China Turns Camera-Shy : Actress’s Narrow Escape Not Part of the Script

Xi’an, China Monday, June 5

I spoke to the directors today and told them I would not work for a government who would murder their own people. --from the diary of actress Debbie Gates

Film actress Debbie Gates went to China two months ago to portray an American journalist who was forced to escape from the city of Xi’an in 1937. But before the cameras finished rolling on her movie, Gates found herself planning her own escape.

Gates’ getaway may not have been as dramatic, or as dangerous, as that of Helen Snow, the journalist who escaped from the Chiang Kai-shek government’s Xi’an prison in 1937. But Gates nonetheless spent two terrifying weeks trying to get home from Xi’an, about 800 miles southwest of Beijing--including several days stranded in China after she quit the film to protest the June 4 massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators at Tian An Men Square.

“I was scared to death,” said the brown-haired actress, back in her North Hollywood home but still keyed-up and breathless from her brush

with danger.

Gates said that she virtually became a prisoner in her hotel room in Xi’an, when her Chinese producers refused to let her leave or help her get out of the country. She says other members of the film crew were barred from speaking with her. Her mail was opened, she said, and her phone monitored and her travel restricted.

Gates was in Xi’an to star in “The Adventures of an American Woman: Helen Snow,” a feature film produced by the Chinese government’s August First Film Studio as part of the 40th anniversary of the Communist Party’s rise to power. Snow and her husband, Edgar Snow (“Red Star Over China”), helped chronicle the Chinese Civil War and the rise of the Communist Party.

“Helen Snow was not a Communist,” the actress explained. “But the Chinese people seem to admire her and Edgar. They think of them as gods because they’re the people who gave the world information about the Communist Party. That’s why they wanted to make a movie about them.”

Gates, who has appeared in TV episodes of “V” and “The Judge,” auditioned in Hollywood for representatives of the Chinese film company. She got the part on March 31 and was on her way to China a day later.

Until June 4, Gates said everything went well. The film was nearly completed when she and co-star John Perry heard about the government’s decision to order its troops to open fire on the protesters in and around Beijing’s Tian An Men Square.

“We had heard about the massacre and immediately quit,” Gates recalled. “One of the things that upset me was listening to the student in Beijing on the phone tearfully telling me how they just shot a 7-year-old boy, how they were indiscriminately shooting people and hearing the gunfire in the background.

“I was very angry that anybody would shoot children, and the people were so peaceful. They were just sitting there.”

Gates said that she didn’t know that her employers were part of the Chinese government until just before the assault on the protesters. When she did learn, she said she got angry and immediately told the head of the studio that she would not work for a “government that kills its own people.”

Her producers were angry and confused by her stand, she said, and instead of allowing her and Perry to leave, they were moved to another hotel, away from the Chinese members of the cast.

“I told the other Chinese cast members about the massacre as soon as I found out, but they just denied it,” Gates said. “Then I began to notice a definite break: The Chinese actors couldn’t look or smile at me. I was later told that no one on the crew was allowed to speak to me. The officials told them nothing and didn’t want me to tell them what had happened. As far as the crew was concerned, no one had been killed and their wives and children in Beijing were OK.”

When Gates and Perry tried to relay to their Chinese co-workers what they had heard, the government officials labled the Americans liars.

Eventually, said Perry, the officials told them: “ ‘You have your news from America and we have our news, which is the truth.’ ”

Days later, officials told Gates and Perry they could leave, but that the Chinese would not help them get out of the country.

“We were basically stuck,” Gates said. “Neither of us spoke the language or had a lot of money.”

Finally, help arrived from the China Film Import and Export, a Chinese-owned, American-based company that helped them get the roles in the first place.

“The U.S. State Department called us and told us to get out,” Gates said. “But it was Charlene Chin, the person from China Film, who personally telephoned the general and asked him to let us leave. I had been very vocal, and Charlene told me that she could only get me out if I kept quiet.”

At 7:30 a.m. on June 8, Gates and Perry took a cab from their hotel to the Xi’an airport, where they waited for more than six hours in a terminal crowded with people eager to leave the country.

Although she wasn’t sure they would get a flight, Gates had come prepared with negatives of photos she had taken--including pictures of student demonstrators--hidden underneath her clothes and a diary of her trip buried among her curlers. She had been warned by one of her directors about traveling with her photos. But Gates, who hopes to turn the pictures and the diary into a book about her experience in China, believed the risks were worth taking.

“I was terrified I might get caught,” she said. “So, I got one of those big exercise bras and taped my money and the pictures, using surgical tape,” she said with a laugh, adding “that was the only thing I could find.”

“Then I put on a lot of clothing. I wore a leotard, a shirt, and a sweater. If they had done a strip search, I would have been up the creek.” When the pair was finally booked on a flight to Canton, she said, security guards “only did a cursory pat search.”

From Canton, they took a boat to Hong Kong, where they waited for three days, sleeping on the airport floor among the throngs of people waiting for a flight out.

“It was so crowded. But Hong Kong was the closest international airport other than the ones in Beijing and Shanghai. We just took the first plane we could get on out of Hong Kong.”

Four flights, one boat ride and a week later, Gates finally returned to her home and worried husband in North Hollywood, her diary and her negatives intact. Gates said the film was more than 90% completed when she quit, and she expects that the producers will piece the remaining scenes together without her.

“The government is still filming and they’re still telling them that nothing happened in Tian An Men Square,” she said. “They even tried to convince me that nothing happened. Before I left, they questioned me about what I told the crew and what I thought.

“When I told them the truth, they denied it. So I just nodded and smiled.”