Metropolis Express
August 11, 2009

Gao Xixi, director of the new TV adaptation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, recently spoke to The Beijing News about the fantastic war scenes in his version of the historical epic:

I am very confident about the war scenes. They are far better than what you saw in the old version. There are no less than one hundred battles in the drama. Take the horses for example: all our horses were imported from New Zealand. China's native horses just look like donkeys, so we found fifty purebred horses from New Zealand. Six horses died during the shooting, while another eight went mad, so we had to buy new ones to replace them. So even the horses couldn't stand it. So you can imagine what spectacular war scenes we've got.

Gao's claims of animal abuse ignited controversy among animal lovers. SARFT even expressed its concern.

However, when he testified before the Animal Association, Gao gave a different story:

Some horses got sick and we had always been trying our best to save the wounded ones...what the viewers see as a horse who snapped its neck is not real. It was all special effects, and we actually used props. The horses which had fire on them are not real either. Their fur had been specially processed. It was not that we burnt these horses...we respect horses just like we do people.