By Cai Shangyao Zhang Yimou is considered to be one of the best directors of our Yimou did an excellent job as the cinematographer on the movie Huang Tudi(Yellow Earth),and his debut as a director on the movie Hong Gaoliang(Red Sorghum) won him many awards and established him as a leading member of the so-called Fifth Generation Movement of Chinese Movie-makers”. Considering his creative camera work and direction,it must be said that Zhang is a movie genius of world stature,and the pride of Chinese movie-goers. In interview,foreign students from 10 countries said that of all Chinese movie directors they knew only Zhang Yimou,and they mentioned such movies as Red Sorghum, Qiuju Da guansi(The Story of Qiuju),and Huozhe(To Live) They said they felt the tremor of life‘s force in Red Sorghum,and were deeply moved by Huozhe(To Live) They also had seen Yingxiong(Hero),but made no comment about it. In fact,people talked mostly about the images and colors of “Hero” when discussing the movie as if they were talking about the work of the cinematographer rather than the director . I have long been following Zhang‘s film-making career and as I watched Shimian maifu(House of Flying Daggers)I felt a sudden burst of sympathy for him--the sympathy one feels for a hero at the end of a then recalled the rain that poured on the night of celebration and the sudden blizzard that descended when the cast and crew were filming the movie in the couldn‘t help wondering if Zhang Yimou had shown us a glimpse of the retreating form of a tragic hero. House of Flying Daggers has been bombarded with criticism in both the media and online BBS discussion forums since its release in China , many viewers have expressed great dissastifaction with the movie. The criticism mirrors the difficulty caused by the commercialization of the movie industry in Zhang Yimou and other Fifth-Generation directors first began making movies they rebelled against making commercial movies,openly rejecting conventional movie notions of story-telling and character development.() Their movie-making style gave the group of Fifth-Generation directors fame and Yimou and Chen Kaige were the two directors who gained fame ,but in recent years they have unknowingly or unconsciously abandoned their previous styles in favour of the traditional storytelling movies. Perhaps Zhang Yimou back in the days when he was making Red sorghum never realized that some day he would be getting into commercial movie making. After making of Yige dou buneng shao (Not One Less) and Xingfu shiguang (Happy Times),Zhang Yimou became commercial. Zhang‘s reputation as a Fifth-Generation director no longer protect him and his “surrender” to commercial cinema could be seen as a self-imposed challenge. The Chinese movie industry can only succeed with commercial movies. Zhang‘s foray into this form of movie-making is a reflection of some directors‘ renunciation of their former mode of Yimou is marching in the vanguard and setting an success or failure should serve as a warning to us that Making a commercial movie is not as easy as we think it is.