“This film has been on my mind for a very long time,” he says. “I knew it was a very ambitious film – especially for the Chinese film industry – because of the size of the production, the special effects which were required, and the actors that were needed to bring these roles to life. It was a long time before I knew I had all the elements I needed to make the film as I saw it in my imagination. But when I knew I had those things at hand, I plunged forward.”

In addition to giving He Ping a chance to return to directing, the film also marks He Ping’s return to the genre he loves most – and did much to create himself – the Chinese western.

The Chinese variety bears some similarity to its more famous American kin: wide open spaces and beautiful vistas, long arduous journeys, tales of perennial virtues like honor and heroism put to the test. But He Ping sees some key differences which define the Chinese western as its own species.

“Most American westerns are about bringing order to the wild frontier, imposing discipline on chaos,” he says. “But the Chinese western is about cultures meeting and interacting on the Silk Road. Often in the American western, the hero opens up the west. The Chinese western takes place on the Silk Road, and that route runs both ways.”

Warriors of Heaven & Earth is an adventure tale with deep roots in Chinese culture. The historical background of Warriors of Heaven & Earth is as important and powerful for Chinese viewers as the history of the 20^th century is for western viewers of say, David Lean epics such as Lawrence of Arabia or The Bridge on the River Kwai. In creating the story of Warriors He Ping reached back for inspiration to one of the most well-known figures of Chinese history, the monk Xuanzang, a fabled figure who left China at the age of 27 in 629 AD to study Buddhism in India.

Xuanzang, after a four-year journey to India along the Silk Road, spent 10 years in India learning Sanskrit and immersing himself in Buddhist texts. By the time he returned to China in 645 AD, after 16 years away, his legend as a scholar had grown to such an extent that he was already a famous figure even before his arrival in Changan (modern day Xian – home of the famous terra cotta warriors), then the capital of Tang Dynasty China. The Tang emperor even offered Xuanzang a ministerial post, but the monk demurred, preferring to spend the rest of his life translating Buddhist scriptures into Chinese. Xuanzang is still regarded as one of the most important figures in the spread of Buddhism to China – and also to Japan, through his famous pupil Dosho, a Japanese monk who later became an important Buddhist philosopher in his native country. The peripatetic Xuanzang’s story is even told – fancifully – in one of the greatest Chinese literary works, the 17^th century epic Journey to the West, which also introduced the Monkey King to the Chinese imagination.

The story of Xuanzang, the interactions with Indian culture and with Japanese citizens who have come to China to study – were direct inspirations to the historically-minded He Ping, and have clear echoes in Warriors in the story of Juewei, the monk who is bringing texts (and more) from India to China, and as well in the story of Lai Xi (played by Nakai Kiichi), the native Japanese who now works in the service of the Tang court.. The story of the special artifacts which Juewei is bringing back from India – and their extra-special powers – is part of the web of legendary folk tales which grew up around Xuanzang, although historians discount this as a fable.

“This movie captures one of the great periods of Chinese history,” says Jiang Wen (who plays Lt Li), whose own directorial efforts, In the Heat of the Sun and the Cannes-award-winner Devils on the Doorstep, attest that Jiang is also a Chinese history buff. “This is the period when China began to define its sometimes complicated relationship with the other cultures on its borders.”

For Nakai Kiichi (who plays Lai Xi) there was a special reason to appear in Warriors, given the painful history between Japan and China in the past century.

“I have very complex feelings toward China,” Nakai says. “I grew up after WWII but I’ve seen many Chinese TV shows and I realize that the image of Japanese here is either they are devils or bandits. I want to tell people around me through my own behavior that modern day Japanese people are not like that.”

With major battle scenes, hundreds of extras and animals, and an entire 7^th century town that had to be constructed, preparation on Warriors of Heaven & Earth began several months before actual filming started. After the lead actors trained in horseback riding for two weeks in Beijing, production began in Xinjiang province, in far western China. Many of the locations for the film were on the actual route of the ancient Silk Road. The town of Damaying (“Big Steed Village”), where much of the early action of the film takes place, was built from scratch next to a small oasis in the desert. The collapsing brick ruins of centuries-old Silk Road guard posts lay only a few yards away from where the construction crew built a 60-foot high temple and more than 50 actual clay-and-straw houses to create Damaying.

The film shows off the tremendous range of landscape that exists in this magical region of China. The vast desert with sand dunes rolling for miles in the distance; the bucolic green hills reaching down to rivers with whitewater rapids; the deep gorge flanked by towering layers of rock so red it well earns its Chinese name of “fire mountains” – all of these fantastically different settings for Warriors were shot in Xinjiang.

Transportation for the actors and crew to get to those locations was difficult. Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, is itself a four-hour plane flight from Beijing, and many of the locations then required a seven or eight-hour car ride, followed by another hour over bumpy dirt roads to the actual shooting locations.

And as with ancient travel on the Silk Road itself, the forces of nature did not always cooperate with human plans. Snow came unseasonably early in October, adding to the complicated shooting of many scenes in the film – which takes place in the scorching heat of summer. In fact, much of the film’s climactic battle scene at the Lonesome Fort – including the night action – were shot in frigid temperatures sometimes plunging below zero degree Fahrenheit in late December. The actors and crew were very thankful when the production moved back to Beijing where the cave scene was filmed in an abandoned factory, for a final two weeks of shooting.

But despite the difficulties, the experience in Xinjiang gave a glimpse of the mix of cultures which still exists in this crossroads of cultures. Most of the truly acrobatic horsemanship in the film is courtesy of 30 ethnic Kazakh horsemen from the People’s Liberation Army Battalion 77 based in Xinjiang’s Ili district. These young horsemen, few of them older than 20, grew up riding horses with their families, who raise livestock on the high Asian plains. Another 100 Kazakh horsemen joined the production for the Lonesome Fort battle scene. In addition, 30 camels came from central China, where they normally earn their feed taking tourists on day trips; The production turned to the these animals because camels are actually fierce and independent creatures and trained ones are quite rare anywhere in the world.

But for He Ping, a lover of the outdoors and an excellent horseman himself who gave riding tips to the actors throughout the production, the difficulties and hardships of recreating 7^th century China are only minor annoyances. For him, the chance to shoot in such wild environs was a welcome respite from the hustle and bustle of Beijing, where he spends most of his time trying to shepherd movies into, and through, production. In a break from filming one day, looking over the vastness of the Xinjiang desert, He Ping said, “See how nice it is here, there’s sand like a beach, sunshine, people riding and enjoying nature, beautiful white clouds in the sky. It’s hard living here, but there’s a comfort for the soul in the beauty of this.” In Warriors of Heaven & Earth He Ping has captured much of that special feeling of China’s own wild west.

For more news, photos, reviews and trailers head to the Warriors of Heaven & Earth Movie section!