When the Chinese government finally allowed the publication of Pearl Buck's books in China in 1994, Luo Yan started to think of adapting  Pavilion of Women into a film script. "I immediately fell in love with "Pavilion of Women" because I grew up in Shanghai with my grandparents who were similar to the novel's Wu family," remembers Luo Yan.

After optioning the rights, and years of study and research into Hollywood business practices, Luo knew that shooting in existing locations in China would cost far less than building sets in the United States, allowing her to make a lavish film on a modest budget. At the same time, she was determined to make the film in English, so that it would be suitable for a mainstream American release. Unfortunately, that ruled out Hollywood writers, who lacked the necessary knowledge and cultural background, and Chinese writers, who lacked the requisite English skills and understanding of the Western character. Finally, she tackled the adaptation herself, with Paul Collins, an attorney who was working for her firm as a collaborator.

"She knew what she wanted and, like Pearl Buck, she understood both East and West," says Collins, but Luo had never written a screenplay before, even in Chinese, and now she was adapting Pearl Buck's novel in a language she had learned only a decade earlier. "My seven years in classical drama training made me comfortable with story structure, dramatic conflict and characters. It is not difficult for me to imagine the background of the story, which I grew up with. But I couldn't write idiomatic English dialogue."

The two neophytes soon got into a rhythm. "I'd close my eyes to imagine a scene, then speak it aloud," remembers Luo. "Paul would put it into colloquial English, then I'd do the final check out. Sometimes, I'd write scenes and he would polish my English." Luo also had the advantage of having known upper class society during her childhood in Shanghai, which gave her special insight into Madame Wu.

"Madame Wu is a typical Southern lady, intelligent, capable, well-read, whom we don't see often in most of the Chinese films. Madame Wu isn't like a Western feminist; she will not survive if she argues or insists upon her viewpoint. She has to take a strategic approach but she has the same purpose as a Western woman - searching for her freedom even in her middle age. I admire Pearl Buck highly. She is such an amazing pioneer in writing vividly about Chinese women."

As with almost every screen adaptation of a novel, certain liberties were necessary. Some of the female characters had to be cut, while the men's roles expanded. The role of Andre was enlarged twice - at the script stage and, later, during filming, by Willem Dafoe. Mr. Wu evolved from being a sketchy figure in Buck's novel to a compelling character in his own right. "We made him into a person you can touch," says Luo Yan. "Mr. Wu is a handsome, rich, almost perfect husband on surface. Inside, he is a selfish spoiled baby. He is a victim of the time but he shouldn't be seen as a villain."

"I found the screenplay lyrical and interesting," says director Yim Ho, "with a lot of potential. I like the period very much. The 1930s were a chaotic, even traumatic time. Western culture was starting to come in, yet the old culture was still in place - plus, of course, the Japanese occupation. It was a romantic and tragic era, both happening simultaneously. The film deals with cultural clashes Western Christianity and free love versus ancient Eastern Feudalism. It was also the beginning of a new era for China, just as Japan is poised to invade, and of course it also deals with relations between a married couple at a time when women were totally subordinate to their husbands."

The director sees a parallel between Pavilion of Women and Henrik Ibsen's classic play A DOLL'S HOUSE, which had a tremendous impact in China and almost certainly influenced Pearl Buck. "Madame Wu goes from having no rights to actually acquiring freedom. In that respect, she symbolises the era."

One of the only two women to win the Nobel Prize for literature, Pearl Buck developed her compassionate view of the world during the more than 37 years she spent living in China. Although she wrote more than 50 years ago, Buck created daring, resilient female protagonists who seem perfectly "modem" today. Whether wealthy and well educated or poor and illiterate, Buck's women manage to achieve dignity and a place for themselves in a society which kept them down.

Pavilion of Women is the first English-language film about a wealthy and well-read Chinese woman who, influenced by the Western Culture, tries to take control of her own life in a feudal society. This set the film apart from Chinese language films the Western audience are familiar with, such as Zhang Yimou's "JuDou" "Raising the Red Lantern", and Chen Kaige's "Farewell My Concubine" etc., as they largely focused on poor, illiterate women characters.

Pavilion of Women's story of upper class and middle class life in China is especially timely today. The wealthy classes had disappeared under Communist rule after 1949. Now, half a century later, economic liberalization has revived these classes, so Pavilion of Women reflects today's China even though it was written more than 60 years ago.

"Today, both in China and the West, middle class, middle-aged people are most concerned with spiritual freedom and finding true love, which are the themes of Pavilion of Women.", says Luo Yan.

"People are facing the problem of how to keep love fresh and what to do after love. It's a 'middle-age, middle-class crisis.' The problems between Mr. Wu and Madame Wu are a perfect example of what millions of middle-aged couples deal with today."

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