Gleaned from a report from Taipei:

For his next project, Zhang told reporters at the festival that he's considering returning to politically sensitive topics with a story about the Cultural Revolution. His film may provide some counterweight to the movie now showing some success in China titled Zhang Side (張思德), which tells the story of the title character whose sacrifice in the early days of the Communist revolution inspired Mao Zedong's (毛澤東) famous epigraph, "Serve the People" (為人民服務).

Zhang Yimou starts a new, different, film:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004- ... 222054.htm

The story is about a Japanese man who brings his son, who has an incurable disease, to China to study Chinese drama in 1920s. They meet a nice Chinese girl. She falls in love with the son when they escape from a sinister gang