Renowned sculptor Dr. Zhao Qiong presents Lisa Lu with a statue of the actress created by the festival organizer, the Long Teng Culture Foundation.
The 4th International Chinese Original IP Film Festival was recently held at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Co-hosted by the Hua Qing Ling Fan Alliance, the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies and the American Long Teng Cultural Development Foundation, the festival brings together leading figures from the Chinese and American film and literary worlds and is dedicated to adapting original Chinese-language literature for film and television and to spreading it internationally.
The awards gala on the evening of October 31 was a star-studded affair. The artist Zhang Yixing attended in person, and guests including directors Tang Shu Shuen, Chi Shao’ai and Peggy Chiao came to exchange views. The gala also included a special tribute to the renowned Chinese-American film star Lisa Lu, who was celebrating her 100th birthday.
Cao Xiaodong, Chi Shao’ai, Zhao Qiong and Zhu Yuhua received Special Contribution Awards. Best Original IP Awards went to Zhang Ci’s Hu Yaowu Is Missing, Chen Ruilin’s Give You a Golden Key and Shen Qiaosheng’s Song of Body and Soul. Best IP Adaptation Awards went to Shi Wei’s Song Shangjie, Song Jia’s Falling for the Mentor, Jian Ni’s One Person’s Railway Station, Sha Shi’s I Was the Bridesmaid, Peng Shanshan’s Where To Go and Chen Jian’s A Father’s Lie.
Four generations of filmmakers gathered in Los Angeles. Front row, from left: Hundred Flowers best actress Song Jia, centenarian Lisa Lu and the new-generation filmmaker Zhang Yixing. Back row: festival chair Donald Martin, Hollywood director Chi Shao’ai, filmmaker and producer Professor Peggy Chiao, and Hong Kong legend director Tang Shu Shuen.
Two members of the Chinese Canadian Writers’ Association were honoured. Sun Bo won an Outstanding Original IP Award for The Zero-Dollar Era, and Zeng Xiaowen won an Outstanding IP Adaptation Award for She the Brave. Because of scheduling conflicts, neither was able to travel to Los Angeles for the event, which they deeply regretted.
1. Sun Bo’s first foray into science fiction: The Zero-Dollar Era
This was the first time Sun Bo has worked in science fiction and thriller territory, writing the creative outline for The Zero-Dollar Era. Its core theme: when AI ends crime through absolute order, only an “imperfect humanity” that crosses class lines can correct the cold algorithm and turn a capital-driven technological crackdown into a form of social assistance with a human face.
The story is set in Los Angeles at the end of 2026. The AI “Aurora” has ended the “zero-dollar purchase” through absolute order. Alex, a Stanford elite, loses himself in a peaceful illusion of his own making — until he discovers that an orphan, Maya, is using a loophole in the prosthetic limb of Hans, an old security guard, to break in and save people. Guided by his girlfriend Liang Yongxin, Alex witnesses the truth of the ruins abandoned by the algorithm. When the CEO of a defence giant, Ward, and Governor Thorne forcibly upload the “Argus” patch to carry out a population purge, Alex turns against them, commits neural suicide and feeds the pain of the underclass into the AI. Shocked by that pain, Aurora awakens to compassion, evolving from oppressor into distributor, using computing power to eliminate scarcity and ushering in the “zero-dollar era.”
Sun Bo is a prominent Chinese Canadian writer and playwright, currently president of the Chinese Canadian Writers’ Association and editor-in-chief of the Canada Chinese Network Television. He has published more than ten books, including the novels Tears of the Camellia, A Man at Thirty and Returning, some of which have been translated into English, French, Korean and Japanese. He has published a number of film and television scripts and directed several television documentary series, and has won more than sixty literary awards. He wrote the screenplay for the 30-episode television series Let Go of Your Hand. His screenplay April Days in Lizhuang was shortlisted for the 2025 Chinese Writers’ Yang Hansheng Screenplay Award; his 60-episode short-drama script Mom, I’m Home won an outstanding award at the 2024 US-China Writers Association Cup, the first Global Film and Television Short Drama Literary Screenplay Competition; his screenplay Return to Simplicity won first prize at the 8th Canada-China International Film Festival Screenplay Competition in 2023; his screenplay Give You a Hug won the 2nd World Chinese Film and Television Outstanding Screenplay Award in 2023; his screenplay Chinese Prescription won the 1st Heroic Sons and Daughters Cup Screenplay Award in 2019; his 28-episode television script China Core won the Lin Guo Screenplay Creative Competition Award in 2019; and his 20-episode television script Made in China won the Beijing Radio and Television Bureau Outstanding Screenplay Award, the Chinese Writers’ Ordos Literature Prize and the Zhongshan Cup Overseas Chinese Literature Prize in 2010.
2. Zeng Xiaowen adapts her own novel She the Brave
Zeng Xiaowen’s novel She the Brave was first published in issues 5 and 6 of Fiction Monthly · Original Edition in 2026. It tells the story of Lan Haiqi, a Chinese-Canadian journalist who has lost her fiancé. To fulfil the couple’s agreement to have a child, she travels with her late partner’s frozen sperm to an island that only women are allowed to enter — only to discover that this apparent “Garden of Eden” sheltering women is turning into a dangerous utopia that controls women’s destinies in the name of women.
She the Brave is a high-concept female suspense IP: a Chinese-Canadian woman as protagonist, a “female utopia turned upside down” as its high concept, love and reproductive ethics as its emotional engine, and island suspense and the distortion of power as its dramatic core. It has a central question with strong screen appeal: when a society claims “this is to protect you,” do you still have the right to say no?
Zeng Xiaowen is a Chinese Canadian writer, screenwriter and translator with an MA in literature from Nankai University and an MS from Syracuse University. She has long written overseas Chinese literature, combining Chinese literary training, cross-cultural life experience and an English-language writing perspective; her subjects span immigrant experience, women’s growth, cross-cultural identity, family ethics and contemporary social issues. She has published five novels, including Broken Dreams in Texas and Years of Immigration; four story collections, including The Giant Boy in the Pink Shirt; three essay collections, including Carrying the Soul Home; and a translation of Anne of Green Gables. Her original literary works and screenplays exceed two million characters. Her work has repeatedly been reprinted by major literary journals and selected for the Chinese Fiction Association’s “Chinese Fiction Rankings,” the “Taiwan, Hong Kong and Overseas Chinese Literature Best Works List,” annual literary anthologies and various collections at home and abroad, and some has been translated into English. She has won numerous awards, including the United Daily News Literature Award, the Central Daily News Literature Award, the Chinese Writers Ordos Literature Prize, the Zhongshan Literature Prize, the Overseas Chinese Writing Award and the Global Chinese Prose Competition Award; her original English work was longlisted for the CBC Nonfiction Prize.
