For an obscure reason, this was re-routed to an older same name 1994 movie/drama page ! So I am copying it back where it should belong:

Next:  Characters and Setting

 Link back to Table of Contents                                                                                              Last updated 24-09-23

 Link back to Table of Contents                                                                                              Last updated 24-09-23

 Link back to Table of Contents                                                                                              Last updated 24-09-23

AnastasiaWun:

Wow, you must have loved and enjoyed this drama very much, considering the efforts you've dedicated in putting up this special tribute for TFS  fans! 

( •̀ .̫ •́ )✧

Yes I liked the tension, suspense, and twists in this series, as well as the cinematography and flashes of humor and human emotions that came in along the acting of Huang Jingyu and Zhang Yu, as "lost soulmates" and Huang Jingyu and Wang Ziqi as alternating "mentors" and "brothers-in-arms".  It was an excellent one. 

So, I had a look at the Weibo accounts for the drama and main leads, and my attention was drawn to the targets/maze designs that were so original and illustrative for the series, also with the snippets of spoken dialogue that unfortunately I couldn't translate into the GIFs.  I still thought it would be nice to preserve these designs here, since Weibo, like much social media, is  not accessible any longer after a while, even if there are links mentioned in comments or other.  The GIFs (which are in are in special section 6 "Mazes") should be a way to perpetuate them in what I intended as a companion piece that can be skimmed, or delved in for chosen bits according to readers' tastes.

The companion pieces are designed according to a format which I have developed for about a score similar ones. But it can take much time to research and write, so at first I just thought I'd put those mazes in  a "chapter" in the Johnny Huang "Profile". But the chapter expanded, and I saw that I needed to separate it as a stand alone full companion piece... As usual, I tried to think about all that could be asked : sources (book or original writing), dates, locations, OST music, characters gallery (sometimes I have a special section for them, by order of appearance, but it was not really necessary here : the two sets of posters should be sufficient, accompanied by a few GIFs from a BTS, a trailer, an event, and from moments in the drama. Since all pictures are linked to sources, it is possible to go watch these for full length). 

Further to compiling info, I also added interpretations of my own, such as about the meaning of the title. Although I did not insist about the name chosen in subtitles for the drug:  the devilish Lucifer is only for the non Chinese speaking audience, the Chinese speakers only knew it was a "special" blend of meth, known under its vernacular name of "Snow angel", like it is known as "ice" or "crystal" in Anglophone countries.

AnastasiaWun:

there's too much info to absorb/digest, but what i like most is the comic figure of Zheng Bei in sunglasses at the phone booth. 

I don't think it is too much ? 

The companion piece  is broken down in sections to enjoy, according to whether you are more interested in pictures, posters (pin-up), data about popularity (Douban, viewcounts etc),  data on where and when and why (and even then, I did this is a few days, so did not get around to add details about Changchun as a movie town - the best videos about it from the 1970s-1980s  which could once be found posted to YouTube, have been lost in the general avalanche of miscellaneous long and short posts found there (not any longer just freely shared information, Wikipedian style, but for clicks which generate revenue to those who flood us with them : times changing...).  You can watch only the section you are interested in, skim through, or read in full:  it's a free read.

The commenters in other reviews about the drama did not pick up much about the importance of the geographical and historical setting,  except stating tersely: "it's in the north-east", "they have an accent" (the figure you like is linked to examples of it in short sentences ;  that video from Weibo is very interesting, but it has not been posted to YouTube (and once again, it is not possible to add sound recordings in this Discussions section). I am sorry if,  despite the direct link, it is not easy to access for everyone...  

I could have added more than just a map to pinpoint where exactly is the Dongbei /North-east, and which are the cities the names of which have been used as models : Harbin and Shenyang.

So, here goes:

Harbin, Changchun, Shenyang - The Dongbei in The First Shot - background information

Each of  these cities have a rich history of their own. 

1 HARBIN

The first, Harbin, close to Russia, has since 19th century a role as a node for the troubled tides of people fleeing from Soviet Russia, or from Japanese invaded Korea, before becoming (like Changchun), an occupied city by the Japanese which had horrible internment camps there with "doctors" performing worse than those of Auschwitz in their experiments, on live Chinese prisoners, of vivisection, injection of various viruses, chemicals, gas, and drugs, to kill, not to heal. The purpose was to exterminate the Chinese, and replace them, use the railroads constructed to loot and export the natural resources which can be found in the region. (These natural resources made the Dongbei relatively prosperous, although also very polluted, in the 1970s to 1990s). The visit of the camps, now museums, is not always on tourists itinerary, the tourists prefer to visit the Siberian Tiger park, or the ice and snow festival held each year in January-February, or to admire brave Dongbei swimmers swim in pools carved out from the thick ice on the large Songhua river in winter (this river is part of a system  of waterways that can be used until they ice over, and is briefly featured in the drama, under another thinly veiled name, and in the memories of Zheng Bei and Xiaohai running over the frozen river - the ice cover can be so thick that horses can draw sleds across).  Although not very deep, it is 1 kilometer in width on average, and is frozen over from November to April. In warmer seasons, it is navigable from the Heilongjiang/Amur river by medium-sized ships, against the flow down from the glaciers and the volcanic Heaven Lake in North Korea where the Songhua river has its source. 

It looks like this in reality and in the drama : my GIF of the Songhua in the 2020s and of the scene in ep19.

Pictures from several sources : map ; tripadvisor ; news feature about icing over ; about ice harvesting for the Ice and Snow festival sculptures, decorations, and buildings in the city (slabs are even used to build a temporary Ice café, sometimes restaurant or even hotel, where you can sample vodka, on ice of course!)

 My GIF from ep.19 - Zheng Bei and Xiaohai reminiscing their escape from their time at the hands of kidnappers when they were 12 years old.

Harbin is a cold city, in winter, so people like to have well-heated dwellings.  The heating system they use is not prominently featured in the drama, but I could have added info about the Russian stove or the  "kang" platform, under which heated water or air from the private coal furnace, allowing people in village houses to keep comfortable, even to 25°C  /77F. Or about heating in residential housing, which is often achieved through heaters, and/or reverse air conditioning powered by heat pumps or communal furnaces serving a whole quarter, not only one building, from November to March, at free or subsidized price based on rooms served.  Stores and restaurants are accessed then through a double door entrance to keep the heat in. People shed their heavy coats and can sit comfortably for a meal in light clothing. Changchun, where the drama was filmed, is cold, but less so than Harbin, so the double door entrances and heating are only hinted at in a couple pictures from the restaurant and street, which were specially constructed in Changchun studios for filming purpose, although the "Halan" Public Security offices used a real building in the city, and some other filming locales were also from Changchun or nearby places in Jilin province.

2. SHENYANG

There is not much about Shenyang in The First Shot, except for the comedic copycat Special investigation team mirroring the Halan one, and the tiring, hours-long, roughly 500 km driving distance from "Halan"/Harbin (birds flight, or along a more direct road than on the map I showed earlier, when the direct G1 tollway had been temporarily closed)  as witnesses the map below, reflecting current driving conditions. In the 1990s, these roads were already enlarged from the narrower, usually only two lanes, one southbound, one northbound, concrete base, with no easier on wheels and better waterproof asphalt, road conditions often years earlier.  But speed limits still made the distance long in hours (and that has not changed much: max 80kmh /(50 mph). except expressway with more than 2 lanes each side: 110 km/h).  Roads have since been further enlarged and are a main drive way for transport, aside from the railroad which has much evolved with high speed and bullet trains since the planning of the 2008 railway master plan. The Beijing-Shenyang-Changchun-Harbin stretch was modernized from the 2010s to 2021: today, bullet trains from Hong Kong to Beijing need only 9 hours to reach Beijing; and the stretch from other station in Beijing to Harbin takes about 7 hours. The whole train travel journey needs only about 16 hours.

Shenyang, despite it is only a city a long drive away, in the drama, has, just as Harbin, a historical and geographical importance. It had several names, one of which is Mukden (its name in Manchu), associated to the 1931 Mukden incident which sparked the invasion of the Dongbei region, at the time referred to as Manchuria, or Fengtian (from the name associated to Shenyang and its warlord who ruled over the three provinces now known as Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang).  Shenyang had been, for a relatively brief period,  the capital of the Jurchen tribe and later Jin dynasty, before it morphed into the Qing dynasty, that became the last one ruling China as it moved HQ to Beijing. Not long after, it became the HQ of the "Fengtian clique" led by a powerful warlord called Zhang Zuolin (nicknamed the "Tiger" or "Old Marshall"). After his assassination when his train was blown up on 4 June 1928 at a Japanese-guarded railway bridge (in a misguided move by the Japanese Kwantung army against their ally), his son "the young Marshall"  Zhang Xueliang, took over the leadership of the clique. (His story is loosely romanticized in the early 2023 drama The Last Princess, for the period of his youth until 1937 for which I thought I had added a longer companion piece than the comments that will serve as, unless it somehow vanished: the drama was not extremely successful and overlong so I did not get back to repair that, although I liked the OST music). Zhang Xueliang preferred to work with the Kuomintang (which "ruled" China from Nanjing) rather than with the traitorous Japanese who had killed his father.

3. CHANGCHUN and its time honored movie studios

But Zhang Xueliang could not prevent the provinces be invaded by the Japanese, who established their Manchukuo puppet state (1932–1945) as a vassal empire headed by  deposed Qing emperor Puyi, held prisoner in the "imperial palace" of Changchun (the palace can be visited by tourists, just like Zhang Zuolin's mansion in Shenyang can be too).

Changchun was then renamed as Xinjing (new capital) romanized as Hsinking.  That city also has a river going through it, but it is much narrower than the Songhua, of which this Yitong river is a tributary; but it could still serve to film the scene where Zheng Bei and Xiaohai reminisce about their escape from the kidnappers when their were children (Gif above).

Here is a birds eye view of the Yitong river and bridges, one of which can be noticed on the GIF above.

Under Manchukuo rule, a film studio was built, with headquarters in a building from 1937 as a replica of the German film studios Ufa GmbH. It produced Japanese propaganda films until 1944.

"The Changchun Film Studios were founded in 1950, integrating in 1955 the older Dongbei Film Studios (Northeast Film studios), which had settled in Changchun already during the civil war between 1945 and 1949. The Dongbei Studios’ history itself reaches back to even earlier times; they succeeded the former Manchukuo Film Association set up by the Japanese during the occupation of northeast China. Thus, historically speaking, the Japanese propaganda film studios became part of the earliest registered film studios in the People’s Republic of China.

The Changchun Film Studios – with a short break during the first part of the Cultural Revolution when no films could be made – produced propaganda movies until 1978. With the 3rd plenary session of the 11th Party Congress that year, Deng Xiaoping allowed for the “emancipation of the mind”, i.e. commercial movies could be produced as well, now. However, propaganda movies remained an important part of the production. [...]  In 2000, the name of the studios was changed into Changchun Film Group Corporation."  (source)

From the 1950s to the 1970s, these studios made many important movies of the period. The building is now housing the Changchun film museum (short visit in this video 2'23). Today, "Today the Changchun Film Group Corporation has one of the largest film production base in China.  The production centers remain in   northeastern Jilin province.   In 2003 the company became a shareholder of Huaxia Film Distribution, which became an importer of foreign films.  Prior to the founding of this distribution corp, the state-run competitor China Film Group Corp. had a near monopoly control on all foreign films going into the country. " (Wikipedia)  Changchun continues to be a film base, although the largest studios are now in the southern province of Zhejiang, in Hengdian which is a film city larger than Hollywood.

 Another thing :  I could have made a section for the influence on this drama of Zhang Yimou's views on cinema, illustrated by some of his "city" and "modern period" movies. Or compared The First Shot to Ordinary Greatness, the 2022 drama about a suburban police station directed by Ding Hei. But that might be pedantic and besides, I am "lazy and whimsical". Such comparisons might take up too much time and steer too much away from my concept of companion piece. But the topics can be open for further discussion, by those who liked these different works.

Ok, enough for this "extra post" about The First Shot details  :D  

(Last edit: the busy weekend is here, so before I leave, I skimmed through this addition hoping there were not too many typos or such. Wishing all who read this : continued drama and associated enjoyment)