Looking for Fun
1993 film by Ning Ying

Looking for Fun, released as For Fun in the U.S., is a 1992 Chinese comedy film directed by Ning Ying, written by Ning Ying and her sister Ning Dai, and based on a novella of the same name by Zheng Jiangong (which was translated into English by Jeanne Tai in 1989). The film is about a group of retirees in Beijing who try to find some sense of belonging and purpose by organizing a Peking opera troupe.
Looking for Fun won the Gold Award at the 1993 Tokyo International Film Festival, the Golden Montgolfiere and Best Actor (Huang Zongluo) at the 1993 Nantes Three Continents Festival, Best Director and Best Actor (Huang) at the 1993 Thessaloniki Film Festival, and Best New Director at the 1993 San Sebastián International Film Festival.
References
Fox, Daniel (2003). "For Fun and The Killer: Directions in Chinese Cinema". Literature/Film Quarterly. 31 (2): 124–129. JSTOR 43797109.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3186684. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1992, 1989, 1993 and 2003.
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This entry incorporates text from “Looking for Fun” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.