courtesy of mingpao.comLiu Ye earlier honestly said that he had pressure from playing Mao Zedong in the film BEGINNING OF THE GREAT REVIVAL. "Mao Zedong was the most important figure in Chinese history, he was the most influential in the entire world. Everyone's understanding of him is different." As for the film being illegally uploaded soon after the Mainland opening, Liu Ye said, "This is an enormous problem, it's outrageous! This time was particularly fast, after one day it was already online. Although the Mainland box office was still good, I believe this incident absolutely would affect the box office."
In the film, aside from a relationship with the Li Qin played Yang Kaihui, he also had scenes with the Tang Wei played Tao Yi, Mao Zedong's first love. Unfortunately Tang Wei's scenes were completely removed. Liu Ye said, "This movie has over 170 actors, finally 17 actors' roles were cut. BEGINNING went from the original over 4 hours to 2 hours. For balance, some roles had to be removed." As for Li Qin, Liu Ye praised that she performed well. However because he did not want her to have any pressure, he did not give too many opinions to her.
