Trivia / Winter Begonia

• Promoted Fanboy: Yin Zheng (who plays Shang Xirui), given that he's a huge fan of Leslie Cheung (who played Cheng Dieyi from Farewell My Concubine, the film that inspired the original book).
  • Yin Zheng has also said that he's a big fan of Huang Xiaoming, so getting to act in something with him (and even hit him in fighting scenes) was something he was really excited about.

• Completely Different Title: The English name for the show/book, Winter Begonia, is pretty different from the full Chinese title, 《鬓边不是海棠红》, which translates roughly to something more like "next to the sideburns there aren't red begonias" and is speculated to be a metaphor for how Shang Xirui is a man who plays female roles onstage (i.e. "wearing red begonias" in one's hair is for girls, but Shang Xirui, being male, "does not have red begonias").

• Enforced Method Acting: Huang Xiaoming and Yin Zheng actually chugged alcohol before filming the drunken striptease scene between Cheng Fengtai and Shang Xirui.
  • Also, apparently the director (Hui Kaidong) was insistent on no "fake" eating, so all the eating scenes have real food which the actors actually had to eat for however many takes needed (reportedly, the food was at least pretty good though).

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