Norway handed to China a copy of “The Cave of the Silken Web,” a classic Chinese film that was long thought to be lost.

    The delivery of the silent film from 1927 arrived in Beijing yesterday.

    After deciding to go through its stock of around 9,000 old films in 2011, the National Library of Norway found a copy of “Pansi Dong” — its original Chinese title. It was the first film from the Asian country to be screened in the Scandinavian kingdom.

    It seems to be the only existing copy.

    The film, inspired by a classic Chinese novel ”Journey to the West” by Wu Cheng’en was restored before being sent to the China Film Archive.

    First screened by Oslo in 1929, the copy found in Norway features subtitles in Chinese and Norwegian.

    “The translator took quite a few liberties and added his own comments in brackets when it suited him. This gives the film a comical twist,” said Tina Anckarman, film archivist at the National Library of Norway.

    “There are also sequences where the Chinese text is upside down or inverted.”(SD-Agencies)