With more and more Hollywood producers and directors (and actors) flying overseas for co-productions in China and Taiwan, a particular Chinese-language term, "sa ching," for a wrap party, might be useful for folks to know. Of course, in the West, we speak of a "wrap'' as a phrase used by directors in the early days of the film industry to signal the end of filming, even as far back as the 1920s, while today people just say: "That's a wrap!" And as everyone knows, a ''wrap party'' is organized after principal photography for a film or TV pilot or series has been concluded. Cast and crew celebrate the end of the shoot with a nice spread and good things to drink, and except for some emergency or planned dubbing or pick-ups, the wrap party marks the end of the the cast and crew's collaboration on any specific film. ------------------------------------(I'm not sure what wrap parties are called overseas in France or Germany or Italy, but I am sure some alert readers here will tell me in internet time in the comments section as soon as this post goes live.) ----------------------------
I've heard a rumor that the term "wrap" is an acronym for "Wind, Reel and Print" but that sounds like something someone concocted after a drunken wrap party in the 1930s. ------------------------
Before he departed this plane of existence, New York Times language maven William Safire wrote a piece titled "It's A Wrap" that was published in his regular Sunday "On Language" column in late February 2005. ------------------------According to Safire, "the switch from [the earlier movie phrase] 'wrap it up' to 'that's a wrap' took place in the 1950s. --------------------------------------
In Taiwan and China, a wrap party is called "sa ching" in the Chinese language, with two characters taking the bows. "Sa" means ''to end or complete something'', and ''ching" means "green." --------------------------------------------How this connects with a wrap party is a long story, and most of it is Greek to me, but to make a long story short, here's the gist of the wrap party term in Taiwan and Asia (and, of course, in doing my research for this post, I had from a variety of sources, all with different explanations, so it might end up being Greek to you too, unless you happen to speak Mandarin very well.) ------------------------------
A Taiwanese film director who lived in Manhattan for ten years in the 1980s, and has attended his share of "sa ching" parties in Taiwan over the years, told me that according to his Mandarin dictionary, the term "sa ching" comes from an ancient production technique for either making green tea (and thus the "ching" word for "green) or from slowly warming green bamboo in order to turn it into material suitable for a book. ------------------------------He also told me that "sa ching" could be spelled in English as either "sa ching" or "sha qing," with the same pronunciation, of course. ---------------------------------------
A Taiwanese film critic in Taipei told me that while "sa ching" does mean a wrap party. it's original meaning has something to do with the final process is tea making. As a result, over the course of time, from ancient days to modern days, people in Taiwan and China adopted the term to mean that a "work" is finished, and the term caught on mostly in the TV and movie business in both countries. -----------------------------A third person told me that, in his opinion, since film stock -- celluloid -- is sort of greenish in color, "sa ching" was a term adopted by the movie people in Taiwan to mean that the principal shooting was over, and only post-production and possible dubbing remained before the film officially opened a few months or so later. -----------------------------So there you have it: a wrap party in some parts of Asia is called a "sa ching" -- and it is often also called a "sa ching jyo" with the "jyo" standing for "liquor" and thus you can get the picture of a lot of toasts with champagne and other things "flowing." ----------------------------------So if you're ever headed to Taipei or Beijing for a wrap party, invited or crashing it with the help of some friends of friends, it's good to know the word in Chinese: "sa ching," sha qing," or maybe even the very liquidy "sa ching jyo." ------------------------------------------------Cheers! Bottoms up! Congratuatlions! Mazel tov! Ganbei! Ganshi-ganshi! It's a wrap.
