In years past, when shooting a film, Yang Hui-shan used to think that al though she had acted in over 100 movies and played over 100 roles, in real life she wasn't sure she could finish anything.

She once thought that if she didn't act in movies, she could sell beef noodles--selecting the choicest cuts, studying how best to stew, finding the world's most exclusive spices and creating an aroma second to none. Yet Yang hasn't acted for five years now, and she hasn't been selling beef noodles.

No designer threads and make-up: At half past six, it's finally getting light. Yang and Chang I drive from Taipei to Peitou, where they pick up Wang Hsia-chun before heading toward the Newworkshop in Tamsui's Houchoutzu Bay. The long road brightens as the sun rises, and Yang Hui-shan and Wang Hsia-chun catch up on sleep or clip hair singed by the heat of the kilns, giving short shrift to the scenery.

In the 21,000-plus square foot Newworkshop, amid the 80 decibel din of the kilns and the 40° Celius heat, Yang, clad as always in tee shirt and jeans, and her 24 partners toil at the art of glass making. Covered as she is in plaster and glass dust, it's hard to tell that this is the brilliant star who won back-to-back Golden Horses and the Asian-Pacific Film Festival best actress award for Jade Love and Kuei-mei, a Woman.

Five years ago, because of difficulties in the domestic film industry and in their love lives, Golden Horse-winning director Chang I and Yang together moved far from the silver screen. Prodded on by Wang Hsia-chun, an artistic director for films, the three embarked on a completely new endeavor as they entered middle age.

And how did they get into glass making? "Many people recommended that we open a restaurant, go into advertising or the fashion business, but we are all pigheaded about our inclinations, always need to be busy and didn't feel like opening a small store," says Chang I, who has a certain heroic aura about him.

Approaching the world of glass: Yang's attitude is that "life without challenge has no meaning." Nevertheless, was this not one more scene in which Yang was taking direction from Chang?

"At first it was indeed," Yang confesses. "If it wasn't for Chang I, I don't think I would be making glass." Yang describes Chang as "the engine that got me moving." But she says her own experience and endurance has kept herself pushing on.

Four years ago, they first went to New York to study glass making. Changtook Yang to a collection of glass art work at the Heller Gallery. "So that she wouldn't merely echo my opinions, I didn't go in," recalls Chang, who drank a cup of coffee in a nearby coffee shop. It wasn't long before Yang Hui-shan came out and told Chang to go ahead and have lunch, that she wanted to stay inside a bit longer. Chang had drunk his coffee, eaten his lunch and read a magazine before Yang came out once more, holding her notes about the special qualities of each piece and bubbling over with excitement.

"How could anything be so beautiful, transparent, allowing one to see designs on the front, the inside and even the back," Yang recalls thinking. "They were flowing and full of limitless possibility. Staring at them, I was full of imagination." From that point on, she threw all of herself into it. "You couldn't pull her away," says Chang with fiendish pride at having seduced her into his trap.

Inner cultivation: Appreciating art is all fun and joy, but actually creating it is constant disaster followed by struggling to set things right. It's especially the case with glass making, which involves the complications of chemistry and physics. It's a long and involved process in which difficulties are incessantly cropping up. Once a kiln spit molten glass and the terrazzo floors cracked under the 1400° Celius heat. With steam spilling everywhere and people repelled by the heat, "it was like making a disaster film," describes Wang Hsia-chun.

"It's cracked again!" Yang Hui-shan says to Chang I. She is referring toan as-yet-unsuccessful Indra bowl, which has cracked ten times over the course of a year and a half. "Last week I thought it would actually fire properly, but two or three days later a crack appeared in the middle," she says, sighing.

On the day they open the kilns, even the young worker who loves to sing gets phased and won't crack a smile. The one to three or four months wait for their works to fire in the kilns is even more frustrating. In this period they have no way to know if their works will crack or not. Frequent failures test human tenacity and ability to endure setbacks. "At one point we thought of giving it all up, and then big sister Yang looked at 20 different ways we have failed and took the same steps all over again, learning the keys to the problems. She is the one that brought back the Newworkshop method of pate de cristal." says Wang Hsiou-chuan, who has worked at Newworkshop for four years.

"Every piece is born from hardship. Sometimes you will stare at the kiln and feel defeated. After trying again and again, I began to feel that the process was a form of inner cultivation and so felt more comfortable and stable," says Yang slowly, offering examples from her current project of making Buddhas. Yang was delighted when she first came across a passage in a Buddhist prayer, "I hope that in the next life, when I attain enlightenment, my body will be like glass, clear inside and out." Upon reading it, she started to use glass to make Buddhas. But in this process of manufacturing, she gradually came to understand that a Buddha's body being as clear as glass was a spiritual matter. Making Buddhas out of glass, on the other hand, was childish.

A Virgo superwoman with an "A" blood type: "Hui-shan is definitely not one of those people bursting with talent, but she is an excellent long-distance runner," says Chang. "From her, I have come to know for certain that women have greater mental and physical stamina than men."

Before the recent Japanese exhibit, in order to make "Bhaisajya-guru Buddha" on time, Yang worked for a week on two hours' sleep a night. When she was making the "Fo To Buddha," because it is a large piece, it was necessary to lay it flat, and she stood in one place bent over for 40 hours. With the heat and the noise of the workshop, it is especially easy to tire, but it's common for Yang to be still at it late at night. Yang herself wonders about where this energy comes from, conjecturing that it may be from the training of once having to shoot 32 separate films in a single month.

As for the demands she places on her work, her workshop partners conclude that they are those of a Virgo with an A blood type -－ an irrepressible perfectionist. Extraordinarily picky, she is always working at modifying the works in her hands. Chang says that she was the same way when making a film. "All the other actors hated the sound "cut"--she was the only exception. She thought that the next time would always be better than the last."

Beautiful mistakes: Her partners could see that she was a perfectionist and had great working concentration, but the question that always came up was "Did she really create these works?"

As a Golden Horse Award winner, she was certainly of help in giving Newworkshop greater recognition, but it was likely people would see her as a dilettante, an obstacle to getting her work affirmed and circulated.

Before the Newworkshop's first exhibit the year before last, an advertising firm was commissioned to analyze the company's image and make a promotion strategy. It minced no words in telling them that with stereotypes about movie stars, most people simply wouldn't accept their changing professions. And many well-intentioned people told Wang Hsia-chun, "For Yang Hui-shan in particular, outsiders are going to be skeptical."

"Indeed, people ask me, 'Did you really do this?'" And when people are buying Newworkshop's finished works, they will often insist on my autograph. "I don't like the feeling that they're coming to see the person and not the work," she says. "Anyway, these pieces are done by all of the craftsmen and are not mine alone."

It was the same tune when she was filming movies. Most directors and the public would tend to emphasize her "angel's face and devil's body" and overlook her acting skills. In Kuei-mei, A Woman, she was playing a housewife in the forties, but as soon as she put on a chi pao, her beautiful face and body inevitably became the focus. And so she put on 6 kilograms, deliberately destroying the beauty that women stars hold so dear. With ordinary looks she broke through the old limitations.

The same problem plagued the Newworkshop, and its members have struggled with all their might. For the first three years, they didn't take any time off, didn't sell any of their work and didn't have contact with the outside world. They simply struggled in the hope that people would only see the good works they made. This brought the focus away from her being an actress.

Can't erase the past: "You can't erase the past," Yang says. "It's like the dancer Chiang Ching. No matter how many years go by, when people introduce her, they're sure to say she was once a star." Yang feels that there is no need to erase the past--you've just got to prove yourself in the present.

Yang still smiles for the camera. An acting career that spanned fifteen years is after all a major chunk of one's life. After changing from a hot film star to a glass craftsman, Yang at first didn't let go of the past.

When the Newworkshop was established, her partners wanted to print name cards. "How could people not recognize my name?" she thought. "Why should I print name cards?" Now she thinks that it's only natural to hand them out.

Chang and Yang affirm that they haven't shut the door on making movies again, but now "movies would be just a hobby and glass making the real job." They still come into Taipei for midnight films. "There are so many new faces!" says Yang, as anyone might, without any regret at having left.

Since its debut in 1990 at the Eslite Gallery, to a 1991 exhibit at the Culture Gallery of the Council of Cultural Planning and Development, an exhibit at the Palace Museum and finally this year's exhibit at the Mitsukoshi department store of Tokyo, Newworkshop has sold 100 percent of its works. The American jewelry company Tiffany's has shown interest in representing the Newworkshop for sales around the world. Coverage has gradually shifted from the movie pages to the arts pages. "They are seeing our work!" Wang Hsia-chun exclaims.

At five in the afternoon, Newworkshop closes early, and everyone goes toa wedding of one of the young employees. Having changed into a dress, Yang gets whistles from her Newworkshop partners. She laughs and says, "Now dressing up is exciting!"

[Picture Caption]

Amid the heat and the clamor, Yang Hui-shan touches up the shape of the "A Mi Buddha." Glass making isn't just an art for her, it's a form of self-cultivation.

The process of manufacturing glass is very complex. The rate of success of the pate de cristal method is only 30 percent. This piece is named "Bodhidruma Wish."

Yang, formerly a brilliant film star and winner of the Golden Horse and Asia-Pacific Film Festival Awards for best actress, threw herself into the creation and exhibiting of glass art when she turned 40.