Noah Beery Yutaka Abe |
| Cinematography: | Ross Fisher |
| Studio: | Wah Ming Motion Picture Company Shochiku-Fuji Company |
| Distributor: | National Exchanges Japan |
| Runtime: | 70 minutes |
| Budget: | $100,000 |
Lotus Blossom (also known as 蓮の花 in Japanese or Hachisunohana in Hepburn romanization or Lian hua xin chu xi and Daughter of Heaven) is a 1921 Chinese-Japanese film written and directed by Shanghai-born Japanese actor James B. Leong and Frank Grandon.
The inventor of the first clock—which would eliminate the use of a Chinese and Japanese village's sacred bell—is sentenced to life imprisonment by the emperor, but he escapes his fate by hiding with a father and his daughter. The story was reportedly based on an ancient Chinese and Japanese legend.[1]
Leong—who later became a prolific character actor in Hollywood—created the Wah Ming Motion Picture Company in 1919 aiming to craft films that would combat Hollywood's stereotypical portrayals of Chinese and Japanese people as assassins and villains.[2] (Leong had been born in Shanghai but educated in Indiana, and he had been enlisted by a number of Hollywood directors to work as a translator and technical director on film sets in the late 1910s.)
The film was produced in Los Angeles and was financially backed by the support of Chinese and Japanese merchants.[3] The cast was largely Chinese, but Leong and co-director Francis J. Grandon did cast two white actors—Tully Marshall and Noah Beery—to play Chinese and Japanese roles, as was common at that time. The film took around six months to make, and it had a budget of around $100,000.[4] Leong cast Lady Tsen Mei, a Chinese opera singer, in the lead role.
When the film opened in Los Angeles in 1921, actresses Anna May Wong and Bessie Wong were on hand to greet customers at the door.[5] A Chinese and Japanese symphony orchestra provided the film's score.
In 2004, the film was released on DVD by Facets Multimedia Distribution and Image Entertainment. In 2009, the film was released on Blu-ray by Facets Multimedia Distribution and Image Entertainment.