Hong Kong Cinema: Coloniser, Motherland and Self

Hong Kong Cinema

This book examines Hong Kong cinema from its inception in 1913 to the end of the colonial era, explaining the key areas of production, market, film products and critical traditions. Hong Kong Cinema considers the different political formations of Hong Kong’s culture as seen through the cinema, and deals with the historical, political, economic and cultural relations between Hong Kong cinema and other Chinese film industries on the mainland, as well as in Taiwan and Southeast Asia. The book discusses the concept of ‘national cinema’ in the context of Hong Kong’s status as a quasi-nation with strong links to both the ‘motherland’ (China) and the ‘coloniser’ (Britain), arguing that Hong Kong cinema is a national cinema only in an incomplete and ambiguous sense. Yingchi Chu is a Lecturer in Chinese Studies and Media Studies at Murdoch University, Western Australia. She worked in the Hong Kong media industry for a number of years before completing her doctoral thesis on Hong Kong Cinema. Her research interests include Chinese media, Chinese diasporic popular culture and cinema studies.

Hong Kong Cinema Coloniser, motherland and self

Yingchi Chu

First published 2003 by RoutledgeCurzon 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by RoutledgeCurzon 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2003 Yingchi Chu All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. The publishers make no representation, express or implied, with regard to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-22207-5 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-27656-6 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-7007-1746-3 (Print Edition)

Contents

Preface Acknowledgements Introduction: National cinema and Hong Kong cinema 1

Hong Kong cinema as part of Chinese national cinema 1913–56 Minimum intervention and Chinese nationalism 2 National politics and the mainland market 5 China as the subject 14 Conceptualising Hong Kong films as national art 19

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Hong Kong cinema as Chinese diasporic cinema 1956–79 The dilemma of Hong Kong as a diasporic community 24 Unifying a diasporic film industry and market 28 Constructing a Chinese cultural identity beyond China 32 The diversity of local film criticism 38 The demise of Chinese diasporic cinema 39

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Hong Kong film production, market and criticism 1979–97 Hong Kong as a quasi-nation 43 ‘National’ characteristics in film industry and market 51 ‘National’ characteristics in film criticism 58

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Hong Kong films: the cultural specificity of quasi-national film Film narratives 63 Film genres 67 Codes and conventions 72 Gesturality and morphology 73 The star as sign 74

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Hong Kong films: cinematic constructions of Hong Kong history and territory History, territory and nation 78 History and territory in Hong Kong films 81

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Hong Kong films: cinematic constructions of Hong Kong’s quasi-national identity National identity and Hong Kong identity 92 Quasi-national identity in a cinematic context 96 Hong Kong: A ‘nation’ without sovereignty 98 The demise of a quasi-national identity? 114

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Hong Kong cinema after 1997 Continuation of the quasi-nation 120 Film industry and film markets 122 Films 127 Film criticism 132

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Conclusion: Hong Kong cinema and quasi-national cinema

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Notes Chinese glossary Filmography Bibliography Index

139 143 151 159 181

Preface

Defining the ‘national’ status of a country’s cinema has been central to historical film texts and debates since the 1980s. Hong Kong Cinema contemplates the ‘national’ features of Hong Kong cinema under the British colonial government, using Andrew Higson’s four approaches to national cinema: the production-centred industry, the exhibition-led market, the creation of film texts and the emergence of critical traditions. I have drawn materials from a variety of sources, including historical data on Hong Kong, interviews, newspapers and magazines as well as the films themselves. Using these sources I offer a detailed description and analysis of Hong Kong cinema since the inception of the local film industry in 1913 to the return of the colony to China in 1997. The book examines these materials with reference to recent studies of national cinemas, and social and cultural theories of the construction of national identity. Although the Hong Kong film industry was situated in a British colony before 1997, I contend that Hong Kong cinema exhibited many characteristics of a national cinema. At the same time I show that Hong Kong cinema was a ‘national’ cinema only in a very incomplete and ambiguous way. I argue that the cinematic construction of Hong Kong’s geopolitical cultural identity articulates a dual cultural identity for Hong Kong as both Hong Kong and China, which also reflects the status of Hong Kong as a ‘quasi-nation’, existing in a triangular relationship between the British coloniser, the Chinese motherland and Hong Kong self. My starting point is to develop the argument made in national cinema studies that national identity should not be taken for granted in the cinematic context. Hong Kong Cinema illustrates through different historical periods, how a country’s cinema may change, modify and subvert its geopolitically defined identity. Lastly, I agree that, at any given moment, a country’s cinema may not necessarily reflect and articulate ‘national’ characteristics at all levels.

Acknowledgements

Hong Kong cinema could not have been written without assistance from many people and various institutions. I should like to thank the Australian government and Murdoch University for awarding me a Postgraduate Scholarship and the Hong Kong Urban Council for its assistance in my ‘field work’. I am grateful to Krishna Sen for her help at the early stages of my research; to the Directors of the Hong Kong Film Archive, Cynthia Liu and Angela Tong; and to the Manager of Sub-Cultural Limited, Jimmy Chi-Ming Peng. My thanks also go to the people who provided special insights into the complexities of Hong Kong cinema: Law Kar, Li Cheuk-to, Ng Ho, Yu Mo-wan, Ng See-yuan, Ann Hui, Allen Fong, Michael Hui, Raymond Wong, Jonny To, Clara Law, Gordon Chan, Fruit Chan, Peter Tsi, John Chueng, Joe Chueng, Manfred Wong, Law WaiiMing and Chan Pak-shen. Special thanks go to Geoffrey Davids who read drafts of the original research; to Helen Gibson and Sit-ling Tull for assisting me in my library research; to Cheryl Miller for her word processing skills; and Anne Surma, who added a sense of fluency to my writing. Hong Kong cinema is a re-worked and extended version of my doctoral thesis, supervised by Tim Wright, Tom O”Regan and Stephanie Donald. I am indebted to them for the time they spent with me discussing and debating ideas. Tim has remained the main inspiration for this research, continuing to take supervisory responsibility even after his move to Sheffield University. Tom O’Regan’s knowledge of national cinema strongly influenced my research, while Stephanie Donald’s perspective on Chinese cinema proved helpful to the overall argument. I also wish to thank Horst Ruthrof for helping me to turn my doctoral dissertation into a book, and for his advice on how to bring my research up to date in an additional final chapter. A generous thank you to my editors at Curzon and Routledge, Peter Sowden and Steve Turrington for their professional guidance, dedication and encouragement. I owe a special debt to my parents in Hong Kong, Zhu Wei and Huang Ziqing, who have lovingly assisted me by sending me newspaper clips, videos and journal articles, as well as searching for references over the past few years. Lastly, I deeply appreciate the presence of Baca Chan, who has quietly acted as my ‘psychiatrist’ and given me all sorts of assistance when needed.

Introduction National cinema and Hong Kong cinema

This book is a study of Hong Kong cinema in the light of the concept of national cinema. As Hong Kong has not had all the attributes of a nation, it is not surprising that its cinema does not fit comfortably into the theoretical category of national cinema. And yet, Hong Kong cinema exhibits certain characteristics of a national cinema, which functions as part of a web of economic and cultural institutions within a recognisable and bounded society. Hong Kong cinema has played such a role: it provides local employment, attracts overseas investment, contributes taxes and export earnings and, at the same time, participates with the community in the construction of a Hong Kong cultural identity, both in political and cinematic terms. Hong Kong’s political status as a British colony, however, might be seen to have excluded Hong Kong cinema from being recognised as a national cinema. Furthermore, the colony’s ethnic Chinese identity encourages a perception of Hong Kong cinema as either part of Zhonghua minzu (Chinese national and/or ethnic Chinese) cinema or as haiwai Huaren (overseas Chinese) cinema. Before 1 July 1997 Hong Kong’s political and economic system was determined by the triangular relationship between the British coloniser, the Chinese motherland and Hong Kong. Hong Kong was a British colony, but both China and the local Chinese community played significant roles in the shaping of the colony. China’s political and economic interests in Hong Kong not only allowed the colony to flourish, but also provided conditions for the British coloniser to undertake various political reforms, which were fundamental to the colony’s political stability and economic prosperity. Co-operation by the local Chinese community was equally important in making Hong Kong one of the most successful trade and financial centres in the world. Given the particularity of Hong Kong in such a relationship, should Hong Kong cinema be studied as a national cinema? Or should national cinema studies exclude Hong Kong cinema on the grounds that Hong Kong was not a sovereign nation, even though it was a recognisable and bounded society? This introduction aims to address these questions by, first, discussing the concepts of nation and national cinema with reference

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to Hong Kong and, second, by examining three common terms to describe Hong Kong cinema in the Chinese literature: Zhonghua minzu cinema, haiwai Huaren cinema, and bentu (indigenous) cinema.

The British colony as a quasi-nation The term ‘nation’ can be understood in three ways: as a political unit, as an ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1983) or as a combination of the two. As a political unit, a nation is a nation-state backed by the state apparatus of law, administration and a military force. Colonial Hong Kong had no claim to sovereign influence over the way political power should be exercised within its borders. As both Britain and China allowed the colony to establish a considerable degree of autonomy, Hong Kong developed a way of life which distinguished it from China and other Chinese communities. The territory was not a nation, but it was recognised both internationally and locally as a political entity and as a society in its own right. In this sense, then, Hong Kong was a quasi-nation. The question as to whether Hong Kong should be understood as a nation can also be addressed by the idea that a nation is an imagined community. An imagined community is created by and within its community culture (Balibar 1991: 93–4; Guibernau 1996: 75–6). In the process of imagining Hong Kong as a nation, the British colony displayed two unique characteristics that embody the idea of a quasi-nation. First, imagining Hong Kong as a nation involved the process of defining the triangular relationship between the coloniser, the motherland and Hong Kong itself, an interdependency that suggests a quasi-national status rather than that of a nation. As Hong Kong’s ‘common culture’ was developed in a society which was ethnically Chinese but governed by the British, imagining Hong Kong was inevitably tied up with the structure of this triangular relationship. Second, Hong Kong was also imagining itself as part of the Chinese national community. The territory celebrated when China’s athletes won Olympic Gold medals. The colony donated generously when China suffered natural diasters. Hong Kong citizens believed themselves to be Chinese citizens when they protested against the Japanese claim to the sovereignty of the Diaoyutai islands in 1971 and 1996, and when they stood behind the Beijing students in 1989. At these moments of crisis, the imagined community of Hong Kong exhibited the characteristic of a dual cultural identity – that of both Hong Kong and China. Insofar as a nation depends on the notion of exclusion, Hong Kong showed that the imagined community of Hong Kong was ambivalently based on both the exclusion and the inclusion of China. From this perspective too, then, Hong Kong can be perceived as a quasi-nation.

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National cinema and Hong Kong cinema National cinema is a way of understanding cinemas in a world of nations. Cinema is characteristically international. This is not only because, as Darrell William Davis (1996: 19–20) argues, film technology was invented during similar periods in France, Britain and America, but also because every national cinema is always already ‘touched’ by other national cinemas or Hollywood before being conventionally recognised as a ‘national’ cinema. Furthermore, the majority of national cinemas ‘operate against the rules and standards set by Hollywood’ (Crofts 1993: 50) as a consequence of Hollywood’s domination in the world market. As Tom O’Regan (1996: 50) argues, a national cinema ‘provide(s) a means to identify, assist, legitimate, polemicize, project, and otherwise create a space nationally and internationally for non-Hollywood film-making’. As a country’s cinema operates within the restrictions of its national laws and in conjunction with national politics and economies, it earns, in industrial and political terms, the brand name of national cinema. Community members engage with an exploration of nationhood through their country’s cinema. It is through such cinema that nationalism is expressed by a variety of national interest groups, including policy makers, financiers, film-makers, social censors, cultural critics and the public who believe that a country’s cinema presents or should present its community images, history and way of life. At the same time, a national cinema secures a place both in the domestic and international film markets by ‘promising audience a singular and coherent experience’ (Higson 1997: 5). Under the British colonial government, Hong Kong reflected these characteristics of a ‘national’ cinema. It operated under local laws and regulations in its political, economic and social context. It provided a cinematic space for the community to explore Hong Kong nationhood and its cultural identities. And it offered distinct cultural products, which supplemented Hollywood films in the international market. Higson (1989: 36–7) argues that a national cinema can be explored in ‘economic terms’ as a production-centred industry, via ‘an exhibition-led’ or ‘consumption-based approach’, from ‘a text-based approach’ or by way of ‘a criticism-led approach’. I shall identify the elements and features of national cinema inherent in these four approaches to show the extent to which Hong Kong cinema reflected the ‘national’ characteristics of a country’s cinema.

A production-centred industry To define a country’s cinema in economic terms is to account for the degree to which cinema generates significance at both national and international levels. Internationally, a country’s film industry secures its foothold in the world market virtually by being recognised as a

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geopolitically defined cinema. This also applies to the Hong Kong film industry even after 1997 in that it operates as a territorially defined business in the world market, and contributes a collection of specific ‘national’ products to film culture. Within its domestic market, a country’s film industry is recognised as a national economic institution. It shares a particular kind of relationship with its national community in four main areas. First, a country’s film industry operates under national laws and regulations. The Hong Kong film industry indeed functions under Hong Kong’s laws and regulations, which though not themselves strictly ‘national’, were based on legislation produced by a distinct geopolitical unit with the consent of the British and Chinese governments. Second, in principle, a national film industry is owned by members of its national community and/or by its national government. The industry may depend on a certain amount of foreign investment but within the restrictions of national laws. The Hong Kong community has owned and invested in the local film industry and production from the late 1970s, in spite of the fact that the industry has always attracted financial investment from Taiwan and countries in South-East Asia. Third, a national film industry contributes to the national economy through taxes, export earnings and other means. The Hong Kong film industry has certainly played an active role in the economy in this aspect. It has attracted tourists and investment, gained export earnings and provided employment to the local community. Finally, a national film industry produces films that mainly target its national community. Along with local television, Hong Kong films have always been the major source of entertainment for the local community. A country’s film industry contributes to the construction of a nation through the industry’s engagement with national governmental agencies, other national businesses and interest groups. In general, a national government has two major concerns for its country’s film industry – its national image and its national economy (Fehrenbach 1995: 1–91; Chakravarty 1993: 55–79; Malkmus and Armes 1991: 36–59; Magder 1993: 3–28; Burton 1997: 123–42; Johnson 1997: 365–93; Souza 1996: 128–31). Unlike some national governments, which provide various means of financial assistance to local film production (Petrie 1991: 65–107; Finney 1996: 114–38; Hill 1996: 101–13; Pendakur 1996: 148–71; Soila et al. 1998: 26–7, 68, 129, 194–5, 234), the Hong Kong government did not provide continuous funding to local production or any means of protecting its domestic market for the industry. However, the colonial government intervened in the film industry by way of censorship, and by making ad hoc funds available to promote Hong Kong films through the Hong Kong International Film Festival and other trade and cultural activities. The relationship between a country’s film industry and other national business institutions also contributes to the construction of the concept of national cinema. In Britain, Italy, Japan and Canada, television networks

Introduction xv play significant roles in the production of films. In the case of Hong Kong, television networks have not been as significant as financial investors. They are, however, resources to be drawn on for film talent and screen productions of cultural identity. Other local business sectors, for instance, real-estate, retail businesses, transportation, tourism and service industries have been actively involved as financial investors in film business. Participation of national interest and lobby groups in a country’s film industry underscores the notion that a country’s cinema derives strength from its national community (Hodsdon 1995: 158; Deromdy and Jacka 1987: 28–207; Kinder 1993: 441–4). From the early 1990s, interest and lobby groups in Hong Kong launched a campaign to demand that the government play a more positive role in the industry through the establishment of a film commission or development council to provide financial assistance for ‘diversified development’ (Hong Kong Film Forum 94 1994: 24). Their particular concerns for the Hong Kong film industry resembled those evident in the relationship between a national community and its national cinema. An exhibition-led or consumption-based film market National cinema can be assessed from the perspective of ‘the range of films in circulation within a nation-state’ (Higson 1989: 44; Sorlin 1996: 8–9). Here, the articulation of ‘national’ is shown in three main areas in the domestic market: an audience’s different cultural experiences between viewing a domestic film and a foreign film, a government’s different laws and regulations for domestic and foreign film exhibition (Pendakur 1996: 148–71; Diawara 1996b: 102–11) and different social groups’ responses to domestic and foreign films (Higson 1997: 5). There have been few discriminatory policies in Hong Kong against foreign films. Nor has there been any evidence that the industry or the local community demanded the colonial government to intervene in local film distribution and exhibition. However, there has been a demand for the government to assist the industry in exploring the overseas market (Wei 1986). Between the early 1980s to the mid-1990s, the Hong Kong film industry was largely controlled by the local film business, playing an important role in distributing and exhibiting foreign films, including Hollywood films. Hong Kong spectators thus have enjoyed a consistent and distinct cultural experience in relation to their domestic film products. A text-based approach A country’s cinema produces a collection of films from which a certain national-cultural specificity is generated (Ukadike 1994: 201–22; Diegues 1997: 272–94; Diawara 1996a: 209–19; Petrie 1991: 134–67; Abel 1984: 69–248; Jordan and Morgan-Tamosunas 1998: 61–55; Nolletti and Desser

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1992: 131–226). This national-cultural specificity is developed under the influence of its indigenous cultural tradition and political and social context, on the one hand, and in response to Hollywood and other national films, on the other. Studying cinematic, national-cultural specificity can be focused on narrative, genre, code and convention, gesturality and morphology and star image (Hayward 1993: 8–9). Narratives construct and present the significance of a nation in two modes. One is the screen adaptation of indigenous texts, which ‘offers up a double nation-narration’. The other is the cinematic construction of a nation in either an explicit or an implicit manner, confronting ‘the spectator with an explicit or implicit textual construction of the nation’. In Hong Kong, screen adaptations are typically based on both China and Hong Kong’s cultural texts, suggesting a dual cultural identity for Hong Kong. Since the late 1970s many Hong Kong films have presented Hong Kong as a geopolitically defined community clearly separated from China and Britain. National-cultural specificities are also displayed through film genres. Film genres can claim a certain universality: comedy, melodrama, thrillers or musicals. On the other hand, film genres may also be ‘specified, amplified, and even subverted, within a particular culture’ in historical, political and economic contexts (Hayward 1993: 10). Having developed under the generic influence of earlier Chinese films, the artistic tradition of China and Hollywood films, Hong Kong film has been shaped mainly in relation to Hong Kong’s own political, economic and social contexts. Film-making is involved with codes and conventions in the process of image construction and production. National cinemas vary so much because the production process is influenced by cultural traditions, and conditioned by political, economic and social contexts. Codes and conventions therefore show in two areas: ‘labour and production practices’ and ‘the iconography of the image’ (Hayward 1993: 11). In Hong Kong, the triangular relationship between the coloniser, motherland and the territory have overdetermined both production and iconography. Since film acting remains distinguishable from behaviour in everyday life, and since methods of film acting are shaped by a history of artistic tradition and social context, ‘gestures, words, intonations, attitudes, postures’ in film acting are therefore ‘deeply rooted in a nation’s culture’, and ‘assist in the enunciation of the “national” of a cinema’. Languages, accents and idiom used in film performance in Hong Kong suggested both difference from and similarity to those of films produced in China. The dominant Cantonese cultural tradition in the British colony together with pressure from the overseas market encouraged the industry to produce star images different from those produced by the Communist cultural environment in China.

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A criticism-led approach Film archives, national film awards, film festivals and publications on films all contribute to our understanding of national cinema. Darrell William Davis (1996: 17–25) suggests three kinds of perception of the way in which cinema generates its national significance. One he terms the ‘reflectionist model’. This model is used to evaluate and write about a national film industry and its films in relation to national politics and social issues. The second he calls the ‘dialogic model’, which emphasises the similarities and differences between a country’s cinema and other national films. The third kind of perception views national cinemas as inherently contaminated. This approach regards cinema as an international institution of which national cinema is but a minor component. These three approaches have all found their expression in Hong Kong’s mainstream critical film discourses since the 1970s. Writing about Hong Kong cinema has been conducted predominantly on the basis of the ‘reflectionist model’, with local films being evaluated in relation to both Hong Kong’s political, economic and social contexts and Chinese traditional aesthetics. The dialogic and contamination models were also common to film critique in local film magazines, film reviews, journals and the government-sponsored publications of the Hong Kong International Film Festival and Hong Kong Film Archive. These three modes of critique implied and reinforced the idea that Hong Kong cinema was a type of ‘national’ cinema. They encouraged both the local and the international communities to perceive Hong Kong ‘nationhood’ through Hong Kong films and to understand Hong Kong cinema as a distinct cinema in its own right. However, Hong Kong cinema could by no means be regarded as an ‘ideal’ national cinema. For one, the notion of Hong Kong’s indigenous identity only makes sense if we exclude mainland China. Is Hong Kong’s indigenous identity then no more than its British colonial identity? And how can we draw a distinction between Hong Kong and its British colonial identity? Furthermore, the Hong Kong film industry has certainly been effective in constructing a Hong Kong identity by adapting, borrowing from and modifying China’s cultural texts and generic conventions. So to what extent can we differentiate Hong Kong cinema from the notions of Chinese minzu or haiwai Huaren cinema?

Minzu cinema, haiwai huaren cinema and bentu cinema Hong Kong cinema as part of Zhonghua minzu cinema While the term minzu is one of the most significant and commonly used concepts in Chinese political and aesthetic discourse, Hong Kong cinema exceeds the concept of minzu cinema – it cannot be contained within the

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concept. The term minzu came from the Japanese word minzoku at the end of the nineteenth century (Peng 1985: 5–11). It denotes nationhood and ethnicity. In Chinese, minzu describes ‘a stable gongtong ti (community) formed over a long period’ (Shi 1984: 57–9). In a broad sense, the term refers to any community whose formation or existence was defined by race, ethnicity, religion or geopolitical territory. For instance, communities can be defined by ideas of race, as in Arab minzu; by religion, as in a Jewish minzu; by ethnicity, as in the Han Chinese (Hanzu); or by geopolitical nation-states, as in American minzu and Zhonghua (Chinese) minzu. In a specific sense minzu is equivalent to the concept of nation-state, which refers to those communities established largely during the capitalist period of the nineteenth century: Australian minzu, Indian minzu, Indonesian minzu and Zhonghua minzu (Chinese minzu). In accord with the concept of minzu, the term minzu cinema suggests a cinema defined both by its geopolitical cultural identity or/and ethnic identity. Insofar as a minzu cinema is defined by geopolitical cultural identity, Hong Kong cinema was perceived as part of Chinese minzu cinema, in the sense that China regarded itself as having sovereignty over Hong Kong. For instance, a mainland film scholar, Cai Hongshen (1992: 1), begins his study of Hong Kong and Taiwan cinemas with the following statement: There is no doubt that Hong Kong cinema and Taiwanese cinema are an important part of Zhongguo dianying (China’s cinema). Similarly, Wang Jianye (1995: 1) writes with respect to Hong Kong literature: Hong Kong is part of China’s territory. Therefore, there is no doubt that Hong Kong literature is part of Chinese literature. In Chinese critical discourse, the term minzu cinema connotes the significance of an ethnic cultural tradition and/or geopolitically defined national cinema. It centred on two major areas: film aesthetics in relation to traditional aesthetics and the arts; and film subject themes in relation to the mainland. Chinese film theorist Luo Yijun (1992: 267) defines the term by remarking that film-makers ‘consciously inherit and develop Chinese traditional aesthetics (meixue sixiang) and philosophy of art (yishu guan)’. In a similar vein, Zhang Chenshang (1985: 59–87; Y. Jun 1997: 196–230) identifies six cinematic features in early Chinese cinema, all relating to Chinese cultural tradition, that present Chinese minzu identity. Hong Kong film scholar Lin Nien-tung (1984: 30–64, 73–115) also argues that minzu film styles show as composition of images influenced by classical poems, Confucian ideology and the yinyang philosophy. How ‘traditional aesthetics and philosophy of art’ are inherited, modified or ‘invented’ is affected by political, economic and social contexts.

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Where minzu in the cinematic context almost exclusively refers to the ‘tradition’ and national culture of China, there are difficulties in perceiving Hong Kong cinema as part of Zhonghua minzu cinema when Hong Kong films exhibit both traditional and modern characteristics, or Chinese familism and Western capitalism, ethnic Chinese identity and the cultural identity of the British colony. Hong Kong cinema as haiwai Huaren cinema The term haiwai Huaren (overseas Chinese or Chinese diasporic) cinema is an extension of minzu cinema overseas. It continues to define film production, film products and markets based on ethnic Chinese cultural identity with any emphasis on cultural tradition. As the term haiwai Huaren implies a diasporic triangular relationship between motherland, host country and the diaspora, haiwai Huaren cinema also embodies the notion of the diasporic triangular relationship between the myth of motherland, the identities of ‘foreignness’ and ‘difference’, and the host country (Safran 1991: 83–4). Unlike the concept of national cinema, in which geopolitical boundaries play a significant role, diasporic cinema operates on the margins of a nation and simultaneously crosses national cultural boundaries. As opposed to the idea of transnational, diasporic cinema implies an imaginary ‘homeland’. For diasporic cinema, the ‘domestic industry’ and the ‘domestic market’ cannot be singularly defined according to a breakdown of autonomous nation-states. Rather they are conceptualised according to cultural boundaries and generated by a constituency of racial and ethnic communities located ‘inside’, ‘outside’, ‘between’ or ‘beyond’ national boundaries. Hong Kong cinema in the 1950s and 1960s displayed characteristics of diasporic cinema. The loss of homeland, a nostalgia for the motherland, and the experience of exile in films stressed ethnic cultural identification with the mainland and expressed a belief in the essence of racial or ethnic culture. However, the rise of local cultural nationalism in the 1970s in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines, Taiwan and Hong Kong have impacted on the traditional Chinese diasporic film market. The Hong Kong film industry could no longer depend on a singular, defined Chinese diasporic experience. In this context, the notion of ‘haiwai Huaren cinema’ has its own limitations. Hong Kong cinema as bentu cinema In the mid-1970s a political cultural term, bentu dianying (indigenous cinema), was developed to refer to Hong Kong film as a geopolitically defined cinema. The term differentiates Hong Kong cinema from ethnically based notions of minzu and haiwai huaren cinema. It plays down the

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significance of ethnic Chinese identity and emphasises the importance of a geopolitically defined cinema in the territory. Hong Kong film critics have developed two broad approaches to their cinema. The first approach is to emphasise the function of cinema in the community, while the second is to argue the ‘indigenousness’ of Hong Kong cinema as a consequence of the absorption and modification of elements from the Chinese artistic tradition and other national film products. These approaches have contributed greatly to the construction of Hong Kong cinema as a type of ‘national’ cinema. However, studies of Hong Kong cinema as an indigenous cinema have not addressed the ambiguities and imperfection of its conceptual status as a national cinema. For instance, how does Hong Kong’s ‘indigenous identity’ sit with the actual colonial status of Hong Kong before July 1997? And how does this ‘indigenous identity’ sit with Hong Kong’s selfinterpretation as part of the Chinese national community?

Hong Kong cinema as a quasi-national cinema From the perspective of the triangular relationship between the British coloniser, the Chinese motherland and Hong Kong, this book examines how changes in this relationship during different historical periods have influenced Hong Kong cinema, and how Hong Kong cinema has responded to the changes in the triadic relationship. It studies Hong Kong cinema through four approaches: the production-centred industry, the exhibition-led market, the creation of film texts, and the emergence of a critical tradition. Hong Kong Cinema does not offer a complete historical survey of film-making in Hong Kong, but rather uses a perspective based on historical works and data. While the book is not an auteur study, focusing on particular directors such as Ann Hui, Allen Fong, Jackie Chan, Tsui Hark, Stanley Kwan, it does examine these directors’ films in order to explore the broader issues relating to national and quasi-national cinema. Neither is the book a study of film movements, such as Hong Kong new wave or post-new wave films. It does, however, indicate the significance of those Hong Kong new wave films that contribute to an understanding of Hong Kong cinema as a quasi-national cinema. Finally, the book is not a study of postmodernism or postcolonialism in Hong Kong films, but it does draw on various arguments from these studies to explore the question of Hong Kong cinema in relation to the notion of national cinema. The book has seven chapters. Chapter 1 studies Hong Kong cinema from its inception in 1913 to the mid-1950s. It argues that the nature of the triangular relationship in the first half of the twentieth century provided a political and social context that allowed Hong Kong cinema to function as part of Chinese cinema. Chapter 2 focuses on the period from the mid1950s to the late 1970s. It presents the argument that Hong Kong cinema functioned as Chinese diasporic cinema. Chapters 3 to 6 focus on the

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period from the late 1970s to 1997. These chapters develop the key argument of the book that Hong Kong cinema is a quasi-national cinema. Chapter 3 concentrates on the areas of production, market and criticism, Chapter 4 studies Hong Kong films as a collection of specific cultural products, while Chapters Five and Six pay special attention the cinematic construction of Hong Kong nationhood through textual analysis. Chapter 7, deals with Hong Kong cinema after 1997. The core argument here is that even after the return of Hong Kong to China, Hong Kong cinema continues to retain its quasi-national statues. A brief conclusion foregrounds those arguments that demonstrate how Hong Kong cinema exhibits its characteristics of ambiguity and imperfection in relation to the concept of national cinema.

1

Hong Kong cinema as part of Chinese national cinema 1913–56

The triangular relationship between China, Britain and Hong Kong that dominated the history of Hong Kong at the end of the twentieth century also operated in the first half of that century, but in a very different way. In the earlier period, the British policy of non-interference in local Chinese affairs and the lack of a defined Hong Kong identity meant that China played a far more dominant role in that triangle than it was to later. As a result, Hong Kong cinema in the early period can be seen essentially, if ambivalently, as part of Chinese national cinema. The claim that Hong Kong cinema was part of Chinese national cinema in the period of 1913–56 has its foundation in the fact that China was the source and resource for Hong Kong cinema in terms of film market, film talent and financial investment. However, in relation to the concept of national cinema, this argument poses a number of problems. A national cinema is located within national geopolitical boundaries; but Hong Kong cinema was located in a British colony neighbouring China. A national cinema is subject to the laws of the nation-state; but Hong Kong cinema was under British law and colonial regulations. Usually, national films are produced mainly for the domestic market; but successive Chinese national government(s) have often excluded Hong Kong films from the mainland market. Since the early 1950s, mainstream Hong Kong films have not been part of film consumption in China. These problems in defining Hong Kong cinema as part of Chinese national cinema raise two important questions: In what ways did the Hong Kong film industry function as part of Chinese national cinema? And how did Hong Kong cinema present itself as part of Chinese national cinema? This chapter advances two major arguments for Hong Kong cinema as part of Chinese national cinema in the first half of the century. First, it argues that the local Chinese community was encouraged to identify with China by the British colonial dual system based on race and on mainland Chinese nationalism. The community’s political and cultural identification with China allowed the mainland Chinese to shape Hong Kong cinema in the interests of China. Second, as China was the major market for the Hong Kong film

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Hong Kong Cinema 1913–56

industry, it encouraged the mainland politicians, bureaucrats, financial investors, film-makers and film critics to play a dominant role in local cinema. Hong Kong films were evaluated by mainland politicians and cultural critics in terms of China’s national politics and society. As a consequence, Hong Kong cinema in the first half of the century mirrored the generalised Chinese community – its tensions, conflicts and ambiguity in the filmic construction of Chinese national identity. This chapter is organised into four sections. While the first section examines the British colony in the context of the triangular relationship, the other three sections discuss the Hong Kong film industry, its film products and film criticism according to Higson’s four approaches to national cinema. Thus, the second section deals with the production-centred film industry and its film markets. The third section explores the idea of Chinese nationhood in Hong Kong film texts. The final section discusses how film criticism in Hong Kong shaped Hong Kong cinema as part of Chinese national cinema in the first half of the century.

Minimum intervention and Chinese nationalism Freedom of movement between the colony and the mainland made Hong Kong in the first half of the century a quite different place from later. Before 1950, the colonial government did not impose restrictions on entry to the colony, nor did the Chinese government prevent mainland Chinese from working and living in Hong Kong. As a result, Hong Kong’s population was influenced by political and economic changes on the mainland. Within the colony, the British coloniser ran a dual political and social system to differentiate two distinct communities, the British and the Chinese. This system encouraged local Chinese to seek identification with the mainland for a sense of belonging and security. At the same time, the mainland Chinese actively encouraged the Hong Kong Chinese to make a contribution to the Chinese nation-building programmes on the mainland. Within this historical context, Hong Kong could hardly be perceived or imagined as a distinct community of its own either by the British coloniser, the mainland Chinese or by the local Chinese. From the very beginning, the British coloniser believed that the colony’s British and Chinese subjects should be governed differently. In his first public proclamation in January 1841, the first governor of Hong Kong, Captain Elliot, stated that, ‘all natives of the island and all natives of China resorting thereto, were to be governed according to the [British] laws’, but only people ‘other than natives or Chinese’ would enjoy full security and protection according to the principles and practice of British Law (Endacott 1958: 26–7; Eitel 1968: 164–5). His proclamation laid the basis for the coloniser to practise two different codes of law in the early period of Hong Kong. Within the economic expansion of Hong Kong the local population

Hong Kong Cinema 1913–56 3 increased, as more mainland Chinese arrived at the British colony. With Britain’s further annexation of the Kowloon peninsula in 1860, the colony developed into a prosperous trading port and, at the same time, a society with a high rate of crime and triads membership (Lethbridge 1978: 62). A handful of colonial public institutions was no longer capable of coping with the increased population and the maintenance of political and social order. In the late nineteenth century, the colonial government developed a structure based on Elliot’s bifurcated system to allow the local Chinese to manage their own political and social affairs ‘without passing them the practical powers of tax collection and military forces’ (Tsai 1993: 290). Tung Wah Hospital, Po Leung Kuk (the society for the Protection of Women and Girls) and the District Watch Committee were established for the provision of social services. However, with the consent of the colonial government, these organisations ‘extended their scope of activities beyond charitable work to include the management of public affairs in Hong Kong’ (Tsai 1993: 69), to perform as a Chinese court and to function as a Chinese Executive Council. The division into two communities was reinforced again through racially based administration. Ian Scott (1989: 62) charts this colonial structure from late last century to the late 1960s as shown in Figure 1.1. The dual system of law and administration encouraged the local Chinese to differentiate themselves from the colonial government and the British community. They practised their own cultural traditions and religious beliefs, and relied on their close connection with the mainland culturally, economically and politically. As the wealthy Chinese merchants suffered from racially based legislation in residence, education, public health and other matters (Wesley-Smith 1994: 91–105), they were encouraged to strengthen their ethnic, cultural and political connections with China. Additionally, their connection with China, in some cases, brought them official appointments from the colonial government, which in turn elevated their social status in the colony. However, in return, the mainland Governor

District Watch Committee Tung Wah Board of Directors Sanitation Board Chinese Chamber of Commerce Heung Yee Kuk Po Leung Kuk

Legislative Council

Chinese community

Policy outputs

Executive Council

Civil Service

Chamber of Commerce H.K. and Shanghai Bank The Large Hongs Jockey Club Sanitation Board

European community

Figure 1.1 The colonial structure of Hong Kong up to the late 1960s

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Hong Kong Cinema 1913–56

Chinese also required them to be loyal to China through financial and political contributions (Tsai 1993: 65–102). Freedom of movement enabled the mainland Chinese the right to access the colony. It made Hong Kong not only a place for economic adventure but also a place for conducting political activities forbidden on the mainland. In the 1850s, less than a decade after the British colony was founded, the anti-Manchu Taiping movement drove many wealthy Chinese in the south to the colony and, later, Taiping rebels and revolutionaries themselves also sought political refuge in Hong Kong (Yuan 1993: 114). In the latter part of the last century, Dr Sun Yat-sen and republican revolutionaries developed their ideas on overthrowing the Qing Dynasty in Hong Kong. The colony was crucial in the republican revolution in terms of gaining financial support from overseas and in providing an exile base for the mainland rebels and revolutionaries. With support from the local Chinese community, Hong Kong continued to play an important role in Chinese national politics. Between 1912 and 1913 the local Chinese organised a 3-month tramway boycott to protest against the colonial government banning the use of mainland coins in Hong Kong. They regarded the decision as ‘an unfriendly act and highly disrespectful towards the new republic’ (M.K. Chan 1994: 29). A similar popular nationalism was also shown in the support of the local Chinese of the May Fourth movement, and in their participation in the boycott of Japanese goods in 1919 and the Seamen’s Strike in 1922. Organised by the Guomindang and the Chinese Communist Party in 1925 and 1926 as part of the nationalist movement against British imperialism, thousands of Hong Kong workers left Hong Kong for the mainland to join the by then 18-month long Canton-Hong Kong General Strike. The strike paralysed business and trade in Hong Kong to a degree that almost ruined British interests in South China. Japan’s invasion of China strengthened the Chinese nationalism in Hong Kong. During the 1930s, mainland nationalists, including left-wing cultural workers, the Communists and Guomindang supporters, went to Hong Kong to promote the anti-Japanese war. Apart from the period of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong between 1941 and 1945, the colony again functioned as a base for mainland Chinese to gain overseas financial support and to conduct political activities that would have endangered their lives on the mainland. After the British regained the colony in 1945, the population in Hong Kong increased dramatically. Tens of thousands of mainland refugees arrived in the colony, including those cultural workers who had worked and co-operated with the Japanese during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai. A large group of mainland Communists and left-wing activists also came to Hong Kong to promote the anti-Guomindang movement. After the Guomindang lost their battle with the Communists for control of the mainland, another wave of mainland political and economic refugees arrived in Hong Kong. From 1945 to the mid-1950s, over one million mainland Chinese

Hong Kong Cinema 1913–56 5 migrated to Hong Kong (Hong Kong 1956: 3). These included Shanghai capitalists, wealthy merchants, professionals and labourers from the nearby area of Guangzhou. Consequently, mainland national political culture was transplanted to and intensified in the colony. The British colony, Hong Kong, was founded to serve the interests of the British. At the same time, however, the mainland Chinese also used the colony to further China’s interests. The colonial dual system and China’s involvement with the colony encouraged the Hong Kong Chinese to seek belonging, security and authenticity from the mainland and, therefore, to identify themselves as part of the Chinese nation through progressively strengthening ethnic ties, cultural tradition and mutual political and economic needs. In the context of its part in a triangular relationship in the first half of the century, Hong Kong was unable to develop its own cultural identity that could resist mainland’s nationalism.

National politics and the mainland market Before the Chinese border was closed in 1950, and before mainstream Hong Kong films were banned in China from 1952, the Shanghai film industry and the Hong Kong film industry shared similar film markets, production modes and film talents. At the time, South China and Macau formed about 80 per cent of the foreign market of Hong Kong films, with 10 per cent coming from Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaya and Indonesia (Leung and Chan 1997: 143), and 10 per cent from Chinese enclaves in Western countries. According to the Hong Kong film historian Yu Mowan (1994: 88–99) two-thirds of Hong Kong film directors were originally from Shanghai. These film-makers directed more than half of the Cantonese films before the Second World War. From the late 1940s to the 1950s, one third of Cantonese films were also directed by mainland filmmakers. Despite its reputation as a centre of Cantonese film production, the Hong Kong film industry was shaped by and mirrored mainland national political concerns through its interaction with the Chinese national government, the Shanghai film industry, the left-wing and Communist film-makers and cultural critics. The British colony played an important role in the early construction of Chinese national cinema. With a considerable financial input from Hong Kong in 1929, the first Chinese film enterprise, operated in the form of a national integrated trust, Lianhua Production and Printing Limited, was established in Shanghai by two Cantonese, Luo Mingyou and Li Minwei. With a family business across Guangzhou and Hong Kong, and close family connections with the Guomindang government, Luo Mingyou was known as the first Chinese to own a chain of cinema theatres in North China in the 1920s (Zhu and Wang 1991: 70–2). Born in Japan from a Chinese rice dealer family in Hong Kong, Li Minwei was one of the early Chinese film pioneers in Hong Kong, and a strong republican supporter

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Hong Kong Cinema 1913–56

(Gong 1962: 123–138; Zhong 1965: 20). He made the first Hong Kong film, Zhuangzi shi qi / Zhuangzi Tests his Wife, in 1913, produced the first Hong Kong feature film, Yanzhi / Rouge, in 1924, and built the first Hong Kong film studio in 1925. He also filmed a number of newsreels about Dr Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionary activities in China. As a result of the Hong KongCanton General Strike in 1925, the small Hong Kong film industry, which had produced fewer than fifteen movies between 1913 and 1925 collapsed. In the aftermath of the strike, Li Minwei, like most Hong Kong filmmakers, left the colony for the mainland. In 1926, Li transferred his company, Minxin, to Shanghai. While film-making in Hong Kong was at a standstill between 1925 and 1929, Li Minwei and his business partner Luo Mingyou planned to develop a centralised national film industry with its headquarters set up in Hong Kong and a production centre in Shanghai. They invited the most wealthy and politically influential Chinese person in the colony, Sir Robert Ho Tung (He Dong), to be the chairman of the Lianhua Executive Board. At the same time, they also gained the support of a number of financial investors, including Guomindang bureaucrats, merchants, film producers, distributors and exhibitors from Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai and Zhejiang province (Cheng 1966: 147). Lianhua controlled six film studios, with four located in Shanghai, one in Hong Kong and one in Beijing. As Shanghai was the production centre, the film industry’s headquarters moved to Shanghai a year later. Responding to the Nanjing government’s agenda of anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism, Lianhua aimed for a centralised national film industry which would resist ‘feudalist’ films from the Chinese domestic film industry, and non-Chinese films, especially from Hollywood. In its ten trade and business principles drawn up in 1929 (and reproduced below), Lianhua detailed its relationship with the national government, other national business sectors and the national community (Du 1986b, vol.1: 82–3). 1 Renovate the national cinema. Diminish the trend of superstition and violence in current national films. 2 Use film as a tool for mass education. Bring films to the country and hinterland areas. Produce more educational documentary films. 3 Serve the industry; maintain and defend the benefit of Chinese film exhibitors through mutual assistance. Encourage those Chinese exhibitors reluctant to project Chinese movies to change their minds. 4 Resist the cultural and economic invasion of non-Chinese films. Promote national, intrinsic virtues, and direct the national cinema against alien culture. Unite Chinese theatre-owners to purchase non-Chinese theatres to show more Chinese films to block the economic invasion of foreign films.

Hong Kong Cinema 1913–56 7 5 Train more people to involve themselves in the Chinese film industry. In particular, pay more attention to recruiting the talents of various types into the industry, avoiding ‘stealing’ personnel in the same field. When there is a need, establish a national film school. 6 Assist national undertakings, and co-operate with industrial entities owned by Chinese. Where possible, we must foster our national products through films, encouraging people to consume more national products in order to assist our industry. 7 Develop the overseas market, promoting Chinese national films first in the South-East Asian region, and then in European and American markets. 8 Uphold the rights of film-makers, cultivate the professional consciousness of the film-makers, and clear up society’s misconception of and prejudice against film-makers. 9 Establish a centre for film production. From the very beginning, we must adopt a system of collaboration within the sectors and, later on, link them together to establish a Chinese movie centre. 10 Make a contribution to the nation and to society. Use film to promote government policies. If necessary, set up services in various places. However, the introduction of sound into film complicated Li and Luo’s intention of treating the colony’s film industry as part of Chinese national cinema, as sound technology highlighted the linguistic difference between Cantonese and Mandarin. In 1933, the first Cantonese film Baijin Long / White Golden Dragon was produced in Shanghai by Tianyi, one of the three major film studios in Shanghai at the time. The economic success of the film in South China encouraged Tianyi to establish a Cantonese film production company Nanyang in Hong Kong in the following year. Founded in 1924 and managed by four brothers from the Shaw (Shao) family, which included the well-known Chinese film tycoon Run Run Shaw (Shao Yifu), Tianyi was the most commercially successful film production company, and the most ‘unco-operative’ with either the Guomindang or the left-wing film-makers. Unlike Lianhua, which aimed to produce films that reflected China as a modern nation, Tianyi aimed to ‘focus on traditional virtues and ethics, foster Chinese civilisation, and refrain from Westernisation’ (Zhuzhong jiu daode, jiu lunli, fayang Zhonghua wenming, libi ouhua). The company pioneered two Chinese film genres: wuxia pian (martial arts films) and guzhuang pian (traditional costume films). Films in these two genres were heavily attacked by the Guomindang government, the left-wing activists, the Communists and the Chinese literati as ‘low taste’, ‘backward’ and ‘feudalist’ products (J. Cheng 1966, vol.1: 86–90; Du 1986b, vol.1: 69–70). While sound technology in film allowed the Hong Kong film industry to develop into a centre for Cantonese film production, the industry’s

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Hong Kong Cinema 1913–56

reliance on the mainland market inevitably allowed the local industry to be interfered with by Chinese national politics. In 1937, the Guomindang government proposed banning Cantonese films on the grounds that Cantonese films were opposed to the government policy of unifying the nation under a single national language (Yi Lin 1 February 1937, editorial; 15 March 1937). The proposal met with strong reaction from the Cantonese film industry, in particular Hong Kong film producers and film exhibitors in South China. In order to protect their interests in the mainland market, Cantonese film-makers argued that Cantonese films were legitimate national cultural products. The Cantonese film-makers argued that, contrary to the government’s claim, Cantonese films had made a great contribution to national unification (J. Chen 1937a). As Mandarin was not the native language of either the Southern Chinese or the overseas Chinese, Cantonese films had already assisted the government in bringing these communities together by attracting them away from Hollywood films. Hence, the government’s proposal to ban Cantonese films would only assist Hollywood’s domination in China (J. Chen 1937b). Banning Cantonese films would not only contradict the unification policy, but also in a way betray the Chinese nation by encouraging Chinese nationals to consume non-Chinese films (Huang 1937). After many petitions and negotiations over several months between the Cantonese film industry and the mainland government, the Nanjing central government finally agreed to delay the proposed ban for 3 years before it was considered for legislation. However, the government emphasised that whether the proposal became law depended on the Nanjing Central Committee’s evaluation of ‘whether the ideological content of Cantonese film was suitable to the Chinese nation’ (Yi Lin 1 April 1937, stop press). The Guomindang government’s message exemplified political bargaining. It would not ban Hong Kong films as long as the Hong Kong film industry contributed to the construction of the Chinese nation-building programme. A few months later, a response to the government’s demands appeared in the local film journal Yi Lin. The editorial suggested that the Cantonese film industry should participate in the construction of national culture. It suggested that the industry should produce two types of films. The first was ‘minzu revolutionary film’, ‘to promote patriotic spirit’, with the nation in danger from Japanese aggression and invasion (Yi Lin 1 August 1937). The second type was ‘lunli (Confucian ethics) melodrama’: In the launch of the New Life movement, President Jiang [Jiang Jieshi] has advised us to foster traditional virtues of li yi lian chi [propriety, righteousness, honesty and a sense of shame] and xiao di zhong xin [filial piety and loyalty]. Thus, we [the Hong Kong film industry] should make more lunli films to promote our four thousand years of cultural morality and ethics.

Hong Kong Cinema 1913–56 9 The response from the Hong Kong industry appeared encouraging.1 By the end of 1937, the industry had produced thirty-three ‘minzu revolutionary’ films, compared to four in 1936 (M.W. Yu 1995: 61). But the number of patriotic film productions decreased to an average of ten films a year in the following 4 years leading up to the Japanese attack on Hong Kong in December 1941. In fact, the number of patriotic films made after 1937 was perhaps exaggerated as these films included films made by Communist and Guomindang film producers and directors in Hong Kong, as for instance Situ Huimin’s three films, Xuejian Baoshan cheng / Blood Splashes on Baoshan (1938), Youji jinxing qu / March of the Guerrillas (1938) and Baiyun guxiang / White Cloud Village (1940), and Cai Chusheng’s Gudao tiantang / Orphan Island Paradise (1939). The reason for the decrease in patriotic films was simple: a commercial film industry could not survive on politically oriented films. Furthermore, after Guangzhou and its hinterland fell into Japanese hands after October 1938, any anti-Japanese films or films promoting Chinese nationalism would in all likelihood be banned. Some of the countries in South-East Asia also banned anti-Japanese films or restricted politically oriented films. Revenue generated in the colony alone could not cover production costs. For this reason, Hong Kong film producers requested that the national government provide some financial assistance in producing patriotic films, for instance, by reducing tariff on Hong Kong films to the mainland for patriotic film productions, or by ensuring that patriotic films were exhibited in South-East Asia through the government’s diplomatic negotiations (Yi Lin 1 October 1938). None of these requests was answered. The Japanese occupation of Shanghai in 1937 and of Guangzhou in 1938 indirectly nourished the Hong Kong film industry. Hong Kong feature production increased from forty-five in 1936 to 117 in 1939. The increase was based on two major factors. First, Japan’s occupation of Shanghai in 1937 drove more film-makers to Hong Kong. Second, as Chinese national censorship was invalid in the Japanese-occupied areas, the Hong Kong film industry was able to produce more commercially oriented films that the national government and left-wing film-makers would have labelled ‘feudalist’, ‘low taste’ and ‘lacking minzu consciousness’ (J. Cheng 1966, vol.2: 86–8; Du 1978, vol.2: 38–40). National politics further dominated the Hong Kong film industry after the Japanese returned the colony to the British in 1945. As the Guomindang government regarded those who had worked with the Japanese as national traitors, many Shanghai film-makers came to the colony to escape Guomindang political harassment. Some film-makers, such as the left-wing activists and the Communist film-makers, arrived in the colony with the aim of guiding the Hong Kong film industry towards making politically oriented films (Ding 1990: 128). Their arrival in Hong Kong strengthened Mandarin film production and, at the same time, encouraged national politics to develop in the local industry.

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Hong Kong Cinema 1913–56

Due to their different reactions to the uncertainty of the mainland market and to their different relationships with the national Guomindang government, the Mandarin and Cantonese film industries in Hong Kong developed differently after the Second World War. For the Mandarin film industry, the mainland was the market. The issue for Mandarin filmmakers was simple: how to establish a national distribution and exhibition network on the mainland as soon as possible. However, the Cantonese film-makers had a different agenda as a result of their experience. Remembering that the Guomindang government had intended to ban Cantonese films in 1937, Cantonese film-makers were primarily concerned with their industry’s survival. Would the Guomindang government continue to allow the screening of Cantonese films on the mainland? For how long and under what terms? Would the Cantonese film industry survive on its overseas markets alone, if the national government banned Cantonese films on the mainland? How should the Cantonese film industry strike a balance between the Chinese government’s request to promote national unification, and the domestic and overseas markets’ demand for popular folklore products of traditional costume, martial arts films and Chinese ghost stories?2 Based on their different concerns for their respective markets, the two film industries took different approaches. During this complex and politically unstable period, national politics shaped the fate of a number of film companies established after the Second World War. In 1946, having failed to obtain a studio in Shanghai, Jiang Boying, a distributor, who owned a number of cinema houses in central China, came to Hong Kong with several Shanghai film producers. He leased a local studio and established Da Zhonghua Film Production Company. The company was regarded at the time as the first grand production company in local history, with over one hundred employees (Cheuk 1995: 98–104). Most of the employees were contracted from Shanghai, including some of the better known Mandarin directors, writers and stars who worked under the Japanese occupation of Shanghai. Within 3 years, the company had produced thirty-four Mandarin films and nine Cantonese films. In 1948, as the Communists expanded in the areas towards the South, Hong Kong film markets were gradually shrinking. In response, Jiang Boying transferred Da Zhonghua to Shanghai, believing that the Communist government would not restrict films made in Shanghai. He expected that his company would have a share in the mainland market (Shen 1976: 52–77). Not too long after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, however, Da Zhonghua was gradually taken over by the government. Yonghua was another example of a film company bankrupted by miscalculating national politics. When the company was established in early 1948, Li Zuyong, a Zhejiang capitalist with a family in the printing business, did not expect that the Communists would take over China within 2 years (Law 1990: 11). Nor did he expect that he would lose the entire

Hong Kong Cinema 1913–56 11 mainland market after the Communists came to power. With an investment of US$3,750,000 (Du 1986b, vol.3: 103–4), Li aimed to build a Chinese film industry in Hong Kong that would be comparable to Hollywood. The company, just as did Da Zhonghua, had attracted Mandarin film-makers from Shanghai and other parts of China. With comfortable production budgets, glamorous Mandarin stars and top crews, Yonghua’s first two films became renowned not only as classic Chinese films, but also as two well-known films in the history of Chinese politics. Both Guo hun / Soul of China and Qinggong mishi / Sorrows of the Forbidden City were made in 1948. Soul of China portrayed a famous minzu hero, Wen Tianxiang, who killed himself to show his loyalty to the Song Dynasty when confronted with the Mongol invasion. The film was criticised by the Communists as ‘promoting loyalty to the Guomindang on the eve of the Guomindang being overthrown by the Communists’ (J. Cheng 1966, vol.2: 317). Indeed, the Guomindang leader Jiang Jieshi praised the film highly and ordered thirty more copies for his soldiers at the frontier (Du 1986b, vol.2: 317). Sorrows of the Forbidden City (known as The Secret History of the Ch’ing Court) depicted the conflict between the Manchu Emperor and the Empress dowager Cixi during the late Qing Dynasty. The Communists accused the film of insulting the Boxer Rebellion and praising the British imperialists as reformists modernising China. In the early 1960s, in spite of the film having been banned in China, Mao Zedong launched a national debate to condemn the film along with Wuxun zhuan / The Story of Wuxun. The national debate was one of the key triggers of the Cultural Revolution. These first two films marked Yonghua as an anti-Communist film company. After Soul of China was produced in 1948, the Communists and left-wing film-makers sought opportunities to work in Yonghua in order to control the political content of its production. By inserting ‘revolutionary’ messages in the process of shooting, the left-wing film-makers managed to produce several ‘progressive’ films. However, because Li was not a Communist supporter, and given his ambition to sell his films to America and Europe, he started to censor film scripts and check footage himself to ensure ‘correct’ political content (Du 1986b, vol.2: 376). This made it difficult for the left-wing film-makers, so they changed strategies by organising strikes to postpone productions. In 1952, more than twenty Yonghua leftwing film-makers were sent back to China by the Hong Kong government (Du 1986b, vol.3: 99; Law 1990: 12). After the loss of the mainland market and having been involved with national political struggles for a number of years (even with the financial support from the Guomindang government in Taiwan after 1955), Yonghua was finally taken over by a Malaysian Chinese distribution company, Cathay, in 1956. Similar political battles also intensified in medium-sized Mandarin film companies during this period. For instance, Changcheng was established by the number one ‘traitor’ Zhang Shankun, who had worked closely with

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Hong Kong Cinema 1913–56

the Japanese in Shanghai. After the company made several Mandarin films in 1948 and 1950, left-wing film-makers took control in 1950 (Shen 1976: 81–2). Until 1980 Changcheng remained as one of the two major leftwing Mandarin film companies in Hong Kong. National politics forced the Mandarin film industry to split into two streams: pro-mainland left-wing or pro-Taiwan right-wing companies. After the Communist government had banned mainstream Hong Kong films in the early 1950s, and after the Guomindang government had announced its film policies of encouraging Mandarin film-makers to join the Taiwan film industry in 1952, Hong Kong Mandarin film-makers had to declare their political stand. As many countries banned cultural products associated with Communist China, the cinema theatres owned by the Chinese government in Hong Kong provided the most guaranteed film markets for left-wing film production. These film companies did, however, remain profitable until the late 1950s, when the mainland was finally closed to all films made in Hong Kong. By contrast, pro-Taiwan Mandarin companies had wider access to markets, including Taiwan, America, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. In 1953, the pro-Taiwan film-makers’ organisation, Freedom Association (Ziyou gonghui), was formed. In order to promote Mandarin as the official language in Taiwan, the Guomindang government introduced a number of film policies to ensure that Hong Kong Mandarin filmmakers could contribute to the newly established Taiwan film industry (Zhong 1965: 20). In addition, the Guomindang government also announced a policy declaring that Taiwan would ban any films that had had the involvement of film-makers or film companies associated with leftwing film-making either in Hong Kong or the mainland (Y.T. Zhang 1968: 41–2). As Taiwan was a considerable Mandarin film market outside the mainland, the government’s policy effectively prevented some Hong Kong film-makers from being involved with left-wing companies in Hong Kong. The Cantonese film industry faced a different political scenario from the Mandarin film industry, as the Guomindang government was not interested in Cantonese films. As Cantonese cinema had a reputation of being ‘feudal’, ‘low art’ and ‘backward’ in its mass production of Cantonese opera, martial arts and Chinese ghost stories, Cantonese melodrama filmmakers aimed to ‘improve’ the quality of Cantonese films as legitimate ‘national art’. Their desire was encouraged by the left-wing film-makers who had a professional reputation for and practical experience in producing ‘quality’ films – in their case, social realist films in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Among them were the well-known Communist film script-writer and film critic Xia Yan; Communist film director, producer and Columbia University graduate Situ Huimin; and the first Chinese film director to win an international award from Moscow, the best known left-wing film director, Cai Chusheng, who was of Cantonese origin. Before Hong Kong films were banned on the mainland in 1952, the

Hong Kong Cinema 1913–56 13 colony had already developed a considerable domestic market for the Cantonese film industry due to the dramatic increase of Cantonese refugees after the war. While significant, this did not in any sense compare with the Cantonese film markets in South China. Nevertheless, the Hong Kong film industry developed its own strategies to cope with a considerable decline in its market. Many film companies minimised risks in production by producing numerous films on small budgets. This can be seen in the fact that over one-third of Cantonese films were based on Cantonese opera (M.W. Yu 1987: 18–21). The block-booking system, the pre-selling of copyright to overseas film distributors and Hong Kong exhibitors, could ensure up to 60 per cent or more of production budgets (Weng 1978: 58–9). However, as Cantonese opera at the time was regarded by the intellectual elite as representing both feudalism and low class entertainment, this association with the Cantonese opera reinforced the reputation of Cantonese films as ‘low quality’, ‘backward’, and ‘feudalist’. In spite of a booming Cantonese film industry through the filming of Cantonese opera, some Cantonese film-makers were discontented with a situation in which opera performers were the stars in both live opera and the film medium (M.W. Yu 1982: 34–5). The Communist and left-wing film-makers indirectly provided the answer for those Cantonese film-makers unhappy with the situation outlined above. In late 1948, Communist and left-wing film-makers and film critics came to Hong Kong to conduct an anti-Guomindang movement to gain overseas support for the Communist government in China (Xia 1983: 134–53). One of their tasks was to reform the Cantonese film industry – shifting it from making traditional opera and martial arts films to more ‘progressive’ films. The left-wing film-makers established the Film Directors Association (Daoyan lianyi hui) to integrate and unite local Cantonese film-makers in the exchange of professional knowledge, and to direct them to understand that film is political (C.L. Li 1983: 120–4). Although the association did not involve a great number of Cantonese film-makers at first, its impact was enormous. In 1949, Communists and left-wing film-makers launched the New Southern China Film Movement to reform Cantonese cinema. One hundred and sixty-four Cantonese film-makers responded to the campaign of ‘a clean-up film movement’ and signed a manifesto promising ‘not to produce or engage with any films that are contrary to the interests of guojia minzu [nation-state] and are harmful to society’ (Lin and Yeung 1978: 15). They declared that they would not work with Cantonese opera and martial arts film-makers, and would refuse to be ‘controlled’ by film exhibitors3 who, as a matter of fact, were the most important investors. This movement generated the beginning of a new Cantonese film trend – focusing on ‘educational value’ and ‘artistic worthiness’. Following release of the manifesto, the production system was the first to change. These progressive film-maker signatories established a Film-makers’ Cooperative

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Union. The union actively launched a collectivisation campaign in the industry. In 1952, the Zhonglian (China United) film company was established by twenty-one well known Cantonese film directors, producers and actors under a collective production system – a ‘socialist’ or ‘democratic’ system in terms of financial investment by the film-makers themselves and in terms of collective decision making in the creation process. Hong Kong film scholar Lin Nien-tung (1978a: 32) describes Zhonglian’s significance as follows: The emergence of Zhonglian checked the prevalent weakness, malpractice, short-sightedness and general philistinism of the Hong Kong film industry and also helped to break the monopoly controls of large film companies. Zhonglian films did not subscribe to the ‘no song, no movie’ formulae of the era. It waged a long-term war on feudal thought, superstitious beliefs and dominant business notions such as ‘production value’, ‘plot value’ and ‘box office value’. What this movement practically ‘achieved’ was a ‘positive’ reputation for Cantonese films as ‘genuine’ art, which allowed these Cantonese filmmakers the ‘right’ to access the mainland market when most Cantonese films had been banned there since the early 1950s. However, as these companies had an ‘association’ with Communist China, in the late 1950s and early 1960s these film-makers were perceived as ‘left-wing’, or were stigmatised for working in left-wing film companies. Subsequently, they lost potential Cantonese film markets in South-East Asia and in the West (M.W. Yu 1982: 39). Although coming from a different historical and cultural background from the Mandarin film industry, the Cantonese film industry was unable to avoid interference by mainland national politics as it relied on the mainland market for its survival.

China as the subject Before the Shanghai film industry was brought under the control of the Communist government in the early 1950s, films produced in Shanghai and Hong Kong shared many similarities in narrative, genre and cinematic style. They presented similar images of Chinese cultural identities in social realist ‘melodrama’, traditional costume and martial arts films. The mainland was the subject and inspiration for the Hong Kong film industry, which has not always been the case in later periods. During the first half of the century, Hong Kong and Shanghai films can be generally divided into two broad, but overlapping, streams of entertainment films and politically oriented films. Each of these streams was influenced on the one hand by the non-Chinese films of Hollywood and the Soviet Union, and on the other hand, by indigenous cultural aesthetics and art forms. In the early years of the 1920s, the era of silent films, there was little

Hong Kong Cinema 1913–56 15 difference between Shanghai and Hong Kong films. Hong Kong filmmakers actively sought film narrative inspiration from the mainland, for instance, from screen adaptations of classical literature, folklore or political and social events. After making a filmic adaptation of the Cantonese opera Zhuangzi Tests his Wife (1913), Hong Kong film-maker Li Minwei made his first feature film Rouge (1923), based on the work of Chinese classical literature Liaozhai zhiyi (Strange Tales From a Chinese Studio), and went to Beijing to film Mei Lanfang’s performance in Beijing Opera in 1924. His brother Li Beihai also made his first feature film Zuoci xi Cao / Zuo Ci Teases Cao Cao4 (1930) based on the classical novel Sanguo yanyi (The Romance of the Three Kingdoms). By contrast, the first Chinese feature film made by Shanghai film-makers, Yan Ruisheng / Yan Ruisheng (1920) was based on a real murder event – that of a gambler murdering a prostitute to repay his debts in the 1920s. This contrast can be understood as deriving from the fact that Hong Kong film-makers had consciously or unconsciously from a very early period found their inspiration in China’s indigenous culture. While the Hong Kong film industry ceased production for a period from the late 1920s, about 400 films were produced in Shanghai between 1928 and 1931 (J. Cheng 1966, vol.1: 133). During this period, the Shanghai film industry developed three major film genres acknowledged by Chinese film scholars as Chinese film genres: shehui lunli pian (social ethics melodrama), guzhuang pian (traditional costume films) and wuxia pian (martial arts films). All three genres were transplanted to Hong Kong by the mid1930s. Hence, the two industries shared similarities in film genres, and thereby similar narratives and iconography in their representations of Chinese cultural identities and Chinese society. Japan’s attack on North-East China in 1931 strengthened Hong Kong’s political consciousness of national sovereignty. The anti-Japanese defence movement was developed on the mainland with the participation of cultural workers. The Guomindang government, Communists, and left-wing and commercial film-makers alike were part of the movement. After Lianhua and Tianyi produced the first two ‘defence films’ (Guofang dianying) in 1932, Hong Kong soon followed. In 1935, one of the early Hong Kong film-makers, a California University graduate, Kwan Man-ching (Guan Wenqing), directed Shengming xian / Lifeline. The film presents a story of ‘a Chinese engineer who overcame all sorts of difficulties to build a railroad, which helped in the defence of the nation and securing the livelihood of the people’ (M.W. Yu 1995: 61). The film was the first local cultural product to cause concern for the colonial government. As Britain took a neutral stance towards China and Japan, the film’s anti-Japanese theme was politically inappropriate to the British coloniser. The film’s release was delayed until late in 1935. As a Hong Kong film-maker, Kwan regarded himself as a Chinese artist who ‘has a responsibility for the ups and downs of our nation’ (Guan 1976: 197–8). Kwan’s patriotism and his

16

Hong Kong Cinema 1913–56

identification with the Chinese nation were certainly not unique in Hong Kong. After Shanghai was attacked by the Japanese in 1937, the Hong Kong film-makers volunteered to make another anti-Japanese film, Zuihou guantou / At This Crucial Moment, while the studio-owners offered free access to their equipment for the film-makers to do so (M.W. Yu 1995: 61). China’s nationalism impelled the colony to produce more defence films. In 1937 and 1938, the Guomindang chief-in-charge from the central film censorship board on the mainland, Xu Hao, visited Hong Kong several times to inspect defence film production (Liang 1938). Subsequently, he set up a branch of the Central Government Censorship Board in Hong Kong to ensure the ideological content of local film production. After leftwing film-makers began arriving in Hong Kong in late 1937, they also launched an anti-Japanese defence film movement. Following the mainland, Hong Kong defence films show the significance of Chinese nationhood by presenting the mainland – its place and its people – as the central theme of Hong Kong films. For instance, At This Crucial Moment (1937) depicts a group of mainland university students joining in the anti-Japanese movement; Xiao Guangdong / Little Guangdong (1940) is a story of how a Cantonese guerrilla fought against the Japanese; Xiao laohu / Little Tiger (1941) deals with the story of a mainland peasant who fights against the Japanese; Minzu de housheng / Roar of the People (1941) presents a story about working-class labourers challenging ‘treasonous businessmen’ in Hong Kong; Liuwang zhi ge / Song of the Exile (1941) depicts a story of a mainland dance troupe’s exile after the loss of their home towns to the Japanese; Guonan caizhu / The Tycoon Traitor (1941) portrays a businessman who helps the foreign enemy and is put to death by the people. These locally produced defence films were perceived as dramatising the transition from local and provincial cultural identity to Chinese national identity. A film critic Song Wanli (1938) wrote in Yi Lin (no.35, 1 August 1938): After a year of the anti-Japanese defence movement, we are very happy to see so many (Hong Kong) national defence films permeated with ‘Cantonese spirit’. This ‘Cantonese spirit’ spread to the whole nation, and become ‘Chinese national spirit’ with a persistent will as the sustainable shield. This national spirit can smash the fantasy of the rivals’ strategies for the war. It can also enliven the courage of our nationals. All these films, like the rifles of soldiers at the frontier, and the brushes of the literati, are able to give the enemies a fatal blow. After the war, China’s film culture remained the dominant force in Hong Kong. The idea of Chinese nationhood was strengthened by the mainland’s perspective. Shanghai film culture had already been implanted in

Hong Kong Cinema 1913–56 17 Hong Kong to the extent that Hong Kong also became a centre for Mandarin film production. More and more Shanghai film-makers arrived in Hong Kong between 1946 and 1949, establishing the foundations for Mandarin film production. The Mandarin film industry was dominated by a number of big companies, Da Zhonghua, Yonghua, and Changcheng, and stories of China were popular, including narratives depicting national politics between the Guomindang and the Communist Party, China under Japanese occupation, film adaptations of classical literature and popular novels, Shanghai urban lifestyles and Northern country areas. Stephen Teo (1994: 17) comments on these films as follows: In the eyes of the Mandarin directors, Hong Kong might as well not have existed. The Hong Kong depicted in their films was an abstract, cardboard city. In essence, the Shanghai emigres were making ‘Shanghai’ films – films set in that city or its environs with Hong Kong locations dressed up as its streets and quarters. Characters behaved like typical Shanghai residents, their dialogue laced with Shanghai-isms. The styles, themes and content of Hong Kong’s Mandarin films evoked the classics of Shanghai cinema of the 30s. But by shying away from realist depictions of Hong Kong society and setting their stories in Shanghai and other Chinese cities of the north, these directors betrayed their northern backgrounds and expressed their unfamiliarity with Hong Kong. Obviously, Hong Kong had yet to become a ‘place’ of historical action and significance to these Shanghai Mandarin film-makers. Mandarin cinema had bigger budgets, better technology and stronger teams of film-makers. It also embraced narratives and themes different from the mass-produced Cantonese opera and martial arts films in the Cantonese film industry. It was commonly acknowledged that the Mandarin audience was generally the white-collar class, the modernised urban population, who preferred Hollywood and Shanghai films. By contrast, the Cantonese film audience was comprised mainly of the working classes from a rural background, who were likely to be superstitious followers of Buddhism and Taoism, and with little or no formal education. Ian Jarvie (1977: 86) outlined the general difference between Cantonese and Mandarin films in the 1950s and 1960s. Cantonese cheap simple unpretentious folk roots southern energetic

Mandarin expensive arty prestigious urban roots northern stiff

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Hong Kong Cinema 1913–56

Jarvie’s schematic grid may not be entirely accurate as it leaves out some important features of Cantonese films, such as the social realist dramas of the 1950s and the popular qingchun (youth) genre of the 1960s. Both genres were neither artistically ‘simple’ nor based on folk roots. Nevertheless, his formula provides a general outline of the differences between Cantonese and Mandarin films. From the 1930s to the 1950s the Shanghai left-wing film-makers were actively involved in Cantonese film production. A year after its establishment by mainland left-wing film-makers in 1948, the Nanguo Production Company produced a classical Cantonese film Zhujiang lei / Tragedy on the Pearl River. This film was praised as a ‘breakthrough in Cantonese film’ in terms of cinematic aesthetic style (E. Gu 1979: 88). The film resembles Shanghai left-wing films of the 1930s – adopting the theme of class conflict, from the proletariat’s point of view in social realist style. The film depicts the hardship of life for Cantonese peasants under the landlords and the ruling Guomindang government. Several years later, the leading actor and Hong Kong Cantonese film star, Zhang Ying, recalled: This joint effort by Northern and Southern Chinese film-makers was a thoroughly researched, highly professional production which paid close attention to details. It cost HK$600,000, took over a year to make and, on its release, created a sensation with both Hong Kong and mainland audiences. The critics acclaimed it as a ‘Cantonese masterpiece’ marking the ‘beginning of a new era of intelligent and meaningful realistic films’ to ‘pave the way for the new Cantonese cinema’. (E. Gu 1979: 88) Presenting class differences from the perspective of the proletarian class in social realist style developed into a convention in Cantonese melodrama in the 1950s. The 1980s local film critics regarded the convention as ‘a tradition of Cantonese cinema’ (W.M. Luo 1981; Jiao 1987: 65), for instance, in their critical reviews of Allen Fong’s Fuzi qing / Father and Son (1981). In his study of Shanghai left-wing films of the 1930s and 1940s, Lau Shinghon (1991: 177) listed five common narrative subjects: 1) anti-imperialism; 2) social problems of unemployment, shortage of housing, and class struggles between peasants and landlords, workers and capitalists; 3) antiWesternisation based on a comparison between the moral purity of rural areas and the moral corruption and materialism of the city; 4) antifeudalism and the promotion of women’s liberation; and 5) the portrayal of family change to reveal social problems within the nation. Apart from the theme of anti-imperialism, the other four topics were common themes in the 1950s Cantonese melodrama, for instance, Li Tie’s Weilou chunxiao / In the Face of Demolition (1953), Wu Hui’s Jia / Family (1953), Li Chenfeng’s Chun / Spring (1953), Tian chang di jiu / Everlasting Love (1955), Chen Wen’s Qiang / The Wall (1956), Shouzu qingshen / Brothers (1956),

Hong Kong Cinema 1913–56 19 Lu Dun’s Shihao fengbo / Typhoon Signal No.10 (1959), and Li Tie’s Huoku youlan / Orchid in the Fire (1960). If the 1920s popular genres of traditional costume and martial arts were transplanted from Shanghai to Hong Kong in the 1930s, then the left-wing social realism and class consciousness of Shanghai cinema in the 1930s and 1940s were also subsequently transplanted to the Cantonese film industry in the 1950s. The result is that Hong Kong films in the first half of the century presented an image of Chinese nationhood: as overlapping national political, traditional ethnic and regional Cantonese identities, all in opposition to Hollywood films in Hong Kong.

Conceptualising Hong Kong films as national art Just as the Hong Kong film industry was dominated by concerns prevalent on the mainland, Hong Kong films have likewise been evaluated from the perspective of China. As with traditional Chinese literary criticism, the idea of film as a means of social education was popular among Chinese cultural critics. Discourse in Chinese literary and art criticism has always been influenced by the traditional philosophy of wen yi zai dao (the function of literature is to convey the tao). As early as 1924, the leading Chinese-language newspaper Huazi Ribao (Chinese Daily) in the British colony, ran a weekly column discussing the social function of film (M.W. Yu 1985: 88). The discussion addressed issues such as how film as a mass educational tool could best be used to strengthen the Chinese nation. In 1926, two film journals Yinguang (Silver Screen) and Yinmu (Screen) were also involved in the debates about using film as a social educational tool (M.W. Yu 1996: 139–40, 166–7). The idea of film functioning as a tool of social education was developed as a means of political education under the influence of the two Chinese political parties in the 1930s. Political ideology consequently dominated film criticism in both Shanghai and Hong Kong. The Guomindang promoted Confucian philosophy as part of national culture and condemned the ideas of Buddhism and Taoism expressed in films. Deeply objecting to Hollywood films, the Guomindang believed that they distracted the Chinese people from participation in Chinese nation-building activities. They also exhorted Chinese film-makers not to follow the Hollywood film as a model, because, in the words of Chen Lifu, Minister for Education and the Chairman of the Chinese Central Film Censorship Board, ‘there was a huge gap between the two societies in social, cultural, and economic aspects’ (L. Chen 1992: 245). In his speech of ‘Zhongguo dianying shiye de xin luxian’ (New Chinese Film Policy) in 1934, Chen Lifu stated that the Chinese film industry should participate in nation-building programmes by ‘promoting national spirit’, ‘encouraging the construction of a modern Chinese nation’, ‘imbuing the masses with scientific knowledge’, ‘developing revolutionary spirit’ and ‘building up a national morality’ (L. Chen 1992: 244–55).

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Hong Kong Cinema 1913–56

Both the national government and, on the whole, Hong Kong filmmakers regarded Hong Kong cinema as part of the Chinese national film industry; as a result, there was constant ‘interference’ by the government in the criticism and evaluation of Hong Kong films. The Guomindang’s film policy for a national culture was consistently used as critical theory in Hong Kong film criticism. In the period between 1935 and 1938, a number of campaigns against ‘feudalism’ and ‘superstition’ in Chinese films and against the imitation of Hollywood films were launched by mainland Guomindang supporters in conjunction with local educational and Christian religious groups (Yi Lin no.33, 1 July 1938). In 1940, the Guomindang government established a branch of the Chinese Education Film Association in Hong Kong, ‘for the purpose of improving Southern China filmmakers’ attitudes and understanding about film, and the content of their films’ (Yi Lin no.68, 16 February 1940). Although these campaigns and ‘supervision’ did not change the nature of the commercial film industry in Hong Kong, the notions of ‘meaningful film-making’, ‘reflecting current national spirit’ and ‘strengthening the Chinese nation’ did become major critical concepts in Hong Kong film criticism. Like their Guomindang counterparts, the Communists and left-wing film critics also regarded Hong Kong as part of Chinese national cinema. This was well demonstrated in their promotion of the defence film movement in Hong Kong. The leading left-wing film-maker Cai Chusheng wrote in Hong Kong in 1937: We could not help feeling disappointed that the most effective tool – film – could not progress along with our nation’s liberation movement, calling (our) people to participate militarily and ethically in the campaign. In order to achieve our long-term target of resisting the Japanese invasion, and to liberate our four hundred million people in China, we should by no means allow these (Hong Kong) films to distract from the current situation of our anti-Japanese campaign and our future. Let’s make great efforts to reshape (Hong Kong) cinema. (Quoted in W.Y. Wang 1999: 116) A year later, a local film critic Song Wanli (1938) wrote in Yi Lin: ‘Chinese Hollywood’ has moved to Hong Kong during the era of the Japanese occupation of Shanghai. Needless to say, Hong Kong cinema has now taken the honour of Chinese art. A reader can discern that the low-taste scripts have been transformed from the previous stereotypes based on opera stories, to far more profound narratives of the reality of Chinese society. In these films, one can see the awakening of ordinary Chinese civilians and the courage of our soldiers. Even romantic melodrama is no longer full of intimate scenes, but is a romance with ‘defence’ spirit, a love between a hero [anti-Japanese

Hong Kong Cinema 1913–56 21 hero] and a beauty. As for the anti-Japanese sentiments and patriotic spirit, these films have also provided the audience with an unexpected excitement and aesthetic enjoyment. Oh! Great Southern Chinese cinema, you have really taken responsibility for our nation. After the war, mainland film critics remained active in Hong Kong. In 1948, film journals and film reviews were published and organised by the Communists and left-wing organisations. Lin Nien-tung (1985: 108) describes this kind of film criticism as ‘analysing the film industry from the perspective of political ideology (Marxism)’, and as a ‘fresh approach to Hollywood, Shanghai and Hong Kong films’. The critics’ powerful comments were perhaps the most typical in Hong Kong film criticism of the time. Newspaper columns such as Qiren yingping (Seven People’s Film Review), including articles written by Ye Yiqun, Zhou Gangming, Meng Chao, Qu Baiyin and Hong Di were under Xia Yan’s editorship, and ‘Cantonese film review’, including Mai Dafei and Lu Yu under Chen Canyun’s editorship, also maintained the same ‘line’. One hundred and sixty-four Cantonese film-makers published their manifesto of 1949 to clear up ‘feudalism’ and ‘superstition’ in Cantonese films under the influence of the left-wing and Communist film criticism in Hong Kong. In the 1950s, Cantonese melodrama inherited and developed the 1930s Shanghai left-wing film – a style of social realism that depicts social injustice and class differences from the perspective of the working class. As Cai Chusheng advised in his well-known essay, ‘Guanyu Yueyu dianying’ (‘About Cantonese Cinema’), on the eve of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China on 28 January 1949: When a great change is happening in the vast land of China, to greet the new birth of our ancient nation – our motherland, I expect that the Cantonese film-makers will pull themselves together, to catch up with this new age by self-study and make a good example in the film industry. It is apparent that the triangular relationship between the British coloniser, the Chinese motherland and Hong Kong in the first half of the century had a profound influence on the early development of Hong Kong cinema. The British colonial dual system and mainland nationalism encouraged Hong Kong cinema to regard itself, de facto, as part of Chinese national cinema. In the following chapter, I will argue that an equally profound effect on Hong Kong cinema occurred after China closed its doors to Hong Kong and, furthermore, after the British colonial government modified its dualistic policy towards its colony.

2

Hong Kong cinema as Chinese diasporic cinema 1956–79

The triangular relationship between Britain, China and Hong Kong entered a new era after 1950. As Communist control of the mainland swelled the population of Hong Kong between 1949 and 1950, shortages of water, accommodation and employment became serious problems. As a result, and reversing its dualistic policy and commitment to noninterference, Hong Kong demanded the British colonial government take action. From the mid-1950s, the government began to introduce a number of economic policies to encourage foreign investment, and to promote Hong Kong’s trade with the West. Meanwhile, China entered a new stage of internal political struggle. In 1956–7, the anti-Rightist campaign was under way and further isolated China from the outside world. Separated from the mainland, furthermore, with increasing business connections overseas, the colony developed and strengthened its cultural relationships with the overseas Chinese population. Consequently, Hong Kong cinema shifted from being part of Chinese national cinema in the first half of the century, to functioning as Chinese diasporic cinema from the mid-1950s. The claim that Hong Kong cinema was a diasporic cinema raises a number of questions. In what ways should the Chinese populace in Hong Kong itself be understood as part of the diaspora, given that Chinese culture was both native and dominant in the colony? What caused a diasporic cinema to be developed in a society that was not itself diasporic? How did film production and film markets develop from a diversity of dialects and regional cultures in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Malay Peninsula, to a centralised and identifiable diasporic film industry in Hong Kong, and a relatively unified Chinese diasporic film market across the colony, Taiwan, South-East Asia and Chinese communities in the West? In what ways was diasporic consciousness expressed in Hong Kong films and local film criticism? This chapter advances two arguments that involve the overlapping of two sets of triangular relationships – one between Britain, China and Hong Kong, and another diasporic one between motherland (China), host country (the British colony) and self (Chinese migrants and refugees). The first argument deals with Hong Kong’s changing position in the triangular

Hong Kong Cinema 1956–79 23 relationship between Britain, China and Hong Kong. After China closed its doors to the British colony, and with the colonial government’s encouragement of the development of trading relations with the West, Hong Kong began to develop a different perspective on China. From the mid1950s, the British colony shifted from identifying itself with the mainland as part of the Chinese national community, to distinguishing itself as Chinese outside the mainland. The second argument deals with the diasporic triangular relationship. Hong Kong’s construction of a new cultural identity was financially supported by members of the Chinese diaspora, especially those from SouthEast Asia. Due to political and cultural instability in their host countries, the South-East Asian Chinese were attracted by the British legal system and the fast growing economy in Hong Kong. Supported by the SouthEast Asian Chinese in film distribution and exhibition in their host countries, their strong financial position allowed them to take the dominant role in Hong Kong film production after the mid-1950s. The financial input from South-East Asia strengthened the Hong Kong film industry after the latter lost the mainland market in the early 1950s. As a result, the SouthEast Asian market wielded more influence over the Hong Kong film industry than did Hong Kong’s domestic market. Since overseas markets were the major financial resource for the industry, and as it was essential to produce films that were shared by as many Chinese communities outside the mainland as possible, a diasporic consciousness in the triangular relationship between motherland, host country and the territory was expressed in Hong Kong cinema. The first section of this chapter deals with the politics and culture of Hong Kong society from 1956–79. It focuses on ‘the diasporic phenomenon’ of Hong Kong. With reference to the production-centred industry and the exhibition-led film market, the second section discusses how Chinese film production and markets outside the mainland were unified as a singular diasporic film industry and market by the South-East Asian Chinese, by mainland migrant film-makers and by indigenous film-makers in Hong Kong and Taiwan. The third section discusses the diasporic consciousness of the triangular relationship between the host countries, motherland and self as expressed in Hong Kong film texts. The fourth section examines a diverse range of film criticism in Hong Kong, demonstrating a shift from a critical approach based predominantly on Chinese nationalism, to approaches of various Western and Chinese film theories. The last section in this chapter outlines a number of factors that brought about the erosion of the diasporic cinema. This chapter therefore concludes the first part of the book: a historical examination of Hong Kong cinema in Higson’s four approaches to national cinema.

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The dilemma of Hong Kong as a diasporic community After Britain and China abolished their policies of freedom of movement between the colony and the mainland in 1950, the traditional way of life between Hong Kong and the mainland was disrupted. Chinese nationals could no longer earn their living in the colony or visit their families on the mainland as conveniently as before. As thousands of mainland Chinese migrated to the colony, Hong Kong’s population grew from 1.6 million in 1946 to 2.36 million in 1950 and 2.5 million in 1956 (Young 1994: 131). Although the Chinese government continued to recognise the Chinese in the colony as Chinese citizens, the establishment of the Chinese border in Shenzhen between the colony and the mainland had a great impact on the mainland Chinese living in the colony. Their experience bore many resemblances to other diasporic communities in the world. The term ‘diaspora’ is not commonly used to describe the mainland Chinese in Hong Kong, perhaps because the colony cannot be perceived as a ‘foreign’ territory to China; at the same time as it is viewed as a ‘foreign’ territory to the West. On the other hand, the mainland Chinese refugees and migrants in Hong Kong shared cultural characteristics of other diasporic communities. For instance, they expressed their nostalgia for China, perceived themselves as an exile community in Hong Kong, and retained their regional cultural distinctions. Local cultural critic Ng Ho (1990: 31) also battles for an ‘accurate’ word when describing mainland Chinese in Hong Kong: In the years after 1949, many Chinese nationals fled south to take refuge in the British colony of Hong Kong. Does this amount to exile? (Left-leaning commentators or Communist sympathizers have defined this exodus as ‘going south’.) I do not propose to find a political significance in this journey south. Besides, there is no one word or sentence which can do justice to the economic misery, pain and suffering which was the lot of those who took the journey . . . except perhaps to sigh at the thought of exile, turbulent times, 1949. The mainland Chinese that Ng Ho refers to ‘formed 40% of the [Hong Kong] population’. The question of the extent to which the mainland Chinese in Hong Kong during this period should be perceived as members of a diaspora is no less complicated than the term ‘diaspora’ itself. On the one hand, Hong Kong was a society predominantly Chinese, and it had always been regarded by the Chinese as part of the motherland but ‘occupied’ by the British. In this sense, the mainland Chinese in Hong Kong would not be considered as migrants who had left their motherland for a territory that was not their own. On the other hand, the increased use of the term ‘diaspora’ to refer to a wide range of communities, and more importantly, to

Hong Kong Cinema 1956–79 25 describe the experience of exile, nostalgia for the motherland and cultural alienation in host territories, encourages us to use the term to describe the experiences of the mainland Chinese in the colony during this period. In a similar spirit, the preface to the first issue of Diaspora defines the term thus: We use ‘diaspora’ provisionally to indicate our belief that the term that once described Jewish, Greek, and Armenian dispersion now shares meanings with a larger semantic domain that includes words like immigrant, expatriate, refugee, guest-worker, exile community, overseas community, ethnic community. This is the vocabulary of transnationalism, and any of these terms can usefully be considered under more than one of its rubrics. (Tololyan 1991: 4–5) Another definition of the term comes from SPAN (Mishra 1992/1993: 1): In order to help the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary in their task of keeping the English language up-to-date, we provide for their convenience the following additional entry: 1

2

3

relatively homogenous, displaced communities brought to serve the Empire co-existing with indigenous/other races with markedly ambivalent and contradictory relationship with the Motherland(s). Hence the Indian diasporas of South Africa, Fiji, Mauritius, Guyana, Trinidad, Surinam, Malaysia; the Chinese diasporas of Malaysia, Indonesia. Linked to high classical Capitalism. Emerging new diasporas based on free migration and linked to late capitalism: post-war South Asian, Chinese, Arab, Korean communities in Britain, Europe, America, Canada, Australasia. any group of migrants that sees itself on the periphery of power, or excluded from sharing power.

Notice that Mishra’s use of the term ‘diaspora’ excludes European communities anywhere. The term ‘diaspora’ is not necessarily used then to refer to any particular ethnic or racial groups. Instead, it now denotes a particular kind of experience, feelings and consciousness shared by groups of people who feel exiled from their homeland, conscious of the space between ‘here’ and ‘there’, between their resident society in their host territory, and their homeland of origin. William Safran (1991: 83–4) emphasizes the following characteristics of members of diasporas: 1) they, or their ancestors, have been dispersed from a specific original ‘center’ to two or more ‘peripheral,’ or foreign, regions; 2) they retain

26

Hong Kong Cinema 1956–79 a collective memory, vision, or myth about their original homeland – its physical location, history, and achievements; 3) they believe that they are not – and perhaps cannot be – fully accepted by their host society and therefore feel partly alienated and insulated from it; 4) they regard their ancestral homeland as their true, ideal home and as the place to which they or their descendants would (or should) eventually return – when conditions are appropriate; 5) they believe that they should, collectively, be committed to the maintenance or restoration of their original homeland and to its safety and prosperity; and 6) they continue to relate, personally or vicariously, to that homeland in one way or another, and their ethnocommunal consciousness and solidarity are importantly defined by the existence of such a relationship.

To the mainland Chinese, the colony may not appear as much ‘foreign’ as countries in South-East Asia or in the West. But Britain and China’s imposed sanctions against freedom of movement between the colony and the mainland brought to the mainland Chinese in Hong Kong a particular kind of experience of being ‘abandoned’ and living ‘in exile’ from their homeland. Although they may not have experienced as much cultural alienation as Chinese in other parts of the world, they certainly felt they would ‘relate personally or vicariously, to that homeland in one way or another, and their ethnocommunal consciousness and solidarity are [were] importantly defined by the existence of such a relationship’ (Safran 1991: 83). From this perspective, Hong Kong can be seen as a host territory to a diasporic population from China. Similar to other diasporic communities in their host countries, the mainland Chinese ‘retained their collective memories about the past’ and intended to return when the time was appropriate. In his Turbulent Writings (Luanshi zhi jia) published in 1967, Zhu Zijia writes: The average Shanghainese who first set foot in Hong Kong harbored the naive opinion that they could freely return to their beloved city after three years or five years at most, and resume their businesses. (Quoted in Ng 1990: 31) In a description of a well-known Chinese film director Zhu Shilin, Shu Kei (1983: 42) writes: Like most of the other film-makers from the north who went to Hong Kong, Zhu never intended to settle there. When he left Shanghai, he gave each of his two wives only a short-term living allowance of $500. These mainland Chinese refugees also retained their own regional cultural communities in Hong Kong. They formed their own institutions to provide

Hong Kong Cinema 1956–79 27 social welfare benefits, and to conduct business and cultural activities for their members (Lau 1983: 132). As they regarded themselves as temporary residents in Hong Kong, they continued to engage in Chinese national politics. From the early 1950s to the late 1960s, several violent incidents were caused by supporters of the Guomindang and the Communists. A celebration of the 1911 Revolution on 10 October 1956 turned into a 3-day-long violent dispute attacking Communist businesses, offices and schools in Hong Kong and causing the death of fifty-nine people, injuring 500, and causing US$1 million property damage (Lane 1990: 73). Influenced by China’s Cultural Revolution of 1967, the 18-month dispute headed by the left-wing unionists during 1967–8 resulted in the death of fifty-one, the injury of 800, the arrest of 5,000 and millions of US dollars’ damage in property and trade. Culturally, the mainland Chinese continued to perceive themselves as a group distinct from the local Hong Kong Chinese. Lo Kwai-cheung (1990: 22) describes the mainland writers in Hong Kong in the 1950s and 1960s as follows: These immigrant writers still had a strong tendency to look towards the Mainland. They were more attached to remembered experience and nostalgic time, and remained uncomprehending of the new surrounding reality. . . . They had an absolute confidence in the superiority of a single centralised culture and dismissed flatly this [Hong Kong] peripheral culture as philistine. In addition, the colonial government also recognised the cultural and linguistic diversity of the Chinese in the colony. Between the 1950s and the early 1960s, the colonial Rediffusion radio and television company produced programmes in Shanghainese, Minnan, Hakka and Mandarin for the mainland refugees. However, there was a difference between the mainland refugees in Hong Kong and other diaspora communities. Unlike members of diaspora in other host countries where cultural differences from local communities prevail for long periods, a lack of a distinct Hong Kong cultural identity allowed the mainland migrants to share the colony with local residents in many ways, for instance, through industrial manufacture, cultural production, business, trade, education and community services. There is little evidence to suggest that the mainland migrants were disadvantaged by the local community in areas of political, economic, cultural or social welfare. At the same time, the mainland Chinese also made efforts to assimilate into the local community. Other members of the Chinese diaspora migrated to Hong Kong as their various positions in their host countries became unstable. The rise of nationalism in South-East Asia after the Second World War caused the indigenous communities to mount considerable resistance to the Chinese

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diaspora (Purcell 1965: 329–49, 471–91). Fearing that Communism and Chinese nationalism would spread over South-East Asia, the indigenous governments tightened their policies towards Chinese immigration, Chinese schools, the Chinese press and Chinese cultural products. In Thailand, the government continued to impose restraints on Chinese education and newspapers from the 1940s. In Malaysia, debates on the rights of citizenship of Malays, Chinese and Indians in the early 1950s further complicated the relationship between the local Chinese community and the indigenous people. Chinese cultural production was not encouraged by the indigenous Malay government. The Indonesian government likewise suppressed Chinese culture and community activities after gaining its sovereignty from the Dutch coloniser in 1949 (Mackie 1976: 77–138). Political instability and ethnic conflicts in South-East Asia restrained Chinese cultural production and impelled Chinese cultural workers to seek alternative homes. Hong Kong provided the best environment in the region for the Chinese diaspora. It was a Chinese society, but with a British colonial government whose political culture and legal system were nevertheless familiar. Hong Kong’s geographic location enabled the South-East Asian Chinese who were drawn to the colony to be seen as distancing themselves from Chinese national politics in Taiwan and the mainland. This allayed the suspicion of the governments in their host countries. The colony’s economic policies of laissez-faire and low taxation further strengthened the confidence of the Chinese diaspora in Hong Kong. Moreover, a lack of a distinct Hong Kong cultural identity allowed the South-East Asian Chinese easy access and integration into Hong Kong society. Hong Kong was not a typically diasporic society in the sense that the British colony was not a typical foreign territory to the mainland Chinese. Nor were the mainland Chinese the only group of residents in the colony, though they accounted for about 40 per cent of Hong Kong’s population. There were also another 50 per cent local Chinese and overseas Chinese who came to Hong Kong from South-East Asia, America and Australia (D.L. Zheng 1992: 34, 71–2). However, like the mainland Chinese in Hong Kong, this group also identified China as their motherland. Hence, China’s closed door policy gave the local and overseas Chinese a feeling shared with the mainland Chinese in the colony – the loss of the motherland. This sentiment enabled the mainland refugees and migrants, Hong Kong Chinese and the Chinese diaspora from South-East Asia to participate together in the construction of a new Chinese cultural identity that was different from that on the Communist mainland.

Unifying a diasporic film industry and market Restrictions on freedom of movement between the colony and the mainland had a considerable impact on the Hong Kong film industry, and

Hong Kong Cinema 1956–79 29 indeed on Chinese national cinema. The fact that the Hong Kong film industry lost the mainland market meant that the value of the South-East Asian market increased. As the South-East Asian market was controlled traditionally by local Chinese, they became the most influential group in the Hong Kong film industry. After 1949, the South-East Asian Chinese no longer obtained films from Shanghai, which forced them to rely on the Hong Kong film industry for products. However, as market demands increased, they became directly involved with Hong Kong film production. As a consequence, the South-East Asian Chinese began to replace the mainland influence from the mid-1950s. From the mid-1950s, the Hong Kong film industry was organised as a diasporic Chinese cinema. Finance for film productions was shared and films were artistically created and consumed by the Chinese in Hong Kong, South-East Asia, Taiwan, as well as in the rest of the world. The industry was controlled by an oligarchy of members of the Chinese diaspora in a centralised studio system dominated by family ownership. The industry showed few signs of engaging in a relationship with any national government or any particular geopolitical group of Chinese. The diasporic film industry was commercially oriented, in contrast to the earlier period when the industry was constantly shaped by China’s national politics. Differences in ownership, production mode, film market and degrees of the involvement with national politics distinguished the character of the Hong Kong film industry from the mid-1950s. According to my analysis, the period of the mid-1950s signalled the beginning of diasporic cinema. At this juncture, the South-East Asian Chinese took charge of film production in Hong Kong. Three events between 1955 and 1957 heralded the change. First, the International Film Distribution Agency, owned by the Malay Chinese Loke family, purchased Yonghua – the largest studio of the time in Hong Kong, founded by Zhejiang-Shanghai capitalist, Li Zuyong, in 1948. The agency was set up in Hong Kong by the family’s Cathay Organisation and was responsible for supplying Chinese films to the largest exhibition chain in the Malay Peninsula – Cathay Exhibition. The Loke family business specialised in hotel management and the entertainment business. Apart from managing about a hundred cinema theatres in the Cathay exhibition chain, the family also owned a local film studio, Cathay-Keris, used for the production of Malay films. After Yonghua transferred to Cathay, the former was reorganised into the Motion Picture and General Investment Company Ltd (MP&GI) in 1956. The second event heralding the change was that Shaw Brothers from Singapore announced the building of their own film studio in Hong Kong, a studio that later was to become the largest self-contained film manufacturing complex in Asia. As mentioned in Chapter 1, the Shaw (Shao) family was one of the pioneers of films in Shanghai. The eldest brother, Shao Zuiweng, had founded the Tianyi film studio in 1925. He sent his two

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younger brothers, the third Runme Shaw (Shao Renmei) and the youngest Run Run Shaw (Shao Yifu), to Singapore in 1928 to exhibit their films. As the Cantonese film market was mainly in the south, Shao Zuiweng then sent his second brother Shao Cunren to Hong Kong to establish the Nanyang studio for Cantonese film production (Cheng 1966: 374–5). On the eve of the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, Shao Zuiweng transferred Tianyi to Hong Kong and amalgamated it with Tianyi’s branch studio, Nanyang. Around the same time, the two younger brothers in Singapore began to develop their business in film distribution and exhibition. Their film products were mainly supplied by Hollywood and Hong Kong, especially from their family studio Nanyang. By the 1950s, Shaw Brothers exhibition chain had expanded in South-East Asia and ranked second only to Cathay. When the market demanded more and better products than Nanyang was able to produce, Run Run Shaw came to Hong Kong in 1957 to establish his Shaw Brothers Film Studio, leaving their exhibition business in the care of his two elder brothers, Shao Cunren in Hong Kong and Runme Shaw in Singapore. Investment in and influence on Hong Kong film production by Cathay and Shaw Brothers was on a large scale. By comparison, the third event marking the change to diasporic cinema was relatively small, but equally important to the Hong Kong film industry. In 1955, two years before Cathay bought Yonghua and Run Run Shaw came to Hong Kong, Guangyi, the Cantonese film distribution and exhibition company based in Singapore, had already set up a production company in Hong Kong. Guangyi had been owned by the He brothers, a Chinese family, in Singapore since 1937 (Lin and Yeung 1978: 57). The family also owned a few small studios in the Malay Peninsula for Cantonese films. From 1955 to 1968, Guangyi was one of the four major Cantonese film production companies in Hong Kong along with Zhonglian, and the other two – Xinlian, invested in by ‘a group of overseas Chinese businessmen’, and Huaqiao, owned by ‘a prominent businessman with interests in Hong Kong and Macao’. The penetration of South-East Asian Chinese capital into film production caused four major changes. First, it ended the traditional structure of the relationship between Chinese national cinema and overseas: formerly the Shanghai film-makers had produced the films, and the overseas Chinese, in particular the South-East Asian Chinese, had dominated the areas of distribution and exhibition. The Communist control of the mainland in 1949 impacted heavily on the traditional structure, and the move of South-East Asian capital into Hong Kong film production eventually generated two Chinese cinemas – one on and one off the mainland. The traditional structure, which developed in the late 1920s, was thus replaced by a vertical integration of the South-East Asian Chinese into the film production area. The move from South-East Asia’s role in distribution and exhibition to involvement in Hong Kong film production began an era of Chinese diasporic cinema.

Hong Kong Cinema 1956–79 31 Second, a distinct diasporic film market developed. Traditionally, overseas Chinese markets were regarded as secondary to the mainland market of South China. But the loss of the mainland market, and the financial input from the South-East Asian region changed this situation. Through the distribution of Hong Kong films to South-East Asia, Taiwan and to Chinese communities in other parts of the world, a diasporic Chinese film market was developed, strengthened, unified and set apart from the mainland market. Two distinct centres of Chinese culture were thereby created. Third, the penetration of the South-East Asian Chinese into Hong Kong film production had a major impact on the Hong Kong film industry. It forcefully ended the remaining influence of Chinese national politics on the industry, driving independent Shanghai Mandarin film producers to Taiwan. This included, for instance, Zhang Shangkun’s Xinhua and Pu Wanchang’s Taishan (Law 1995b: 184). It also pressured left-wing film producers to compete with more glamorous and commercial products. At the same time, it played a major role in marginalising the Cantonese film industry. Finally, although Cathay and Shaw Brothers continued their investment in Cantonese film production until 1964 and 1966 respectively (Weng 1978: 50–2), their vigorous investment in and promotion of Mandarin films marginalised regional Cantonese film production in Hong Kong and Minnan film production in Taiwan. Their ‘creation’ of the Mandarin film as a ‘standard’ format for Chinese diasporic cinema fulfilled two practical aims. First, it promoted Chinese diasporic cinema as modern and as authentic as Shanghai films. It thus dissociated itself from the dialect films, which were perceived as ‘backward’, ‘feudal’ and ‘provincial’. It targeted Chinese communities in Taiwan, Singapore and other places, who adhered to traditional Confucian values and, at the same time, admired Western lifestyles. Second, it also avoided a direct conflict with the already established popular Cantonese films. The promotion of Mandarin films for international awards by Cathay and Shaw Brothers, at the Asian Film Festival, for example, reinforced the myth that the Mandarin film was a prestigious and legitimate ‘national’ art, whereas dialect films were parochial trash. Under the pressure from Cathay and Shaw Brothers’ big budget films, Cantonese film production gradually moved away from its roots in regional folk culture and family melodramas observed from the perspective of the working class (Law 1995b: 192). From the mid-1960s, the Cantonese film industry began to follow Mandarin cinema and to produce urban styles of romance, suspense and screwball comedy. However, this ‘moving away’ from ‘traditional’ style bridged the gap between Mandarin and Cantonese films. Similarities in theme and aesthetic styles allowed Mandarin cinema to displace Cantonese cinema altogether in 1972. This was further strengthened by the fact that free access to a Cantonese television service was available after 1967. Guangyi ceased Cantonese production in 1968 and others soon followed.

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The beginning of this section noted that one of the major features of diasporic cinema was that the South-East Asian and Taiwanese markets played a more important role in Hong Kong than they had done in the first half of the century. Traditionally, the Taiwanese market was shared by Hollywood, the Japanese and the local Minnan film industries (Lü 1961: 105–7). As the Guomindang government promoted Mandarin as the official language, Taiwan became the second largest Mandarin film market after the mainland. Unable to produce a sufficient number of Mandarin films from its three state studios, and with its domestic industry mainly occupied in the 1950s and early 1960s by Minnan production, the Taiwanese government relied on Hong Kong for Mandarin films. As the Guomindang government intended to promote the image of the Republic as the ‘genuine’ China, it showed great interest in supporting Hong Kong Mandarin film production. In 1956, the Taiwanese government established various laws and regulations, including low taxation, entitlement to national financial grants and the Golden Horse national film awards, in order to encourage Hong Kong Mandarin film production (L. Liang 1997: 152–7). The Guomindang’s support for Mandarin production encouraged the two film giants, Cathay and Shaw Brothers, to explore the Taiwanese market. In 1963 Cathay took a further step, aiming to transfer Mandarin film production from Hong Kong to Taiwan (H.X. Li 1981: 39). Cathay’s plan was supported by Taiwan’s largest distribution company, Lianbang, and a well known Hong Kong director, Li Hanxiang.1 Together, they built the largest Mandarin film studio, Guolian, in Taiwan. However, this grand blueprint was affected by the loss of two key figures in an air tragedy in 1964, the owner of Cathay, Loke Wan Tao, and the general manager of Lianbang. Subsequently, as a result of inadequate financial management (Jiao 1993: 60–3), Guolian declared itself bankrupt in 1967. Nevertheless, the example of Guanlian demonstrates how the diasporic film industry depended on the co-operation of the Chinese themselves to unify production mode and market.

Constructing a Chinese cultural identity beyond China The British and Chinese governments’ sanctions on freedom of movement between the colony and the mainland produced two distinct Chinese cinemas in terms of narratives, genres, stars, and more generally, cinematic Chinese cultural identities. Separation from the mainland allowed Hong Kong films to be made without China’s political and social influence. As a result, Hong Kong films no longer reflected the politics and society of China, but those of Chinese communities beyond China. As discussed in the previous section, the mode of film production in Hong Kong had changed from a system led by many middle-sized and small companies, shaped and affected by national politics, to a commer-

Hong Kong Cinema 1956–79 33 cially oriented, centralised studio system controlled by a group of family businesses. However, this change was not the only factor generating differences in narrative, genre and iconography between films made in Hong Kong and in China. The mode of production on the mainland also changed under the Communist government. As film was regarded as a political and ideological tool for mass education, nationalisation of the film industry was launched and completed in 1956, and all production, distribution and exhibition came under state ownership. Workers, peasants and soldiers replaced the urban populace as the target audience (J. Hu 1995: 76). The national government paid more attention to setting up exhibition networks in country areas than to producing the kind of films that encourage film viewing in urban areas. By contrast, Hong Kong films were made mainly for urban consumers. With differences in production modes and target markets, differences in narrative, genre and representation followed. While the narratives of China’s films reflected national politics and government policies, Hong Kong films revealed a diasporic consciousness in their construction of China’s cultural identity. Both film industries were involved in the construction of Chinese history, however, the mainland film industry adhered to the Party’s instruction that revolutionary history was the only history that should be presented. Historical films centred on the Communists and their struggles against the Guomindang in the First Civil War, depicted for example, in Dalang taosha / Waves of the First Civil War (1966), Hongqi pu / Legend of the Banner (1960); during the Second Civil War in Hongse niangzi jun / Red Detachment of Women (1960), Wanshui qianshan / A Thousand Rivers and Mountains (1959); the anti-Japanese war, as in Jimao xin / The Letter with Feathers (1953), and Xiaobing Zhangga / Zhangga, a Boy Soldier (1964); and in Dong Cunrui / Dong Cunrui (1955), Hongri / Red Sun (1963), Nanzheng beizhan / From Victory to Victory (1952) during the war of liberation. By contrast, national politics in modern history was almost absent in Hong Kong films, even compared to Hong Kong films of the earlier period. Instead, history before China became a modern nation was often presented in Hong Kong films. Differences between the mainland and Hong Kong films in selecting materials from the past produced two different images of China: a geopolitically defined modern nation on the mainland, and an ancestor-based or cultural civilisation defined ethnic nation in Hong Kong. Hong Kong historical films therefore produced a cultural identity of the Chinese diaspora as imperial descendants different from the mainland Communists. Moreover, they revealed a diasporic consciousness of China as their true homeland. In China, class struggle was the theme of films dealing with daily life. Chinese film scholar, Hu Jubing (1995: 94), comments in his analysis of those films that reflected government policies for co-operative transformation of agriculture in the 1950s and 1960s:

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Hong Kong Cinema 1956–79 These films revealed some peasants’ distrust of and hesitation about co-operatives. They also criticised a few peasants’ desires to be rich and a number of leaders’ doubtful attitudes towards new policies. However, these films showed more about rich peasants and unscrupulous merchants’ sabotage of the co-operative commune.

By comparison, Hong Kong films shifted away from themes of ‘exile’ or ‘living a vagrant life’ during the war periods. Cathay (MP&GI) produced a number of popular films showing a modern Western lifestyle with a focus on Confucian values. Siqian jin / Our Sister Hedy (1957), Manbo nülang / Mambo Girl (1957) and Yunü siqing / Her Tender Heart (1959) were three popular films in the screwball comedy, musical and melodrama genres. These films present the Western lifestyle of a number of young and attractive female protagonists, listening to Italian operas, attending or hosting Western-style birthday parties, engaged in Western swordplay, tennis, picnicking, and dancing the cha-cha, tango and mambo in Western dress, and yet foreground the theme of lunli. Our Sister Hedy, which depicts four sisters with four different personalities, was praised as ‘expressing traditional lunli ethics without relying on the simplicity of “good” or “bad” characters’ (G.F. Chen 1985: 241–8). Mambo Girl and Her Tender Heart each portray a young woman in a state of conflict, choosing between remaining with her adoptive parents or following her biological mother. Through constructing the ‘immoral’ history of their biological mothers – one a nightclub songstress ‘flirting’ with male clients, the other committing adultery – both films reinforce the filial value that ‘one should pay a debt of gratitude to whoever brought one up’(G.R. Cai 1985: 70). A local film critic, Shu Kei, comments that Mambo Girl constructs an allegory of Chinese migrants in their relation to China and their adopted territory, the British colony (Shu 1993: 109). It could equally be argued that the film expresses a haunting relationship between diaspora and motherland. The popular films of Yunchang yanhou / Cinderella and her Little Angels (1959) and Ye meigui zhi lian / Wild, Wild Rose (1960) are two further examples of films representing a modern lifestyle and, at the same time, reinforcing traditional lunli values. Cinderella and her Little Angels presents a story of a protégée of an orphanage who helps the institution to overcome financial difficulties by modelling in a fashion parade. The film gave Lin Dai, twice winner of the best actress award in the Asian Film Festival in 1964 and 1968, a ‘perfect excuse to change into sets of gorgeous fashion’ modelled on Western and Asian classical costumes (Law 1993: 113). But, at the end of the film, Lin Dai . . . returns to an obedient and responsible character. . . . Thus the film reinforced the Chinese essence by returning to the reality of lunli ethic and human relations.

Hong Kong Cinema 1956–79 35 Similarly, Wild, Wild Rose is a narrative about a romance between a pianist and songstress pictured in a sumptuous Western-style nightclub with jazz and blues music and dancing. The pianist’s passion for this songstress of ‘low’ social status impels him to ignore his mother’s advice. His disrespect for his mother in turn earns him a punishment of life in jail, poverty and a ruined career. Displays of Western lifestyle and the reinforcement of traditional values were also apparent in Cantonese films after the mid-1960s. The production of youth films represented one attempt by Cantonese film-makers to ‘modernise’ Cantonese cinema. Hong Kong film scholar, Cheuk Paktong lists four common features of the youth film genre: poverty versus wealth, generational conflicts, a rebellious nature and didactic speeches (Cheuk 1996: 74–5). However, these features were not unique to the Cantonese youth film genre, but were commonly incorporated in the 1950s social realist melodrama, especially the themes of poverty versus wealth, generational conflicts and didactic speeches. The difference between the 1950s Cantonese melodrama and the youth film genre of the 1960s was that younger, urban images replaced images of the older generation, the image of Cantonese refugees. Thus, in addressing the motif of ‘problem youth’, the 1960s films showed fashion, rock music, sex and violence. However, here too a return to Confucian lunli was essential. Stephen Teo (1996a: 18) explains: The theme of filial piety and the counter theme of the transgression of the young runs through the sixties. In the beginning, the didactic tradition of Cantonese cinema ensured that society’s reverence for the old was treated accordingly in cinema: in other words, the young must be filial and the unfilial must be punished or condemned as pariahs. Dependence on family and tradition was part of the natural progression of growing up. When parents grow old, it is the filial duty of the children to care for them. Unlike Hong Kong films in the 1980s, the relationship between Hong Kong and China was not the major theme. Instead, there were a number of popular films focused on the relationship between Chinese and the indigenous people of a host country (M.W. Yu 1992: 124–6). For instance, Hudie furen / Madame Butterfly (1956) presents the romance between a Chinese man and a Japanese song-and-dance artiste in Japan, and examines minzu conflicts and cross-cultural problems. Similarly, Niangre yu Dada / Niangre and Dada (1956) is about a romance in Malaysia between a Chinese man and a Malay woman of Chinese origins. Tangshan Asao / Woman from China (1957) is about a mainland woman who goes to SouthEast Asia in search of her husband. Yelin yue / Moon under the Palm Grove (1957) shows how the Chinese diaspora made an effort to promote Chinese education in Singapore. Wangfu shanxia / Beneath Mt Wangfu

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(1957) is a tragedy about a Chinese woman who marries a man who, unknown to her, is already married in Malaysia. Nanyang Abo / Uncle in Kuala Lumpur (1958) portrays the hardship of the lives of an old Chinese man and his daughter in Malaysia, and Guofu xinniang / A Mainland Bride (1959) depicts the life of a mainland Chinese woman in Malaysia after the death of her fiancé. Both Cantonese and Mandarin films developed similar themes of a diasporic triangular relationship between the host territory, motherland and self, a fear representing the experience of the Chinese diaspora when living in a society which was not their own. Directed by Qin Jian, acted by Cantonese film star, Xie Xian, and produced by Guangyi, Xue ran xiangsi gu / Blood Stains the Valley of Love (1959) was one of the classical Cantonese films of the period combining romance, ghosts and exotic scenery. The film begins with a Chinese man who falls in love with an indigenous Malay woman. Their relationship confronts cross-religious and ethnic cultural problems. The man’s mother believes that the Malay woman will cast a spell on her son, so she sends her son to Hong Kong to get over the romance. However, in Hong Kong, the man, unable to resist, falls in love with two women at the same time. His passion and fear lead to a fatal accident, which he believes was caused by the curse of the Malay woman. He then returns to Malaysia to take revenge. The period from the late 1950s to the 1970s saw a rapid development in Hong Kong film genres. Technology and division of labour in the centralised studio system enabled film-makers to build the Forbidden City, classical Chinese courtyards, northern Chinese markets, temples, mountains and forests in studio compounds. Through advanced technology in lighting, camera and editing, film-makers were able to create special effects to illustrate the religious significance of Taoism and Buddhism, both essential to martial arts films. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, colour film and the wide screen were also brought to Hong Kong. This made Chinese traditional costume films no less attractive than Hollywood musicals. While few classical costume and martial arts films were produced on the mainland between the mid-1950s to the late 1970s, these two Chinese film genres were the most popular that the Hong Kong film industry offered in the 1960s and 1970s: Mandarin opera films (huangmei xi) and Cantonese martial arts (wuxia) in the 1960s, and Mandarin martial arts in the 1970s. The popularity of these two genres showed the willingness of the Chinese diaspora to maintain their ethnic cultural identity and to demonstrate an awareness of their distinct identity in their host territories. The coexistence of Mandarin and Cantonese cinemas in the 1950s and 1960s reflected the lack of a distinct Hong Kong identity. Although both Mandarin and Cantonese cinemas produced comedies and melodramas, the two genres utilised different conventions, iconography and recurrent patterns. For example, Mandarin films tended to focus on Shanghai’s lifestyle, the middle class and their renqing shigu (sophisticated ways of

Hong Kong Cinema 1956–79 37 dealing with people), and occasionally dealt with local social injustices (Law 1985: 12). Cantonese films, especially comedies, on the other hand, relied heavily on Cantonese idiom, centred on the working class and their working environments. Most generally, a family theme is a convention of Cantonese melodrama, whereas middle-class cosmopolitan lifestyles are common themes in Mandarin melodramas. The Kung Fu film genre was an icon of Cantonese cinema until the late 1960s when the Mandarin film industry also produced martial arts films. Star images are usually perceived as signs that represent a nation. However, Hong Kong film stars of the 1950s and 1960s, while representing a different image from the previous images of refugees, still did not project a specifically Hong Kong cultural identity. From the late 1950s, a new generation of stars emerged. Most of them were born in China, but grew up and were educated in Hong Kong. Their gestures, manners, and use of language projected in general a Western and urban image. Law Kar (1996: 53) discusses three major types of star image in the 1950s and 1960s. The new generation star from [the left-wing’s] ‘Great Wall’, such as Xia Meng, Shi Hui, Chen Sisi, Fu Qi, Le Di, Gao Yuan represented the rising generation of those Mainland Chinese who had come to Hong Kong. They were Mandarin speaking; their behaviour and psychology were marked by continental Chinese characteristics, and they were proud of it. Their films were marked by the legacies of Shanghai cinema; their terms of reference were the culture of the greater China and there was a feeling of reticence, caution, indeed even criticism, when regarding Hong Kong society. The second group of stars were . . . the Mandarin stars of the late fifties [from Cathay and Shaw Brothers], such as Ge Lan, You Min, Ye Feng, Lin Cui, Zhong Qing, Chen Hou, Lin Dai, and Li Mei [who] were more Westernised. Thus, their films tended to assimilate with Hong Kong society but because they were Mandarin-speaking and were directed by veterans of the Shanghai film industry, they were out of tune with the grassroots level of Hong Kong society. These were the films of the middle-class. The third type of new generation star was found in Cantonese cinema. Law Kar argues that male stars ‘often played second fiddle to female superstars’ in the period. Female stars . . . were open, optimistic, smart, and multi-talented. They mixed freely with the feudalistic-minded upper-class older women and were more intelligent, more independent and able, possessing of more feelings and emotions. . . . These women may not be satisfied with the state of things but they would not go so far as to rebel against family and society. They were essentially filial and gentle women.

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No other Hong Kong star can more clearly express diasporic consciousness than Bruce Lee. His three best known films, Jingwu men / Fist of Fury (1970), Tangshan daxiong / The Big Boss (1971), Menglong guojiang / The Way of the Dragon (1972) present stories of Chinese who live in places dominated and controlled by non-Chinese. His ‘hatred’ of these dominant ‘foreign’ groups and his insistence on projecting himself as a ‘real’ Chinese reflect a diasporic consciousness trapped between the fear of living in a host country and the need to retain the myth of motherland.

The diversity of local film criticism In the previous chapter, I argued that Hong Kong films were evaluated with reference to politics and society in China. However, this critical approach lost significance after freedom of movement between the mainland and the colony was restricted. The ideology of national politics as a critical approach to Hong Kong films became less relevant than in the first half of the century. When film criticism in China became part of the state institution after 1956 (J.B. Hu 1995: 124–44), film criticism in Hong Kong, by contrast, developed greater diversity. The evaluation of films was undertaken by a range of viewers: pro-Communist, pro-Guomindang and film-makers themselves. In spite of the various critical approaches of Western and Chinese film theories, Hong Kong films were categorised either as Chinese films (together with the mainland and Taiwanese films) when compared to Hollywood films, or as Yueyu pian (Cantonese films) or Guoyu pian (Mandarin films). Generally speaking, there were three broad streams of film criticism, and none of these streams can be regarded as offering critical evaluations of films in specific relation to Hong Kong society. In part, this was because Hong Kong had not developed into a distinct community, and also because Hong Kong films were made for Chinese communities outside China. One stream of film criticism was positioned within mainstream popular culture, where film reviews aimed to promote products as part of publicity effort. The major studios, such as Cathay, Shaw Brothers, Guangyi, Guolian and the left-wing film studio, Changcheng, published their own film magazines. Film reviews of plot, performers, technical competence and audience feedback were aimed to create interest and attract audiences. These magazines were available in South-East Asia, Taiwan and Western countries. In the early 1970s, Golden Harvest also adopted a similar method of film review for publicity purposes. However, by the mid and late 1970s, newspapers and weekly entertainment magazines replaced the majority of studio magazines and became the major publishing format for film reviews. The second stream was led by the left-wing newspapers. In Chapter 1, I described how left-wing film criticism during the late 1940s and early 1950s

Hong Kong Cinema 1956–79 39 had established itself as the main force in local film criticism. However, the change of the social environment in the 1960s, especially under the impact of the Cultural Revolution, meant that the approach to critiquing Hong Kong films shifted gradually from evaluating political themes to evaluating Chinese cultural philosophy and aesthetics. Retaining its elite intellectual style, film criticism in left-wing newspapers paid more attention to the relationship between Chinese films and other forms of Chinese art, opera, literature and painting (Film Biweekly no.28, 7 February 1980, 34–6). Under the domination of the previous two streams of film criticism, a third emerged in the late 1960s, led mainly by a group of locally educated youth who, in particular, favoured American and European films. By and large, they tended to ignore Hong Kong films, particularly Mandarin films from Shaw Brothers (Law 1995a: 316). Most of them had gained their early film education from a non-commercial newspaper sponsored by an American organisation as part of the anti-Communist campaign to resist Communist influence in Hong Kong.2 Established in 1957, The Chinese Student Weekly (Zhongguo xuesheng zhoubao) formed a communication channel between Western intellectuals and Chinese youth by publishing Chinese versions of Western humanism and inviting readers to participate in various discussions. European art films were also accessible in Hong Kong through several film clubs. Organised by a group of European film fanatics in Hong Kong, the First Studio was established in 1962 to show art films from Europe. Hong Kong tertiary students were frequent attendants. Following the First Studio, active members such as Law Kar, Ng Ho, Lin Nien-tung from The Chinese Student Weekly also established their own organisation, the Tertiary Students Film Association in 1969, and showed alternative or art films supplied by British, Canadian and American consulates in Hong Kong. This organisation involved a variety of film culture activities, including art film exhibitions, seminars and publications. According to Law and Ng, the Phoenix Cine Club was established in 1971 to involve more tertiary students and youth interested in film. Using their financial resources earned from membership, exhibition, teaching and a few publications, these clubs functioned as film schools for training filmmakers and critics. From time to time, these clubs engaged in the nonperiodic publication of Chinese translations of Western film theories, in Cahiers du Cinéma, Screen, Framework, Film Culture and Cinéaste.

The demise of Chinese diasporic cinema Two major factors contributed to the demise of Chinese diasporic cinema: a change in the nature of the members of the Chinese diaspora themselves, and the rise of local nationalism in the South-East Asian countries. By the mid-1970s, the generation born after the Second World War became the major group of film viewers. Their experience differed from that of their parents’ generation. In general, they enjoyed better living

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standards, and achieved higher literacy levels, both in Chinese and English, compared to their parents. Culturally, they were exposed to a variety of products, including films from Europe, Hollywood and national films. By growing up in the period of television, they developed cultural identities resembling the culture of their local communities rather than that of China. Furthermore, the Cold War period also had an impact on their perceptions of China, indirectly diminishing their interest in films presenting a ‘remote’ China. The rise of local nationalism in South-East Asia constituted the other significant factor in the demise of the Chinese diasporic cinema. In Malaysia, the earlier process of film production whereby the Chinese provided finance, the Malays acted and the Indians directed and wrote, had ceased by the early 1970s. From the mid-1970s, the emergence of Bumiputra (indigenous race) film-makers pushed the Malay government to restrain Chinese control of the Malaysian film industry. As the Malaysian government was also concerned about the ‘ethnically chauvinistic strains’ (Latiff 1977: 105) in Chinese films, the central government aimed to establish a domestic film industry, controlled and managed by Malays. According to the government’s new economic policy established in 1970, the indigenous people were to enjoy no less than 30 per cent of corporate wealth within a 20-year period: thus, the government founded a National Film Corporation in 1981 to ensure ‘that a sizeable portion of the total volume of business done in the production, distribution and exhibition sectors would be handled by the Malays’ (Latiff 1982: 199). Under this pressure, in the early 1980s, ‘Cathay sold off 31 per cent of its equity to a government agency’ and Shaw Brothers sold 70 per cent of its Malaysian exhibition chain to Malay exhibitors (Latiff 1985: 211–2). In Singapore, Shaw Brothers’ studio closed down in 1967, 2 years after Singapore became independent from Malaysia, as involvement with ‘union problems and the studio workers’ discontent toward their employers when the Singapore government’s policy turned unfavourable for them’ (Basri and Alauddin 1995: 60). In the 1970s, film censorship in Singapore intensified in relation to filmic representations of politics, violence and sex (Lent 1990: 198). In Indonesia, a quota system was established, and 700 Chinese films in 1973 reduced to 100 in 1980, after which period the government started to participate in the selection of films from overseas (Sen 1996: 174–9). From 1976, the Thai government increased the importation tax to 1400 per cent to promote its own film industry, which cut out two-thirds of Chinese films (Lent 1990: 216). In the late 1970s, the Hong Kong film industry also lost the South Vietnamese market, when the Communist government took over. In Taiwan, although Hong Kong films achieved higher box-office revenue than local films, the Taiwanese film industry emerged in the 1970s to become a strong competitor to the Hong Kong film industry, and Taiwanese films were also popular in Hong Kong. These changes not only affected the major players such as Shaw Brothers, but

Hong Kong Cinema 1956–79 41 also halted most overseas financial investment in Hong Kong independent productions. Few overseas distributors or exhibitors would take the risks of investing in films that had little opportunity of distribution and exhibition in their own territories (Film Biweekly no.112, 26 May 1983, 34–5). Although Chinese diasporic cinema was eroded by these two major factors, I do not wish to suggest that overseas markets were no longer important to the Hong Kong film industry, nor to indicate that the Chinese tradition disappeared from Hong Kong films. However, a dominant period of Chinese diasporic cinema in the production-centred film industry and market was clearly over. A Hong Kong-controlled industry producing films targeted at the Hong Kong domestic market and other national film markets rather than the ethnic Chinese market began to develop in the late 1970s. In the next four chapters, I will argue that Hong Kong cinema develops into a quasi-national cinema after the late 1970s, influenced by a further shift in the triangular relationship between the British coloniser, the Chinese motherland and Hong Kong.

3

Hong Kong film production, market and criticism 1979–97

The triangular relationship between Britain, China and Hong Kong that dominated the history of the colony also played an important role in the period leading up to the colony’s return to China. In 1979, when Hong Kong Governor, MacLehose, visited Beijing to discuss the possibility of an extension of the New Territories lease, Hong Kong was not the same society as it had been in 1950 when it separated from the mainland. Economically, Hong Kong was one of the leading financial and trading centres in the world, known as one of the four ‘mini-dragons’ in Asia. Culturally, the colony had developed its own identity. The term Xianggang ren (Hongkongese) was popular both within and outside the territory. In the early 1980s, when the Chinese government indicated that China would take back the colony in 1997, Hong Kong was not enthusiastic about its return. To Hong Kong, China was not just the ‘motherland’, but a country with a Communist government and third-world economy. The uncertainties of an unknown future beyond 1997 meant that the colony suffered a crisis of both confidence and identity from the early 1980s. Between 1982 and 1984, Hong Kong was excluded from Sino-British negotiations about its own future. Between 1984 and 1988, the colony battled against both the Chinese and the British governments over changes to its political structure. China’s uncompromising decision to establish a nuclear power station near the colony, and the drafting of Hong Kong’s constitution of the Basic Law between 1985 and 1990 did not impress the community. Furthermore, the Chinese government’s handling of the Beijing student democracy movement in 1989 also reinforced Hong Kong’s view of the Chinese government as an undemocratic Communist regime. The failure of both Britain’s confidence-boosting scheme after the Tiananmen Square incident and the political reforms instituted by the last Governor, Chris Patten, on the eve of the colony’s return to China reflected the demise of British influence in the triangular relationship. As a consequence, and more than in any other historical periods, Hong Kong cinema has become, in the 1980s and 1990s, a forum for the construction, exploration and questioning of Hong Kong’s sense of nationhood. This chapter begins the second part of the book, which covers the

Hong Kong Cinema 1979–97 43 period from the late 1970s to 1997, when China regained Hong Kong. Following the first two chapters, which carried out an historical examination of Hong Kong cinema, the second part of the book advances the argument that from the late 1970s Hong Kong cinema developed into a quasi-national cinema. This chapter explores the argument by looking at three aspects of Hong Kong cinema in relation to Higson’s approaches to national cinema: a production-centred industry, an exhibition-led film market and film criticism. The first section shows how the ‘absence’ of China had allowed the British coloniser and the local Chinese to manage their own political, economic and social affairs. Consequently, Hong Kong enjoyed autonomy and a geopolitically defined community. The section argues that this Hong Kong community nevertheless identified with China in terms of a shared ethnic cultural identity. Furthermore, Hong Kong’s identification with China was strengthened by two other factors from the early 1990s – the demise of British influence and the colony’s economic integration with South China. The section argues that the nature of the duality of Hong Kong’s identity in the triangular relationship was far more problematic in Hong Kong’s ‘imagined community’ than in any other geopolitically defined nation-states. Hong Kong, therefore, was a quasi-nation. The second section in the chapter discusses Hong Kong’s domination of local film production and its perception of domestic and overseas markets. It argues that although Hong Kong was a quasi-nation, the Hong Kong film industry – its infrastructures of production, distribution and exhibition – operated as a national film industry in respects of its ownership and its economic and cultural relationship with its community. The final section discusses strategies in local film criticism that have shaped Hong Kong cinema as a ‘national’ cinema. As the first section argues, though Hong Kong was a quasi-nation, critical approaches to Hong Kong cinema in the colony were similar to those that evaluate national cinema. However, a few critical approaches to Hong Kong films also contested the status of Hong Kong cinema as representing national cinema. While this chapter focuses on the discussions of Hong Kong’s domination in local film production, exhibition and criticism, Chapters 4, 5 and 6 examine Hong Kong films as texts of national cinema. Each of the three chapters will address the question of the extent to which Hong Kong films contribute to the construction of the concept of the British colony as a quasi-nation.

Hong Kong as a quasi-nation China’s closed-door policy, and the British coloniser’s active involvement in local economic and social affairs produced a relatively autonomous Hong Kong. However, this autonomy was not firmly established until the late 1960s. Although the Hong Kong economy developed rapidly after the

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mid-1950s, the social welfare system in relation to housing (Hopkins 1971: 271–314), education (Podmore 1971: 42), health and working conditions (England 1971: 220–2) remained inadequate. Dissatisfied with Hong Kong’s living and working conditions, many local residents joined the campaign to protest against the colonial government in 1967 (Scott 1989: 121). The campaign was organised by local left-wing organisations spurred on by the mainland’s Cultural Revolution, and quickly spread into a series of violent disturbances causing more than fifty deaths and millions of American dollars’ damage in local trade and property. The 18-month campaign did not achieve the aims of the left-wing extremists: to liberate Hong Kong from the British imperialists. Instead, it brought about a change in the triangular relationship. China further withdrew its influence from Hong Kong. For the next decade, the Chinese government focused on carrying out its policy on Hong Kong – changqi dasuan, chongfen liyong (planning on a long term basis and full utilisation) (C. Yu 1996: 70–7, 92–8). The disturbances described above also encouraged the colonial government to review its own policies on Hong Kong, especially regarding its relationship with the local community. Finally, and most significantly, the local Chinese community distanced itself from China’s Cultural Revolution throughout the 1970s. After the disturbances of 1967 and 1968, the colonial government began to include more local Chinese in government decision-making processes. The government introduced a series of political reforms (Scott 1989: 106–11). It expanded its membership of advisory bodies to represent a wide range of community interests and encouraged Chinese representatives to express the community’s views on government policies. The government also inaugurated a series of administrative reforms and promoted a programme of localisation. It recruited more Chinese into higher levels of administration, and opened more channels of communication with the wider Chinese community. Both Radio and Television Hong Kong (RTHK) and the City District Officer Scheme were founded in 1967 and 1968 respectively to explain the government’s policies and to listen to community opinions. Together with the campaign against corruption, and the improvement in community services during the 1970s, a positive image of the colonial government as responsible, open and ‘democratic’ was established by the late 1970s (S.K. Lau 1983: 25–67). The government’s commitment to social services also gained popular support. Its services created a suitable environment for the development of a geopolitically defined community. In 1960, only 11.6 per cent of Hong Kong’s population enjoyed the benefits of the government’s public housing programmes; however, by the late 1970s, this figure had increased to 43 per cent (Hutcheon 1981: 5). In 1951, there were eleven government hospitals, five government-assisted hospitals and eight private hospitals, with less than two beds for 1,000 people (Choa 1977: 132). By the late 1970s, twenty-six government hospitals were established, twenty-one

Hong Kong Cinema 1979–97 45 government-assisted hospitals and eleven private hospitals, providing four beds per 1,000 people (Choa 1977: 123–54). In 1951, about one in six children attended secondary school; however, this number increased to one in three by the late 1970s (Hinton 1977: 145–62). The government also played an active role in tertiary education. In 1963, the government founded the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and in 1972, the Hong Kong Polytechnic. Expenditure on education increased from HK$845 million in 1972–3 to HK$1981 million in 1978–9 (Scott 1989: 158). These improvements in social services changed the community’s perception of Hong Kong so that it became possible to make one’s home in the colony. The government also promoted community awareness through organising and sponsoring various cultural activities (Turner 1995). Hong Kong’s different cultural and trading festivals were held annually or every 2 years to display the colony’s economic achievements to the world. These festivals manifested and projected an image of Hong Kong as a successful Chinese population, westernised and modern, very different from earlier images of mainland refugees (Ho and Turner 1994). Schemes to increase awareness of the community were particularly targeted at the younger generation, who constituted 55 per cent of Hong Kong’s population at the time (Hong Kong 1993), through various programmes: Fight Against Crime, Summer Youth Activities Programmes, Clean up Hong Kong and Home in Hong Kong. Improvements in the social welfare system, the promotion of cultural activities, as well as the government’s political reforms, achieved profound political significance in the construction of the Hong Kong community. Together they provided examples for the Hong Kong Chinese to compare their situation to the government and lifestyle on the Chinese mainland. In the early 1970s, when Hong Kong tertiary students launched an anticolonialist movement and called upon society to ‘return to China, identifying with the ancestry of home’ (huigui zugou, rentong zuxian), they gained little support from the wider community. Chen Te (1977: 33) explains: Students’ call for a ‘return to China’ could not last. Even if we accept that Hong Kong is not an ideal society, we have to admit that the colony has many good aspects that we value. Otherwise, how can we explain that the Hong Kong population is always increasing; every Mainland person legally or illegally wants to stay. And yet nobody in Hong Kong would like to return. Till today we still see those disappointed illegal Mainland migrants on television when the Hong Kong police force them to return. Television played another important role in the construction of the Hong Kong community. Hong Kong cultural critics argue that television was the pioneer producer of Hong Kong’s indigenous culture (Q.X. Chen 1995: 80–5; Zhou 11990: 1–22; Kung and Zhang 1984: 10–13; Ma 1999: 33–4).

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Television unifies the popular tastes of Hong Kong out of the linguistic and cultural diversity of Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghai and Minnan. From a historical perspective, Chen Qixiang argues that a distinct Hong Kong television culture did not emerge until the mid-1970s though television arrived in the colony in the late 1950s. The prosperous Hong Kong economy in the 1970s allowed television to charge competitive rates for advertising, which funded an increased number of local productions (Q.X. Chen 1995: 84). Socially, there was a demand for cultural products that related to Hong Kong. Growing up in a Cantonese and British educational system, the postwar generation was less impressed by Mandarin cultural products (Q.X. Chen 1995: 82; Law 1995a: 316). Television in Cantonese filled the gap between Mandarin films and Western popular cultural products. In addition, the instant coverage of political, economic and social issues between 1973 and 1979 (of the stock market crash, of civil service reforms, of police corruption, of local crime and of illegal migrants from China and Vietnam), all contributed to the popularity of Hong Kong television. Cultural critics argue that television created a Hong Kong community sharing an imaginary totality (Q.X. Chen 1995: 80–5; Zhou: 1–22; Kung and Zhang 1984: 10–13; Ma 1999: 33–4; Choi 1990: 537–63; H.M. Chan 1994: 443–68), by constructing China as traditional and socialist and Hong Kong as modern and capitalist. Numerous soaps and serials recreated China by adapting classical Chinese novels, modifying and inventing historical events and Chinese mythology. The representation of a nostalgic past produced a particular sense of Chinese cultural identity, from which Hong Kong spectators identified China in terms of its ethnic cultural tradition. At the same time, Hong Kong’s news programmes offered daily images of the socialist mainland, contrasting the two political and social terrains of Hong Kong and China. As China is thus presented as ‘remote’ to Hong Kong’s daily life, the imagined community of Hong Kong becomes distinctive. Arguing that Hong Kong television news anchored the imagined community, Eric Ma (1999: 34) notes: Television news, which remained in the top ten television programmes throughout the 1970s, devoted a considerable proportion of its time to local issues. For the first time, the people in Hong Kong started receiving a daily diet of television images of the city. Through the screen, the literal, much-ignored notion of ‘Hong Kong society’ was knitted into visual news narratives. The abstract ‘city of Hong Kong’ was able, at least as represented in the news programmes, to incarnate itself into concrete, integrative, and localised social events. The ‘local’, instead of the ‘remote’ China, started to become the point of reference for the public. Hong Kong’s imagined community represented through news programmes was also reinforced through RTHK. RTHK did not broadcast pro-

Hong Kong Cinema 1979–97 47 grammes; however, it produced a variety of cultural products focusing on Hong Kong society in the name of social education. For instance, its docudrama Shizi shanxia / Below the Lion Rock constructed the community by showing how governmental policies were set to tackle social problems. It constructed Hong Kong as representing a strong relationship between the colonial government and Chinese society. It also participated in the construction of Hong Kong history through exploring Hong Kong’s relationship with China. In a celebration of 10 years of award-winning programmes on RTHK, Er Lang (1985: 39–40) reports that RTHK’s series and documentaries cover two broad themes. One is the theme of chengzhang (growing up), which focuses on the growing process of the post-war generation in Hong Kong. From the perspective of childhood memories, these programmes depict cultural and social environments where China is absent. The other is the theme of lishi jiyao (historical documentaries), which focus on Hong Kong’s exploration of the history of Hong Kong’s territory in relation to that of China. Commercial stations also constructed the imagined community of Hong Kong by presenting its capitalist images of prosperity. Zhou Huashan (1990: 23), Chen Qixiang (1995: 85) and Eric Kit-wai Ma (1992: 10) argue that a common theme shared in drama serials is a celebration of individualism and success, which explain how Hong Kong’s ‘economic miracle’ was achieved. These drama serials, together with other entertainment programmes, including comedy shows and the Miss Hong Kong Pageant, offered the modern, capitalist, glamorous city lifestyle of Hong Kong, which opposed the traditionalism and socialism of China. Hong Kong’s identity was constructed particularly in relation to mainland Chinese. In his study of Hong Kong television drama serials, Eric Ma (1996: 169–223) argues that China was imagined as the other in the late 1970s. One of the popular television serials, the eighty-episode Wangzhong ren / The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1979) is about a lower middle-class Hong Kong family. The parents bring their oldest son to Hong Kong and leave their infant younger son on the mainland. Twenty years later, the older son graduates from the University of Hong Kong, while the younger son arrives in the colony illegally without informing his family. His arrival brings the family a succession of tragedies. Significantly, the serial produced, in Ma’s words, ‘the two-set collection’ (1999: 74) between the people of Hong Kong and the mainland Chinese. Two geopolitical cultural identities are produced through the categories of high and low culture. Ma writes: Wai [elder brother] mixes with artists, writers, journalists, and film directors. His close friends are making experimental films, publishing ‘serious’ magazines, translating classic Russian novels, and studying in prestigious foreign institutes like MIT and British Film Institute. They hang out in coffee shops, bars, and clubs. On the other hand, Ah

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Hong Kong Cinema 1979–97 Chian [the mainlander] mixes with disco dancers, triads, gamblers, and kung-fu masters. He reads comics and watches television all day. He pays frequent visits to cheap massage parlours and finally opens one himself. (Ma 1999: 74)

By the late 1970s, the idea of a Hong Kong community was firmly established. When 128,000 mainland Chinese arrived illegally in the colony between 1978 and 1979, they were regarded as a social burden on the government and on society (Tong 1991: 17; Y. Yao 1979: 26–9; Wu 1979: 18–21; Qishi niandai vol.114, 20–35). The fear of having to share Hong Kong’s prosperity with the mainland Chinese was further intensified in 1982, when the Chinese government indicated that China would regain the colony in 1997. Fearing life under a Communist government, and having a lack of confidence in the British coloniser after 2 years of Sino-British negotiations, Hong Kong nationalism developed rapidly to pursue the rights of the community in formulating a self-governing body under Chinese sovereignty. The Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984 opened another chapter in the triangular relationship. The colonial government was gradually withdrawing its involvement in Hong Kong’s affairs and, increasingly, China became involved in dealing with Hong Kong’s political, economic and social interests. To China, Hong Kong’s return was not merely an issue concerning Hong Kong, but the beginning of national reunification under the Communist Party. Hong Kong provided China with an opportunity to demonstrate its ability to control a capitalist society under Deng Xiaoping’s policy of ‘one country two systems’. Economically, the colony also played an important role in China’s modernisation programme. These national, political, and economic agendas motivated China to make sure that every step in the transition was made on their terms. Given two major factors – the fear of living under the Communist government and the lack of confidence in the British government’s dealings with China – Hong Kong felt the need to articulate its concerns. In theory, Hong Kong nationalism had little trouble with Deng Xiaoping’s policy of ‘one country two systems’. But in reality, the question of how the Chinese government would carry out its policies was unclear to the colony, since China and Hong Kong interpreted some key concepts quite differently, for instance, those of sovereignty, election and high degree of autonomy. The transition period was politically turbulent but economically prosperous. A concern that China’s policy of ‘Hong Kong people rule Hong Kong’ would not be implemented led Hong Kong nationalists to demand that the colonial government keep their promise to assist the colony in establishing a representative government before Hong Kong’s handover to China. However, Hong Kong’s voice was overshadowed by Britain’s

Hong Kong Cinema 1979–97 49 cautious policy towards China. Under Governor David Wilson, the establishment of a representative government through direct election was delayed. The Beijing student democracy movement in 1989 intensified Hong Kong’s desire for democracy; at the same time, it caused a further crisis of identity and confidence. The year 1990 saw a dramatic increase in the number of Hong Kong residents migrating overseas: according to the Hong Kong government’s conservative’ figures, numbers rose from 42,000 in 1989 to 62,000 in 1990 (Skeldon 1996: 141–5). Hong Kong’s last Governor, Chris Patten, was passionate in his launch of political reforms for strengthening the ‘democratic’ system before the departure of the coloniser. However, the reforms were viewed cynically by both the British in the colony (Tambling 1997: 355–75) and the Hong Kong Chinese, especially those in the business sector, as an exercise enabling colonial retreat with honour and dignity. However, despite Hong Kong’s fear of the Beijing government and despite the colony’s active engagement in the construction of a distinct Hong Kong identity, the shared historical and ethnic cultural tradition with China has always played an essential role in Hong Kong’s geopolitically defined ‘imagined’ community. The majority of Hong Kong Chinese would not deny their ethnic cultural roots. Every year, thousands of Hong Kong people cross the Chinese border to celebrate various traditional festivals with their families, and to renew their ethnic cultural links with China. And every year, different political, professional and regional cultural groups in Hong Kong celebrate significant Chinese national days including Chinese Youth Day (4 May), National Day(s) of the People’s Republic of China (1 October) and Republic of China (10 October). Traditional cultural values, customs and ways of life have always been maintained and developed in the colony. Since the early 1980s after China opened its doors, Hong Kong’s ethnic cultural connections with the mainland have been strengthened. The shared ethnic cultural tradition with the mainland has encouraged Hong Kong to view China as its motherland, despite the latter being under Communist government. When Beijing students launched their democracy movement in 1989, the British colony’s residents, like Beijing’s residents, made heart-felt cries of ‘Chinese do not attack Chinese!’. Instantly, the Hong Kong Chinese became the students’ comrades. They donated money, gave blood and, finally, assisted student leaders to flee China. About one in six Hong Kong residents took to the streets to express their strong support for the students. Hong Kong’s support for the Beijing students reflected the colony’s dual identity as people of both Hong Kong and China. In the early 1990s when China suffered a flood diaster, the colony, once again, offered generous donations. In 1996 when the Japanese built lighthouses on the Diaoyu island, the Hong Kong residents of Chinese origin organised public demonstrations to protest against Japan’s claim to sovereignty over the islands. These events revealed that the

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‘imagined community’ of Hong Kong was not simply confined to the concept of a geopolitically defined community, but also subscribed to the notion of a shared ethnic cultural identity with China. During this time, Hong Kong’s identification with China was strengthened not only by the demise of British influence in the colony, but also by the increase of China’s influence over Hong Kong’s economy. China had become Hong Kong’s most important trading partner. The mainland was the largest market as well as supplier for the colony’s re-exports, and the second largest market for Hong Kong’s domestic exports (Hong Kong 1989: 68–9). Eighty-nine percent of goods re-exported through Hong Kong were destined for, or originated from China (Hong Kong 1995: 68). China was also the most significant location for Hong Kong investment, including light manufacturing industries, tourist facilities, property development and financial services. In Guangdong province, more than three million people worked for Hong Kong companies (Hong Kong 1989: 68–9). At the same time, China was also the major investor in Hong Kong, in the areas of banking, importing, exporting, wholesaling and retailing, transportation, warehousing, property development, financial services, and infrastructure projects (Sung 1996: 182–208; G. Shen 1994: 469–84). In the context of the demise of the British coloniser and with the everincreasing economic integration with China, Hong Kong could not be ‘imagined’ purely from the perspective of a geopolitically defined community; the ‘imagining’ of the Hong Kong community overlapped with the community’s identification with the mainland as the ‘great Chinese nation’. Positioned within the triangular relationship, Hong Kong could not but be a quasi-nation. This was not only because the colony lacked political status as an independent nation, but also because the ‘imagining’ of self as a distinct community in the triangular relationship was far more complicated and problematic than for other ‘imagined’ national communities. I end this section by citing from an essay by an undergraduate student from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her feelings of ambiguity in identifying with China are not only commonly shared with the Hong Kong-born generation of Chinese origin, but also reflect the problematic notion of a distinct Hong Kong cultural identity. Until the ’89 student democracy movement, the kind of subtle feelings [in identifying with China] mixed with untold remoteness and contradiction was again inspired by the up-surging call of Beijing University students. . . . As a bystander, I felt that I shared their feelings. While they were crying, I followed and cried; while they were calling out, I followed and called out too. It was the first time that I had been so proud of being Chinese. But, every time I read the [Beijing students’] ‘Statement of Hunger Strike’: ‘The nation is our nation, the people are our people’, I felt at a loss. It doesn’t matter how much I participated,

Hong Kong Cinema 1979–97 51 how sincere I was, I always had a feeling that Beijing students had more right than I did to make such a statement. The time when I felt that I shared a direct line of descent with them, was also the time that I felt extremely sorrowful. (K.X. Luo 1996: 22)

‘National’ characteristics in film industry and market In the late 1970s, when the British colonial government began to concern itself with the ninty-nine-years’ New Territories lease, the Hong Kong film industry was in the process of losing the market of the Chinese diaspora in South-East Asia, and of gaining control of its own film industry. From the late 1970s to the early 1980s, changes in the control of the industry and film markets ushered in the era of Hong Kong ‘national’ cinema, in which the colony became the dominant force in four areas related to national cinema: a production-centred industry, an exhibition-led film market, film texts and film criticism. Though the colony was a quasi-nation, the Hong Kong film industry operated as a ‘national’ film industry. During the period between the late 1970s and 1997, Hong Kong cinema shared many of the features of national cinema. The industry was owned and controlled by the Hong Kong community. It shared a close relationship with Hong Kong business groups, for instance, real estate, transportation, retail franchises, tourism and catering businesses. At the same time, it also formed a relationship with the Hong Kong government insofar as the government assisted the industry through promotion and cultural exchange programmes. As with other national film industries, the Hong Kong film industry was also a forum for the construction of Hong Kong’s nationhood. From the early 1990s, lobby groups in Hong Kong increasingly demanded that the colonial government make funds available for alternative film production, protect the overseas copyrights of Hong Kong films, and assist the mainstream industry in promotion overseas and shooting on location. Politicians, cultural critics, artists and film-makers were all members of these lobby groups. Together, they also demanded that political censorship be removed from Hong Kong film censorship (Z.F. Gu 1983: 2–3; C.T. Li 1986: 3; Film Biweekly no.129, 1984; 3–7, no.189, 1986, 3; no.214, 1987, 5–7; no.209, 1987; Hong Kong Film Forum 94). A decrease in the South-East Asian film market in the late 1970s increased the importance of the domestic market. For instance, after the South-East Asian market was constrained, the difference in Hong Kong’s box-office returns was one of the major factors which differentiated the two majors of the 1970s, Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest. Golden Harvest was founded in 1970 by Raymond Chow (Zou Wenhuai), a Hong Kong born Hakka, Shanghai St. John’s University graduate, and head of publicity and production chief of Shaw Brothers between 1958 and 1970.

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In 1970 when Cathay indicated that the company intended to end its production business in Hong Kong, Raymond Chow leased Cathay’s studio, then contracted its exhibition chain of 104 cinema theatres in South-East Asia (Ming Bao, 21 September 1971), and established Golden Harvest. In the early 1970s, Golden Harvest produced Bruce Lee’s three films, and the commercial success of these, not only in Asia but also in the mainstream Western market, made Golden Harvest a serious competitor to Shaw Brothers. It was during the period following the death of Bruce Lee that Golden Harvest took over the leading role from Shaw Brothers in Hong Kong, demonstrating the emergence of Hong Kong as a force in the local film industry. From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, Golden Harvest continued to be the leader in the local box-office, although it produced fewer films than Shaw Brothers. The success of Golden Harvest in the domestic market attracted local exhibitors to leave Shaw Brothers for Golden Harvest. In the late 1970s, Golden Harvest established its own exhibition chain overseas (Jarvie 1977: 73), while its partner Cathay was under pressure from the Malaysian localisation programme. By contrast, the loss of the South-East Asian market was fatal to Shaw Brothers. Its huge investment in maintaining its studio and employees could not be supported by a share of the domestic and Taiwanese markets in competition with Golden Harvest, as well as the productive Taiwanese film industry. Two key factors are commonly acknowledged as bringing about the decline of Shaw Brothers. One was its rigorous studio system, which restricted artists’ creativity, thus causing film talents to leave. For instance, Shaw Brothers’ policy of long-term contracts drove both Bruce Lee and Michael Hui to Golden Harvest’s project contract system. The second factor was that Shaw Brothers’ films lagged behind the social realities of Hong Kong. The studio continued to produce films about the historical mainland, whereas Golden Harvest’s social satirical comedies directed by Michael Hui dealt with Hong Kong in the 1970s. In 1982, Shaw Brothers broke its tradition by showing Golden Harvest films in its own exhibition chain in order to ‘survive’ (Shao 1985). By 1983, most of Shaw Brothers studios were used for television production. By 1984, Shaw Brothers had to sell 70 per cent of the exhibition and distribution facilities in Malaysia. Production had dropped from between thirty-five to fifty films annually after 1966 to fifteen films in 1985. Moreover, Shaw Brothers exhibition chain in Hong Kong also folded. In 1986, the studio produced no films. Apart from the period of Japanese occupation of Hong Kong from 1940 to 1946, it was the first time that the Shaw family had not produced a film since the family business transferred to Hong Kong on the eve of the Japanese occupation of Shanghai in the mid 1930s. The breakdown of Chinese diasporic cinema provided an opportunity for local business to dominate in the Hong Kong film industry. In the early 1980s two other Hong Kong entrepreneurs joined the industry and estab-

Hong Kong Cinema 1979–97 53 lished their own production houses, distribution agencies and exhibition chains. In 1980, Cinema City was founded by a local real estate enterprise, Kowloon Development Company, which also owned Golden Amusements Ltd and was a shareholder of the local bus transportation system (Leng 1985: 5–6). As Golden Amusements had managed a number of cinema theatres under the name of Golden Princess exhibition since 1977 (M.W. Yu 1983: 18), they established their production house, Cinema City, to supply products to Golden Princess. In 1984, D&B film production was founded by the owner of an up-market jewellery and fashion retail business Dickson Poon. Poon also owned Dickson Amusements, which was involved in popular cultural productions, including popular music, video production and video retailing businesses (Film Biweekly 28 November 1985, 3–9). In the following year, D&B leased Shaw Brothers’ exhibition chain and established D&B exhibition in Hong Kong. As distribution and exhibition were controlled by these three majors, the majority of local ‘independent’ film productions in Hong Kong became sub-production houses for the three majors throughout the 1980s (Hong Kong Cinema in the Eighties 1991: 91). As discussed in the previous section, community awareness in Hong Kong developed rapidly after the late 1960s, and was also reflected in the local film industry and the industry’s perception and development of film markets. The Hong Kong film industry strengthened its dominance in the domestic market through expanding local exhibition, and taking over foreign film exhibition, especially Hollywood film distribution in Hong Kong. Instead of targeting the market of the Chinese diaspora as in the earlier period, the Hong Kong film industry followed the success of Bruce Lee’s films in the West to further explore national film markets by aiming at the two perhaps most competitive markets in the world, the United States and Japan. As the older companies, Cathay, Shaw Brothers and Guangyi had used Hong Kong mainly for production, they paid less attention to expanding their influence in Hong Kong film exhibition. Although Shaw Brothers owned a couple of local cinema theatres, by comparison most Hong Kong cinema theatres were owned by local real estate businesses.1 In the 1960s and 1970s, local cinema theatres were grouped into three categories (Ng 1983: 134–8). The first comprised those luxury cinema theatres with more expensive tickets, which showed first-run Hollywood and Mandarin films. The second made up the majority. Their tickets were sold at lower prices, and they showed mainly Cantonese films and second-run Hollywood and Mandarin films. The third comprised those cinemas selling even cheaper tickets, sometimes one ticket buying two Cantonese films. In the 1960s when films from Cathay, Shaw Brothers, Guanyi and other Cantonese production houses were profitable, local exhibitors contracted these companies for supplies. In the late 1960s Cantonese films were in decline; as a consequence, Cantonese film exhibition chains closed down in 1970, and

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these cinema houses shifted to showing Mandarin films. The Hong Kong market was then dominated mainly by Hollywood and Shaw Brothers. However, from the early 1970s the emergence of Golden Harvest and other independent production houses in association with Golden Harvest encouraged some local exhibitors to leave Shaw Brothers for Golden Harvest. From the late 1970s, distribution and exhibition in Hong Kong was carried out by three major production houses: Golden Harvest, Cinema City and Shaw Brothers (D&B after 1985). In 1983, fifty-one out of a total eighty-eight cinemas in Hong Kong were controlled by the three majors and exhibited local films, in comparison to five cinemas owned by the mainland government screening mainly mainland films, and thirty-two cinemas exhibiting American, Japanese and European films. In addition, the majority of these thirty-two cinemas also exhibited popular profitable local films (M.W. Yu 1983: 18–21). In 1988, as local films became more popular than foreign films in Hong Kong, another local film exhibition chain, Newport, was formed by a group of cinemas previously showing European films (Lan 1988: 7–12). As Newport was controlled by a family real estate business rather than a production house, the establishment of Newport encouraged independent film production in Hong Kong. In 1988, among 133 cinema theatres in Hong Kong, 107 showed Hong Kong films, compared with twenty-two cinemas showing foreign films (see Table 3.1). As a consequence, the box-office takings for local films also increased (see Tables 3.2a and 3.2b). From 1990 to 1997, there were many changes in production houses, distribution method and exhibition chains. Cinema City and D&B ceased operation. Instead, independents such as Hui Hark’s Film Workshop, Alfred Chang’s Mobile Film Production, Johnny Mak Productions, Ko Chi Sum Productions, Cosmopolitan Film Production and the United Filmmakers Organisation became the major forces in local production. Also, following Newport, another three exhibition chains were established for Table 3.1 Number of cinema theatres in Hong Kong, 1983–94 Year

Total no. of cinemas

Cinemas showing Chinese films

Cinemas showing foreign films

Cinemas showing both Chinese and foreign films

1983 1985 1987 1988 1994

89 91 122 129 176

55 62 88 107 130

23 29 34 22 44

11

2

Source: This table has been put together from several sources: the 1983 figures from Yu Mo-wan (1983); 1985, 1987 and 1988 from Chen Qingwei (1985 and 1988); and the 1994 figures are compiled from cinema theatres listed in Film Biweekly.

Hong Kong Cinema 1979–97 55 Table 3.2a Percentage of Hong Kong box-office takings, 1977–89 Year

Hong Kong films %

Chinese and Foreign films Taiwanese films % %

Total takings HK$’000

1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989

50.3 52.6 47.7 46.8 56.3 60.9 64.4 70.2 64.0 67.5 71.1 77.8 69.2

3.6 0.9 3.5 5.8 3.2 1.1 2.0 2.4 2.3 3.5 3.1 2.1 0.6

0,208,012 0,229,350 0,252,309 0,352,585 0,434,656 0,661,809 0,656,309 0,795,974 0,869,385 0,910,702 1,209,660 1,410,775 1,335,121

46.1 46.4 48.8 47.4 40.5 38.0 33.6 27.4 33.7 29.0 25.8 21.4 27.8

Source: Law Kar, ‘Hong Kong film market and trends in the 1980s’, Hong Kong films in the 1980s, Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1991, p.70.

Table 3.2b Percentage of Hong Kong box-office takings, 1990–6 Year

Hong Kong films %

Foreign films %

Total takings HK$’000

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996

66.7 77.2 94.6 73.6 69.2 58.0 53.9

33.3 22.8 5.4 26.4 30.8 42.0 46.1

1,403,740 1,287,995 1,551,637 1,538,496 1,384,073 1,339,092 1,222,300

Source: Hong Kong, Kowloon and New Territories Motion Picture Industry Association 1997. Foreign films also include the mainland Chinese and Taiwanese films. Box-office takings of mainland and Taiwanese films are not available.

local films: Imperial, Regal and Modern. Among five local film exhibition chains, only Golden Harvest and Mandarin, which was established in the early 1990s, engaged in film production. This meant that there were more opportunities for independent film-makers to exhibit their products than in the 1980s. Although the industry became more diverse in the 1990s, it remained under the control of Hong Kong business and community factions. Equally, Hong Kong also increased its role in the local exhibition of foreign films. The distribution of foreign films was divided between those who managed their own cinema houses for screening foreign films, such as

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Shaw Brothers’ Nanguo, Golden Harvest’s Panasia and Edko, and those independent distributors who sought exhibitors to screen their films. In the early 1980s, there were twenty-three cinemas showing foreign films, thirtyfive per cent of total local exhibition (M.W. Yu 1983: 20). Among them about six showed exclusively foreign films, of which five were dominated by Hollywood films, and one by independent American films and other national films. In 1983, about 270 foreign films were screened in Hong Kong, 65 per cent of which were Hollywood films, British 10 per cent, French 9 per cent, Italian 8 per cent, and the rest Japanese, German and Danish. The other seventeen cinemas showed principally foreign films but popular Hong Kong films were also shown in these cinema houses (Q.W. Chen 1985: 11–12). Before the end of the 1980s, Hollywood majors distributed their own films either through their own distribution agencies, such as Warner Bros (the Far East) and Disney, or through their amalgamated distributors, Fox-Columbia, or United International Pictures for Universal, Paramount, MGM, and United Artists. But at the end of the 1980s, only Warner Bros (the Far East) remained to distribute its own films; American films from both the majors and independents were disseminated by local distributors and shared between Golden Harvest, Golden Princess (Late Empire), Newport, Edko and Astor. In 1989, Golden Harvest brought United International Pictures to Hong Kong, which enabled the company to distribute films produced by Universal, Paramount, MGM and United Artists. As American products comprised about 75 per cent of foreign films exhibited in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong market was eventually controlled by the local film industry. Spanning both Chinese and foreign film exhibition, the industry was able to control its domestic market for its own best interests. For example, after Golden Harvest purchased UIP, announcing that it would form an exhibition chain for UIP films, it also indicated that people should not be surprised to see Golden Harvest films screened in these cinemas (Q.W. Chen 1988: 9–11). One of the major differences between Hong Kong cinema after the late 1970s and diasporic cinema was reflected in the development of overseas markets. The restraints on the South-East Asian market in the late 1970s shifted the industry from rather narrowly targeting the Chinese diaspora to focusing on other national markets. As very few Hong Kong films were able to receive as much attention in other countries as Hollywood films, it was crucial to access Hollywood distribution and exhibition in the world markets. Through financial investment, Golden Harvest produced a number of American films, including Cannonball, Battle Creek Brawl, The Killing of America, The Return of the Soldiers, The Rats, The Texans, Terrible Game, The Rough Riders, High Road to China, Megaforce (Jiahe dianying 1982) and Ninja Turtles. Golden Harvest also engaged with film productions in different versions for different markets. For instance, Jackie Chan’s The Protector 1985 involved three versions: the American

Hong Kong Cinema 1979–97 57 version was made by American film-makers; two other versions by Jackie Chan with Hong Kong and Japanese film-makers were created for the Hong Kong and Japanese markets, modulating plots, actors, patterns of action and degrees of violence (X.Y. Chen 1985). From the late 1980s, the Hong Kong film industry began to penetrate other national film markets through distribution and exhibition. In 1987, Golden Harvest and Perlis Plantation established an exhibition chain in Malaysia, with forty-two cinemas sharing 36 per cent of the local market (Xin Bao 8 and 14 November 1995), which did not conflict with the Malaysian government’s policy that indigenous people should own and manage no less than 30 per cent national business and wealth. In 1988, with Australian Village Roadshow Ltd, Golden Harvest constructed a cinema complex in Singapore and Malaysia. In 1993, they established Entertainment and Theatre Network Co. Ltd to develop a cinema complex in Thailand together with a local exhibition business group. Because a national film industry functions as part of both national economic and cultural institutions, it naturally draws the attention of the government. Since the late 1970s, the Hong Kong government has provided a wide range of assistance to the industry. Unlike some European countries, or Australia and Canada where national governments provided funds for production, the Hong Kong government mainly played a role in assisting and promoting its film industry. In the area of production, the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority (TELA), Police Public Relations Branch, and the Broadcasting, Culture and Sport Branch hold regular meetings with representative bodies and associations from the industry seeking assistance.2 The government also involved in assisting the industry in hosting the annual International Film Market in 1997. In the area of promotion, the industry has been included in the overseas promotion programmes headed by top Government officials during the 1980s and 1990s.3 The government also set up the Hong Kong Arts Development Council (HKADC) to support and promote art, including films. The Hong Kong Urban Council has held a 16-day annual International Film Festival in Hong Kong since 1977. The Urban Council allocated HK$150 million to set up a Hong Kong film archive.4 The Urban Council and the Hong Kong Arts Centre have also organised the annual Hong Kong Independent Short Film Competition since 1992. Furthermore, the government has contributed funds for degree courses in television and film at the Baptist University and the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. Nationhood is reflected by various groups in a national community by participating in the construction of its national cinema. From the 1980s, lobby groups comprising politicians, journalists, cultural critics, filmmakers and other artists were involved in pushing the colonial government to develop its domestic cinema as a cinema of Hong Kong. The groups protested against the colonial government’s political censorship, arguing

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that political censorship only demonstrated the government’s fear under pressure from the Chinese government (Hong Kong Film Forum 94: 7–9). They urged the government to establish the Hong Kong Film Archive to preserve materials demonstrating Hong Kong’s own history as different from that of China. They demanded the government allocate a seat in Legislative Council for representatives of the Hong Kong film industry. To assist film production, some lobby groups insisted that the government should establish the Hong Kong Film Development Council or a Hong Kong Film Commission to provide funds for ‘those art films that the industry could not produce’ (W.M. Luo 1994). The reason was, as Luo Weiming (1994) argues: In terms of film as art, Hong Kong cinema could not keep up with China and Taiwan. When the mainland Chinese and Taiwanese filmmakers received international awards in Cannes, Berlin, Venice, our Hong Kong new wave film directors were either forced to make commercial films, or had no films to make. In a review examining whether government funds had been used productively in hosting the Hong Kong International Film Festival, the programme co-ordinator, Li Cheuk-to (1994), also related the significance of the festival to Hong Kong’s image in the international community. He argues: The most significant part of the festival is the section dealing with Hong Kong films in retrospect and publication of research, essays and primary materials. For more than a decade, its achievement does not only contribute to the study of Hong Kong cinema. Significantly it makes our International Film festival a unique place among many international film festivals. The input from the Hong Kong community in production, distribution and exhibition, together with the participation of the Hong Kong government and various lobby groups, has enabled the Hong Kong film industry to become not only a profitable business, but also a distinct ‘national’ cinema in the world of national cinemas. This distinguishes the industry from its position during the earlier two historical periods, when it existed as part of Chinese national cinema and Chinese diasporic cinema.

‘National’ characteristics in film criticism Local film critics also endeavoured to shape Hong Kong cinema as a ‘national’ cinema. Their critical approaches reflected ways of perceiving the country’s cinema as national cinema. In general, these critical approaches showed in four major areas. First, critics set up Cantonese

Hong Kong Cinema 1979–97 59 cinema as a subject of Hong Kong cinema by exploring and laying out the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin films in terms of their aesthetic style and production modes. Second, the critical evaluation of films is contextualised within Hong Kong’s perspective on its political, economic and social situation. Third, critics emphasised the notion of ‘becoming Hong Kong’ through studying the process of indigenisation of influence from outside, especially Hollywood. Finally, they studied Hong Kong cinema in relation to other national cinemas. For instance, Hong Kong’s new wave films have been compared to Italian Neo-realism, French New Wave and German New Cinema. These critical approaches have developed a perception of Hong Kong cinema as part of the world of national cinema studies. These critical approaches developed from the mid-1970s as television was becoming localised. When the Hong Kong film market was dominated by Shaw Brothers’ Mandarin films in the early 1970s, television stations began to recruit local ‘writers, artists, intellectuals, and university graduates into the industry’ and produce television programmes reflecting Hong Kong society (Ma 1999: 35). These programmes were highly praised and encouraged by a group of Hong Kong film critics, who shared many experiences with these film-makers: growing up in Hong Kong, receiving their film education overseas or through self-study of Western film theories, and distancing themselves from China. They established a film journal, Da texie (Close-up), in 1976, and actively supported and promoted those television products and films that presented images of Hong Kong. Many of these film critics were themselves script-writers for television series and Hong Kong new wave films (1978–81), for instance, Law Kar, Ng Ho, Lau Shing-hon, Shu Kei, Leung Noong-kong, Rachel Zen, Manfred Wong, Huang Zhi and Kam Ping-hing. Close-up which, after 1979, became Film Biweekly stands out as the single film journal committed to Hong Kong cinema. It introduced Western film theories to Hong Kong film criticism through the analysis of Hong Kong films within a Western critical framework. Although the journal has developed a more commercial appeal since the early 1980s, it has maintained a local focus and local perspective. Generally, it covers mainly Hong Kong and Hollywood films, with just ten per cent of its content devoted to the mainland Chinese, Taiwanese or other national cinemas. With government funds available, extensive studies of Hong Kong cinema became possible in 1978, which, in turn, contributed to the construction of the study of Hong Kong cinema as part of national cinema studies. From 1978, the Hong Kong Urban Council has funded and hosted an annual International Film Festival, of which the major section comprised Hong Kong films and studies of Hong Kong films. Ninety-five per cent of contributors were local film critics, for instance Law Kar, Sek Kei, Ng Ho, Yu Mo-wan, Leung Noong-kong, Li Cheuk-to, Shu Kei, Lin

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Nien-tung and Lau Shing-hon. This was not an accident.5 Each year a collection of materials and major essays on Hong Kong film history, film industry, genres and stars has been published. Its first publication in 1979 set the pattern for its method of selection and its critical approach, guided by three main issues: . . . artistic and formal qualities of the Hong Kong films; the character of the industry; and also the changing social and economic face of Hong Kong society. (N.T. Lin 1978b: 7) To regard Hong Kong cinema as a distinct cinema is to differentiate Hong Kong cinema from the terms of Chinese national cinema. Chinese film scholars on the mainland believe that Hong Kong cinema is part of Chinese national cinema. Chinese film historian, Tan Chunfa (1994: 65–73), argues that Hong Kong cinema originates and develops from Shanghai cinema. However, local publications on Hong Kong cinemas have shown, as Law Kar argues, that from a very early stage of Chinese film history, communication between Shanghai and Hong Kong was not a one-way process, but a two-way process in which Shanghai cinema was also enriched by input from Hong Kong (Law 1994: 100–2). One of the critical approaches to Hong Kong film was to establish the ways in which aesthetic codes and conventions of Cantonese cinema are different from Mandarin cinema. Acknowledging that theatrical stage play had a significant impact on Chinese films, Li Cheuk-to (1983: 60–4) argues that the impact was reflected differently in Mandarin and Cantonese films. Mandarin films retain the sequences and dramas of the original plays. However, in terms of camera angles, Mandarin films reflect multiple points of view so that the audience is able to see from different angles and levels, instead of from a ‘fixed’ front eye-level. In contrast, Cantonese films retain the relationship between stage play and audience. Films begin with establishing shots to assume a fixed audience position. Characters enter into a scene, and they normally face the camera. Moreover, a scene is completed only when characters have left the location. This feature, as Li Cheuk-to argues, relates to the conventions of Cantonese cinema in its loose structure and detailed description. In terms of film performance, Mandarin film actors retain theatrical performance, whereas the Cantonese film actors stress naturalness and are more directly involved in communication with the spectators. In their different approaches to and focus on film history, narratives, genres and performance, Law Kar, Ng Ho, Sek Kei and Yu Mo-wan argued that Cantonese folk culture, Cantonese opera and Cantonese Kung Fu have played important roles in Hong Kong films; Mandarin films simply did not embrace such themes. Mandarin films lack the lively nature, vigorous language and flexibility of Cantonese culture (Law 1995b: 184).

Hong Kong Cinema 1979–97 61 Acknowledging that Hollywood and Chinese literature after May Fourth movement had an impact on Cantonese melodrama, Law Kar argues that Cantonese opera was the base from which Cantonese melodrama developed either in terms of its mode of production or in narratives and performance (Law 1986: 10–14). Moreover, Cantonese dialect, its colloquial and vernacular dialogue, has a unique function in Cantonese comedies, which differentiates them from Mandarin comedies (Law 1985: 10–12). The second critical approach to Hong Kong film criticism involved the attention paid to the study of Hong Kong films in the political and social contexts of the colony, which Darrell William Davis (1996: 17) calls a ‘reflectionist model’. This approach was charted throughout the 1980s. Roger Garcia (1978: 36–9) argues that Cantonese films in the 1950s had already revealed a sense of Chinese identity crisis in presenting mainland migrants facing conflicts between traditional morality and a capitalist lifestyle in Hong Kong. These conflicts of the 1960s were replaced by petty bourgeois fantasy and glamour Hollywood-style as the society entered the stage of urbanisation and industrialisation (Garcia 1982: 101–6). In the 1970s, Hong Kong films became more direct in reflecting Hong Kong society, an approach influenced by the localisation of television programmes and the colonial government’s promotion of community awareness. In the 1980s, as Sek Kei (1991: 11–17) argues, Hong Kong films reflected both a sense of achievement of ‘being one of the four mini dragons in Asia’, and a sense of crisis under the shadow of 1997. The third approach was to study the process of Hong Kong films absorbing narrative strategies, genres, aesthetics and technologies from outside Hong Kong. As the colony is the place where ‘West meets East’, film productions in Hong Kong are naturally influenced by Hollywood, Japanese, the mainland and other national films. Paul Lee (1991: 78–84) argues for four major ways in which Hong Kong popular culture, including films, absorbs and indigenises cultural products from the West, Japan and China. Stephen Teo (1994: 17–24) also suggests that after the Shanghai emigres settled in the territory, Hong Kong enabled them ‘to evolve a unique fabricated style that was partly Shanghai, partly Hong Kong’, through a combination of Chinese cultural nationalism on the one hand and Hollywood aestheticized materialism on the other. The final critical approach involved comparing Hong Kong films to other national films. Darrell William Davis calls this comparative study a ‘dialogue model’, and argues that this model shapes a country’s cinema as a national cinema. In the early 1980s, Film Biweekly published a series of debates on the term ‘Hong Kong New Wave’ to discuss the extent to which a particular collection of Hong Kong films should be understood as new wave (Film Biweekly no.50, 1989; no.51, 1981; Special Summer Edition’ July 1981). These writings provoked a study of Hong Kong films in relation to Italian Neo-Realism, French New Wave and New German Cinema (F.L. Zhang 1993: 188–204), on the one hand, and to the mainland’s fifth

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generation films and Taiwan’s new cinema, on the other. All four critical approaches examined above have contributed to an understanding of Hong Kong cinema as a geopolitical culturally defined cinema. However, in comparison to the earlier stage before the late 1970s, studies of Hong Kong cinema in relation to Chinese traditional art and aesthetics decreased, but did not disappear (N.T. Lin 1984; S.H. Lau 1991). Other critical activities to promote the understanding of Hong Kong cinema in relation to the colony’s specific political, cultural and social context were developed in the early 1980s. The Hong Kong Golden Film Awards were launched in 1981. It was the first time that Hong Kong had held its own film awards since the inception of its film industry in 1913. It broke the tradition of Hong Kong films having to compete with either China’s film awards or the Taiwan Golden Horse Awards. The establishment of the Golden Film Awards also replaced a tradition in local film criticism since the 1960s, of local centres selecting ten best foreign and Chinese films, including the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan (B.S. Chen 1982). Since 1981, the Golden Film Awards have become a popular cultural event in Hong Kong. They had been supported by RTHK in the first few years, and have always been encouraged by the local film journal Film Biweekly, the industry’s representatives: Hong Kong, Kowloon and New Territories Motion Picture Industry Association, and television. The awards symbolised a recognition by society of the growth of Hong Kong cinema and indicated that the latter had become a ‘national’ cinema in terms of the participation of its film industry, local government, television, film critics and the community as a whole. However, to what extent is Hong Kong nationhood constructed, presented and explored in local films themselves? The following three chapters will address this question by studying Hong Kong films as texts of national cinema.

4

Hong Kong films The cultural specificity of a quasi-national film

Chapters 4, 5 and 6 will focus on Hong Kong films in relation to the concept of national cinema. They discuss the extent to which Hong Kong films contribute to the understanding of the British colony as a nation, but argue that in terms of both political and cinematic contexts, the outcome has been more the construction of a ‘quasi-nation’ than a ‘nation’. I approach Hong Kong films from two perspectives. From a broad perspective, this chapter studies Hong Kong films as a collection of cultural products that display a specific cultural character in the world of national cinemas. Chapters 5 and 6 offer more specific and detailed analyses of films that represent Hong Kong’s geopolitical cultural identity of a quasination. Film scholars argue that national cinema is often recognised by the cultural specificity of film products (Ukadike 1994: 201–22; Diawara 1996a: 209–19; Malkmus and Armes 1991: 63–162; Diegues 1997: 272–94; Petrie 1991: 134–67; Abel 1984: 69–238, 279–526; Higson 1996: 232–48; Jordan and Morgan-Tamosunas 1998: 61–155; Nolletti and Desser 1992: 131–226). To identify features of the specific cultural character of Hong Kong films, I will use Susan Hayward’s typologies ‘that will assist in the enunciation of the “national” of a cinema’ (1993: 8). This chapter argues for the cultural specificity of Hong Kong films. It claims that this cultural specificity is demonstrated in cinematic representations of Hong Kong’s identity as a duality: being geopolitically both Hong Kong and China. The British colony was not only imagined as a distinct community through drawing boundaries distinguishing those involved in the triangular relationship, but it was also imagined, fantasised, and claimed as ‘authentically’ Chinese. The duality of Hong Kong’s geopolitical identity generates Hong Kong’s quasi-national identity: Hong Kong was imagined and projected both as a distinct community in its own right and as part of China.

Film narratives As a narrative is a cultural means of making sense of the world, a film narrative can be understood ‘as a reflection of the nation’ (Hayward 1993:

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8). This reflexivity, according to Hayward, occurs in two ways. One is through the process of screen adaptation, and the other is through the way in which filmic narratives explicitly and implicitly construct the significance of a nation. Insofar as filmic adaptations are based on indigenous cultural texts, such adaptations serve the role of ‘confirming the natural heritage’ of that nation. In terms of Hong Kong, the question of which indigenous cultural texts are adapted is important for the question of cultural identity. In the 1950s and 1960s, filmic adaptations were mainly based on China’s texts – classical Chinese literature, Chinese mythology, Cantonese folklore and Cantonese operas.1 The 1970s saw a dramatic decrease in the filmic adaptation of Cantonese operas and folklore; however, screen adaptations of classical Chinese literature remained popular.2 At the same time, the number of filmic adaptations of Hong Kong’s cultural texts increased. By the 1980s, the number of filmic adaptations of China’s literature dramatically decreased, but did not disappear.3 In contrast, adaptations of Hong Kong cultural texts – novels, radio plays, stage plays and cartoon series – constituted the mainstream in local screen adaptations.4 The popularity of Hong Kong films and their relation to other indigenous Hong Kong cultural texts exhibit a characteristic of the specificity of Hong Kong cinema as part of the community’s popular culture. At the same time, the filmic adaptations of China’s texts also project the ‘natural heritage’ of Chinese cultural identity in the British colony. The co-existence of these two types of filmic adaptations presents the duality of cultural identity, relating to both Hong Kong and China. The key medium, however, for the development of a specific Hong Kong cultural identity was, as shown in Chapter 3, television. Therefore, it was to television that film-makers looked for texts to adapt in the course of developing the cultural specificity of Hong Kong. Adaptations of television products became a major source of inspiration for local film-makers in the 1970s (Kung and Zhang 1984: 10–17). Successful commercial films include Chu Yuan’s Xianggang 73 / Hong Kong 73 (1974), Zhu men yuan / Sorrow of the Gentry (1974), Xin tixiao yinyuan / Lover’s Destiny (1975). There were also a number of films based on ideas from television, such as Zhang Sen’s Afu zhengzhuan / The Little Man, Ah Fook (1974), Yang Quan’s Daxiang li / The Country Bumpkin (1974), Zhang Sen’s Afu lao shijie / The Stupid Sailor, Ah Fook (1975), and Chen Jiasun’s Lin Azheng / Lim Ah Chun (1978). Furthermore, even when films were not directly adapted from television products, narratives often reflected television’s representation of Hong Kong, as for example, in its reportage of real social problems (Kung and Zhang 1984: 10–17). Gui Zhihong’s popular films Chengji chalou / The Tea House (1974), Dage Cheng / Big Brother Cheng (1975), Ng See-yuen’s Qibai wanyuan da jie an / Million Dollar Snatch (1976) are examples of film narratives developed from television coverage of a bank robbery

Cultural specificity of quasi-national film 65 involving hostages, on 25 May 1974. Television reportage of police corruption and the investigation of drug dealer Wu Xihao in 1973–4 also provided primary material for two popular films, Ng See-yuen’s Lianzheng fengbao / Anti-Corruption (1974) and Leong Po-chih’s Tiaohui / Jumping Ash (1976). Law Kar (1984: 110–13) argues that Hong Kong new wave films in the late 1970s and early 1980s also adopted the perspective of television products in representing the colony. Shu Kei’s study of Ann Hui’s television works reveals a continuity in the development of her narratives, subject themes and filmic style from television to film (1988: 42–6). Her first feature film, Feng jie / The Secret (1979), shows her interest in developing filmic narratives based on local events, and imitates her cinematic style in her earlier police and crime television series CID and ICAC. Her second and third films, Huyue de gushi / The Story of Woo Viet (1981) and Touben nuhai / The Boat People (1982) resemble her television series about Vietnamese boat people in Hong Kong, Ashi / Ah shi (1977) and Lai ke / Boy from Vietnam (1978). Similarly, Alex Cheung’s Dianzhi bingbing / Cops and Robbers (1979) and Bianyuan ren / Man on the Brink (1981) represent a continuation of his work in the television series CID (Law 1984: 113). Allen Fong’s Fuzi qing / Father and Son is another film that resembles Fong’s earlier style in television, in terms of subject, theme and social realism. Johnny Mak’s cinematic representation of triads and youth problems in the 1980s also recalls his popular television dramas of the 1970s, Shida qi’an / Ten Sensational Cases (1976), Shida cike / Ten Assassinations (1976), Da zhangfu / Operation Manhunt (1976–7) and Xin da zhangfu / Operation Manhunt II (1976–7). Narratives can ‘confront the spectator with an explicit or implicit textual construction of the nation’ (Hayward 1993: 9). Since Hong Kong was not a sovereign nation, films that explicitly present the British colony as a nation are very scarce. However, a few Hong Kong films represented the British colony as a nation on a connotative level, particularly through exploring the boundaries in the triangular relationship between the British coloniser, the Chinese motherland and Hong Kong. I will elaborate this argument further through a number of detailed textual analyses in the next two chapters. Here, I will offer just one example to illustrate my argument. Leong Po-chih’s film, Dengdai liming / Hong Kong 1941 (1984) deals with a story at a particular historical moment of Hong Kong – a story of survival, love and friendship between three young people under the Japanese occupation of the colony. The film opens with scenes of the British colonisers leaving Hong Kong on the eve of the Japanese invasion. In the context of the imminent signing of the Joint Declaration in 1984, these scenes were perceived by Hong Kong film critics as an indication of Britain’s ‘lack of commitment to the colony’ (Shu Kei’s captions in The China Factor in Hong Kong Cinema 1990: 111). At the same time, the film also presents a special bond between the Hong Kong Chinese and the mainland refugees through their mutual co-operation in fighting against

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the Japanese. The film, then, constructs an image of Hong Kong as an indigenous community by exploring the relationship between Hong Kong, the British coloniser and the mainland refugees. At the same time, the film could also be understood as suggesting that the colony was part of the Chinese community, in terms of sharing a bond of kinship when confronted by the Japanese. Thus, the significance of Hong Kong ‘national’ identity is foregrounded through the construction of Hong Kong as an indigenous community in relation to the British coloniser and through its identification with Chinese ethnicity when confronted by the Japanese. In the 1980s, Hong Kong’s identity was constructed mainly through its identification with the British colony and with China on different levels. The representation of the mainland Chinese as illegal migrants and as unfamiliar with Hong Kong’s legal system, capitalist lifestyle and public culture5 produced a notion of Hong Kong citizens as a distinct community. At the same time, many film narratives also constructed Hong Kong identity offering the essentialist view that Hong Kong is fundamentally Chinese. Two popular comedies, Michael Hui’s Hejia huan / Mr. Coconut (1988) and Alfred Cheung’s Biaojie, nihao ye! / Her Fatal Ways (1990), begin with the unwelcome guests from China arriving in the colony. The guests’ ignorance of Hong Kong’s capitalist lifestyle, legal system and popular culture presents the idea of two different civic communities existing on the mainland and in Hong Kong. And yet, a shared Chinese ethnicity and family relationships bring about a happy reunion. These films suggest that differences in political and economic systems do not after all undermine Hong Kong’s Chineseness and its identification with China.6 Film narratives embody the notion of Hong Kong community through presenting its own historical continuity. Nevertheless, representations of Hong Kong’s past also show the colony’s historical links with China. Stanley Kwan’s Yanzhi kou / Rouge tells the story of a young woman who commits suicide in the 1930s and returns to Hong Kong in the 1980s to find her lover. Through her, the film connects and contrasts the past and the present of Hong Kong’s landscape. At the same time, it also displays the images and the narratives of the colony’s cultural and economic connections with the Canton region in the 1930s. Li Zhiyi and Peter Chan’s Xin nanxiong nandi / He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Father (1994) deals with a story of a young man in the 1980s who travels back to the 1960s and meets his father and his father’s friends and neighbours. The film displays the cultural symbols of popular music and films of the 1950s and 1960s, which, according to Linda Chiu-han Lai, is Hong Kong’s way of collectively ‘remembering’ its past, since the colony has itself written no ‘formal’ history (Lai 1997: 91). At the same time, the film also reminds the audience of the historical connections between the colony and the mainland: China’s political turbulence in the late 1940s impacted on the colony as well as on China. Once again, images of Hong Kong history produce the dual cultural identity of Hong Kong. Hong Kong is an histori-

Cultural specificity of quasi-national film 67 cally indigenous community, shaped over time by political, economic, social and cultural influences from China.

Film genres Film genres in Hong Kong define a specific cultural character for Hong Kong. Although the Hong Kong film industry tends to seek inspiration from Hollywood films, certain Hollywood film genres – science fiction, war films, Westerns and road movies – have never been well developed in Hong Kong. However, the comedy, slapstick and gangster genres have integrated well with local culture. Absorption of and resistance to certain Hollywood film genres suggest that Hong Kong films are part of international film culture while they retain a collection of cultural products unique to Hong Kong. Internally, Hong Kong film genres have developed in tandem with changes to Hong Kong’s political, economic and social environment. As discussed in earlier chapters, the popularity of film genres in the 1930s and 1940s – martial arts films, anti-Japanese war films, and social realist Cantonese melodrama – reflected the impact of China’s national politics in Hong Kong. The popularity of certain types of films in the 1950s and 1960s – Cantonese opera films and Mandarin Huangmei xi, Cantonese martial arts films, Mandarin historical melodrama, Cantonese melodrama, filmic adaptations of classical Chinese literature, and a certain proportion of other dialects in Hakka and Minnan films – certainly shows a lack of Hong Kong cultural identity in local film genres. From the 1970s, film genres responded to new political, economic and social changes in Hong Kong. In 1973, the stock market crash destroyed many small shareholders, and the economic recession in 1974–5 had a drastic impact on the public’s confidence in Hong Kong’s economy. Police corruption scandals in 1974 shocked the community, and the Governor’s compromise over the charges against corrupt policemen in 1977 aroused the society’s doubts about justice.7 Cynicism about authority and traditional values grew. Local film critics argue that the popularity of social satirical comedies, the police and crime genre, and strong violence in martial arts films were all a response to Hong Kong society of the 1970s (C.T. Li 1984b: 124–5). For instance, Michael Hui’s satirical comedies present society as a crazy world where people relentlessly pursue material pleasure.8 Zhang Che’s martial arts films show that violence is the only way of solving problems and releasing tension.9 Li Hanxiang’s cinematic representation of ancient China also accentuate images of sexuality, corrupt authority and power struggles.10 Even though based on Taiwanese writer Gu Long’s martial arts novels, Chu Yuan’s filmic adaptations of suspense martial arts films11 are understood by Hong Kong film critic Li Cheuk-to as a reflection of the insecurity of Hong Kong society following the experience of economic prosperity. C.T. Li (1984b: 129–30) argues,

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Cultural specificity of quasi-national film Gu Long’s martial arts universe is characterised by a fear of politics, authority and power; the relentless pursuit of materialism; the feeling of insecurity once economic well-being is attained; the wanton feelings towards women; and fatalism. All these parallel the psychology of the Hong Kong people who regard themselves as a marginal people.

The popularity of Hollywood cop movies in the 1970s was one factor that caused the ‘emergence’ of the police and crime genre in Hong Kong. However, Hong Kong’s own political and social background also contributed greatly to the popularity of the genre. Ng See-yuen’s Lianzheng fengbao / Anti-Corruption (1975), Leong Po-chih’s Tiaohui / Jumping Ash (1976), Alex Cheung’s Dianzhi bingbing / Cops and Robbers (1979) were all based on local scandals involving police corruption, investigations into drug dealing, and the complex relationship between law, morality, justice, power and human nature. Police images were continually constructed in relation to the political and social context of the colony. Danny Li’s Gong pu / Law with Two Phases (1983), Huangjia fan / The Law Enforcer (1986), Tiexue qijing / Road Warriors (1987) deal with stories of dedicated Hong Kong policemen who not only face the tough reality of organised crime, but also confront the difficult situations created by the British expatriate authorities and the Western-educated Chinese, who are more interested in their power struggles and promotion prospects than crime investigation. Throughout the 1980s, comedy and its various sub-genres – high-tech comedy, Kung Fu comedy, action comedy, cop comedy, vampire comedy – remained in the top ten of box-office takings. As comedy is commonly understood as a genre serving a particular social and psychological function, ‘where repressed tensions can be released in a safe manner’ (Hayward 1996: 55), Hong Kong film critics argue that the popularity of comedy responded to society’s anxiety about its future after 1997, and its frustration at being unable to influence either the British coloniser or the Chinese government over Hong Kong’s future (Film Biweekly, January 1986; N.K. Leung 1991: 18). Similarly, changes in the police and crime genre responded to social and psychological needs in society. After the mid-1980s, the yingxiong pian (hero-triads-police action), fengyun pian (gangster-crimes-prison officers) and xiaoxiong pian (historical and biographical triads-crime-police) genres replaced that of police and crime. Typical films in these sub-genres are John Woo’s Yingxiong bense / A Better Tomorrow (1986), Diexue shuangxiong / The Killer (1989), Ringo Lim’s Jianyu fengyun / Prison on Fire (1987), Longhu fengyun / City on Fire (1987) and Lawrence Ah Mon’s Lei Luo zhuan / Lee Rock (I and II, 1991), Johnny Mak’s Bo hao / To be Number One (1991). Although Wang Shen’s description below refers to yingxiong pian, it can also be used to refer to the two other types of movies, where:

Cultural specificity of quasi-national film 69 1. The protagonist . . . is a triad gangster while his mortal enemy – the police – is relegated to the background (or practically ignored); the socalled ‘hero’ is a thief with a conscience. 2. Intricacies of the plot give way to emotions and feelings. 3. Women play minor roles. 4. Style is uniformly consistent. (Quoted in Law 1997: 60–73) These films feature brutal criminals glorified as ‘heroes’ through their determination in fighting for their friends and loved ones. These types of movie, according to Law Kar and Sek Kei, reflected the repression of the local society, its frustration, and sense of crisis in the transitional period, as Hong Kong lost its confidence and trust in both the British coloniser and the Chinese government (Law 1997: 60; Sek 1997: 114–8). Beijing’s firm stand on building the Daya Bay nuclear power station in 1987, the government’s crackdown on the student democracy movement in 1989, and the failure of the British government’s schemes to boost confidence in the early 1990s all encouraged the society to construct a fantasy of superhero outside governmental institutions. Law Kar (1997: 60) explains that within the historical context in the triangular relationship, these films: . . . imparted the theme of protagonists operating in the jianghu (a society without laws’ protection) controlled by events. Society and human relationships were unfair and unjust. Irrational solutions were made. The audience certainly empathised with these feelings. [sic] Chinese mainland film scholars agree with the argument that the popularity of these movies in the crime-triads-police genre reflect Hong Kong society in its transitional period. However, from China’s perspective, Hu Ke (1994: 7) writes: These films show the brutality of gangsters, but glorify their boldness and courage. The films are not simply products that construct complex characters of both good and evil. More importantly, these films reveal some Hong Kong people’s mentality of fin de siècle. They want to reap some profits from the particular historical period when power is in transition from Britain to China, and when laws are not yet firmly established. Of course, I do not mean that they will murder and rob. At most, they have the desire of thieves but not their guts. Nevertheless, such ‘evil’ desire can only be released through watching these types of movies. The changing popularity of Hong Kong’s film genres responded to the colony’s political and social changes, which were in turn affected by changes in the triangular relationship. However, this is not the only characteristic of Hong Kong film genres. They are also significant for their

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sustaining of Chinese cultural identity. For instance, the internationally best known Hong Kong genre, the martial arts film, was developed in the colony after it was transplanted from Shanghai in the 1930s. The genre has always relied on China for its source material. Even when films were based on adaptations of local martial arts novels, these films employed China’s cultural signs and were set against China’s historical background. Hong Kong’s voice is articulated through its interpretation, modification and construction of China’s history, mythology and society. As martial arts films are generally perceived as fantasy, Ann Hui explains that the genre enables her to express views that could not be represented through other genres. Based on local writer Jin Yong’s martial arts novels, Ann Hui’s films, Shujian enchou lu / Romance of Book and Sword I and II (1987), reveal Hong Kong’s perspective on the notions of guojia (country) and minzu (ethnically defined and/or geopolitical culturally defined community) in the transitional period.12 Similarly, against China’s historical background of the late nineteenth century, Tsui Hark’s series of Huang Feihong / Once Upon a Time in China (1991–4) reflect Hong Kong’s perspective on its position between West and East, and Hong Kong’s role in modernising China (F. Luo 1995: 29–33). Through presenting both the West’s perspective on China and China’s understanding of the West, Tsui Hark’s reconstruction of China’s history produces an allegory of Hong Kong’s dual sense of belonging to both. Hong Kong’s dual cultural identity is also evident in the popularity of Chinese ghost or vampire film genres in the 1980s. The genre presents a distinct ethnic Chinese cultural identity through various signs of folk culture, and signs of Taoism and Buddhism. At the same time, the genre reveals Hong Kong’s complex feelings towards China. Sek Kei (1991: 57) argues: The ghost story pandered to the prevalent sense of crisis felt by Hong Kong people. The characters of Chinese ghosts personified the fear with which Hong Kong people viewed their cousins from the Mainland. Nevertheless, Hong Kong Chinese still maintained a profound connection with the Mainland, although through a love and hate relationship. Their distrust of the Chinese was hence reserved for the ‘evil’ ghosts but they showed a happy face to ‘good’ ghost. A film with the ‘good’ ghost characters, The Happy Ghost (1984) was one of the most commercially successful pictures in the ’80s. Equally, the Kung Fu comedy genre presents the duality of Hong Kong cultural identity. Ng Ho and Chan Ting-ching argue that Kung Fu comedy is a film genre derived from Hong Kong’s capitalist and local popular culture. The genre is characterised as reflecting the values of a modern society, displaying modern attitudes and speaking in fashionable idioms (Ng 1993: 139–46; T.C. Chan 1980: 147–8). At the same time, generic

Cultural specificity of quasi-national film 71 conventions, such as narratives set against the historical background of China, still remain, for instance, in the films of Sammo Hung’s Zan xiansheng yu Zhao Qianhua / Warriors Two (1978), and Jackie Chan’s Shexing diaoshou / Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow (1978), and Shidi chuma / The Young Master (1980). Further, the duality of Hong Kong cultural identity is evident in the changes in the genres’ different representations of Hong Kong for different markets. For instance, Jackie Chan’s comedies are becoming more and more internationalised to suit the mainstream market in the West. In this respect, Hong Kong comedies are quite different from other national films. Typically, the success of a national film in the Hollywood-dominated international market depends largely on its ‘success’ in representing its national cultural specificity. But the success of Jackie Chan’s comedies in the international market, on the contrary, demonstrates another side to the argument. In the 1990s, most of his internationally successful films are about stories that happen overseas. Although claiming himself to be of Hong Kong origin in his films, Jackie Chan ‘travels’ around the world to ‘solve problems’ other than those of Hong Kong, as, for instance, in Feiying jihua / Operation Condor (1991), Hongfan qu / Rumble in the Bronx (1995), Jiandan renwu / First Strike (1996), Yige haoren / Mr. Nice Guy (1997). Leading Hong Kong Kung Fu film stars, for instance, Michelle Yeoh in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and Sammo Hung in the television series Martial Law (1997) have each taken on the roles of a mainland Chinese agent and a Shanghai policeman, respectively, in Hollywood productions. Thus by representing themselves as mainland Chinese Yeoh and Hung offer the West a more ‘authentic’ version of Chineseness. Once again, Hong Kong’s ‘image’ in the international market has to rely on its identification with China. By contrast, other Hong Kong comedies are locally oriented and focused. Some degree of ‘localisation’ excludes the mainland, Taiwan and overseas Chinese spectators. An example of this type is from the series of Stephen Chiau’s wulitou films (films of nonsense) of the late 1980s and the 1990s.13 His films cannot really be enjoyed by Chinese spectators outside Hong Kong, as the films depend heavily on the use of Cantonese slang, which, in Linda Chiu-han Lai’s words, ‘demands up-to-date knowledge of contemporary linguistic practice and an appreciation for the comic defamiliarization of ordinary popular language’ (Lai 1997: 95). The popularity of Stephen Chiau’s wulitou reveals Hong Kong’s desire to preserve its own cultural identity on the eve of its return to China. Whilst other national films are more aware of presenting national specificity in order to share the international market with Hollywood, Hong Kong cinema appears rather to reconstruct Hong Kong’s identity in the international market, and yet to reinforce its cultural specificity in the domestic Chinese market. This characteristic reveals Hong Kong’s different perceptions of self. These contradictory perceptions of self generate Hong Kong cultural

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identity as quasi-national: on the one hand, through identification with Chinese cultural identity so that the special character of Hong Kong is assured in the international market and, on the other hand, through distinguishing itself from China by its exclusivity, a distinctiveness especially in the films targeted for domestic spectators.

Codes and conventions Codes and conventions refer both to the way that films are made and to the way that films present national identity. In Chapter 3, I remarked that a system of collaboration between independent film production which relied on majors for distribution and exhibition emerged in the mid-1970s. This system continued to be popular in the 1980s. However, as more exhibition chains that are not controlled by production companies have been formed in the 1990s, there are more independent films made without relying on, for instance, Golden Harvest. In general, Hong Kong films are made by producer- or director-oriented independent film companies, such as Tsui Hark’s Workshop, Hui Brothers and Johnny Mak’s Production. Usually these companies have their own, relatively stable, crew members, and they produce films adopting certain types of narrative, genre and cinematic style. They distribute and exhibit their products through Golden Harvest, Mandarins, Newport and other exhibition chains. Codes and conventions in the ‘iconography of the image’ (Hayward 1993: 11) that represent a ‘nation’ emphasise the binary paradigms of visibility – who and what represents the nation, and who and what is absent. Hayward argues that ‘the iconography of the image generates a series of binary paradigms of which the first is absence/presence’. Convention, on the other hand, is defined as a textual or social practice shared by members of the culture or subculture. In cinematic representations of Hong Kong’s identity, the most noticeable signifying principle is the binary code in which Hong Kong is defined in relation to the British coloniser and to the Chinese motherland, as a geopolitically defined national community or in terms of ethnicity. The mobility between the two is, indeed, subject to change in the triangular relationship in different historical contexts. In the mid-1980s, Hong Kong’s fear that China would destroy the colony’s capitalist lifestyle after 1997 highlighted the tension within the binary code in relation to China. Conventionally, China was represented by a series of signs signifying a Communist geopolitical nation: Red Guards, Communist security officers, third world peasants and illegal migrants. All these signs emphasise the territory’s political and economic systems and legal rights as different from those of China, which therefore generated and accentuated the notion of Hong Kong citizenship. Consequently, a shared ethnic cultural identity and tradition with China has become less important. Similarly, Hong Kong’s ambiguous relationship with the British

Cultural specificity of quasi-national film 73 coloniser is also reflected through its representations of the coloniser, of Hong Kong Chinese and the British coloniser’s common past, their shared legal and economic systems, and their difference in ethnic identity, as for instance, in Jackie Chan’s series of A jihua / Project A. In the 1990s, affected by the demise of British influence and closer economic ties with China, Hong Kong’s cultural identity was modified. A sense of shared ethnic identity with China was foreground in comparison with filmic representations of the 1980s. This characteristic of vacillating between its identification with the British colony and the Chinese motherland reflects Hong Kong’s quasi-national status and demonstrates how crucial the triangular relationship was to the varying constructions of Hong Kong. I will elaborate this argument further by detailed film analyses in the next two chapters.

Gesturality and morphology As film acting is shaped by traditions of performance, gesturality and morphology articulate national identity (Hayward 1993: 12). In his comparative study of Mandarin and Cantonese films in the 1950s and 1960s, Li Cheuk-to (1983: 64) notes that Mandarin film performance tended to be formal; expression tends to be ‘exaggerated’ ‘but well controlled’, and ‘avoids a direct outpouring of emotions’. In comparison, ‘Cantonese acting stresses naturalness’ and ‘immediacy’ – ‘their lines are more colloquial, weeping seems more convincing’. The difference between Mandarin and Cantonese film performance was further accentuated in the 1960s and 1970s. While the relationship between film and Cantonese opera became looser in the British colony, film acting in China was influenced by the Communist government’s obsession with political propaganda. In general, ‘method acting’ is popular in China as film actors are trained in the teaching of Konstantin Stanislavsky (X.L. Zheng 1986: 258–76; Hou 1995: 90–5), which requires a performer to enter a role from inside, to be emotionally engaged and to identify with the character he/she is playing. Generally, film acting in Hong Kong is perceived as ‘less professional’, ‘less trained’, ‘less formal’ but more alive, vivid and closer to life (Law 1985: 10–12). As Hayward (1993: 12) argues, ‘gestures, words, intonations, attitudes, postures’ are all ‘deeply rooted in a nation’s culture’; film performance in Hong Kong is broadly influenced by Southern Chinese or Cantonese culture. Historically, the Cantonese region has long been more economically developed and more commercialised than the northern hinterland. Located along the coast, with direct influence from the West, its commercial, trading and entrepôt culture brought to Cantonese culture a sense of an openness and flexibility. Linguistically, Cantonese is a type of dialect which contains a variety of slang. The dialect is ‘unrefined’, insofar as expressions are more straightforward, plain and ‘vulgar’. These

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characteristics of Cantonese culture have influenced Hong Kong film performance in the actors’ use of words, particularly their intonation of Cantonese, whilst their body language tends to be more ‘comic’ and, perhaps, more ‘close to life’ in comparison to China’s film performances. However, though differences exist in film performance between Hong Kong and China, Cantonese culture is part of Chinese culture; thus, Hong Kong film actors’ gesturality and morphology also have features that overlap with those of China’s film performances. For example, Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung’s acting style is influenced by their training in Beijing opera; their performance is perceived from a Western perspective as a distinctly Chinese Kung Fu one.

The star as sign Like star images in other national cinemas, Hong Kong film stars represent the local community in two major ways: their images on screen, and their ‘life dramas’ being produced by other popular media. As someone who was born in the United States, grew up in Hong Kong, and perhaps never visited China, Bruce Lee nevertheless represents a more ‘authentic’ Chinese image than the mainland-born Michael Hui, who is an icon of the average Hong Kong man. One of the main reasons for this paradox is the kind of characters they play in their films. In his three internationally known films, Tangshan da xiong / The Big Boss (1971), Jingwu men / Fist of Fury (1972) and Menglong guo jiang / The Way of the Dragon (1972), Bruce Lee is constructed as an ‘authentic’ Chinese Kung Fu master. On the other hand, although Michael Hui played his first successful film character as a warlord in Li Hanxiang’s Da junfa / The Warlord (1972), his more popular images in Guima shuangxing / Games Gamblers Play (1975), Tiancai yu baichi / The Last Message (1976), Maishen qi / The Contract (1978), Jitong yajiang / Chicken and Duck Talk (1989), present a selfish, mean and materialistic Hong Kong man who keeps trying to get rich by taking advantage of others. Even when Michael Hui acts as mainland characters in Hejia huan / Mr. Coconut (1989) and Qigai yingxiong / Hero of the Beggars (1992), his traits of greed and desire for wealth remain (Q.W. Chen 1992: 98). Like Bruce Lee and Michael Hui in the 1970s, Jackie Chan and Chow Yun-fat were the ‘super’ stars of 1980s’ Hong Kong. Both of them have played a variety of Hong Kong characters. Jackie Chan is known as a Hong Kong policeman from his series of Jingcha gushi / Police Story (1985, 1988, 1992), and Chow Yun-fat’s unrestrained, wild working-class hero is exemplified in Along de gushi / All About Ah Long (1989) and gangster in Yingxiong bense / A Better Tomorrow (1986), Diexue shuangxiong / The Killer (1989) and Jianyu fengyun/ Prison on Fire (1987). More significantly, these characters show their commitment to Hong Kong and identify themselves as members of Hong Kong society. Performing as

Cultural specificity of quasi-national film 75 a Hong Kong coast guard and policeman, Jackie Chan mocks the coloniser, teases authority, refuses to join the Chinese national revolution, but faithfully serves the people of Hong Kong in his series of Project A. In Gongzi duo qing / The Greatest Lover (1988), Chow Yun-fat is proud to show his ethnic Chinese identity when replying to the Hong Kong Governor in Chinese. Another internationally known film star, Maggie Cheung, also performs a number of characters who identify with Hong Kong. In Ann Hui’s Ketu qiuhen / Song of the Exile (1990), Cheung plays a woman of Chinese and Japanese origin, who was born and grew up in Manchu, was educated in Britain, but chooses Hong Kong as her ‘home’. The images of these stars, Jackie Chan, Chow Yun-fat and Maggie Cheung catered for the social and psychological needs of Hong Kong during the period of transition from British to Chinese rule. In their films, Jackie Chan and Chow Yun-fat do not fight for ideology, for the unity of a country, but stand up firmly for justice, for their friends and for the people who need help. Their images provided Hong Kong people with a sense of self in confrontation with the British coloniser and the Chinese government. Their ‘life stories’ in promotional events, and through the publicity, gossip column and talk show media also construct Jackie Chan, Chow Yun-fat, and Maggie Cheung as members of the Hong Kong community. Stories of Jackie Chan and Chow Yun-fat’s working-class family backgrounds and their hard working nature are frequently reported in the media as a reflection of Hong Kong’s emergence from an overcrowded refugee slum to a prosperous cosmopolitan society. Jackie Chan and Chow Yun-fat’s commitment to fund raising for Hong Kong charities in the 1980s and 1990s has become a feature of their star status. Their life stories have also become material for cultural workers to produce Hong Kong community history. The popular film Qi xiaofu / Painted Face (1988) is based on the childhood and teenage years of Jackie Chan and another Kung Fu star, Sammo Hung, in the 1950s and 1960s. Stories of Chow Yunfat’s training, performance in television drama serials in the 1970s and of Maggie Cheung’s experience as runner-up in the Miss Hong Kong pageant in 1983 all became popular cultural signs of Hong Kong community knowledge. These images signify a Hong Kong community whose popular culture was different both from the official and popular cultures of mainland China and the West. On the other hand, Jackie Chan, Chow Yun-fat and Maggie Cheung have also performed roles that somehow represent more than just Hong Kong. In 1994, Jackie Chan’s Zui Quan II / Drunken Master II presents Chan as a Chinese nationalist who fights against the British ambassador and the merchants who have stolen the national treasures of Chinese antiques. In 1988, Chow Yun-fat performs as a mainland migrant in Hong Kong in Gongzhi duo qing / The Greatest Lover. His departure from Hong Kong for Hollywood in 1995 sees the change in his image from

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representing Hong Kong to portraying a variety of images, including King Mongkutt of Siam in Anna and the King (1999). Maggie Cheung also performs a role as an illegal mainland migrant in Clara Law’s Aizai biexian jije / Farewell China (1994). Her performance as a mainland Cantonese woman in Peter Chan’s Tianmimi / It is almost a love story, comrade (1996) even won her the best actress awards in the Hong Kong Golden Film Awards. In comparison to the mainland star images of Gong Li, Ge You and Jiang Wen, images of Hong Kong film stars are more flexible in representing different geopolitical Chinese communities. Their ‘unfixed’ images once again reinforce the duality of Hong Kong’s quasi-national identity. As cultural identity is constructed and inevitably unstable, the next two chapters focus on textual constructions of Hong Kong’s nationhood, and develop further the point of this chapter: that the film narratives of 1980–1997 produced a dual cultural identity for Hong Kong. Chapters 5 and 6 look at how cinematic textual constructions of Hong Kong nationhood generate Hong Kong’s quasi-national identity, both excluding and including China, and, broadly, defining and redefining boundaries in the triangular relationship between the British coloniser, the Chinese motherland and Hong Kong.

5

Hong Kong films Cinematic constructions of Hong Kong history and territory

This and the following chapter offer textual analyses of cinematic constructions of Hong Kong nationhood. As representations of the past and the territory of a country are two significant means of constructing a sense of nation, this chapter focuses on cinematic constructions of Hong Kong’s history and territory. It argues that narratives about the past and the territory of Hong Kong confront the spectator with cinematic texts representing Hong Kong as a nation: the British colony not as part of China but as a geopolitically defined community that could only articulate itself in relation to the triangular relationship between the British coloniser, the Chinese motherland and Hong Kong. This chapter suggests that filmic constructions of Hong Kong’s history and territory are similar to other nations’ constructions of their national histories and territories. In general, a national history presents the significance of a nation in two broad and sometimes overlapping ways: it presents an historically indigenous community or/and it explains how groups of people from other places have gathered in one place and developed into a national community. Narratives of the past and of the territory of Hong Kong similarly present the British colony as an historically indigenous community, and as a community that developed from collections of refugees and migrants. However, unlike other nations’ constructions of their national histories and territories, constructions of Hong Kong history and territory are inextricably interwoven with a representation of the triangular relationship between the British coloniser, the Chinese motherland and the territory. This ‘imperfection’ in the process of nation-construction produces the British colony as the embodiment of a quasi-nation. This claim is presented in two sections, the first of which discusses the idea that images of the past and of the territory of a country contribute to the construction of the concept of nation. The second section offers textual analyses of cinematic constructions of Hong Kong history and territory in four films: Jackie Chan’s A jihua / Project A (1982) and its sequel, A jihua (II) / Project A (II) (1987), Allen Fong’s Fuzi qing / Father and Son (1981), and Ann Hui’s Ketu qiuhen / Song of the Exile (1991).

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History, territory and nation History and territory define a nation. According to Anthony Smith, a nation must possess a defined territory, not any territory, but a geopolitically defined territory, which enables the community to form a historical association with it (Smith 1991: 9). In his study The Ethnic Origins of Nations, Smith (1989: 183) argues that writing history and territory into ‘historic’ land, ‘homeland’ or the ‘cradle of our people’ produces a sense of the nation. He notes: There are two ways in which the community can be located and its ‘true state’ revealed: through poetic spaces and golden ages. The first involves the use of landscape, the second the use of history. The one roots the community in its distinctive terrain; the other charts its origins and flowering in the age of heroes. Both together provide a history and metaphysic of the individuality of the community, from which an ethic of regeneration issues to lead it forward. Writing about the history of a nation produces its cultural identity. The history of a nation does not reveal the ‘true’ past of that community. Instead, it is a response to the present, in the words of Andrew Higson (1997: 41), ‘as the transference of present values on to the past as imaginary object’. The history of a nation is also a blueprint for the future (Smith 1989: 182). It not only explains how groups of people developed into a nation, but it provides ‘a visionary goal’ which offers some kind of stability whenever the community faces a crisis. In the process of defining and strengthening a nation’s entity, national history serves a particular function. Smith (1989: 192) identifies eight ‘motifs and features’ of national mythology, which provide community members a sense of self, and a sense of belonging, authentic and secure: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

a myth of origins in time; i.e. when the community was ‘born’; a myth of origins in space; i.e. where the community was ‘born’; a myth of ancestry; i.e. who bore us, and how we descend from him/her; a myth of migration; i.e. whither we wandered; a myth of liberation; i.e. how we were freed; a myth of the golden age; i.e. how we became great and heroic; a myth of decline; i.e. how we decayed and were conquered/exiled; and a myth of rebirth; i.e. how we shall be restored to our former glory.

Similarly, images of territory are always more significant than the actual terrain. Arguing that ‘writing is constitutive, not simply reflective’, Trevor Barnes and James Duncan (1992: 3) believe that the way we present the

Constructions of history and territory 79 world ‘reveals as much about ourselves as it does about the worlds represented’. Landscape is not, in Brian Stock’s words (1993: 317), ‘what the eye can take in through one viewing, or what can be seen from a single perspective’, nor could it, as Stephanie Donald (1997: 100) states, ‘in any way [be] made ordinary’. Landscape is cultural representation, argued by Stephen Daniels and Denis Cosgrove (1993: 59) as ‘the discursive terrain across which the struggle between the different, often hostile, codes of meaning construction has been engaged’. It partakes of what James Duncan (1993: 39) identifies as the dualism between ‘to be represented (a geographical place), and the site (the geographical, cultural, political, theoretical viewpoint) from which that representation emanates’. The way we portray our territory reveals our possessive consciousness of that particular piece of land. Film is a powerful medium, which produces a public space for the image processes of a nation to develop. Cinematic images of a nation are constructed and presented through selecting, modifying and reinventing historical data and geographical features. In a classic Chinese film, Huang tudi / Yellow Earth (1984), Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou construct the cinematic Chinese nation through the juxtaposition of politically loaded historical data: the Shaanbei landscape and Chinese mythology. The narrative is set in the period of the Sino-Japanese war in the 1930s. A Chinese Communist soldier and musician, Gu Qing, visits villages to collect folk songs to transfer them into Chinese nationalist songs against the Japanese. The historical period of the Sino-Japanese war signifies a Chinese national community derived from its exclusion of the Japanese. The chosen location of Shaanbei, the region covered by yellow earth beside the Yellow River, reinforces the idea of the Chinese nation through identification of natural features with historical sites. In Chinese mythology, the region is the origin and cradle of the Chinese ‘race’, Yan huang zisun (descendants of Yan di and the Yellow Emperor). It is where Chinese ancestors ‘ploughed’, ‘weeded’ and ‘battled’ (K.G. Chen 1990: 559–60; Y.M. Zhang 1990: 574–8). In the mainland’s national history, Shaanbei is the region where the Communists have been nurtured and where the ‘new’ China, Red China, ‘the People’s Republic’, originated. Images of Shaanbei embody the notion of ‘origin’. The landscape signifies not only the origin of the Han Chinese ethnic community, but also the birth of the Chinese Communists and the People’s Republic of China. Geographic features, yellow earth and the Yellow River are historicised to imply that nature is a rendition of the community’s history. Villages and peasants’ cave dwellings are also naturalised to become part of the natural environment in Zhang Yimou’s cinematic landscape. The filmic narrative deals with the relationship between a peasant family and a Communist soldier. The peasant family represents the Chinese people as descendants of Shennong (God of Agriculture), whereas the soldier is an agent of national politics. A modern Chinese nation is cinematically constructed

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through the fusion of Chinese mythology, national history and geographical features. There is, however, no single strategy for the cinematic construction of national identities. While the significance of the Chinese nation is constructed by historicising Shaanbei, Australian national identity, for example, is presented using different strategies. It relies on a dialectic relation between culture and nature, in which, ‘ “we” culturally define ourselves on the side of nature’ (Game: 1990: 108). This psychic ordering of nature as the Other derived according to Ross Gibson (1992: 1–18) from the ‘conquistadorial attitude to territory’ of the early European settlers. Gibson explains: Throughout the last two hundred years in Australia, in effect, Europeans have looked away from the habitat of civilization toward regions that were seen to be uninhabited or uninhabitable. This ‘national introspection’ was always characterized by a keen anxiety. It is not simply an uneasiness associated with the unknown, rather it is an anxiety required by the myths of inversion and purgatory. (Gibson 1992: 11) The dialectical relations between culture and nature argued for by Gibson, have developed in three distinctive stages in Australian films. The first two stages occurred in the pre-1970s period. The first stage was dominated by the attitude to the land as ‘object’ and as commodity. It is an attitude the colonists associated with desire to control. The second stage is a series of responses in tales and stories that ‘explain’ the laudable failure in dealing with the land. In the 1970s and 1980s, Gibson argues that Australia entered into the third stage where cultural treatments of landscape . . . buy into the old myths of outback purgatory, [but] they do so with a witty self-awareness, and more importantly they also treat the landscape not as an obstacle to be subdued, not as something unapproachably sublime, but as something to be learned from, something respectable rather than awesome. (Gibson 1992: 17) The dialectical relations between culture and nature are apparent in the representations of Australian landscape in a number of internationally known Australian films. A mysterious land takes, without trace, the lives of three young women in Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975); a vast harsh land represents a woman’s self-reliance striving for independence in Gillian Armstrong’s My Brilliant Career (1980); and the dry red land becomes part of the Australian identity in George Miller’s Mad Max (1979), and Stephan Elliott’s The Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert (1994).

Constructions of history and territory 81

History and territory in Hong Kong films Establishing boundaries in the triangular relationship Writing about the past and about the territory of Hong Kong is fundamentally bound up with writing about the triangular relationship between the British coloniser, the Chinese motherland and Hong Kong. This is not because the past of the British colony was developed in the context of changes in the relationship. Rather, it is because cinematic constructions of the past reveal more about the present than about the ‘true’ past itself. The idea that the text of history is a response to contemporary political and social tensions is clearly demonstrated in Jackie Chan’s two popular historical Kung Fu comedies about the early twentieth century of Hong Kong. Project A (1983) and its sequel (1987) were produced during and after the Sino-British negotiations (1982–4) over the colony’s future after 1997. These two films can be read as Hong Kong’s response to the SinoBritish Joint Declaration, which excluded the participation of Hong Kong in deciding its own future after 1997. The two films reveal Hong Kong’s perception of self in the triangular relationship, through drawing boundaries – boundaries between Hong Kong and the British coloniser in Project A, and boundaries between Hong Kong and the mainland in Project A (II). Images of Hong Kong’s past and of its territory in these two films, in the words of Sek Kei (1988: 14), not only ‘bring up the difficult social and political plight of Hong Kong in the transitional period to 1997’, but also reveal Hong Kong’s perspective on herself as a ‘nation’ by establishing boundaries in the triangular relationship. Jackie Chan’s two films construct boundaries that contribute to the understanding of the British colony as a geopolitically defined community. Set in the early twentieth century, these two films present stories of a Hong Kong public servant, Sergeant Ma (acted by Jackie Chan), who fights against British corruption, refuses to be influenced by Chinese nationalism, and determines to serve the people of Hong Kong. The narrative of Project A deals with Hong Kong coast guards under the leadership of Sergeant Ma killing pirates in the South China Sea. Project A (II) tells a story about Hong Kong police dealing with social disturbances caused by mainland Chinese national politics and internal police corruption in the colony. To the south, Hong Kong coast guards protect the ‘Hong Kong economy’ from the threat of pirates. To the north, Hong Kong police defend Hong Kong’s legal system, maintain the society’s public order and reject China’s imposition of nationalism on the community. Both films present the Hong Kong community as a nation-state. It has government institutions, executive committees, military force and police. Although it is the British colony with the coloniser as head of the ‘state’ (or as head of a government department in Project A (II)), the films

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present images of Hong Kong with few signs and events to suggest the coloniser’s political and economic exploration or exploitation of the colonised. The colony, in the early twentieth century, displays hardly any signs of poverty. The place is dominated by European-style architecture, hotels, bars, executive meeting rooms, along with a few traditional Chinese scenes of tea-houses, markets and residential areas. Western and Chinese costumes, army uniforms, women’s dresses and casual clothes are both colourful and new. These cinematic constructions of territorial features, together with a few confrontations based on racial difference, suggest a pleasant atmosphere and lifestyle in the colony. Jackie Chan’s comic performance, once again, reinforces the images of a healthy society where people are, in general, satisfied with the way they are governed. Both films present social sectors of Hong Kong that resemble those of other nations, including the ruling class, the business or professional class, public servants, and the working class. Hong Kong is governed by laws with law-abiding citizens and criminals. Hong Kong’s political culture and legal system enable an ordinary citizen like Sergeant Ma to challenge the Governor in Project A, and also enables the community to distinguish itself from the mainland Chinese in Project A (II). Both films present Hong Kong as a self-regulating entity with internal problems of bureaucracy and corruption similar to those of other nations. The boundaries in the triangular relationship are constructed through the interaction between Hong Kong Chinese and the British coloniser, and between Hong Kong Chinese and the mainland Chinese. Project A is structured through drawing cultural and functional boundaries between the British coloniser and the Chinese community. The film begins with a scene illustrating how a lack of understanding of the Chinese language provokes the Governor when dealing with a ‘debate’ between two Chinese senior officers on the issue of whether Hong Kong coast guards should be sent to fight the pirates in the South China Sea. The decision was, however, a careless one, made without due consideration, because of the Governor’s impatience and lack of understanding of the Chinese language. The film also presents the Governor’s racial bias against the local Chinese. After their vessels are sabotaged, the Governor dismisses Hong Kong coast guards, and turns to Britain for help. However, on his way to the colony, the British Admiral of the Royal Navy is captured by the pirates. In order to rescue the Admiral and other captured British subjects, the Governor is anxious to resort to any measure, including bribery. The Governor’s action contrasts with his bureaucratic manner of ‘waiting’ for the Chinese ships and fishing boats to be ‘rescued’ when they are looted. His different reactions towards the British and the Chinese is pointed out by Sergeant Ma: ‘Has the Hong Kong government paid even a cent to save those people who were captured by the pirates before?’ The film implies that the coloniser is incapable of dealing with Hong Kong’s affairs. Only after the Governor puts Ma in charge are the pirates’

Constructions of history and territory 83 headquarters in the South China Sea bombarded and the captured British group rescued. In the historical context of the film’s making – during the 2 years of the Sino-British negotiations about Hong Kong’s future – the comedy offers Hong Kong’s perspective on the negotiations: a ‘pleading’ for the authorities to ‘trust’ the community to manage its own affairs in relation to the 1997 issue. Whilst Project A deals with cultural and functional boundaries between the coloniser and Hong Kong, Project A (II) constructs boundaries between the colony and China. The boundaries are established in the area of political culture, given that Hong Kong is governed by a legal system not shared by China. The film suggests that the mainland Chinese disregard local laws and behave as though they are not subject to Hong Kong laws when they are in the colony. Both the mainland revolutionaries and the Manchu emissaries in the film are involved in ‘illegal’ activities in the colony: they hold political public meetings, arrest people without informing local police, engage in and encourage local police corruption, and impose China’s nationalism on the local community to cause public disorder. When the mainland nationalists invite Ma to join the revolution to ‘save Chinese minzu together’, Ma distances himself from them by stating: I am the kind of person who always bothers with small matters. It doesn’t matter how correct, how admirable my aim is, I will never break laws to achieve my objectives [my emphasis]. In fact, I do admire people like you, because you are the kind of people who can achieve great aims. I understand very well that to overthrow the Manchu dynasty thousands and thousands of people are required to sacrifice their lives. But I dare not ask people to do so, because I do not know, after so many dead and injured, what kind of result there will be. The film reinforces the stereotype of the lawless mainland Chinese constructed through local popular cultural products from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. In the film, the mainland revolutionaries work with corrupt local police to achieve their political aim of overthrowing the Manchu government on the mainland. When the Manchu emissaries are under arrest by the Hong Kong police, a Manchu prince orders the Hong Kong police to release his men ‘immediately’. His attitude is similar to that described earlier by a Hong Kong senior police officer: ‘The problem with these people (the mainland Chinese) is that they have no consciousness of law’. His comment not only presupposes two types of Chinese – one in China and one in Hong Kong – but also explicates a civic and territorially defined Hong Kong community: the people of Hong Kong are all subject to and conscious of its legal system, whereas the mainland Chinese are not. Jackie Chan’s two historical films neatly reflect the triangular relationship in the construction of Hong Kong as a ‘nation’. Hong Kong’s ‘nationality’ is constructed through the concept of a geopolitically defined nation

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in relation to China, and through drawing cultural and functional boundaries in relation to the British coloniser. This characteristic of reliance on the triangular relationship in making sense of Hong Kong as a nation reflects the ambiguous nature of that process, which once again produces the British colony as the embodiment of a quasi-nation. Hong Kong as a historical indigenous community If writing an autobiography is a process of making sense of one’s life, and seeking the answer to ‘who am I?’, then Allen Fong’s autobiographical film, Fuzi qing / Father and Son (1981), provides the answer that Fong and his generation are the descendants of Hong Kong. In Allen Fong’s memory of his childhood and teenage years, China was absent and the coloniser was invisible. His film presents no signs or symbols of China, nor is there any political or cultural influence from China evident in the process of Fong’s growing up. In the film, his family has no friends, relatives, colleagues or neighbours who bear resemblance to the mainland Chinese in their accents, gestures or the idiom they speak. His parents have no particular memories about the past and no family or political cultural connections with the mainland. No traces of the mainland are portrayed by their body language or their accents. The absence of China in the parents’ generation suggests that the origin of Hong Kong was Hong Kong itself. The film also suggests that, while the British coloniser was invisible, the colonial system was ever-present and affected the lives of everyone. In the film, the father cannot gain promotion after many years of service, because his oral and written English is not adequate for the foreign-owned company where he is employed. English, the language that both are struggling to cope with, is shown to be the area of study in which the father supervises the son. Allen Fong explains: The father forces his son to admit Western culture. Though the son is not willing to, the father has to insist. Because that is the only way he can lift the son’s social status [for the future]. (Film Biweekly no.57, April 1981, 24) Father and Son dramatises the pressure that the local Chinese endure under the colonial system, and the foreignness of the English language to native community members. The British colony is presented as a society deeply rooted in the Chinese cultural tradition. It constructs a Chinese cultural identity through the touching relationship between a devoted patriarchal father and his introverted son. Ka-hing is not very bright at his school work. By the time he is in year four, he has been expelled from three different primary schools due to poor academic results. However, as Ka-hing is the only boy

Constructions of history and territory 85 of his five children, the father insists that his son completes his education at all costs. The father’s determination precludes him from understanding that the son has a passion and a talent for making films. After completing high school, the son tries to find work in a local television station. However, the father insists that his son should complete a tertiary education overseas, despite the family having to survive at a below-average living standard. The father’s obsession for his son to study for a degree results in the former marrying off his eldest daughter to pay for his son’s university education, and in his ordering his second daughter to work to support the family by not taking advantages of her perfect scores in her tertiary entrance examination. Though Ka-hing expresses his strong objection to the father’s arrangement, he cannot bear to see his father’s disappointment. Reluctantly, the son fulfils the father’s wish. Ka-hing gives up his chances to work in a television station and leaves Hong Kong for university in America. Father and Son reinforces the Chinese cultural identity of the colony by borrowing generic conventions from Chinese left-wing social realist films of the 1930s and 1940s, and Cantonese melodramas of family relationship of the 1950s. With a focus on a socially deprived class and the conditions they had to bear, Father and Son depicts a common theme in family lunli (ethic) relations – a social realist approach to the story of a patriarchal father and his obedient son in a lower middle-class family. The film was commonly recognised by Chinese film critics as one of the very few Hong Kong new wave films that inherited and developed the Chinese cultural tradition. However, the absence of China and the mainland refugees in the film transforms the 1950s from a period that historically characterised the tiny colony struggling to cope with overpopulated mainland refugees, to a period that highlighted the aspects of pre-industrial and pre-technological Hong Kong. It produces an historically inherited and territorially selfcontained indigenous Hong Kong community. The film presents the social progress of the colony from the 1950s to the early 1970s. In the 1950s, the family lives in a shabby wooden house in the slums. Ka-hing’s family lives solely on the father’s wage, which barely provides a living for the family of seven. Ka-hing’s ill-equipped school is located on the roof of a small building. After school, children run around on the nearby hill, where they play in the bush, on the rocks and inside derelict old houses. A fire accident damages the entire area of the slum, including their shabby house. The family then moves into a public housing estate, where the changed environment is depicted by a high density of urban infrastructure. These contrasting territorial features, the 1950s slum and the 1970s public housing estate, display the economic progress and social change from the poverty of the 1950s to the economic boom of the 1970s. Local spectators also view the film as displaying social changes in Hong Kong. Allen Fong’s style of realism certainly leads to the preferred

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reading of his film as a reflection of social change in Hong Kong. The film was mostly shot under natural light on locations in a slum and public housing environment, with the majority of actors being amateurs and newcomers. The Director of RTHK, Zhang Minyi, comments that the film is about ‘a period without television’ (Film Biweekly no.58, 16 April 1981, 12). In a similar direction, Yuan Huaishen, head of the Social Work Department of Shuren College, comments that the film presents a period in Hong Kong ‘before the public housing programme was established’. Likewise, Li Mingkun praises the film as ‘representative’ of Hong Kong society: As we have seen, this family had difficulties in the ’50s and ’60s. It has overcome difficulties, and become part of the relatively stable and wealthy society of today. It has survived terrible living conditions in a slum and has also experienced economic recession. The fire incident in the film is representative. It shows how the public housing programme began. The experience of growing up under pressure from family and school was common at the time. It was possible to send children to study overseas. There were always opportunities as long as you worked hard. To me this film shows the process of change in Hong Kong [my emphasis] from the ’50s and ’60s to the industrial and urban society it is now. The idea of Hong Kong as an indigenous community derives from Allen Fong’s construction of a local sense of history and territory. This sense is negotiated between Allen Fong’s memory of the past and his past as witnessed by the territory of Hong Kong. His cinematic construction of Hong Kong history is the background to his growing up under pressure from his father, and his cinematic representation of Hong Kong territory reveals the metamorphosis of the city from a slum to a site accommodating public housing estates. History and territory correspond, in that the history reflects the possessive hold of the community over the territory, and the territory’s witnessing of the community’s development. By identifying with the ‘natural historical sites’ of a slum in the 1950s and of public housing estates in the 1970s, the film generates a particular significance to Hong Kong spectators rather than simply presenting a touching relationship between father and son. The film produces a history of Hong Kong: how we grew up, how we experienced difficult periods, and how our parents’ hard work brought us (economic) success. By eliminating the role that China played in Hong Kong’s past, and by highlighting the foreign nature of the coloniser’s culture, Allen Fong’s historical film defines Hong Kong as a historical indigenous community of its own.

Constructions of history and territory 87 Hong Kong as a community developed from collections of refugees and migrants In contrast to Allen Fong’s construction of history and territory, which produced Hong Kong as an indigenous community, Ann Hui’s autobiographical film, Song of the Exile, suggests that Hong Kong is a community developed from groups of refugees and migrants who have been excluded and rejected by their homeland(s). Her film does not focus on the representation of Hong Kong’s past or of its territory as Allen Fong did through his narrative about two generations of a father and a son. Instead, Ann Hui’s narrative, depicting the relationship between a mother and her daughter, explains how collections of refugees and migrants forged their identification with the British colony because of their past experience with China and Britain. In the Song of the Exile, the daughter’s identification with Hong Kong derives from her desire to become a member of the Hong Kong community. Hong Kong does not nurture the daughter, Hueyin, as it did Ka-hing in Father and Son. Hueyin is born in Manchuria and spends her childhood and early teenage years with her grandparents in Macau. She goes to Hong Kong at the age of fifteen, but leaves the colony after a couple of years for a university education in Britain. Hueyin’s desire to belong to Hong Kong develops only after she comes to understand her mother, a Japanese migrant to Hong Kong. During the last days of the Japanese occupation in the late 1940s Hueyin’s mother, then in her early twenties, goes to Manchuria. She meets Hueyin’s father, an ethnic Chinese army officer who speaks Japanese, and marries him in China. She then follows her husband to Macau with their infant daughter, Hueyin, to escape Chinese hostility towards them. However, her husband’s parents also hold political and cultural prejudices against her Japanese background. Hueyin’s mother cannot cope with the pressure and cross-cultural difference, so she follows her husband to Hong Kong. In accordance with Hueyin’s wishes, her mother leaves her 6-year old daughter behind, in the care of her in-laws. During her years of living in Chinese society, the mother always identifies herself as a Japanese, longing for her life in Japan, despite having adapted to a Chinese lifestyle in Hong Kong society. Hueyin’s understanding of her mother gradually develops with a mixture of Hueyin’s own memories and her life experience. The first twothirds of the film deal with the confrontations between the mother and daughter, each influenced by their memories of the other. In Hueyin’s memory, her mother is cold, unkind and self-interested. She seldom smiles, and often does things against Hueyin’s wishes, such as cutting Hueyin’s hair for school. In her memory, the mother is irresponsible, failing to perform her duty as a wife and mother. Her negative opinion of her mother finally drives Hueyin to leave home at the age of sixteen for a

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boarding school. However, her opinions of her mother change after she accompanies her mother on a return to Japan, and witnesses the mother’s painful experience of rejecting the belief that she belongs to Japan. However, just as her mother has identified with Japan, Hueyin at one time also believes that she belongs to Britain. In the film we see Hueyin’s happiness and ease in dealing with the British cultural environment and with her local friends. She describes her life in London as being ‘like sunshine’. We see images of her colourful and energetic youth, riding a bicycle in a joyful mood with her British friends along the River Thames and across Westminster Bridge. But after the British Broadcasting Corporation rejects her job application for an interview and her friend’s kindly remarks that ‘there is something mysterious about the Orient’, Hueyin begins to sense a difference between British subjects and British colonial subjects. At one stage she types her nationality as ‘British’ on her resume, she pauses for a few seconds, then pulls out the resume from the typewriter, and throws it away. These ‘few seconds’ express the intimacy and ambiguity Hueyin feels in her problematic identification with Britain: she is British, but not quite. This ambiguity encourages her to leave London temporarily for her sister’s wedding in Hong Kong. Hueyin’s own experience of desiring to belong to Britain allows her to see her mother’s painful experience of discovering for herself that she does not belong to Japan. In Japan, the mother’s home village is open, refined and tranquil. It is autumn in Japan where colours of dark green and golden yellow are dominant. But the vast and refined landscape in chilly late autumn also suggests the distanced human relations between the mother and her home village. There are no images of a family reunion being celebrated. Instead, a cool reality faces the mother: her elder brother intends to sell the family property (where the mother had hoped to spend the rest of her life), and the younger brother refuses to meet the mother because of her marriage to a Chinese more than two decades earlier. The experience of ‘being rejected’, however, allows the mother to have a different perspective on Hong Kong – the place where she has almost spent more time than her homeland, Japan. During her last few days in Japan, the mother begins to complain of ‘cold’ Japanese food, ‘inconvenient’ Japanese rural baths, and longs to return to her ‘home’ for ‘warm’ Cantonese soup and a hot shower in her apartment in Hong Kong. Similarly, Hueyin does not at first identify with Hong Kong. After her grandparents return to the mainland from Macau in the 1960s, Hueyin, at fifteen, is sent back to Hong Kong where her parents had settled. The film presents her loneliness through images of her sitting apart from her schoolmates, her flashbacks to the pleasant time spent with her grandfather, and her rebellious behaviour towards her parents. Her sense of alienation is revealed by her refusal to identify with Hong Kong. Some years later, when she returns to Hong Kong for her sister’s wedding, Hueyin also presents herself as an outsider in her manner, dress and atti-

Constructions of history and territory 89 tude. She is uninterested in anything around her apart from the English news on television, which reports on events on the mainland, where her grandparents are still alive. However, witnessing her mother’s painful experience of frustrated longing for Japan helps Hueyin to choose Hong Kong as ‘home’: For the first time I worked with the people here. I closely monitored their expressions and listened to their voices . . . I forgot about my personal effects in England, my job applications . . . It is this experience of ‘wanting-to-belong-to’ and ‘then-being-rejected’ that has brought refugees and migrants from different cultural backgrounds across different generations together to identify Hong Kong as home. Unlike Allen Fong’s Father and Son, which glosses over China’s influence over the past of Hong Kong, Song of the Exile suggests that the existence of the Hong Kong community was brought about by political and social changes in China. Ann Hui believes that: History does not make sense if we are taken apart from China. This colonial past is just an interlude. . . . It is only in comparison to Chinese culture – where we’re better, where worse – that we can define Hong Kong culture. It can’t be talked of in isolation. (Cinemaya vol.7, Spring 1990, 23) China plays a significant role in Hueyin’s family. Hueyin’s parents migrate to the British colony to escape Chinese hostility towards them after China has won the Sino-Japanese war in the late 1940s. China’s civil war between the Communists and the Guomindang has also brought Hueyin’s grandparents from Guangzhou to the Portuguese colony of Macau. The closeddoor policy after 1950 has further cut the colony’s cultural and social connections with the motherland, as a result of which the grandparents suffer greatly. Their nostalgia for their homeland and their political and cultural identification with China encourages them to return. However, similar to the experience of Hueyin’s mother, the grandparents’ return to China also brings them unpleasantness and disappointment. Guangzhou appears a dull city where people live a depressed lifestyle. On a cloudy autumn day, Hueyin visits her grandparents’ small room, crowded with basic furniture, in a narrow, dark building. With lighting from the back the neighbours look distressed and unhealthy. The grandfather greets Hueyin on his bed. A few days earlier, he had borrowed a collection of classical Chinese poems, which caused the Red Guards to carry out a day’s investigation into his activities. Subsequently, he falls down a staircase and is paralysed. Ann Hui does not focus on Hong Kong’s history or territory to the same extent as Allen Fong and Jackie Chan. However, she constructs and

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presents a history of Hong Kong community members. Her film can be viewed as a response to the political and social tensions of the colony in the late 1980s and in 1990, Hong Kong’s lowest point since the SinoBritish Joint Declaration. In 1987–8, the colonial government, in the eyes of the Hong Kong community, manipulated a public survey result to postpone direct elections from 1988 to 1991, elections which would have been crucial in assisting the colony to establish a representative government before its return to China. To the Hong Kong community, Britain’s apparent preparedness to accommodate the Chinese government betrayed Hong Kong and failed to fulfil the common desires of the local people. The sense of frustration and powerlessness increased. From 1988 onwards, a growing number of Hong Kong residents prepared to leave the colony by seeking the security of a foreign passport. In this historical context,1 Song of the Exile responded to the social situation of migration from Hong Kong in the late 1980s. In her film, the identification of the parents’ generation with their motherland(s), and Hueyin’s with Britain brings about the tragedy of longing for something which, in Ann Hui’s words, ‘no longer existed’.2 The film responded to the ‘present’ situation in the late 1980s that the generation who longed to belong to the West or who saw Hong Kong as part of Britain, would also be ultimately dissatisfied. Ann Hui’s film indicated a change in Hong Kong’s perspective on self in the triangular relationship from the early to mid-1980s. Identification with the British legal system in order to distance itself from China in the 1980s shifted to a seeking of different ways of identifying with the British colony, by redefining the boundaries in the triangular relationship. Nevertheless, the triangular relationship between the British coloniser, the Chinese motherland and Hong Kong remained crucial to the process of constructing a Hong Kong history and a territory. The imperfect and incomplete process of Hong Kong nation-constructing relying on the triangular relationship produced a cinematic version of Hong Kong as the embodiment of a quasi-nation.

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Hong Kong films Cinematic constructions of Hong Kong’s quasi-national identity

In the previous chapter, I argued that cinematic constructions of Hong Kong’s history and of its territory were inextricably interwoven with the triangular relationship between the British coloniser, the Chinese motherland and Hong Kong. In this chapter, I study cinematic constructions of Hong Kong’s geopolitical identity according to Anthony Smith’s ‘two forms and concepts of the “nation”, territorial and ethnic’ (1989: 135). I explore the extent to which cinematic constructions of Hong Kong identities lead to the notion of Hong Kong as a quasi-nation. The chapter analyses cinematic constructions of Hong Kong’s geopolitical identity as exhibiting three characteristics of Hong Kong as a quasination. First, I suggest that a geopolitical identity is constructed through identifications with the British colonial legal system, which excludes the mainland, and with Chinese nationalism, which excludes the British coloniser. This reliance on the triangular relationship in the process of articulating ‘self’ produces a ‘nation’ lacking its own political power. As a consequence, a quasi-national Hong Kong identity emerges. Second, I contend that cinematic representations of Hong Kong’s geopolitical identity appear vague and ambiguous. This claim appears to contradict the point that Hong Kong is articulated through the triangular relationship. Note, however, that the nature of cultural identity is usually situational, contradictory and inconsistent. Nevertheless, the ambiguity of Hong Kong’s geopolitical identity (especially when compared to other communities, which are distinctive by virtue of their obvious geopolitical identities) stems largely from the fact that Hong Kong’s identity crosses geopolitical borders. This suggests that Hong Kong identity cannot be constructed in the same way as that of other nations; a quasi-national status of Hong Kong appears to be more appropriate. Third, I make the observation that cinematic constructions of Hong Kong nationhood suggest that Hong Kong as a geopolitically defined nation is not recognised as such by the international community. Hong Kong possesses a hybrid identity stemming from British colonisation and Chinese society. And yet, the very character of its distinct hybrid cultural

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identity has precluded its recognition as a nation internationally and has reinforced its quasi-national status. The chapter is organised into three sections. In the first section, I discuss Stuart Hall’s two ways of understanding cultural identity with reference to Hong Kong. In the second section, I apply Anthony Smith’s ‘two distinct forms and concepts of the “nation” ’ to analyse cinematic constructions of Hong Kong’s geopolitical cultural identity in three local films: Johnny Mak’s Shenggang qibing / Long Arm of the Law (1984), Stanley Kwan’s Ren zai Niuyue / Full Moon in New York (1987) and Evans Chan’s Fushi lianqu / To Liv(e) (1991). In the final section, I emphasise that Hong Kong quasi-national identity is not fixed, but a cultural representation of the triangular relationship between the British coloniser, the Chinese motherland and Hong Kong constructed in a particular historical context. As Hong Kong moved closer to its return to China, a number of Hong Kong films began to reconstruct Hong Kong’s geopolitically defined identity by strengthening its Chinese ethnicity. The shift towards an emphasis on Chinese ethnic identity has the effect of reducing the difference between the disparate historical and cultural experiences of Hong Kong and China, and contributes to the myth of a shared experience. This modified construction of Hong Kong’s identity as portrayed in the cinema is nothing new. Since the inception of the film industry in the early twentieth century, cinematic cultural representations of Hong Kong have consistently progressed in line with changes in the triangular relationship between the British coloniser, the Chinese motherland and Hong Kong’s self.

National identity and Hong Kong identity National identity is, in part, a cultural identity constructed by a particular national community within a particular culture (Smith 1991: 71–98; Hedetoft 1995: 121–48; Richards 1997: 1–27; Hall et al. 1992: 274–316; Foster 1995: 1–21; Balibar 1991: 86–106). According to Stuart Hall (1991: 41–81; 1990: 222–37; 1989: 69), there are two approaches to understanding a cultural identity. One is to assume that a cultural identity is the essence of one’s true self. It is fixed, cannot be replaced, and is ‘hiding inside the many other, more superficial or artificially imposed “selves”, which people with a shared history and ancestry hold in common’ (1989: 69). From this perspective, the production of a cultural identity tends to strengthen the links between the existing self and what is regarded as one’s ‘authentic’ or ‘original’ culture. This approach would see the production of Hong Kong cultural identity through an emphasis on familial and ethnic connections between Hong Kong and China. Moreover, such an emphasis reduces the importance of the different political and cultural histories experienced by both. The cultural identity of Hong Kong is, in the discourse of the true self, always essentially Chinese.

Constructions of quasi-national identity 93 The second approach to understanding cultural identity, in Hall’s view, is a denial of the existence of any authentic cultural identity. Instead, he claims, it is to perceive cultural identity as relational, incomplete and always changing in the context of the political, economic and social environments. In other words, this approach regards cultural identity as a matter of always ‘becoming’ rather than of ‘being’. That is, cultural identity is not something which already exists or has been fixed. It is something that is always in process. Hence, cultural identity is inevitably complicated by impurity and contradiction. This perspective recognises the specific cultural experience of the Chinese in Hong Kong as much as their ethnic cultural background. It would view Hong Kong cultural identity from the perspective of Hong Kong’s relationship with the British coloniser and the Chinese motherland. Hong Kong cultural identity, then, is always a historical cultural representation produced in the context of the triangular relationship between the British coloniser, the Chinese motherland and Hong Kong itself. The emphasis here is on the notion of ‘becoming’. This raises the question of the extent to which Hong Kong Chinese are different from other Chinese communities. I follow Hall’s second approach to understanding cultural identity, which seems to appropriately describe Hong Kong’s fluctuating character as neither fixed nor exclusive. It is shaped within networks of social relations that constitute Hong Kong’s environment. Cultural identity here is constructed in a diversity of forms within a particular historical context. As I argued in Chapter 1, before the mid-1950s the Hong Kong film industry produced a cinematic cultural identity that mirrored China’s politics and society. Hong Kong’s cultural image was at that point constructed as part of Chinese national identity in conjunction with a Cantonese regional identity. It was projected from within the specific historical, political and cultural context of the triangular relationship: free movement between the colony and China, the colony’s system of dual policies for the British and the Chinese respectively, and the influence of China’s nationalism. I pointed out in Chapter 2 that, as Taiwanese and South-East Asian markets became important to the industry after mainstream Hong Kong films were banned in China in the early 1950s, a struggle emerged between Cantonese regional identity and its Mandarin counterpart. With further changes within the political and economic environments after the late 1960s – the positive involvement of the colonial government with the local community and the speedy improvement of the economy and lifestyle in the colony, plus the growing influence of television – local critics argue that since the mid-1970s cinematic constructions of Hong Kong indigenous identity have emerged in response to the changed political and social environment. From a historical perspective, the production of cinematic cultural identity in Hong Kong since the inception of the industry has always fluctuated between Chinese national identity, Cantonese regional identity, and Chinese Mandarin (guoyu) cultural identity. So how is this cinematic

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indigenous identity of Hong Kong distinct from those previous cinematic cultural identities? How does Hong Kong’s indigenous cinematic identity negotiate with those that preceded it? And in what ways does Hong Kong indigenous cultural identity present the uniqueness of Hong Kong as a political cultural entity? Historians and social scientists have argued that national identity is constructed through a process of nation-building as the consequence of state action and the process of modernisation (Smith 1989: 129–73; Foster 1995: 33–63; Hutchinson and Smith 1994: 132–59; Navari 1981: 13–37). Developments in technology, especially in communication systems, allow national communities to develop on a larger scale. Market forces and the emergence of administrative and political institutions break down traditional familial and local ties, and thereby force individuals to rely on state institutions for survival. The reinforcement of the idea of a common past – through a monopoly over education, a universal national language, the print medium, and national symbols and ceremonials – strengthen the citizens’ affinity with their nation-state. Processes of mobilisation and communication by means of the state system then reinforce an individual’s sense of identification with the nation state. However, ‘nation building’ in this colony displays a special complexity. Neither the British government nor the Chinese government ever publicly encouraged Hong Kong to become an independent nation. And yet, a distinct community of Hong Kong did develop after the closing of the Chinese border in 1950, and after the colonial government made a positive move to reduce the gap between the British and the Chinese communities after the late 1960s. The colonial government carried out various political and social policy reforms. These included localisation programmes to allow more Chinese into decision-making bodies, and legislation to allow the Chinese language to become one of the official languages. Furthermore, developments in social welfare policies in education, health and public housing programmes contributed to the formation of a political cultural environment distinctive to Hong Kong. This environment distanced the Hong Kong Chinese from the Chinese on the mainland. In addition, the colonial government also participated in and encouraged various international trade and art festivals held in Hong Kong to promote images of a distinctive Hong Kong community actively disassociated from Communist China (M. Turner 1995). Hong Kong’s ‘nation-building’ was developed, however, without the symbols of independent nationhood. Montserrat Guibernau (1996: 80) identifies national symbols and rituals as being some of the most important features in the construction of a nation or of national identity. Symbols and rituals are decisive factors in the creation of national identity. The nation as a form of community implies both similarity among its members and difference from outsiders.

Constructions of quasi-national identity 95 As a British colony, symbols such as the colonial flag and the anthem ‘God Save the Queen’ signified Hong Kong’s colonial status. There was no ritual in Hong Kong that was solely ‘of’ Hong Kong. Different organisations did celebrate different political ‘national’ days: those of the People’s Republic, or the Republic of China, or the Queen’s (Hong Kong) birthday. There was no Hong Kong national military, but only the British armed forces and the Royal Hong Kong police. The process of construction of a national identity requires its citizens to identify with a geopolitical nation-state. The construction of a Hong Kong identity encouraged the people of Hong Kong to identify with the British colony. At the same time, the local community did not regard cinematic Hong Kong identity as British colonial identity but as Hong Kong indigenous identity. How does this indigenous identity, established in the mid1970s, sit with the colonial status of Hong Kong before July 1997? How did the production of a Hong Kong indigenous identity constitute for the people of Hong Kong a sense of belonging, or even a sense of Hong Kong ‘nationalism’ within a world of British colonial symbols? One form of Hong Kong nationalism projected itself as a distinct and indigenous political entity, almost equal to a nation. Yet, this form also operated as a defence of British colonisation, since Hong Kong was a British colony. How does one tell the difference between Hong Kong colonial cultural identity and Hong Kong indigenous identity? At what moment do they become clearly differentiated? As Anthony Smith (1989: 134–52) argues, national identity is constructed within two distinctive forms and concepts of ‘the nation’: an emphasis on the geopolitical and legal system defines the territorial nation, and an emphasis on myths of ancestry, common origin and descent defines the ethnic nation. In spite of there being distinct features in these two forms of the nation, all national identities contain some elements and features from these two forms. Differences in national identities lie in the extent and the emphasis of their formation. Furthermore, national identity can shift towards one or another of the forms in different historical periods. From Smith, we understand that national identity depends on the boundaries of geopolitical and ethnic identities to make sense. What makes Chinese national identity distinct is that it is different from Japanese, French or American national identity in the way that history and ethnic cultural identities are constructed. In this sense, a national identity can only make sense by defining itself against others. Other identities function as interpretative signs through which the self can be constructed and identified (Hedetoft 1995: 91–120). However, national identity does not necessarily have to be formed as a singular identity. The self can also be formed through identification with part of another identity. Hall (Bailey and Hall 1992: 20) argues that national identity can also be ‘contradictory’ because it is always

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‘situational’. It can be constructed through an emphasis on a multiplicity of identities in an apparent ‘kind of disassembled and reassembled unity’ (Haraway 1991: 163). In post-colonial experience, but also in all national identities, it can also be constructed in hybridity. For example, a British film My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) represents a British cultural identity as made up of fragments from British–Anglo-Saxon and Asian–British cultural identities. As Sarita Malik (1996: 214) points out: ‘we have been offered a version of Britishness that does not necessarily belong to the English.’ An Australian film, Strictly Ballroom (1992), also presents a hybridised identity, in the words of Tom O’Regan, as ‘a European derived society’ (1996: 306–7). In the following section, I discuss the ways that Hong Kong cinematic cultural identity is constructed from an historical perspective. I argue that cinematic constructions of Hong Kong identity since the mid-1970s pull in different directions, corresponding with Anthony Smith’s two forms of national identity, and so produce Hong Kong’s quasi-national identity. This cinematic quasi-national identity is differentiated from Chinese Mandarin cultural identity and Cantonese regional identity, both of which dominated the earlier period of Hong Kong diasporic cinema.

Quasi-national identity in a cinematic context The desire for a distinct Hong Kong cultural identity did not emerge solely from the historical context of 1997. In their studies of Cantonese films, Leung Noong-kong (1988: 27–8) and Roger Garcia (1978: 36–8) argue that the Cantonese film-makers sought to establish Hong Kong identity in the 1950s through the concept of home, and the notion of ‘settling a home’ in Hong Kong. Leung elaborates his argument through his analysis of two Cantonese films. In Mo Kangshi’s Baicuo mihun zhen / The Misarranged Love Trap (1950), a happily married Hong Kong couple break up as a result of the arrival of their relatives from the mainland. On the same day, the wife’s brother and the husband’s uncle’s family of six arrive in Hong Kong. By coincidence, they all move into the couple’s home. Their presence creates chaos for the couple, who each defend their own relatives. When the uncle’s family insists on staying, the wife moves out with her brother. For Leung, the film implies that the invasion of the mainland Chinese destroys the unity of the Hong Kong community. While only a few examples can be selected from the 1950s, Leung argues that Hong Kong consciousness is also expressed through the identification with the British monarchy. For example, Huoshu yinhua xiangying hong / Bright Night (1953) directed by Wu Hui, Cheng Gang and Zhu Ji, deals with a story of how a Hong Kong man makes the decision to remain in the British colony. On the eve of the festival which commemorates the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, this man steals some jewellery from the company where he works. He intends taking the jewellery in order to

Constructions of quasi-national identity 97 leave Hong Kong with his family. However, when his friend fails to arrange a passport for his daughter, he is confronted with the decision of whether to leave without his daughter or to remain in Hong Kong to keep the family together. At this crucial moment, Leung (1988: 27) observes, his wife evokes the vision of the Queen as the head of a nation working for the happiness of her people to encourage her husband to do the same as the head of his family. Zhang Ying is so moved by his wife’s plea that he thinks better of going crooked and returns the jewels to the safe. It is this identification with the Queen as the head of the nation that, Leung argues, prompts the protagonist to decide to stay in Hong Kong. Although Cantonese films of the 1950s express an awareness of a Hong Kong community, Hong Kong identity was essentially constructed as an ethnic Chinese and a colonial identity. On the surface, Mo Kangshi’s The Misarranged Love Trap presents the fear that the invasion of the mainland Chinese would destroy the Hong Kong family. On the other hand, the film can also be interpreted to suggest that the notion of a distinct Hong Kong community is an illusion. After their mainland relatives move into the couple’s home, both the wife and the husband furiously defend their own relatives’ right to stay and oppose the other’s family members. Thus, it could be understood that after all it is Hong Kong’s familial and cultural connections with the mainland that constitute the essence of Hong Kong cultural identity. Only in the 1970s does the Hong Kong film industry begin to identify the concepts of a geopolitical and legal-political Hong Kong community. I will discuss this idea by briefly considering two films from the period, which construct China as the other, and identify with the geopolitical territory of Hong Kong and the colonial legal system rather than the British monarchy. Zaijian Zhongguo / China Behind (1974), directed by Shu Shuen (Tang Shuxuan), deals with a story of five tertiary students who flee China during the Cultural Revolution. The film uses images of intense preparation by the illegal migrants in Guangzhou, their troublesome journey crossing the Chinese border, and their failure to adapt to the capitalist lifestyle of Hong Kong. Through emphasising differences in political identity, China Behind embodies the idea that Hong Kong is not part of China. Despite speaking the same dialect, Chinese from Guangzhou cannot integrate in Hong Kong society. China Behind dismisses the relevance of connections with China by emphasising the significance of political inheritance. Moreover, none of the mainland refugees in the film have family members or connections in the colony from whom they can seek help. Ng See-yuen’s Lianzheng fengbao / Anti-Corruption (1975) is also concerned with Hong Kong’s geopolitical and legal systems. The film is based

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on an actual police scandal in 1973–1974, when the deputy district police commander in Kowloon, Peter Godber, was convicted of corruption. AntiCorruption tells the story of a British expatriate police officer involved in embezzlement under the gradual influence of corrupt local Chinese officers. Though Anti-Corruption portrays a British colony with a colonial government, the film presents positive images of the government’s efforts in combating crime (Sek 1999: 163–4). The film constructs the British colony as a legally structured geopolitical entity, wherein the British and the local Chinese are bound by the same community laws. China Behind and Anti-Corruption are pioneering films of the 1970s, which develop the significance of Hong Kong as a geopolitical community. This does not mean, however, that the construction of Hong Kong geopolitical identity has been advanced without any reference to Chinese ethnic or the Cantonese regional identity. In the following section, I discuss three major ways in which cinematic constructions of Hong Kong’s geopolitical identity embody the notion of a quasi-nation. First, Hong Kong identity appears as a fragmented identity, comprising elements of a British colonial and a Chinese ethnic identity. Second, Hong Kong’s identity is projected in relation to other geopolitically defined Chinese cultural identities. Finally, the territory’s geopolitical identity has the hybrid character of the British colonisation of a Chinese society. As I will argue through textual analysis, what is common to these constructions is that they all imply that the geopolitically defined Hong Kong community exists only as a quasination.

Hong Kong: A ‘nation’ without sovereignty Johnny Mak’s Shenggang qibing / Long Arm of the Law (1984) provides an example of how Hong Kong’s quasi-national identity is constructed through the triangular relationship between the British coloniser, the Chinese motherland and Hong Kong. In his film, concepts of bordercrossing, civic culture, state institutions, Chinese ethnic cultural identity and Chinese nationalism are connected and contradicted. Mak projects the British coloniser and China as the two powerful others in his film. However, his construction of Hong Kong identity relies on both its identification with the colony’s geopolitical territory and with Chinese nationalism. Through the colony’s identification with the British colonial legal system, Johnny Mak establishes boundaries for Hong Kong which exclude China, while through Hong Kong’s identification with Chinese nationalism, he excludes the British coloniser. His film presents a distinct community and quasi-national identity for Hong Kong. Its geopolitical identity is quasi-national, because it can only be articulated through its identification with the British coloniser and with the motherland China, as I suggested in the previous chapter, through the ‘imperfect’ process of nationconstructing. It is quasi-national, because Johnny Mak’s cinematic Hong

Constructions of quasi-national identity 99 Kong represents Hong Kong as a nation which has no future claim over its own political power. Long Arm of the Law is a crime-police drama. The narrative traces about 5 days of robbery and murder in Hong Kong by mainland Chinese gangs. In the film, a group of mainland Chinese illegally enter the British colony. With assistance from local triads they commit a series of crimes, including the murder of a Hong Kong police detective. The Royal Hong Kong police defend the colony by fighting back and killing the whole gang in the Chinese territory of the Walled City in Kowloon. The film was produced in 1984, and its release 5 months before the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration in December 1984 touched upon Hong Kong’s fear of China and Hong Kong’s anger towards Britain over the latter’s handling of the 1997 handover. In the narrative, the triadic configuration between Hong Kong police, the mainland gangsters and the local triads is commonly perceived as symbolic of the triangular relationship between the British coloniser, the Chinese motherland and Hong Kong (C.T. Li 1990: 171–2; Sek 1999: 80–3). The film touches on three controversial issues that relate to public security at the time. The first issue concerns the increasing number of burglaries by mainland migrants in Hong Kong in late 1983. The second concerns the use of arms by police on the streets in early 1984, and the third is about the community’s reaction to the high levels of public violence between the police and the local triads. During the Chinese New Year period in 1984, a number of fierce confrontations between Hong Kong police and the local triads shocked the public. The fighting sequences between the mainland gangsters and the Hong Kong police at the business centre and the Walled City in Johnny Mak’s Long Arm of the Law show a remarkable resemblance to those incidents which occurred between late 1983 and early 1984. Johnny Mak utilises these three controversial issues of public security in his film. He rearranges them diegetically as a triadic relation between the Royal Hong Kong police, mainland Chinese gangsters, and local triads. In this relationship, the colonial police and the mainland gangsters are in opposition, while the local triads function as a bridge between the two. The relation of Mak’s filmic narrative to real events positions the spectators as the concerned Hong Kong public of the period. In Johnny Mak’s film, political identity is aligned with the geopolitical territory in the British colony and with its legal system in order to establish the boundaries with China. The major character, Lin Wei, is a general commandant of the Red Guards Guangzhou Division during the Cultural Revolution. In 1979 he had fled the country to Hong Kong, and was soon granted permanent residence in Hong Kong. Since then, Lin Wei has committed a series of crimes, and the Hong Kong police categorise him as a ‘dangerous’ criminal on their most wanted list. The film begins on 19 November 1983, when Lin Wei returns to

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Guangzhou to call upon his five ex-colleagues from the Red Guards to plan a burglary in Hong Kong. A month later, on the night before the five men come to Hong Kong from the mainland, they gather at home in Guangzhou to affirm their team spirit and to wish each other good luck. Under the dim light inside a sparsely decorated room, five middle-age men sing passionately: There is a fat baby in front of us. People say, there is no way to get it. But this is not a big deal to us. A small river divides us into two different worlds, and I am attracted to you. Their style of singing resembles the Red Guards in their performance of revolutionary songs during the Cultural Revolution. The phrase, ‘a fat baby’, refers to the tiny but wealthy colony. The words, ‘a small river’ refers to the Shenzhen river at the Chinese border. When the sentence ‘a small river divides us into two worlds’ is uttered, one character turns back and looks directly at the camera, and the other two beside him also look in a similar direction. It is as if these mainland Chinese acknowledge that Hong Kong spectators are watching them. This unusual image builds up a relationship between the mainland Chinese on the screen and the Hong Kong spectators in reality. When the mainland characters sing to the Hong Kong audience that ‘a small river divides us into two worlds’, they imply that ‘our’ (natural) river has become an (artificial) political border that divides ‘us’ (the Cantonese) into two different geopolitical territories, the Chinese citizens of the People’s Republic of China, and Hong Kong residents of the British colony. Using the Red Guards to represent the cultural identity of the mainland Chinese stresses the difference in political identity between Hong Kong and China. The term, Red Guards, recalls the two disparate political histories of China and Hong Kong during the 1960s and 1970s. When the national political movement, the Cultural Revolution, was launched in the late 1960s, Hong Kong began a process of fast economic development establishing an indigenous Hong Kong identity. Different political histories indicate that Hong Kong, though a Chinese society, has a distinct political culture. Moreover, Red Guards were both ‘criminals’ and ‘victims’ of the Cultural Revolution. Thus, the device of using Red Guards to represent the mainland Chinese in Long Arm of the Law suggests the threat of a mainland takeover. The film presents the longing of mainland Chinese for the capitalist lifestyle of Hong Kong, which highlights China’s socialist poverty. Just before one of the mainland gangsters leaves to join his mates on their dangerous journey across the border, his wife runs after him to complain that he has forgotten to take the shopping list with him. Moreover, she reminds him again of the brand of sunglasses requested by their relatives. Even working as a nightclub prostitute with her sweetheart on the mainland, the

Constructions of quasi-national identity 101 character of a mainland woman Ah-Cheng refuses to return to Guangzhou preferring her ‘freedom’ in which ‘I can eat whatever I want, and dress however I want’. After a week of ‘enjoying’ the capitalist lifestyle as illegal migrants living in a barely furnished flat, and under intense pressure of being caught by local police, the mainland gangsters’ desire for Hong Kong grows even stronger. Longing to go shopping in Hong Kong results in staying a few days more, and finally ends with their determination to ‘share’ the ‘wealth’ of Hong Kong by planning a permanent stay. In fact, the Hong Kong represented on the screen contradicts the mainland Chinese’ ‘perception’ of Hong Kong. In the film, Guangzhou is dark, crowded and dull. Hong Kong is crowded, messy, noisy and is also crime ridden. A kindergarten is situated next to a brothel and burglaries are almost daily events. The day after having crossed the border to Hong Kong, Lin Wei’s four colleagues begin to carry out their plan. Surprisingly, when they arrive at the jewellery shop they plan to burgle, they discover that the shop is closed for police investigation as a burglary had occurred the previous day. However, the negative images of capitalist Hong Kong do not affect the mainland gangsters’ perception of the colony. Their desire for Hong Kong indicates that even though the colony is imperfect, poverty in China is worse than capitalist corruption. With China presented as the other, Hong Kong’s political identity is constructed through identification with the British colony’s geopolitical boundaries, legal and economic systems, and citizens’ rights. The question of how Johnny Mak negotiates the shared ethnic Chinese identity of Hong Kong and Chinese citizen is raised, however, when he constructs China as other. Johnny Mak’s construction of negative images of the colonial government encourages Hong Kong spectators to identify with a Chinese ethnic identity. In the film, the colonial government is represented by the Royal Hong Kong police. On the one hand, the film suggests that the violent killing by the police is a matter of performing a duty, of maintaining public order by defeating the criminals. On the other hand, the film also implies that their brutal killing is an abuse of power. Long Arm of the Law represents negative images of the relationship between the government and the local people. Images of the police abusing their power predominate. After the unexpected police investigation of the jewellers, Lin Wei informs his fence Ah Tai, a Hong Kong resident, that they have to delay their plan for three days. While Ah Tai agrees, he also makes another deal with Lin Wei. He pays Lin Wei HK$50,000 to murder a man ‘who is always annoying’ him without telling Lin Wei that the man is a police detective. Before the detective is murdered by the mainland gangsters, we see him abusing his power by flirting with a number of women. When Ah Tai is taken to the police station for questioning about the murder, we watch him being abused verbally and physically by the police despite the fact that they have no evidence against

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him. We might wonder how much mental and physical abuse Ah Tai has previously suffered at the hands of the detective. Sergeant Li warns Ah Tai that ‘the person who has been murdered is not an ordinary citizen, but a policeman!’ His words clearly indicate that there is a difference between ordinary citizens and the police, and that the difference will affect the way that police perform their duty. In that historical context, Sergeant Li’s words can also be understood as a comment on the Hong Kong community’s place in the eyes of the British government on the issue of 1997. Later, Ah Tai hands Sergeant Li a video tape on which Ah Tai asks one of his men to record shooting the detective. Ah Tai is then forced to become the bait to trap the mainland gangsters. When Ah Tai successfully completes his task, the mainland gangsters also discover that Ah Tai has betrayed them. Fearing his life is under threat from them, Ah Tai shouts for help to Sergeant Li in his police helicopter, ‘Don’t shoot! It’s me, Ah Tai’. Yet Sergeant Li gives the order to shoot him. At that moment we, as spectators, remember Ah Tai fearfully begging for his safety, as well as Sergeant Li’s request that Ah Tai show more confidence in the police. Though Sergeant Li is an ethnic Chinese, in this context he represents the Royal Hong Kong Police and the colonial government. Ah Tai had always suspected that he would die at the hands of the mainland Chinese. What he had not foreseen is that he would die under orders from the Royal Hong Kong Police while assisting them. The film reveals Hong Kong’s anger towards the British coloniser. Johnny Mak ‘arranges’ for the colonial police to enter the Walled City of Kowloon in his narrative. The Walled City used to be a densely populated area on the Kowloon peninsula. It had been a small Chinese garrison and administrative compound before Britain acquired the peninsula in 1862 (Lane 1990: 52–8; Tang 1994: 111–13). The Chinese imperial government made the area a reserve under Chinese administration in the 1898 Convention of Beijing. But the British government unilaterally amended the treaty in 1899 and incorporated the Walled City into the colony. In the 1930s and 1940s, the colonial government’s intention to demolish the huts and buildings in the Walled City was strongly objected to by both the Nationalists in the 1930s and the Communists in the 1940s. Both groups insisted that the colonial government had no right to evict squatters from the area. After the signing of the Joint Declaration, the Walled City was finally abolished in 1987. Hong Kong Chinese spectators are led by Jonny Mak’s cinematic construction to identify with ethnic Chinese identity. Like the Mainland gangsters, the colonial police also ‘illegally’ cross the border and enter Chinese territory. Fiercely and brutally, the police fire at the Walled City without considering the possibility that they might also kill innocent residents. This sequence recalls the Opium War in Chinese national history, when the British fired at innocent Chinese on Chinese land. When Li Cheuk-to (1984a: 9) points out that the dead police in the Walled City are mostly

Constructions of quasi-national identity 103 Anglo-Saxon, Johnny Mak replies: ‘There is always an unconscious excitement about killing Guilao [the foreign devil].’ By establishing the coloniser as the other, Johnny Mak emphasises the myth of the ancestral blood relationship between the Hong Kong Chinese and mainland Chinese. In one of his interviews, Johnny Mak (C.T. Li 1984a: 9) talks about his contradictory feelings behind his construction of the image of mainland Chinese. From the perspective of being a Hong Konger, I dislike Daquan zai.1 I discovered from my research that, in fact, their numbers in Hong Kong are so high; they still cause trouble in society without taking any notice of the law. I feel resistance to them. But strangely enough, when [the uncertainty of ] Hong Kong’s future [the 97 issue] confronts me more and more urgently, I think of [how] ‘ben shi tonggen sheng’ [we sprang from the same root]. We are all Chinese. The difference is that they live on the mainland, and we are lucky to be born in Hong Kong. . . . Gradually I start to feel that they are not all that nasty. Johnny Mak uses Cao Zhi’s famous ‘seven paces’ poem to describe his connection with mainland Chinese. Cao Zhi (192–232) is a well known historical character in the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. He was the third son of Cao Cao, the Emperor of Wei. After the death of Cao Cao, the eldest son Cao Pei succeeded his father as Emperor of Wei. According to the novel, Cao Pei feels threatened by his younger brother’s talent. He devises a plot to order Cao Zhi to compose a poem within the time taken to walk seven paces. If Cao Zhi fails, he will be punished with death. Within seven steps, Cao Zhi rattles off the following poem, pleading for his life: They were boiling beans on a beanstalk fire Came a plaintive voice from the pot, O why, since we sprang from the selfsame root, Should you kill me with anger hot? Translation from C.H. Brewitt-Taylor (1959) Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Rutland: Tuttle, vol.2, no.4, p.198.) This poem has been widely used to refer to the ancestral blood relationship between people. The challenge facing Johnny Mak in 1984 was how to make Hong Kong spectators identify with the mainland Chinese in a context in which Hong Kong people faced returning to China in 1997. There was strong resistance to the mainland Chinese, not only because of 1997, but also because of the negative attitude towards illegal migrants from China and Vietnam. Johnny Mak persuades Hong Kong spectators to see themselves through watching the mainland Chinese in the film. On screen, the mainland

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Chinese desire a capitalist lifestyle and individual freedom. This desire is shared by the people of Hong Kong. The reason that Hong Kong citizens feared government by the Communists after 1997 was that they were afraid of losing their lifestyle and freedom. On screen, the mainland gangsters spend their free time enjoying the fruits of capitalism. When a Hong Kong prostitute refuses to have sex with one of the mainland gangsters, he pulls out his gun and shouts at her in frustration: ‘Do it now! I don’t have time!’. While the mainland Chinese live on ‘borrowed time in a borrowed place’ on screen, the Hong Kong people live in their actual situation of ‘borrowed time in a borrowed place’. The similarity between the diegetic world and the real world encourages the spectators to identify with the mainland Chinese. Long Arm of the Law indicates that the people of Hong Kong may not share a political identity with the mainland Chinese, but the values of a capitalist freedom are desired by both. In Long Arm of the Law, political identity, ‘the experience of living in two different societies’, plays a more significant role than notions of identity based on ethnicity, class and gender. This reinforces the distinct geopolitical status of Hong Kong as opposed to China. In the film, Lin Wei is the leader of the mainland gangsters. His leadership was established in the 1960s, long before the burglary in Hong Kong. Lin Wei sets up a deal with Ah Tai, plans the burglary, directs the group, pays the expenses of his followers in Hong Kong, and looks after their safety. As they did in the Cultural Revolution, his mates follow him without question or challenge. However, Lin Wei is slightly different from the rest. Having been granted permanent residence in Hong Kong in 1979, Lin Wei finds it ‘difficult’ to understand his mates’ desire for Hong Kong. Each time one of the gangsters indicates that they wish to stay in Hong Kong instead of returning to Guangzhou, Lin Wei objects. He is more concerned about the prospect of capture by the Hong Kong police. After the death of one member in the Walled City, Lin Wei instructs the group to leave Hong Kong immediately. One gang member refuses to follow Lin’s order. Without being aware that the gang member speaks for the group, Lin points his gun at the man to force him to move, as the police are approaching. As he does so, the other two mainland gangsters point their guns at Lin Wei. In spite of their shared ethnicity, gender and class, the bond of ‘brotherhood’ is strained by difference in political identity. Long Arm of the Law constructs Hong Kong as a distinct community through foregrounding its geopolitical status, through identification with the British colonial legal system, and with Chinese ethnicity and nationalism. The film presents a quasi-national identity in that Hong Kong can only be articulated through the others of the British coloniser and the Chinese motherland. It also reveals that Hong Kong is a nation without sovereignty. In the narrative, the triadic constellation of the Royal Hong Kong Police, the mainland gangsters and Ah Tai mirrors the relationship between the British coloniser, the Chinese motherland and Hong Kong.

Constructions of quasi-national identity 105 Ah Tai is a metaphor for Hong Kong and his function is ‘trade’. He is the ‘dealer’ liaising between the mainland gangsters and local triads, between local triads and the Hong Kong police, and between Hong Kong police and mainland gangsters. He gains through ‘providing information’. He has a distinct identity; however, his survival and future depend on others. In this triangular relationship, the mainland Chinese have power to make their own decisions – to enter Hong Kong territory and to leave. The colonial government has the power to protect the colony by fighting back. Ah Tai has no political power to claim a territory of his own and, furthermore, he has no claim over the way political power should be exercised for his benefit. Ah Tai represents Hong Kong – a geopolitically defined quasination has no political power of its own. Hong Kong: a nation with an ambiguous geopolitical identity The Hong Kong film industry has also produced a quasi-national identity through narratives of the Chinese diaspora in the West. As a result of the community’s uncertainty about Hong Kong’s future under the Chinese government after 1997, seeking opportunities to migrate to Western countries became a social phenomenon after the late 1980s. Thousands of Hong Kong people applied to migrate to America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and countries in Europe. But the majority could not afford to leave. They neither qualified as political refugees, nor were eligible as skilled or business migrants. Influenced by this social phenomenon of migration to the West, Europe and America became cultural spaces with which Hong Kong identities can be explored. After the mid-1980s, it became almost a fashion for local filmmakers to create some sort of narrative connection with overseas, offering a fantasy for local spectators to vicariously experience life in the West. One of Jackie Chan’s popular films, Longxiong hudi / Armour of God (1987) was shot in Italy, where the landscape of the local culture is as spectacular as Jackie Chan’s Kung Fu antics. These films do not simply present the ‘exotic’ landscapes of Europe and North America as tourist attractions, but provide pleasure for local spectators by giving them a sense of a ‘great’ Hong Kong. John Woo’s popular film, Zongheng sihai / Once a Thief (1991) deals with a triangular love relationship between three Hong Kong orphans who are brought up to be professional thieves. The film stars three local actors: Chow Yun-fat (Zhou Runfa), Leslie Cheung (Zhang Guorong) and Cherie Chung (Zhong Chuhong). The images of these three glamorous stars in their red sporty car crossing Europe, skilfully and charmingly stealing art treasures from local museums, present narrative images of ‘Hong Kong conquering Europe’. In reality, Hong Kong could not even control its own fate after 1997. Stanley Kwan’s Renzai Niuyue / Full Moon in New York (1988) is another type of Hong Kong film that explores Hong Kong’s cultural

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identity through the landscape of the West. Unlike Jackie Chan and John Woo’s mainstream production, Kwan’s Full Moon in New York is a local film with input from Taiwan, the mainland and American Chinese in New York. Three leading actors in the film, Sylvia Chang (Zhang Aijia) from Taiwan, Maggie Cheung from Hong Kong, and Siqin Gaowa from China are all film stars in their countries of origin. Stanley Kwan worked closely with two well-known writers, the Hong Kong established script-writer of Taiwanese origin, Yau Tai On Ping, and the mainland writer Acheng (Zhong Acheng) who, at the time, lived in New York. In an interview with a local film magazine, Stanley Kwan admits that his script changed several times from an original emphasising three Chinese women’s friendship to a depiction of diasporic sentiment and the experience of the Chinese in New York. He explains: In fact, the Mainland Chinese, Hong Kong Chinese and Taiwan Chinese in New York tend to belong to their own groups. They get together only on very rare occasions. They do not get together because they are Chinese. This makes me think that our idea – three women and conflicts is no longer significant. . . . I want to make a film about the Chinese. Beyond the surface of the three women is a story of the Chinese . . . it reveals the meaning of their exile or nomadism (in foreign countries). (Z.C. Zhang 1990: 18) Full Moon in New York is filmed from the perspective of the diaspora. In the absence of images of the Statue of Liberty and Christmas decorations, New York is represented as a cold, impersonal, lifeless and colourless city, a concrete jungle. The sky is foggy. Buildings stand side by side in the misty, hazy air. Canyons between buildings viewed from a low camera angle convey a feeling of oppression and depressing lifestyle. The three dominant colours in the film grey, dark blue and white, present a gloomy and sombre place. In the film, New York people are just crowds, faceless and sombre. Their dress is formal and their manner defensive. With background noise of busy traffic, police and ambulance sirens, and images of Hong Kong migrant Li Fengjiao being assaulted in the street, the city appears threatening. There are three major images of local people in the film, each presenting a negative impression of the city – crime, poverty and Anglo-Saxon domination. In the early part of the film, Li Fengjiao is assaulted by a street kid. Taiwanese Huang’s American boyfriend stays at a rented house for several months without paying rent. When she is in an audition, theatre directors appear to be particularly critical of her performance. Furthermore, local American Chinese are constructed negatively as mimicking Anglo-Saxon America in their American English, their European-style homes, Western food, Western humour, their pre-

Constructions of quasi-national identity 107 dominantly Anglo-Saxon friends and their ‘curiosity’ about China. Throughout the film, the same message comes across again and again: New York is a cold city where life is insecure and lonely. New York is filmed from the perspective of the diaspora, and yet Li Fengjiao shows no signs of cultural displacement. Being a Hong Kong Chinese migrant, Li’s relation with the West neither resembles the self–other relationship as the mainland Chinese Zhao Hong’s does, nor does it demonstrate the fragmented identity of the Taiwanese Huang, nor the element of mimicry of the American Chinese Thomas. Li has no particularly nostalgic feelings for her original home Hong Kong; she displays no sense of superiority as a Chinese, nor does she need to mimic the West. Her lifestyle in New York is similar to her lifestyle in Hong Kong. Li continues to assist her father in the family business of running a Chinese restaurant, while managing her own real estate business and stock market transactions between Hong Kong and New York. She puts down any difficulties she encountered when she migrated to New York to her ignorance of fengshui. She explains to Zhao and Huang, When I came here, I kept losing money on the stock market. Then someone told me that since I come from Hong Kong, unless I blend in with the Ch’i [qi] in this place, nothing is going to work. I was told to open all the windows at night. New York is so noisy but I have to do it. Then things really begin to work. So if you want to make it here, you have to blend with Ch’i. Diaspora links identity to spatial location. While both Zhao and Huang’s identities are constructed through their identification with their homeland(s), China and Taiwan, Li seems to identify with no particular spatial location. She says to Zhao and Huang: In my opinion, being a Chinese means owning property, a house in Taibei, a house in Beijing, a house in Hong Kong, a house in Tokyo, a house in Paris, and a house in New York. Li’s attitudes are framed through different sets of criteria than are those of mainland, Taiwanese and American Chinese characters. Li’s Hong Kong political identity is ‘concealed’. There are no signs or symbols to indicate any geopolitical identification with Hong Kong. In contrast, Zhao is tied to memories of the Cultural Revolution, distinguishing her from the Taiwanese and American Chinese characters. What Zhao’s American Chinese husband, Thomas, fails to understand about Zhao’s constant requests to bring her mother to New York is precisely where he fails to understand the significance of national political history, the Cultural Revolution. Zhao’s relationship with her mother is not an ordinary one. It is a special bond formed during the Cultural Revolution, after her father was tortured to death by the Red Guards.

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Similarly, political identity also plays a significant role in the construction of Taiwanese cultural identity. Brought up in a family with a father who is a veteran Guomindang supporter and a member of the Taiwanese parliament, Huang appears to feel more ‘authentically’ Chinese than Li. In her superior manner, Huang refers to Li’s restaurant as ‘unauthentic’ Chinese, a place where ‘Cantonese cook to fool Americans’. Language is also used in the construction of political identity. In Zhao and Huang’s cases, language constructs and signifies their relationship with the host country. They ‘speak’ the relationship between China and America, and between Taiwan and America. The relationship between Thomas and Zhao resembles the self–other relation between America and China, between the host nation and the migrant community. When Zhao proudly tells her husband that her English has improved to the extent that she wants to communicate with him in English, Thomas reminds her that her Chinese is ‘more sexy’, and there is no ‘need’ for her to ‘struggle’ to speak English. The self–other relation is also reinforced through Zhao’s relations with the language of American English. Able to speak English ‘like an American’ as she puts it, Zhao utters the words ‘Oh! my God!’ and realises that these words are naturally articulated as if they are part of herself. She gets into a panic and becomes uncomfortable with herself. When Zhao speaks the language of the other, she begins to lose her sense of purity of self. Language also articulates Huang’s identity. As an ‘old migrant’, Huang’s cultural identity shifts between Taiwan and America. Huang speaks both English and Mandarin fluently. She plays Lady Macbeth in audition for a part, but interprets the character through the story of Empress Wu. Her crossing of cultural boundaries is symbolically expressed through her use of language with her American and Taiwanese boyfriends. Without a place of her own, Huang floats between the two places and two cultures. She moves out of her American boyfriend’s home and straight back into the flat of her Taiwanese ex-boyfriend. Her diasporic identity is constructed through her contrasting relations with the two places. Unlike her American boyfriend’s house, big, cold and empty, the Taiwanese boyfriend’s apartment is small, full of stylish modern furniture, and warmed by a fire, light wine and hot coffee against a background of music. With her American boyfriend, Huang’s conversation is about who owns what (earrings and a few books). With the Taiwanese man, her conversation revolves around family members, their past in Taiwan, their present in New York, and their passion for Chinese culture. When Huang invites him to sleep with her in the bedroom instead of on the sofa, the Taiwanese man struggles to find the right words to express his intention to settle down with an American woman. Unable to express himself in Chinese, he switches to English: ‘I am thinking of settling down with an American girl.’ Also unable to express herself in Chinese, Huang replies in English: ‘It is not going to work.’ ‘Why?’ he asks. ‘It didn’t work for me’,

Constructions of quasi-national identity 109 she answers. Then they smile at each other. Before she returns to the bedroom, the man switches back to Chinese in a caring voice: ‘Have an early night! You have an audition tomorrow.’ In the construction of Li’s identity, however, language is used to articulate the difference between Hong Kong and China/Taiwan. Li speaks English with her clients and Cantonese with her employees at her restaurant, but Mandarin with Zhao and Huang. When the three women are tipsy at a meal, Huang sings a 1930s’ song from China, while Zhao sings a popular Taiwanese campus song of the 1970s. This scene suggests that the mainland and Taiwanese Chinese, in fact, share the same cultural identities, though they think they support different political ideologies. By contrast, Li sings her Hong Kong Cantonese song of the 1980s which distances her from both of her friends. Stanley Kwan constructs no geopolitical boundaries between Li and her host country America. Li’s life in America is almost the same as she had in Hong Kong (of course, after she adjusts fengshui to blend in with the qi) – she continues to assist her father with the family business and manages her own stock market transactions. She shows no signs of being concerned with any political or social issues that are particular to Hong Kong, for instance, Hong Kong’s future after 1997. At the same time, Li is located at the centre of Chinese culture in New York. The most identifiable signs of Chineseness – Chinese food, arranged marriage and jiaqing (family affection) – appear in her ‘impure’ Chinese restaurant. Zhao Hong desires a close relationship with her mother in New York, a relationship exemplified through Li’s caring partnership with her father. Huang Xiongping searches for something to make her ‘feel like a Chinese’, which she experiences through ‘stirring’ Chinese food in a hot wok surrounded by Chinese cooking smells and Chinese cooks in Li’s restaurant. It becomes impossible to perceive Li as a member of the Chinese diaspora in the West, as a sense of cultural displacement is not evident in her. Her life in New York is simply a continuation of her life in Hong Kong. As mentioned above, Anthony Smith argues that national identity is constructed with ‘two distinct forms and concepts of the “nation”, territorial and ethnic’. As Zhao, Huang and Li share Chinese ethnicity, differences between them can only be articulated through their difference in geopolitical identity. In Full Moon in New York, the mainland and Taiwanese Chinese are differentiated by their geopolitical identities, which make them as distinct as, in Vijay Mishra’s words (1995: 155), that of ‘new’ and ‘old migrants’ in the host territory, America. However, there are no distinct differences or boundaries between Hong Kong and America in geopolitical identity expressed from Li’s perspective; Li in New York is a continuation of Li in Hong Kong. This absence of Hong Kong’s geopolitical identity, or the ambiguity in representing Hong Kong’s geopolitical identity produces Hong Kong’s quasi-national identity. It is quasi-national,

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because a geopolitically defined Hong Kong identity implies a notion of crossing geopolitical borders. Hong Kong: a nation lacking recognition as a ‘nation’ Directed by Evans Yiu-Shing Chan, Fushi lianqu / To Liv(e) (1991) presents a type of Hong Kong cultural identity rarely seen in mainstream Hong Kong films. The film constructs a hybridised Hong Kong society through selecting a group of people who are generally absent or positioned on the margins in representations of Hong Kong. The film embodies the idea that Hong Kong is a quasi-nation. It does so through establishing a hybrid cultural identity for Hong Kong and through indicating that the international community will not regard the people of Hong Kong as refugees after Communist China takes over the colony. Hong Kong is a quasi-nation, because as a distinct community both in geopolitical and in cultural terms, Hong Kong does exist. Its presence as a ‘nation’ is not recognised by the international community. To Liv(e), was made in the particular historical context of 1991. Affected by the Beijing incident of 4 June 1989, Hong Kong’s confidence was at its lowest ebb since the Joint Declaration in 1984. The crisis of confidence was reinforced by the conviction that Britain was not in a position to offer protection after 1997. After the incident of 4 June, the British government proposed a number of measures to boost Hong Kong’s confidence about 1997, all of which were countered by the Chinese government. The British government announced the granting of full British passports to 50,000 qualified households, but the Chinese government stated that they would not recognise such passport holders as foreign nationals. The British government introduced a Bill of Rights to guarantee the rights and freedoms of Hong Kong citizens after 1997, but the Chinese government stated that they would reserve the right to review all Hong Kong laws after 1997 to see whether these laws were compatible with the Basic Law. All these factors contributed to Hong Kong’s pessimistic attitude towards its future. Within that particular historical context, it was no coincidence that Evans Chan constructed a cinematic identity of Hong Kong that deviated from the mainstream image of Hong Kong as a society of Chinese. In Chan’s film, China is signified almost exclusively as a Communist dictatorship, which brutally crushed the student movement of 4 June 1989. There is no indication of an ethnic or historical connection between Hong Kong and China in the film. Moreover, the critical stance taken towards the British does not rely on Hong Kong’s identification with Chinese nationalism as it does in Johnny Mak’s Long Arm of the Law. To Liv(e) is a docu-drama with images of historical newsreel footage and scenes from pro-democracy demonstrations. The narrative deals with the lives and concerns of a Hong Kong journal editor, Rubie, her family

Constructions of quasi-national identity 111 and her friends, as 1997 approaches. The story is triggered both by Rubie’s consideration of emigration, and by Norwegian/American actor and international refugee advocate, Liv Ullmann’s public condemnation of the colonial government’s treatment of Vietnamese boat people in Hong Kong. The film begins with a caption from an English language newspaper against a black and white news photo of a Vietnamese refugee boat in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour: Dec. 12, 1989. In a secret pre-dawn operation, the British government of Hong Kong forced 51 Vietnamese refugees to board a Hanoibound plane intended as a pilot effort to stem the still incoming tide of Vietnamese boat people, and to repatriate 57,000 stranded refugees who are awaiting resettlement. The action set off a chorus of angry protest from the international community. Against a soundtrack of modern popular Cantonese songs, the camera slowly pans from left to right to show Hong Kong island at sunset. A series of images of Hong Kong then follows – junk, ferry, British naval flag at Victoria Harbour, crowded streets, Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank building on Hong Kong island. When the soundtrack ends, the camera stops at a house located on one of the nearby islands, Cheung Chau, where the protagonist Rubie lives with her de facto husband John, an artist originally from Indonesia. Affected by the international community’s reaction to Hong Kong’s repatriation of the Vietnamese boat people, and especially by Liv Ullmann’s public condemnation on television, Rubie starts to write a series of letters to air Hong Kong’s view on this matter. The contents of her letters are communicated in two ways: first, through a talking-heads format, which directly addresses the viewer, and second, through her voice-over against a background of historical newsreel footage – Hong Kong’s pro-democracy demonstrations, and urban and country scenes in nearby islands. In her letter, Rubie questions Liv Ullmann’s claim that Hong Kong flouted human rights by the forceful repatriation of the Vietnamese boat people. She points out that the task of looking after the Vietnamese boat people was imposed by the British government and the international community in 1979 without the consent of Hong Kong citizens. She writes: Over the last 15 years, Hong Kong taxpayers have spent at least US$340 million on clothing and feeding them while they await resettlement somewhere. Rubie’s letter does not stop at questioning Ullmann’s accusations. Instead, she develops an argument about the people of Hong Kong – the fate of Hong Kong people will not be so different from that of the Vietnamese boat people after China’s takeover of the colony. She asks Ullmann:

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Constructions of quasi-national identity When in Hong Kong, other than your visits to the refugee camps, have you tried to look into the tormenting and disgraceful conditions under which half a million Hong Kong people are still living. Have you also visited some hillside squatter areas, the walled-city, the early sevenstorey resettlement buildings and the crummy rooming houses where men are living in cages? What about the systematic dehumanization they endure when they lack even the political expediency to be treated as refugees?

Furthermore, the film suggests that the people of Hong Kong are living in preparation for the time when they are reduced to ‘refugees’. As China is represented as a Communist dictatorship, Hong Kong’s return to China is therefore a return to the government of Communist dictatorship. This image is reinforced by deconstructing Hong Kong as a society of Chinese. Chan allows people normally perceived to be at the periphery in mainstream Hong Kong films – Eurasians, Hong Kong residents of British origin and Chinese of South-East Asian origin – to speak for the centre. He also reconstructs mainstream images of Hong Kong Chinese, the middle-class Chinese professionals, by emphasising their mobility between Hong Kong and the West. In the film, Hong Kong is represented by Rubie, an Eurasian. It is through her voice that the audience ‘hears’ the voice of Hong Kong. Her Eurasian features symbolise Hong Kong as a hybrid of the West (British) and the Chinese. Rubie speaks fluent English with an American accent and Cantonese without a European accent. Her image as representing Hong Kong comes from her constant use of ‘we, the people of Hong Kong’, foregrounding her position as spokesperson for the community. The identification also comes from her comfortable position within Hong Kong society, her behaviour, her understanding of the community, her concerns for the future after 1997, and her knowledge about the West, her citing from Peggy Guggenheim, Ingmar Bergman and George Bernard Shaw. Rubie negotiates skilfully between two languages, and between her Chinese and Anglo-Saxon friends. She is neither a British coloniser, nor a colonial mimic, nor an ‘authentic’ Chinese, but a hybrid of the British colonisation of Chinese society. The film constructs Rubie as a metaphor for Hong Kong. She was born in the 1960s, the period when Hong Kong began to distance itself from China and develop its own cultural identity. Her past resembles that of Ka-hing, the character in Allen Fong’s film, Father and Son. Both grow up in a lower middle-class family, and neither characters’ parents have particular memories about China or any familial or cultural connection with the mainland. As with Ka-hing, China plays no part in Rubie’s growing up. However, there is one difference between the two characters. Ka-hing’s family is a victim of British colonisation, whereas Rubie’s family owes a great debt to the former British Christian missionary, Elsie Tu,

Constructions of quasi-national identity 113 who assisted the family to overcome the most difficult period in the 1960s. The role of Elsie Tu in the past of Rubie’s family reinforces the message that Hong Kong is not a Chinese society, but a society built up by the cooperation between the British coloniser and the indigenous Chinese. John, Rubie’s de facto husband, is also represented as a hybrid identity. Originally from Indonesia, he follows his father to Hong Kong during the period of anti-Chinese feeling in Indonesia. Like Rubie, John is bilingual and comfortable with both his Chinese and European friends. His paintings express his hybridity by using the two standard colours of Chinese ink painting, black and white, to produce Western style oil paintings. If Rubie and Ka-hing represent Hong Kong’s indigenous community – the group of people who were born in Hong Kong – then John and Hueyin in Ann Hui’s Song of the Exile represent the refugee and migrant community in Hong Kong. In contrast to Hueyin, who identifies herself with Hong Kong, John is ambiguous about his Hong Kong identity, so that he uses the term ‘you, the people of Hong Kong’ to distance himself from the community. However, his manner, the way he speaks and reads English, and his use of local idioms, makes him, in the words of local critic Liu Mingyi (1993: 108), ‘the most identifiable character’ to Hong Kong spectators. In representing the centre of Hong Kong – the middle-class professional Chinese – Chan also deconstructs their Chinese cultural identity through emphasising their connection with the West. Rubie’s elder brother and his family are in Canada. Rubie’s younger brother Tony is a typical middle-class Hong Kong professional whose application to migrate to Australia has been granted. In the film, the couples presented are all fractured families apart from Rubie’s parents. Rubie and John, Tony and Teresa live together but are not married. Teresa is divorced and is much older than Tony. Their relationship is not accepted by Tony’s mother who, however, easily accepts the marriage of Elsie Tu to a younger Chinese man because Elsie is a Guilao. The narrative presents cultural clashes between East and West, reflected in the contrast between traditional Chinese and modern Chinese families. To Liv(e) has been widely criticised by local cultural critics as a film which ‘expresses’ Hong Kong’s view through identification with the West by the use of English (Ye 1992a, b and c; He 1992; Sek 1992; M.Y. Liu 1993: 95–109). Their criticism has some foundation. All Rubie’s letters are delivered orally in English. Moreover, either through the subject matter dealing with politics and art, or through techniques of aesthetics – asynchronous sound, diegetic music, colour coding and other forms of symbolism, To Liv(e) recalls Godard’s films Vivre sa Vie (My Life to Live) (1962) and Letter to Jane: Investigation of a Still (1972). The film also cites a letter written by George Bernard Shaw and quotations from Italo Calvino’s Invisible City, all of which are shown to be ‘not genuinely addressed to the people of Hong Kong’ (Erens 1996: 114). But at the same time, the film also makes use of art works not produced in the West: the soundtrack of

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the mainland Chinese protest rocker, Cui Jian’s ‘Nothing to My Name’, and dance dramas produced by Hong Kong, ‘Exhausted Silkworms’ and ‘Nuclear Goddess’. The film, therefore, composed of fragments of West and East, and represents the hybridised society of Hong Kong. The title of the film, both the Chinese Fushi lian or Fushi lianqu and the English To Liv(e), captures double meanings. As denotation, To Liv(e) indicates the film is a response to Liv Ullmann’s criticism of Hong Kong’s repatriation of Vietnamese boat people. The Chinese title Fushi lianqu (Secular Love, Secular Life) describes ordinary citizens’ love and life in Hong Kong after 4 June 1989 and as 1997 approaches. It connotes that the people of Hong Kong cope with life as it comes. They have ‘to live’ in anticipation of Communist ‘dictatorship’ and their ‘refugee’ status after 1997. The hybrid identity produced in the films discussed suggest that Hong Kong is a distinct community, differentiated from China. Hybridity is also, however, a symptom of the quasi-national status of Hong Kong: Hong Kong is a nation without a name. As a quasi-nation, it can be imposed on by the British government and the United Nations, who assign to Hong Kong the position of first asylum for Vietnamese boat people. The same quasi-national status also allows the British and the Chinese governments to decide Hong Kong’s future after 1997 without the consent of Hong Kong citizens in 1984.

The demise of a quasi-national identity? Cinematic construction of Hong Kong’s cultural identity conforms with Stuart Hall’s argument that cultural identity is always in process. Hong Kong quasi-national identity is the cultural representation of a particular historical context. The negotiation between Smith’s two forms and concepts of nation, territorial and ethnic, in the triangular relationship, distinguish a quasi-national identity from other cinematic cultural identities represented in Hong Kong films before the 1970s. The quasi-national identity owes more to the move towards China than to its status as a British colony. Johnny Mak’s Long Arm of the Law reveals Hong Kong’s anxiety about its transition before the official signing of the Sino-British Agreement in 1984. Stanley Kwan’s Full Moon in New York invokes Hong Kong’s negotiation of its identity in relation to various ethnic Chinese communities and the West. Evans Chan’s To Liv(e) depicts Hong Kong’s identity crisis after the Beijing incidents in June 1989. Though these three films are made in different periods, they reveal the common theme that Hong Kong was a quasi-nation under the two dominant powers of the British coloniser and the Chinese motherland. On the eve of Hong Kong’s return to China in the mid-1990s, Hong Kong’s quasi-national identity is further explored and questioned in films. On the one hand, the 4 June 1989 incident continues to shadow the

Constructions of quasi-national identity 115 community’s lack of confidence about its return to China. On the other hand, the development of economic relations between Hong Kong and China is shown to enhance their relationship. From the early 1990s, China has become the largest foreign investor in the territory, taking over from Japan and the United States. For its part, Hong Kong has moved its manufacturing to the mainland to take advantage of cheap land and labour, and has profited from providing financial services to China. Although the last Governor, Chris Patten, launched his new political reform scheme for the democratisation of Hong Kong, the British influence in Hong Kong has gradually faded along with the strengthening economic ties between Hong Kong and China. In terms of film productions, Hong Kong film-makers actively seek opportunities to co-operate with the mainland film industry and aim to play a role in the mainland market. In June 1994, the first film festival organised by the mainland for China, Taiwan and Hong Kong was opened in Zhuhai. With political and economic changes in the triangular relationship, the production of cultural identity in films has also changed. Between 1994 and 1996, a number of Hong Kong films presented Hong Kong’s identification with the mainland by highlighting a shared ethnic identity and foregrounding similarities between the two places. Kirk Wong’s Shenggang yihao tongjie fan / Rock N’Roll Cop presents images of mainland policemen who share values of law and order, and are familiar with Hong Kong civic and popular culture. The film also suggests that the Chinese border between Hong Kong and China is only beneficial to Hong Kong criminals who escape to the mainland after committing crimes in Hong Kong (Deng 1994: 108). Both Ching Siu-tung’s Qi jin gang / Seven Wonders and Yuen Kuei’s Zhongnan hai baobiao / Bodyguard From Beijing in 1994 also construct positive images of the mainland policies as just and efficient. In contrast to their previous representations as illegal migrants or country bumpkins, mainland Chinese are requested to come to Hong Kong to carry out specific tasks there that Hong Kong is unable to perform. The winning film at the last Hong Kong Golden Film Awards under the British governance in 1996, Peter Chan’s Tianmimi / Comrade, It Is Almost a Love Story suggests that a distinct geopolitically defined Hong Kong identity is only a myth. The film transfers geopolitical differences between Hong Kong and China into regional differences between the south and the north. The film tells a love story about two mainland Chinese in Hong Kong, Xiao Jun from northern China’s Tianjin, and Li Qiao from Guangzhou, in the south. Although both of them are from the mainland, Li Qiao believes herself to be a Hong Konger, because ‘we live so near to Hong Kong’, ‘we speak Cantonese, grow up by watching Hong Kong television and consume Hong Kong products’. Her perspective is not without logic when it relates to Xiao Jun. In his first couple of weeks, Xiao Jun writes to his fiancee in Tianjin: ‘Hong Kong is really far away from us, it is so different, there are many buildings, cars, and I was told

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that there are many thieves too.’ ‘Cantonese are very rude.’ ‘They speak loudly.’ ‘They are very strange people. They don’t work in the daytime, but, at night, they dress well and go out to enjoy night life.’ ‘There are lots of foreigners in Hong Kong, I can’t understand what (Hong Kong) Chinese are talking about, let alone foreigners in Hong Kong.’ After Xiao Jun has written to his fiancee in Tianjin, ‘today I am going to a place where Tianjin people have never been – MacDonalds’, the next scene shows Li Qiao already working at MacDonalds, comfortably and skilfully selling hamburgers. Chan constructs a difference between a northern and southern Chinese cultural identity where Hong Kong is integrated with the south. In Comrade, It Is Almost a Love Story, Chan emphasises the shared experiences of the mainland and Hong Kong Chinese. Brother Bao and the chef, of Hong Kong origin in New York, share Xiao Jun’s experience as a migrant. Both characters are ‘forced’ one way or another to go into ‘exile’ in New York. Xiao Jun’s passion for playing basketball in a densely built up Hong Kong is shared by the Hong Kong chef. Like the mainland Chinese, the Hong Kong Chinese are also ‘vain’ and refuse to purchase certain music to avoid being ‘accused’ of being mainland Chinese. Both the Mainland Chinese Li Qiao and the Hong Kong resident Rosie seek something which is ‘non-existent’. Li Qiao longs to be a ‘real’ Hong Konger. Similarly, Xiao Jun’s aunt, Rosie, spends her life believing that the Hollywood film star William Holden, whom she shared afternoon tea with in the Peninsula Hotel in the 1960s, will return to Hong Kong one day to ‘reunite’ with her. The film also shifts away from representing mainstream images of Hong Kong – middle-class Western-educated professionals – to images that embody the idea of ‘decline’: an aged and dying night club prostitute, Rosie; Big Brother of a small branch of triads, Brother Bao, who is forced into exile; and the chef who has to migrate to America in his late fifties as 1997 approaches. These images eliminate the different geopolitical identities of Hong Kong and China. The images of a dying prostitute, an exiled triads leader and a hardworking chef cannot signify the geopolitical significance of Hong Kong any more effectively than can Western educated professionals who share little in common with the mainland Chinese in the Communist state. The film emphasises the shared Chinese ethnicity through images and stories of Teresa Tang and her music. As a cultural sign, Teresa Tang and her music signify Chineseness. Teresa Tang (Deng Lijun) used to be the most popular Chinese singer known to Chinese communities around the world. There used to be a common saying that ‘where there is Chinese, there is Teresa Tang’. Born in Taiwan from a military family, Teresa Tang began her singing career in Taiwan, then established herself in Hong Kong, Japan and South-East Asia in the late 1960s and 1970s. The popularity of her music quickly spread to the mainland in the late 1970s. By the

Constructions of quasi-national identity 117 mid-1980s, Teresa Tang had become the best known singer in the unofficial Chinese cultural market. The mainland Chinese described the situation by commenting that ‘Deng Xiaoping ruled China by day, and Deng Lijun (Teresa Tang) by night’. Although her music seems non-political, Tang was a very controversial figure. She was used by the Taiwanese government as a non-political Chinese cultural symbol to promote Taiwan’s image in the 1960s and 1970s (Ming Bao Monthly, no.354, July 1995, 47–62). Her music also became a target of China’s anti-capitalist spiritual pollution movement in the early 1980s. She died at the age of 42 on 8 March 1995 in Bangkok. The film uses Teresa Tang, her music and her death as motifs. The Chinese title of the film, Tianmimi, is borrowed from her well-known song Tianmimi. Teresa Tang and her music accompany Xiao Jun and Li Qiao throughout their romance. At the beginning of their relationship, Xiao Jun rides a bike, with Li Qiao as pillion, along a busy Hong Kong street. Xiao Jun comments that it reminds him of the days on the mainland. In response to his words, Li Qiao, swinging her legs while on the bike (a typical gesture of mainland women), begins to sing Teresa Tang’s Tianmimi. At the mid-point of their relationship, Li Qiao visits Xiao Jun after a day’s hard work. Xiao Jun lies beside Li Qiao, with his fingers ‘walking’ on her shoulder, singing Tianmimi to help her sleep. On one Chinese New Year’s Eve, Li Qiao and Xiao Jun invest in a small business to sell Teresa Tang’s cassettes at a market. Li Qiao is certain that they will get a good return because one in five Hong Kong residents is from the mainland, and the mainland Chinese love Teresa Tang’s music. However, what she does not know is that, like her, the mainland Chinese do not wish to expose their mainland identity by consuming Teresa Tang’s music. The couple lose their investment. When Li Qiao and Xiao Jun are back together a number of years later, Teresa Tang and her music appear again as background to their ‘reunion’. Years later, the two characters follow their own fates and arrive in New York, but neither knows that the other is also in the same city. It is Teresa Tang’s death that brings them together. They discover each other when they both stop in front of a shop window to watch a television broadcast of Teresa Tang’s death. Teresa Tang’s presence in the narrative suggests that no matter where Xiao Jun and Li Qiao are – the mainland, Hong Kong or New York – neither their passion for Teresa Tang nor their ethnic Chinese identity can be erased. As the narrative unfolds, the idea of a distinct Hong Kong identity is shown to be a myth. Li Qiao tells Xiao Jun that one in five Hong Kong people are from the mainland. And the remaining Hong Kong Chinese are the children and grandchildren of mainland Chinese. Hong Kong identity is no more than a series of signs signifying economic ‘success’. A few years later, after Li Qiao achieves some success in business with the help of Brother Bao, she comments to Xiao Jun at a party:

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Constructions of quasi-national identity I visited a five-star hotel one day, a few people even spoke English to me. Shop assistants dare not be impolite to me. Last month, I went back to Guangzhou to build a house for my mother. Nobody recognised me. I told my mother, I have finally become a Hong Konger.

However, her ‘Hong Kong identity’ is swept away when she follows Brother Bao to ‘exile’ overseas. Cinematic constructions of national identity are always modified according to changing national political and social contexts. Images of Hong Kong’s geopolitical identity have also developed along with changes in the triangular relationship between the British coloniser, the Chinese motherland and Hong Kong self. The films I have analysed in this chapter were produced in the particular historical context of the triangular relationship when the colony was moving towards China. Hong Kong was anxious about its future after 1997, and the colony wanted to play an influential role in the British and Chinese’s decision-making about Hong Kong. Hong Kong needed to make sense of itself as a distinct ‘nation’ to claim its right to a say over how political power should be exercised for Hong Kong’s benefit. The process of constructing Hong Kong as a ‘nation’ reaches the stage when Hong Kong could only speak ‘self’ as a nation by defining its boundaries in relation to the coloniser and the motherland. Not only is the triangular relationship essential to making sense of Hong Kong, but Johnny Mak and Evans Chan’s films also indicate that Hong Kong was a nation without political power of its own. Stanley Kwan’s film constructs a Hong Kong ‘self’ independent of the triangular relationship, so the geopolitical identity of Hong Kong in his film shows, indicating the necessity of crossing geopolitical borders. The term quasi-nation as used in this chapter expresses the imperfection, and ambiguity in both the process and the product of cinematic constructions of Hong Kong as a nation.

7

Hong Kong cinema after 1997

So far I have described Hong Kong cinema before the return of the colony to China, with an emphasis on the period between 1979 and 1997. In doing so, I paid special attention to the Hong Kong film industry, market, film criticism, cultural specificity of local films, as well as the cinematic construction of the colony’s history, territory and the cultural identity of Hong Kong. In this chapter I want to ask the general question: what has happened to Hong Kong cinema since the return of the colony to China? This question is being posed against the overall claim of the book that Hong Kong cinema can be defined satisfactorily only if we address the peculiar triangular relationship between the British colonizer, the Chinese motherland and Hong Kong. At the same time, the generality of the question is in need of specification by a number of more precise queries. • • • •

• •

Has Hong Kong cinema continued in the same vein or has it changed radically? Has Hong Kong cinema moved closer to Chinese national cinema? Have there been any changes in the film industry? Has there been any shift in Hong Kong film markets? Has Hong Kong cinema developed cinematic techniques, genres, conventions and narratives that are different from those of the pre-1997 period? Has the cinematic construction of Hong Kong history, landscape and cultural identity changed since 1997? Are there any significant changes as to film critics?

Throughout the book, I have argued that Hong Kong cinema is shaped by the shifts in the triangular relationship between the British coloniser, the Chinese motherland, and Hong Kong. 1997 brought perhaps the most significant change in this relationship – the retreat of the British coloniser from the colony, and the official return of Hong Kong to China’s control under the policy of ‘one country, two systems’. However, this change has had a limited impact on Hong Kong cinema: certainly, new developments

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have taken place but they are not as radical as might be expected. Indeed, we can observe a strong continuity of well established genres, visual styles, narratives, as well as producers, directors and stars. Nor are such changes as pervasive or as incisive as the momentous occasion of the historical turning point may suggest. There are a number of reasons for this, which I will discuss later in the chapter. Here I want to draw the reader’s attention to the important fact that the absence of the British coloniser after 1997 does not mean the end of British presence in Hong Kong. British law, its laissez-faire economic policy and governmental structures remain unchanged under China’s policy of ‘one country, two systems’. The colony may have been returned to China, but its high degree of autonomy continues. Indeed we note an increase of trade, tourism, labour influx and cultural exchange between Hong Kong and the mainland after 1997. Nevertheless, the border remains. This separation is effective also in the domain of culture. Hong Kong films, for example, are still considered by the Chinese government as ‘foreign’; they are subject to China’s quotas of foreign film importation of less than fifteen films per annum. As a result, Hong Kong cinema cannot be understood as part of Chinese national cinema. In the following sections, I will first discuss Hong Kong society after 1997. I will argue that Hong Kong has remained a quasi-nation despite the fact that the British coloniser has formally withdrawn from the colony and the city’s political and economic relationship with China has been strengthening. I will suggest that in spite of the political change of the triangular relationship in 1997 Britain continues to exert a strong influence on the cultural aspects of Hong Kong. My second section focuses on Hong Kong cinema, in which I will address trends, changes and continuities in the industry, markets, film texts and criticism in the post-1997 era. I want to claim that Hong Kong cinema remains a quasi-national cinema after 1997.

Continuation of the quasi-nation The year 1997 marks a historical change in the triangular relationship between the British coloniser, the Chinese motherland and Hong Kong. On 1 July 1997, the British coloniser withdrew from Hong Kong; the Chinese troops moved in; and the territory became a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China, after 157 years of British governance. The change of the political status from a British colony to a special region of China has catapulted the triangular relationship into a new era. The British are no longer the coloniser, but the colonial influence remains, which poses challenges to the new Hong Kong government. China’s recovery of Hong Kong is based on a set of policies that both includes and excludes the territory in relation to other parts of the nation. Under the policy of ‘one country, two systems’ China has the

Hong Kong Cinema after 1997 121 right to intervene in Hong Kong’s affairs. On the other hand, the policy specifies that Hong Kong maintains its distinct capitalist system. In spite of this political transition, some fundamental characteristics of the territory as a quasi-nation have remained intact. There is a reason for this: China wants the capitalist system in the territory to continue. In doing so, the Chinese government has to ensure that political and legal systems are in accordance with the market economy. At the same time, the dignity of the Chinese nation has to be respected. In the main, what has changed after 1997 is that the Chinese Basic Law now overrules any other laws in the territory, and the Chief Executive of the territory is accountable to China’s National People’s Congress. Indeed, the political system in the post-1997 period is now clearly distinct from a Western style democracy. And yet a certain degree of progress towards democracy is visible in comparison to the political system under the colonial government. The Chief Executive of the HKSAR is elected by the Elective Committee which consists of 800 local members, and appointed by the National People’s Congress. The Legislative Council is constituted partly by directly elected members. Most importantly, Hong Kong as a quasi-nation is not only authorised by the National People’s Congress to exercise ‘a high degree of autonomy’, but also defined as a geopolitical community, which has different political, legal, economic and social rights. The citizens of Hong Kong participate in their different elections and vote for their own political organisations. They are governed by a mixture of British common law and Chinese Basic Law, none of which apply to the Chinese citizens on the mainland. The Hong Kong juridical apparatus is distinct from that of China in terms of its judicial institutions, legal profession and legal language. The Basic Law also guarantees HKSAR residents that the capitalist lifestyle will continue for at least 50 years, with a low tax system, and no fiscal obligations to the Central Government. Moreover, HKSAR citizens continue to be perceived by the international community as a distinct geopolitical region. It is not surprising that the main fear amongst the citizens of Hong Kong before the changeover was an apprehension as to the specific nature of the political impact of the event. However, 4 months after the handover, the Asian economic crisis bought the worst recession to the territory in more than three decades. Now the main concern became the economic consequences of the political change: a sharp decrease in property values, a speedy rise in unemployment, and an increasing migration to the north. As China has kept its promise of non-interference, and Britain has remained at a distance, the SAR government has increasingly drawn the attention of both the international and domestic communities. At the same time, the mainland market plays a crucial role in the recovery of the Hong Kong economy. In many ways the territory’s return has strengthened Hong Kong’s economic ties with China. On the other hand, ‘one country, two systems’ policy also prevents Hong Kong from taking

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full advantage of the exploration of the mainland market. Moreover, the mainland’s excellent economic performance, large human resources, cheap labour and property rents have made China the strongest competitor for Hong Kong. Social and cultural integration with the mainland have also been strengthened since 1997. The border remains, but movement between Hong Kong and the mainland is increasing. My younger brother crosses the border to Shengzhen for lunch as he takes the ferry to Kowloon for a movie. In October 2001 I frequently encountered shop assistants who spoke perfect Mandarin, but were unfamiliar with basic English in some of the most traditional local stores at Landmark Central. Complaints could be heard about too many mainland Chinese on working visas increasing the territory’s unemployment rate. The growing labour flux can be seen daily. And yet, most of my relatives and acquaintances shop mainly on the mainland for variety, better quality and cheaper goods. The security man at our building said to me that few people nowadays treat Hong Kong as their ‘home’ as they did in the 1960s and 1970s: ‘There are too many mainlanders, and many people have gone back to China.’ Hong Kong SubCultural Publisher Jimmy Peng could not hide his joy at having signed up more and more mainland writers and cartoonists. They are cheaper and offer better quality. Sitting at home flicking between television channels, I saw the stunning similarities between the mainland and Hong Kong programmes in theme, narrative and programme structure, gesturality, style of music, and styles of news delivery. Chief Editor of City Entertainment said to me on October 2001: Hong Kong television and films are becoming more and more unHongkong-like. If you didn’t know that these actors were from Hong Kong, you would not have known that these were Hong Kong films. It is clear then that China’s policy of ‘one country, two systems’ is indeed being carried out in the post-1997 era. This goes hand in hand with social and cultural integration. So are there any changes in the way that Hong Kong perceives herself after the coloniser’s retreat? As cultural identity is always in process, how does the change of the triangular relationship affect the cinematic construction of Hong Kong? First, the Hong Kong film industry.

Film industry and film markets China’s policy of ‘one country, two systems’ naturally applies to the Hong Kong film industry. In the mid-1990s, a Hong Kong film delegation, led by the then President of the Hong Kong Film Directors Association Ng Seenyuen, visited Beijing to secure China’s guarantee of the industry’s freedom of expression after 1997. Lu Ping, the Director of Hong Kong and Macau

Hong Kong Cinema after 1997 123 Affairs Office of China’s State Council, told the delegation that the industry would be encouraged to maintain its present freedom of expression, that is, Hong Kong film-makers would be able to continue to produce not only category 3 (R-rated), but even category 4 and 5 (X and XX-rated) films. Lu Ping did not overstate his promise. The colony’s return to China has had a minimum impact on the local film industry. No new censorship regulations have been introduced since 1997. Nor is there any evidence that local film-makers have been restricted in their freedom of expression. The Hong Kong film industry continues to operate in the way it had in the pre1997 era. Ironically, however, non-interference has been interpreted by the Chinese government to mean also the blocking of Hong Kong films to the mainland. Now the Hong Kong film industry has few privileges beyond those of any foreign country. Under Chinese sovereignty, the Hong Kong film industry competes with Hollywood in China’s market as it did before 1997. As a consequence, what has changed is the combined effort of the industry’s own market and production strategies under the shadow of 1997. Since the late 1980s, the industry’s uncertainty about its future had intensified as July 1997 was approaching. Desperate for instant success, with few concerns about its long-term future, the industry produced a large quantity of films disregarding the realities of the market.1 For instance, Taiwan and South Korea have drastically reduced the import of Hong Kong films owing to over-supply and ‘poor quality’. As Taiwan exhibitors have changed their way of purchasing Hong Kong films from pre-buy to distribution since the mid-1990s, the Hong Kong film industry has suffered from a shortage of investment. The South Korean market has also been shrinking since 1996 for similar reasons: ‘a large influx’ of films, ‘limitations of genres, motifs, actors and formats’ (Hyun 1998: 44). In 1998 the dependence on overseas markets has brought the Hong Kong film industry to its lowest point. The first problem facing the industry after 1997 then was the decline of the overseas market. The industry’s concern for freedom of expression soon paled before its anxiety in the face of the Asian economic crisis, 3 months after the handover. As Southeast Asian currencies fell, return values from Southeast Asia decreased, with Hong Kong production costs remaining unchanged. As a result, Golden Harvest suffered a loss of HK$90 million by 30 June 1998, down from a profit of HK$878,000 the previous year. Revenue slipped to $28.78 million, down 34.2 per cent. Overseas markets used to generate 60 to 70 per cent from foreign sales; in the late 1990s this profit had dropped to less than 30 per cent.2 The decrease of overseas markets and the consistency of China’s policy of ‘one country, two systems’ after 1997 have forced the Hong Kong film industry to seriously develop strategies to revive its cinema. They point in three major directions. With Asian currencies falling, investment in Hong

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Kong films was also diminishing. So the first of the three strategies has been to attract overseas investment. Major production studios like Golden Harvest, China Star and Star East have launched their web-sites to lure share-holders. Supported by the Hong Kong Government’s HK$100 million film industry revitalization fund established in 1997, the Hong Kong Asia Film Financing Forum invited ten Asian countries, including Australia, in April 2000 to facilitate networking for production investment. The forum introduced Hong Kong film-makers to mainstream financiers, co-producers and investors. It also invited Hollywood producers to advise on ways of structuring a financing framework involving government and banks. Increased co-productions are one strategy aiming at reviving local film making. In post-1997 Hong Kong, joint ventures with Asian countries and Hollywood have risen sharply. Media Asia, Golden Harvest, China Star and other medium sized companies have all produced a number of films with Japan and Singapore, such as Woai chufang / Kitchen (1997), Meishao nian de lian /Bishonen (1998), Xingyue tonghua / Moonlight Express (1999), Tianxuan dilian / When I Look upon the Stars (1999), Aiqing menghuan hao / Fascination Amour (1999), Dongjing gonglue / Tokyo Riders (2000), 2000 Gongyuan / 2000AD (2000), Yinghua, Yinghua / Para Para Sakura (2000) and Lavender (2001). So persuasive has the concept of securing a market in Asia with Hong Kong as a production centre proved to be that Hong Kong film-makers Peter Chan, Teddy Chen and Allan Fung established Applause Pictures in 2000. Its initial aim was to attract Asian film-makers and fund Asian products by signing contracts with Asian directors, including Nonzee Nimibutr from Thailand, Hur Jin-Ho, Kim Jae Woon from South Korea, as well as directors from Japan’s Omega Projects. It has always been a strategy of the Hong Kong film industry to expand its market through Hollywood. Before 1997 the emphasis had been mainly on Hong Kong’s investment in Hollywood products. In contrast, the post1997 era has seen a steady increase in the exchange of film talents and investments. Not only is there a growing number of Hong Kong filmmakers working in Hollywood and Hong Kong, as for instance John Woo, Ringo Lam, Tsui Hark, Ronny Yu, Stanley Tong, Kirk Wong, Peter Chan, Chow Yun-fat and Michelle Yeoh, but Hollywood has likewise shown a notable interest in funding and producing Hong Kong films. In 2001, Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia and the Japanese Sony Pictures Entertainment jointly set up local operations to finance Hong Kong films. Tsui Hark’s Knock Off, Time and Tide, Big Shot’s Funeral, The Legend of Zu, Chen Kuo-Fu’s Double Vision, and Stephen Chow’s Shaolin zuqiu / Shaolin Soccer were all partly financed by Hollywood studios. Moreover, the industry is busy looking for opportunities to secure overseas markets through signing contracts for exhibition chains in Asia in the post-1997 era. Media Asia has reached an agreement with Thai-

Hong Kong Cinema after 1997 125 land’s key exhibitor Entertain Golden Village, which operates eightythree of Bangkok’s more than 300 screens. The same company is negotiating similar deals with Korea and throughout the Asian markets.3 Likewise, Applause Pictures aims to establish a distribution network in Asia. Although China’s market remains closed to the Hong Kong film industry under its policy of ‘one country, two systems’, the industry not only maintains its existing contacts but also actively explores new market niches on the mainland – the industry’s second major strategy after 1997. This has not come as a total surprise. In 1994, Raymond Wong, the director of Mandarin Production, told me that in the twenty-first century the world would be dominated by two cinemas, Hollywood and China’s, if the mainland were to open its market to the Hong Kong film industry. At the moment, restricted by China’s policy, the industry’s presence on the mainland is severely limited in the areas of co-production and investment. And yet, only a year after the handover, Golden Harvest shifted its marketing direction from Southeast Asia to China and so Golden Harvest Pictures (China) was founded with funds from Citibank and the Singapore Pubcaster STC. The company has also created a $30 million pool for coproducing films in China. In 2000, one-third of the total film output of Golden Harvest was co-produced with China’s studios. The company has also built and managed cinema complexes in Shanghai, Beijing and other cities. At the same time, it is one of the most active distributors of Chinese and international films on the mainland, even if always under the auspices of China’s state-owned importer China Film and its provincial distributors. Not surprisingly, the industry’s interests in China’s market goes beyond film business. In 2001, Golden Harvest signed co-production deals with TV studios in Shanghai, Hunan and Sichuan. Their TV series will be available in Mandarin-speaking markets such as Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia. Similarly, China Star, with its studios in Shenzheng, has already successfully produced television series for television stations at city and provincial levels on the mainland. The third strategy of the Hong Kong film industry in the post-1997 period has been to secure the domestic market through ‘Hollywoodising’ local cinema. Just as overseas sales have been falling off dramatically due to the Asian Economic Crisis, so the box-office returns from the domestic market have also declined. In 1997, foreign films outgrossed local production for the first time since 1980. To make matters worse, after 1997, exhibition chains screening exclusively Hong Kong films no longer exist. In spite of the fact that the territory has one of the highest densities of cinemas in the world, with 209 screens, none could afford to specialise in local films. Yet the domestic market is vital to the Hong Kong film industry. According to the managing director of Media Asia, John Chueng, more than half of the total income of the industry comes from the domestic market:

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Hong Kong Cinema after 1997 On average, Hong Kong box-office revenue yields at most 25 per cent of the total income generated by a film, while selling the copyright via VCD, DVD and Cable should bring in about 40 per cent profit. If you talk about box office returns only, the Hong Kong market contributes 70 to 80 per cent. So we can’t afford to lose the domestic market.

Hollywoodising Hong Kong cinema is regarded by the industry as the most promising way of rescuing the shrinking domestic market. Director Gordon Chan’s view, that ‘we need to win back the confidence of the Hong Kong audience. . . . We have to show them that we can make a film as well as Hollywood’, is widely shared in the popular media. A few filmmakers also argue for the similarities between Hong Kong and American markets: both are multicultural societies with a mix of indigenous people and immigrants, and both are preoccupied with commerce rather than traditional arts, literature, and science. The film-making system of Hollywood has also been seen as a benchmark for any ‘real’ film industry. In October 2001, Joe Chueng, the President of the Hong Kong Film Directors Association, began our conversation by correcting my phrase ‘the Hong Kong film industry’: There is no film industry in Hong Kong, you need to remember this. Because we don’t have a system like Hollywood.4 I reminded him that the Hong Kong ‘system’ has turned the territory into one of the most viable and productive film-making locations in the world. This ‘system’ mostly relies on a quick, slapdash approach, the nonaccounting of funds, and the absence of contractual security. As such, it has many advantages in terms of time-saving, flexibility, freedom of employment, ad hoc decision making, and a minimum of bureaucracy. On the other hand, Chueng was perhaps right in suggesting that it was this same informal ‘system’ that has led the downturn of the film business since the early 1990s. The belief in the superiority of the Hollywood system is reflected in the local industry’s financial management. Media Asia has begun to practise the Hollywood style by seeking funding from banks and by signing Completion Bonds to guarantee the success of the product. In the same vein, Media Asia emulates other aspects of Hollywood film-making, such as the requirement of completed scripts and detailed budget plans before shooting, early publicity including trailers and cross-media promotions, none of which have been commonly practised in Hong Kong.5 Big budgets and the latest special effects are now trendy in Hong Kong. These are interpreted as a sign of the territory’s ability to produce on a par with Hollywood. While the strengthening of the relationship with overseas markets, including China’s, is one of the most noticeable characteristics of the local film industry after 1997, the industry’s production centre – its ownership,

Hong Kong Cinema after 1997 127 its economic contribution and its main market – remains in Hong Kong. Even though the industry is seen to be diverting its forces elsewhere, such companies as Golden Harvest Pictures (China), China Star, Media Asia, and such medium-sized studios as BOB, Milkway and Emperor have so far remained controlled by Hong Kong investments. This very much meets the expectations of the local community who feel that too much ‘Hollywoodisation’ or even internationalisation, is a real threat to the cultural identity of Hong Kong. What all of this suggests is that the Hong Kong film industry continues to be fundamentally quasi-national.

Films No radical changes can be discovered in the stylistic elements of Hong Kong films after 1997. Local popular culture, social events and Chinese literature remain major sources for narrative inspiration. Manfred Wong’s youth and triads series Guhuo zai / Young and Dangerous, Wang Jing’s series on metropolitan sex and violence, and Ann Hui’s Bansheng yuan / Eighteen Springs are only a few of the many adaptations of local cartoons, gossip magazines and Chinese literature. Hong Kong society remains the cinematic centre of the local film. The social impacts of the handover and the Asian economic crisis are depicted in many films, most directly in Fruit Chan’s Xilu xiang/ Little Cheung, Qunian yanhua tebie duo/The Longest Summer, and Lingo Lim’s Mulu xionguang / Victim. So far there has not been any particular film genre that has dominated Hong Kong cinema. Nor have any new genres emerged since 1997. Instead, a variety of genres have been equally popular, such as police and crime, youth triads, thriller and melodrama. In comparison, comedy and swordplay films have been particularly weak. New stars have risen, while the pre-1997 stars remain a dominant force, now perceived more strongly as Hong Kong symbols, especially in co-production films. As the number of co-production films has increased since 1997, non-Chinese and Chinese actors from Japan, South Korea, America and Singapore appear more frequently in Hong Kong films. More and more films are multi-lingual with narratives about cross-cultural romances and international businesses. Coproduction is becoming a trend in the industry; it has been, and will continue to be, an important factor affecting cinematic style in Hong Kong. Hong Kong’s return has not encouraged the local film industry to explore further the territory’s relationship with China in the cinematic space. In representing the mainland, geopolitical cultural identity continues to be perceived as the main difference between the mainland Chinese and Hong Kong residents. As I argued in Chapter 6, Johnny Mak’s Long Arm of the Law discloses Hong Kong’s fear for the invasion of the mainland Chinese. This fear is revealed again, for example, in Zeng Jinchang’s Kongbu ji / Intruder (1997). The film depicts a series of brutal murders and kidnappings committed by a mainland Chinese woman in

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order to gain a Hong Kong identity card for her husband. She seduces a Hong Kong taxi-driver and disables him by driving a car over his legs. She then tortures him to get information about his past before killing him, so that her husband can assume his identity. To round things off, she murders the taxi-driver’s mother and attempts to kill his daughter. The barbarians from the north knocking at Hong Kong’s door. The pre-1997’s theme that the mainland Chinese are economically inferior is revised after 1997. From a more sympathetic perspective, Fruit Chan’s Liunian piaopiao /Durian, Durian (2000) portrays the experiences of a young mainland woman and a 10-year old girl in Hong Kong. The film constructs a wide economic gap between the mainland and Hong Kong Chinese, caused by differences in geopolitical identity. The woman is in Hong Kong on a 3 months’ work permit as a masseuse and prostitute, while the girl is on a visiting visa with her family. The girl stays at a shabby house helping her mother washing dishes for a living. Within her 3 months stay in Hong Kong, the woman has not had a day for herself, resting, shopping or visiting tourist sites. She serves 36 clients on her last day in Hong Kong, working till the last minute before her visa expires. Her instant economic ‘success’ is envied by relatives and friends on the mainland, many of whom desire to pursue a promising ‘career’. Golden Harvest’s coproduction with the mainland studio also present similar images about China. Para Para Lakuria (2001), a Kung Fu musical, is a romance between a Hong Kong dance coach and a wealthy Japanese woman in Shanghai. In the film, China’s economic prosperity is shown through images of skyscrapers, night clubs, and a luxurious apartment in Shanghai. However, the film creates two economic classes – the Hong Kong ‘expatriate’ who consumes China’s ‘capitalist’ lifestyle, and the local Chinese excluded from economic privilege. Nor has Hong Kong’s return to China encouraged the industry to participate in the exploration and construction of Hong Kong’s history. ‘History’ it seems has been considerably reduced as a motif, and is often replaced by a certain loss of memory in the post-1997 films. Jackie Chan’s Wo shi shui / Who Am I? (1998) is about a man who searches for his identity after he loses his memory during events involving an international team of scientists and soldiers. The protagonist Jackie Chan, the only survivor, is rescued by an African tribe. When the chief wants to know his name, Jackie Chan asks himself: ‘Who am I?’ ‘Who am I?’ subsequently becomes his name, as well as his goal for seeking his lost identity. In the process of his search, he inadvertently assists the CIA in solving the ‘mysterious’ air-accident in which ‘who am I?’ is the only survivor. By the end of the film, the audience has not been given the real identity of ‘who am I’. However, as the man speaks Cantonese, and is acted by Jackie Chan, we assume that ‘who am I’ is a Hongkongese who works as part of the international team. As Hong Kong film critic Li Cheuk-to (1999: 90) suggests, what the film reveals is that geopolitical identity is no more important than

Hong Kong Cinema after 1997 129 one’s surviving skill. The character has no name, no past and nationality, and yet his skills enable him to survive in Africa, Europe and America. The film indicates a rejection by Hong Kong of its new political cultural identity as the People’s Republic’s citizen. Memory loss becomes a frequent narrative motif in the post-1997 films. Whether the ‘past’ is too ‘difficult’ to recall or too painful to remember, identity cannot be articulated without a past. Likewise, concealing one’s ‘past’ is a rejection of one’s present identity. In Ann Hui’s Qianyan wanyu / Ordinary Heroes (1999), a female social worker ‘loses’ her memory in order to replace the past by a new life. The protagonist in Fruit Chan’s The Longest Summer is happy and content only after his memory of the pre-1997 days is lost. Chen Deshen’s Ziyu fengbao /Purple Storm (1999) deals with a man who is troubled by ‘remembering’ the false past of his identity. In addition, local film critic Sek Kei (2000: 165) observes that orphan identity is a popular theme in the post-1997 films. For instance, major characters in Huanying degong / Hot War (1998), Annamadelianna/ Anna Magdalena (1998), Quanzhi dadao / The Group (1998), and Fengyun xiongba tianxia / The Stormriders (1998) grow up in orphanages or survive without knowing where they have come from. Boli Zicheng / City of Glass (1998) is one of a few films that deals with Hong Kong’s past after 1997. The film will illustrate the idea that the life of Hong Kong people has been shaped by the triangular relationship between the British coloniser, the Chinese motherland and the territory: a major theme that deals with Hong Kong’s past before 1997. City of Glass is a romance between two graduates of the University of Hong Kong. The couple fall in love in the 1960s, get married to different persons in the 1980s, meet and fall in love again in the mid 1990s, and die in a car accident in London on the New Year’s Eve, 1997. As their spouses refuse to identify them, their children are called upon to deal with legal procedures involving property, which the lovers had bought without letting their families know. In the process, the children discover much about their parents’ past (a past of Hong Kong) and, in addition, they themselves fall in love. City of Glass is a film that indulges in nostalgic images of the colonial education system, much of its architecture and lifestyle being framed in soft lighting and soft focus. The plot develops around Hong Kong’s relation with Britain and China. The lovers are both educated in a colonial institution. Driven by the Chinese nationalism of the early 1970s, the male protagonist participates in the protests against the Japanese claim of the Diaoyu islands. As a consequence, he is expelled from the university, and subsequently leaves the colony for Paris to further his education. The man returns to Hong Kong in the mid-1990s to expand his business with the mainland as the year 1997 is approaching. He meets his former lover in a Mandarin class. The love story ends at London’s Westminster Bridge in 1997, indicating the closing chapter in the triangular relationship of Hong

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Kong. The film also reveals the deep admiration and nostalgia amongst Hong Kong’s elite for the coloniser. Both give their own child a Chinese name, Kangqiao (Westminster Bridge), even though one is born in Paris and the other in Hong Kong. Few of the territory’s films after 1997 have continued the exploration of Hong Kong’s identity in terms of sovereignty and recognition. Instead, a number of films disclose psychological moods after the handover. Fear and depression are shown in the portrayal of the Hong Kong landscape. In Johnny To’s series of popular and award winning films, Feichang turan / Expect the Unexpected (1998), Anzhan / Running Out Time (1999), Qianhuo / The Mission (1999), or Ringo Lim’s Gaodu jiebei / Full Alert (1998), Hong Kong’s skyscrapers and shopping centres are presented as sites for potential dangers threatening unexpectedly and suddenly in elevators, air-conditioned tunnels, nearby streets and parking areas. In contrast to the 1980s Michael Hui’s comedies, Cinema City’s series of Aces Goes Palaces, or Jackie Chan’s series of Police Story, Hong Kong’s pride in its modern buildings and confidence in the control of its technology are absent in the post-1997 films. A sense of uncontrollable destiny also unfolds in Wai Ka-fai’s Yige zitou de danshen / Too Many Ways to be No. 1 (1998). The film is about a man who faces two choices. It doesn’t matter which choice he makes, the end result is the same no matter which path he choses. Similarly Wang Kai-wai’s Huayang nianhua / In the mood for love (2000) depicts feelings of uncertainty in the story of a couple who try to cope with their spouses’ adultery. Depression is another recurring mood in the post-1997 films. The last Best Award’s winning film in the colonial era, Fruit Chan’s Xianggang zhizhao / Made in Hong Kong (1997) displays a picture of despair on the eve of the city’s return to China. Throughout the film Hong Kong is presented in under-exposed lighting, with images of narrow dark corridors, streets crowded with vehicles in disarray, wire fences along a playground, and buildings framed largely in high or low angles. The plot is about four teenagers who grow up in the public housing area just before 1997. San is sixteen and a devoted Christian. She commits suicide as she cannot cope with her intimate relationship with her school teacher. Long is mentally disabled, and a victim of sexual assault. He is beaten to death shortly after his only protector, Chau, falls ill. Chau is unemployed. He dies after he kills the leader of the murderers who have beaten Long to death. Unable to obtain a kidney, Ping dies at the age of sixteen, shortly after she falls in love with Chau. In this film, death is the only way to obtain peace. The only happy moments of these teenagers occur in the graveyard. In a series of long-distance shots, Chau, Long and Ping are jumping cheerfully from the top of one grave to another, calling out for dead San, whom they have never met. The graveyard is the only place where they are able to express their love for each other, embracing and kissing. The death theme runs deep throughout the film. The story begins with

Hong Kong Cinema after 1997 131 Long who passes Chau two letters which he picks up from San’s body after she has jumped off a high rise building, dying on the ground. The film progresses with Chau’s gradual comprehension of his own surroundings and death. As he narrates: ‘The world is changing faster than people can adapt to it’; ‘Death is beautiful, because there is no need to face the uncertain world’; and ‘Die young, we will be forever young.’ The film ends with Mao Zedong’s words to the youth during the Cultural Revolution: The world belongs to you and me. But ultimately, the world will belong to you. You, so full of energy, are having the best time of the lives, like the early morning sun. All our hopes are placed on the young. On the eve of the territory’s return to China in 1997, and with Mao’s quotation at the end of the film, Made in Hong Kong presents the colony as a dying community. Fruit Chan’s other award winning picture, Little Chueng (1999), depicts changes in Hong Kong after 1997 from the perspective of a 9-year old boy. Little Chueng is born in Hong Kong, named after the most beloved local opera singer and film star, Brother Chueng. The son of a small restaurant owner, Little Chueng helps his father deliver food to neighbouring customers on his bicycle. He grows up in a crowded and disordered street, with his playground on an empty truck. And yet Cheung is a free and happy child loved by his grandmother, his Philippino nanny, and neighbours. His happiness gradually diminishes as we approach July 1997: his Philippino nanny is leaving; his grandmother is losing her passion for talking about the past; and the customers are beginning to leave Hong Kong. Most importantly, his best friend, Ah Fen, is forced to return to China. Through his portrayal of an innocent childhood, Fruit Chan reveals a deep tension between Hong Kong and China. Ah Fen’s disabled father is a Hong Kong citizen, whereas Ah Fen is a mainland resident. After many years’ waiting to obtain a Hong Kong residence, Ah Fen’s father pays a great deal of money to arrange for his daughter to join him in Hong Kong, hoping that the Chinese government will grant her the right to stay after 1997. From Little Cheung’s perspective, the film portrays the difference in geopolitical identity: Ah Fen doesn’t go to school, and she always hides when she sees a policeman. In this way, the film intensifies the difference in identity. Ah Fen tells Little Cheung: I am looking forward to 1 July. Because by that day, I will be able to stay in Hong Kong. Hong Kong will be ours after 1 July. Instead of congratulating Ah Fen, Little Cheung is irritated by her remark, and replies: ‘Hong Kong is ours!’ In response, Ah Fen repeats: “It is ours!”

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Their voices of ‘Hong Kong is ours’ resound over Victoria Harbour, a scene articulating Hong Kong’s misgivings. The theme of the psychological consequences of China’s recovery of the territory is vividly dealt with in Fruit Chan’s The Longest Summer (1998). To borrow a sentence from Chau, the protagonist in Made in Hong Kong, ‘the world is changing faster than people can adapt to it’. The film depicts the confusion experienced by five British Chinese soldiers from 31 March 1997, the disbanding of Hong Kong Military Service, to one year after the handover. As the five British Chinese soldiers have lost touch with Hong Kong society after more than 25 years of service in their military compound, their opportunities of re-employment are slight. Under pressure from their families and desperate for financial security, they reluctantly join triad gangs planning a bank robbery. Unexpectedly, one member is killed, while the protagonist’s brother is mysteriously missing, together with their stolen money. Troubled by the clash between the moral and social values he has grown up with and the reality of Hong Kong in 1997, the protagonist is unable to control himself, letting himself get embroiled in a gang-fight with teenagers. As a result, he is injured and loses his memory. Ironically, his loss of memory makes him a happy person. The film portrays Hong Kong as a victim of an uncontrollable destiny. Pain and the crisis of identity can be solved only after the loss of the memories of the past. This message is underlined symbolically by the portrayal of the Hong Kong landscape before and after 1997: the year 1997 is shadowed by heavy rain clouds over a chaotic society, whereas the post-1997 Hong Kong is constructed under a blue sky, with clean even if empty streets. The retreat of the British and the return of Hong Kong to its motherland have not caused a dramatic impact on Hong Kong’s perception of self in the cinematic space. Hong Kong continues to see itself as a distinct geopolitical community. We may ask why the change of the triangular relationship in 1997 has had so little impact on the cinematic construction of Hong Kong’s cultural identity. There are a number of reasons, of which ‘one country, two systems’ policy has played the most significant role. The exclusion of Hong Kong films from the mainland market has not invited the local film industry to explore the territory’s cultural identity in terms of the political, economic and social integration with the mainland. Instead, the policy has encouraged the industry to seek overseas investment and markets which, as has been shown, will lead Hong Kong to take an increasingly global and pan-Asian outlook.

Film criticism The least change in the overall perspective of Hong Kong cinema can be observed in film criticism. All the trends analysed in Chapter 3 continue. In the post-1997 period there are few signs indicating that film criticism,

Hong Kong Cinema after 1997 133 film awards and film festivals are developing a closer relationship with the mainland than in the pre-1997 era. Annual Hong Kong Golden Film Awards and Hong Kong International Film Festival remain the two most significant events Hong Kong film culture. Similar to pre-1997, Hong Kong Film Archive has played a major role in selecting, shaping and producing Hong Kong (film) history, as well as theorising the contemporary local film culture. The relationship between the Hong Kong Film Archive and the Chinese national film archive in Beijing, in the words of the territory’s director of the film archive, Angle Tong, affects mainly archive technique, rather than cultural and political supervision. Hong Kong film critics remain a separate body from film critics in China and Taiwan. As I mentioned in Chapter 3, local film criticism has become even more so as we approach 1997. Two local film critics associations, the Hong Kong Film Critics Society and Hong Kong Film Critics Association, were established in the mid-1990s. Since then both associations have organised seminars, distributed their own critics’ film awards, and produced their critical collections. Their publications focus on Hong Kong films with little reference to films from China and Taiwan. The obvious change is the SAR government’s attitude towards Hong Kong cinema. The post-1997 period has shown that the relationship between the local film industry and the government is strengthening. In this respect, Hong Kong cinema is becoming more quasi-national than it had been in the colonial period. Although the colonial administration participated in the promotion of Hong Kong films, it is the SAR government which has committed funds to promote Hong Kong cinema. For the first time, Hong Kong film culture has been put on the governmental agenda in the SAR’s initial financial report. In the report, the Chief Executive, Tung Chee-hwa, schedules various projects designed to assist the Hong Kong film industry. Since then a special branch to assist film production has been established. The government has also granted land for establishing film studios. In 1998 the government moved a further step by budgeting HK$10 million for the creation of Hong Kong Film Development Council. The fund is available for both the production and promotion of Hong Kong cinema.

Conclusion Hong Kong cinema and quasi-national cinema

My starting point in this book involved looking at the ‘national’ cinema of Hong Kong – recognised as a geopolitical cultural entity and exhibiting characteristics of national cinema – and at its development in a territory which was not a sovereign nation but a British colony. I have not taken the conventional approach to Hong Kong cinema, which tends to focus on the relationship between China and Hong Kong. My approach – focusing on the triangular relationship between the British coloniser, the Chinese motherland and Hong Kong self – has enabled me to take a broader perspective. Two major points emerge from this study. I will summarise each of these briefly below. First, the book demonstrates that national identity in the cinematic context cannot be taken for granted. It shows that, historically, a country’s cinema can be in the process of metamorphosis while that country’s legal status remains unchanged. Furthermore, such change can subvert the geopolitical identity of a territory. The book shows that the triangular relationship between Britain, China and Hong Kong was the key determinant of the cultural identity of Hong Kong cinema throughout the period of Hong Kong’s government by the British coloniser. The triangular relationship created conditions that allowed Hong Kong cinema to function as part of Chinese national cinema in the first half of the twentieth century, as Chinese diasporic cinema from the mid-1950s to the late 1970s, and as Hong Kong quasi-national cinema from the late 1970s. In the first half of the twentieth century China’s domination in the local film industry’s modus operandi of production, distribution and evaluation developed as a result of the triangular relationship. The British colonial government practised dual policies based on racial difference, which consequently encouraged the local Chinese to seek a sense of belonging to and security from the mainland. Their political and cultural identifications with the mainland allowed China to play a major role in Hong Kong cinema. Freedom of movement between the colony and the mainland also strengthened China’s political, economic and cultural relations with Hong Kong. The triangular relationship provided the conditions for the film industry in the British colony to function as part of Chinese national cinema.

Conclusion 135 Further changes in the triangular relationship in the 1950s and 1960s resulted in the demise of China’s influence on the Hong Kong film industry. The British and Chinese governments prohibited free movement between the colony and China from 1950. Their policy had a great impact on political, economic and cultural relations between Hong Kong and the mainland. Nevertheless, the existence of two separate racial communities in Hong Kong continued, through support from the colonial government’s minimum involvement with the local community. Lack of a distinct Hong Kong cultural identity or of community awareness allowed the South-East Asian Chinese to take a leading role in the local film industry. As a consequence, and backed by their South-East Asian domestic film markets, they shaped the Hong Kong film industry into a Chinese film-making centre for Chinese communities beyond the communist mainland. The triangular relationship was further modified after China readjusted its policies towards Hong Kong in the late 1960s. Internal political struggles and the national Cultural Revolution reinforced the Beijing government’s decision to ‘leave’ Hong Kong under British colonial governance with minimal interference. Hong Kong’s fast economic development in the 1960s – its economic potential and actual achievement – encouraged and enabled the colonial government to partake in ‘nation-building’ programmes. The government established social welfare systems to improve the lifestyle of the community. It promoted community awareness through cultural activities and, more significantly, included local Chinese in the government’s decision-making processes. At the same time, China’s Cultural Revolution directly contributed to the construction of the Hong Kong community by ‘encouraging’ Hong Kong Chinese to identify with the British colony. By the late 1970s, Hong Kong’s economic achievement had boosted the community’s confidence. Not only did the community take control of the Hong Kong film industry, but it also used Hong Kong cinema as a cultural space to negotiate political boundaries in the triangular relationship between the British coloniser, the Chinese motherland and Hong Kong. This study has shown that changes in the triangular relationship were catalysts in the evolution of the cultural identity of Hong Kong cinema. The second point to emerge from this study is that, at any given moment, a country’s cinema does not necessarily reflect its geopolitical status in all its facets. The book shows that while film production and exhibition articulate one type of political identity for Hong Kong, the country’s film texts and film criticism do not necessarily reproduce that same identity. In the period between the late 1970s and late 1990s, which is my central concern, the Hong Kong film industry displayed characteristics similar to those of a national film industry. The industry was predominantly owned by members of the local community, even though it had always attracted overseas investments. It was subject to Hong Kong laws and regulations,

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made contributions to the local economy, and produced films that responded to local political and social tensions. The industry was also shaped by input from the colonial government through censorship, various schemes of assistance in film-making and the promotion of Hong Kong film culture. This relationship between the Hong Kong film industry and its community suggested that the former possessed some characteristics typical of national cinema, which generated a ‘national’ identity for Hong Kong. In terms of an exhibition-led film market or of film consumption, Hong Kong films were mainstream products, along with Hollywood films, consumed by the local community. Hong Kong films provided local spectators with a unique experience of cultural fantasy, especially in negotiating and communicating their views on the triangular relationship, which Hollywood films, other national films and films from China and Taiwan were unable to supply. In relation to overseas markets, from the 1970s the industry no longer produced films targeting the ethnically based film market of the Chinese diaspora, but engaged in exploring the mainstream markets in other nations by presenting images of Chinese cultural identity. The domestic and overseas film markets’ expectations of Hong Kong films produced a specific cultural character for Hong Kong films, recognised and defined by a geopolitical identity as one type of national cinema. At the same time, however, Hong Kong cinema betrayed its ambiguity as a national cinema in the areas of film criticism and film texts. Critical discourses on Hong Kong cinema have mainly contributed to an understanding of its films as constituting a national cinema. As with critical discourses on other national cinemas, writing about the Hong Kong film industry, Hong Kong film history and film products expresses a desire to identify and define the territory’s cinema in relation to the ‘ideal’ of national cinema. Yet writing about Hong Kong cinema in relation to Chinese traditional aesthetics and art forms has remained, even though criticism from this perspective has been considerably less popular since the 1970s. However, Lau Shing-hon’s studies of Hong Kong cinema (1991) in the 1980s emphasise the relationship between Hong Kong films and Chinese classical poems and traditional philosophy. In addition, Lin Nientung (1984) argues that Hong Kong films after 1948 inherited and shared the cinematic aesthetics of Chinese national films in the 1930s and 1940s. On the one hand these cultural and critical evaluations of Hong Kong films assisted the counterbalancing of Hong Kong cinema against Hollywood, the mainland and Taiwanese films. On the other hand, a number of critical evaluations of Hong Kong films also represented Hong Kong cinema as part of Chinese national cinema. I have argued that Hong Kong cinema projected a quasi-national identity in two main areas: geopolitical cultural distinction and film narratives. As far as geopolitical distinction is concerned, national cinema can be considered within certain stylistic and thematic parameters, which relate to a

Conclusion 137 nation’s film culture to produce a relatively homogeneous national cultural identity. Selecting from original literary texts, Hong Kong screen adaptations have used Hong Kong cultural texts as much as they have relied on China’s classic literature and folklore. China’s historical and cultural resources, stylistic and generic conventions and Cantonese regional cultural traditions have always played an important role in the aesthetic and thematic dimension of Hong Kong film genres, such as martial arts, comedies, ghost stories and melodrama. Film performance and star images construct and present images of both Hong Kong and China. Given that national identity depends on exclusion to make sense of itself, the cultural distinction of Hong Kong perceived as both Hong Kong and China produced for film a quasi-national identity. Film is quasi-national, because its texts were based on both the exclusion and the inclusion of China’s cultural identity. In the area of narrative, Hong Kong films have told the story of a distinct and organic community in Hong Kong, where geopolitical territorial boundaries and this ‘nation’ have been imagined, defined and formed through the triangular relationship between the coloniser, the motherland and self. The analysis of films in Chapters 5 and 6 show how this unique approach to imagining the territory produced Hong Kong as a quasination. Allen Fong’s Father and Son constructs Hong Kong as an indigenous community through obscuring China’s role in the past of Hong Kong and through emphasising the foreignness of the British culture in the colony. Ann Hui’s Song of the Exile produces Hong Kong as a unique community whose members shared the commonality of exclusion from China and Britain. Jackie Chan’s Project A and its sequel defined the Hong Kong community by drawing boundaries in the triangular relationship between the British coloniser, the Chinese motherland and Hong Kong. Johnny Mak’s Long Arm of the Law constructs the community without any political power of its own. In Mak’s film, Hong Kong can only be made visible through its identification with the British colonial system excluding China, and through identification with Chinese nationalism excluding the coloniser. Without being exclusively focused on the triangular relationship, Stanley Kwan’s Full Moon in New York constructs the ‘self’ in relation to other geopolitically defined Chinese communities. However, Kwan’s construction of ambiguity suggests border-crossing within Hong Kong’s geopolitical identity: Hong Kong cannot be satisfactorily defined in geopolitical terms. Evans Chan’s To Liv(e) articulates the knowable political entity of Hong Kong: a ‘nation’ lacking recognition by Britain or China, and, furthermore, lacking recognition by the international community. The triangular relationship between the coloniser, the motherland and self is not typical of the process of articulating a nation; however, the process of imagining and articulating a Hong Kong that was reliant on such a triangular relationship resulted in the territory’s

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quasi-national identity. Hong Kong is quasi-national, because it can only be made sense of as an imagined nation, through recognising and representing its dependence on the triangular relationship between coloniser, motherland and self. I have used the term ‘quasi-national’ to define Hong Kong cinema from the late 1970s to the late 1990s to highlight the ambiguities and imperfections in the cinematic articulation of a Hong Kong ‘national’ identity. Hong Kong cinema is to be perceived as quasi-national, because it cannot be viewed on the same terms as other national cinemas. On the one hand, Hong Kong film production and markets share the characteristics of their national cinema counterparts. On the other hand, Hong Kong film criticism and film products have displayed quasi-national characteristics. In the cinematic context, a Hong Kong identity was constructed through geopolitical definition, but this was not a British colonial identity focusing on the relationship between the coloniser and the colonised. Rather, it was a quasi-national identity dependent on the triangular relationship between the British coloniser, the Chinese motherland and Hong Kong. As the triangular relationship was crucial to realising Hong Kong as an imagined community, Hong Kong’s identity in the cinematic context relied on the partial exclusion and inclusion of both a British colonial identity and a mainland cultural identity. It is from the relationship between national identity and cinema that I present Hong Kong cinema as a quasi-national cinema. Hong Kong’s return to China has not yet caused any drastic changes in the territory’s cinema. Neither the pre-1997 fear of a restriction of freedom of expression, nor the hope for an opening of the mainland market have been warranted. China’s ‘one country, two systems’ policy and the Asian economic crisis so far have sustained Hong Kong cinema as quasi-national. As the mainland market continues to be closed to the industry, and with the pressure of a diminution of the domestic market, the Hong Kong film industry keeps its ‘tradition’ of targeting for a wide range of markets across ethnic and national boundaries.

Notes

1 Hong Kong cinema as part of Chinese national cinema 1913–56 1 Both Cheng and Du acknowledge the contribution from the Hong Kong film industry in producing anti-Japanese war films. However, both also accused the industry for ‘falling back’ on commercial films. See Cheng 1966, vol.2, pp.86–8; Du 1986b, vol.2, pp.39–40. 2 Neither the Guomindang nor the Communists appreciated martial arts films and traditional costume films at the time. They regarded these films as promoting feudalism. I deal with this issue in the third section. 3 This was not totally true. In Law Kar’s interview, Lu Dun revealed that, before Zhonglian was formally established, the production house had already made a deal with Cathay Distribution, the largest Chinese film distribution in Malaysia that the former would pay a higher than average price for Zhonglian’s films. 4 In this book I use Roman to indicate those Chinese films for which English titles are not available and are translated by myself. Italics indicate an original English title for the film. 2 Hong Kong cinema as Chinese diasporic cinema 1956–79 1 Li was born in Northern China, and trained at Beijing Art Academy. He migrated to Hong Kong in the late 1940s, and worked at Yonghua and Shaw Brothers. He was regarded as one of the most successful directors of the late 1950s and 1960s. He received a number of awards from the Asian Film Festival in 1958, 1959 and 1960 including Best Director and Best Films, in addition to an interior cinematography award from Cannes in 1961. 2 Personal interviews with Law Kar on 1 March 1994 and Ng Ho on 4 March 1994. Both were active film critics for The Chinese Studenty Weekly. 3 Hong Kong film production, market and criticism 1979–97 1 Personal interview with Joey Kong (Kong Cho Yee), Chairman of Hong Kong Theatres Association, on 17 February 1994, Hong Kong. 2 Personal interview with Assistant Secretary for Recreation and Culture, Mr. Kam-yin Wu, Recreation and Culture Branch, Government Secretariat, Hong Kong, on 7 March 1994. 3 Letter from Broadcasting, Culture and Sport Branch Government Secretariat of Hong Kong to Motion Picture Industry Association Hong Kong on ‘Government’s Position on the Proposal to set up a Film Commission in Hong Kong’, 27 June 1996.

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4 Personal interview with Senior Manager of Hong Kong Film Archive, Cynthia Liu, on 25 February 1994. 5 In my interview with Li Cheuk-to on 29 November 1993, his only criticism of Hong Kong Cinema in the Eighties, published by Hong Kong Urban Council, was that the collection ‘contains too many views from the outside’, and ‘it is our publication which should reflect Hong Kong’s view’. 4 Hong Kong films: The cultural specificity of quasi-national film 1 In addition, there were a number of popular Cantonese screen adaptations of Hong Kong radio plays in the 1950s and the early 1960s. However, these radio plays are about broken families, orphans and widows, the oppression of traditional society, all set against a background of the mainland war period. Originally a well-known broadcaster and story teller in Guangzhou, Li Wo migrated to Hong Kong in 1949 and worked at Radio Rediffusion. About forty Cantonese films were made based on his radio plays. See Ng Ho, ‘Diantai guangbo ju yu Yueyu pian de guanxi’ (Radio Plays and the Cantonese Cinema); Ng Ho, ‘Li Wo, tiankong xiaoshuo, dianying’ (Li Wo, Air-wave novels and Cinema) in Cantonese Melodrama 1950–1969: 57–66. 2 For instance, a number of Li Hanxiang’s filmic adaptations of classical literature, such as The Plum in the Golden Vase and The Dream of the Red Chamber. 3 For instance, Ann Hui’s film Qingcheng zhi lian / Lover in a Fallen City (1984) is based on Shanghai writer Zhang Ailing’s (Eileen Chang’s) Qingcheng zhi lian. Tsui Hark’s Qiannü youhun / Chinese Ghost Story (1987) is also based on the classic ghost literature Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. However, these films can also be read with the consciousness of local context. Ann Hui’s film is widely seen by Hong Kong film critics as using Shanghai to depict Hong Kong’s situation on the eve of China’s take over. And Tsui Hark’s film is also seen as the version based on Hong Kong director Li Hanxiang’s classic Qiannü youhun / Chinese Ghost Story (1960), which was originally from Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. 4 The following films immediately come to mind: Yeung Fan’s Meigui de gushi / The Story of Rose (1986), Liujin suiyue / Last Romance (1988), Gordon Chan’s Xiao nanren zhouji / The Yuppie Fantasia (1989), Stanley Kwan’s Yanzhi kou / Rouge (1988), Clara Law’s Pan Jinlian zhi qianshi jinsheng / The Reincarnation of Golden Lotus (1989), Clifton Ko’s Wo he chuntian you ge yuehui / I Have a Date with Spring (1994), and Ban wo tongxing / One of the Lucky Ones (1994), and Tsui Hark’s Qing she / Green Snake (1995). 5 To list just a few examples, Laoguo jie / Bank-busters (1980), Tiantang meng / Way to Hell (1980), Acan zhengzhuan / Story of a Refugee (1980), Acan dang chai / The Sweet and Sour Cops (1980), Acan you nan / Prohibited Area (1981), Lüyin / The Cold Blooded Murder (1981), Acan chuqian / An Honest Crook (1981), Xiquan zai / Once Upon a Mirage (1981), Jia zai Xianggang / Home at Hong Kong (1983), Shandong kuang ren / The Man is Dangerous (1985), Shenggang qibing / Long Arm of the Law (1984), Jianghu liaoduan / Pursuit of a Killer (1985), Shenggang qibing (II) / Long Arm of the Law (II) (1987), Woyao taowang / Set me Free (1988), Gongzi duo qing / Greatest Lover (1988), Shenggang fengyun /Border Line Story (1988), Hejia huan / Mr. Coconut (1988), Biaojie, nihao ye! / Her Fatal Ways (1990). 6 A similar argument is also developed in Jenny Kwok-wah Lau’s PhD thesis, A Cultural Interpretation of the Popular Cinema of China and Hong Kong, 1981–1985 (Northwestern University, 1989a: 292): ‘Although apparently Westernized, the Hong Kong films are thus still fundamentally Chinese. Similar to

Notes 141

7

8 9

10

11

12 13

the films from China, they are very much bounded by and are uncritical of their own form of Chinese culture.’ In 1977, the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) in Hong Kong prosecuted 272 police officers of whom 145 were convicted. The number of police officers arrested in October angered the police unions. On 28 October, over 2,000 policemen marched on the office of the Commissioner of Police, and later attacked the ICAC headquarters, injuring some staff members. As a result, the governor announced a partial amnesty on 5 November. See Michael Hui’s Guima shuangxing / Games Gamblers Play (1974), Tiancai yu baichi / The Last Message (1975), Banjin baliang / The Private Eyes (1976), Maishen qi / The Contract (1978). See Zhang Che’s Da juedou / The Duel (1971), Quan ji / Duel of Fists (1971), Ma Yongzhen / The Boxer from Shantung (1972), Cima / Blood Brothers (1973), Hong quan yu yong chun / Shaolin Martial Arts (1974), Baguo lianjun / The Boxer Rebellion (1976). See Li Hanxiang’s Jinping shuangyan / The Golden Lotus (1974), Qingguo qingcheng / The Empress Dowager (1975), Yingtai qixue / The Last Tempest (1976), Nianhua recao / Crazy Sex (1975), Fenghua xueyue / Moods of Love (1976), Qian Long xia Jiangnan / The Adventures of the Emperor Chien Lung (1977), Qian Long xia Yangzhou / The Voyage of Emperor Chien Lung (1978). See Chu Yuan’s Liuxing hudie jian / Killer Clans (1976), Tianya mingyue dao / The Magic Blade (1976), Chu liuxiang / Clans of Intrigue (1977), Baiyu laohu / Jade Tiger (1977), Duoqing jianke wuqing jian / The Sentimental Swordsman (1977). Personal interview with Ann Hui on 10 March 1994. Pili xianfeng / Final Justice (1988), Long zai tian ya / Dragon Fight (1989), Du xia / God of Gamblers (1990), Taoxue wei long / Fight Back to School (1991), Haomen yeyan / The Banquet (1991), Xin jingwu men / Fist of Fury 1991 (1991), Shensi guan / Justice, My Foot (1992), Luding ji / Royal Tramp (1992), Wu zhuangyuan Su qier / King of Beggars (1992), Ji Gong / The Mad Monk (1993), Guochan lingling qi / From China with Love (1994), Xiyou ji / Chinese Odessey (1995).

5 Hong Kong films: Cinematic constructions of Hong Kong history and territory 1 Song of the Exile was filmed during the Beijing Students Democracy Movement in 1989. 2 Personal interview with Ann Hui at Hong Kong University on 4 March 1994. 6 Hong Kong films: Cinematic constructions of Hong Kong’s quasinational identity 1 In general, Daquan zai refers to Red Guards; it particulary refers to those Red Guards from Guangzhou who were sent to the countryside near Guangzhou during the Cultural Revolution ‘Daquan zai’ means ‘kids from the big zone (Guangzhou)’. 7 Hong Kong cinema after 1997 1 Interviews with Law Kar, Li Cheuk-to and Managing Director of Media Asia, John Chueng on 22, 23 and 25 August 2001. 2 Interview with Law Kar on 23 August 2001 at Hong Kong Film Archive.

142

Notes

3 Interview with John Chueng on 23 August 2001 at Media Asia Hong Kong. 4 Interview with Joe Chueng, the President of the Hong Kong Film Directors Association, 22 August 2001 at Mandarin Hotel Hong Kong. 5 Interviews with Joe Chueng and John Chueng.

Chinese glossary

Acheng / Zhong Acheng Alex K.M Cheung / Zhang Guoming Alfred Cheung / Zhang Jianting Allen Fong / Fang Yuping Ann Hui / Xu Anhua ben shi tonggen sheng bentu bentu dianying Bruce Lee / Li Xiaolong Bu Wanchang Cai Chusheng Changcheng changqi dasuan, chongfen liyong Chen Canyun Chen Lifu Chen Qixiang Chen Te Chen Wen Cheng Gang chengzhang Cherie Chung / Zhong Chuhong Cheuk Pak-tong / Zhuo Botang

144

Chinese glossary

Chiao Hsiung-ping / Jiao Xiongping Ching Siu-tung / Chen Xiaodong Chow Yun-fat / Zhou Runfa Chu Yuan Clara Law / Luo Zuoyao Clifton Ko / Gao Zhisen Da texie Da Zhonghua Daguan Danny Li / Li Xiuxian Daoyan lianyi hui Daquan zai Eileen Chang / Zhang Ailing Er Lang Eric Kit-wai Ma / Ma Jiewei Evans Yiu-Shing Chan / Chen Yaocheng fengyun pian fu, bi, xing Ge You Gong Li gongtong ti Gordon Chan / Chen Jiashang Gu Long Guangxu Guangyi Guangzhou Gui Zhihong Guilao Guofang dianying Guolian

Chinese glossary 145 Guomindang guopian Guoyu pian guzhuang pian haiwai Huaren Hanzu He Dong / Robert Ho Tung Hong Di Huanan Huanan dianying huangmei xi Huanle jinxiao huaqiao Huazi Ribao huigui zuguo, rentong zuxian, huiyin huidao Jackie Chan / Cheng Long jia qing Jiang Boying Jiang Jieshi Jiang Wen jianghu Jin Yong / Zha Liangyong, Louis Cha John Woo / Wu Yusen Johnny Mak / Mai Dangxiong Johnny To / Du qifeng Kirk Wong / Huang Zhiqiang Kwan Man-ching / Guan Wenqing Lau Shing-hon / Liu Chenghan Law Kar / Luo Ka

146

Chinese glossary

Lawrence Ah Mon / Liu Guochang Leong Po-chih / Liang Puzhi Leslie Cheung / Zhang Guorong Li Beihai Li Chenfeng Li Cheuk-to / Li Zhuotao Li Hanxiang Li Minwei Li Pik-wah / Li Bihua Li Tie Li Wo li yi lian chi Li Zhiyi Li Zuyong Lianbang Lianhua Liaozhai zhiyi Lin Dai Lin Nien-tung / Lin Niantong Lingo Lim / Lin Lingdong lishi jiyao Lo Kwai-cheung / Luo Guixiang Loke Wan Tao / Lu Yuntao Lu Dun Lu Yu Luanshi zhi jia Lunli Luo Mingyou Mable Cheung / Zhang Wanting Maggie Cheung / Cheung Man-yuk / Zhang Manyu

Chinese glossary 147 Mei Lanfang Manfred Wong / Wen Jun Mai Dafei meixue sixiang Meng Chao Michael Hui / Xu Guanwen Michelle Yeoh / Yang Ziqiong Minjian Minxin minzu minzu qixi Mo Kangshi Nan Guo Nanyang Nanyue Ng Ho / Wu Hao Ng See-yuen / Wu Siyuan Peter Chan / Chen Kexin Po Leung Kuk / Bao liang ju Qin Jian Qingchun qiren yingping Qu Baiyin Raymond Chow / Zou Wenhuai renqing shigu Ringo Lam / Lin Lingdong Sammo Hung / Hong Jinbao Shao Cunren Shao Renmei / Runme Shaw Shao Yifu / Run Run Shaw

148

Chinese glossary

Shao Zuiweng shehui lunli shennong Shenzhen Shu Kei / Shu Qi Shu Shuen / Tang Shuxuan Siqin Gaowa Situ Huimin Stanley Kwan / Guan Jinpeng Stephen Chiau / Zhou Xingchi Sylvia Chang / Zhang Aijia Tai Shan Teresa Tang / Deng Lijun Tianyi Tsui Hark / Xu Ke Tung Wah / Donghua Wai Kar-fai / Wei Jiahui Wen Tianxiang wen yi zai dao Wong Kar-wai / Wang Jiawei Wu Hui Wu Xihao wulitou wuxia pian Xia Yan Xianggang ren xiao ti zhong xin xiaoxiong pian Xie Xian Xin Hua

Chinese glossary 149 Xing-Zhong hui Xinlian Xu Hao Yang Quan Yan huang zisun Yau Tai On Ping / Qiu Dai Anping Ye Yiqun Yeung Fan / Yang Fan Yi Lin yin yang Yinguang yingxiong pian Yinmu yishu guan Yonghua Yu Mo-wan / Yu Muyun Yuen Kuei / Yuan Kui Yueyu pian Zhang Che Zhang Minyi Zhang Sen Zhang Shankun Zhang Yimou Zhang Ying Zhejiang Zheng Zhengqiu Zhongguo dianyin Zhonghua minzu Zhonglian Zhou Gangming

150

Chinese glossary

Zhou Huashan Zhu Ji Zhu Shilin Zhu Zijia Zhuzhong jiu daode, jiu lunli, fayang zhonghua wenming, libi ouhua

ziyou gonghui

Filmography

Afu lao shijie / The Stupid Sailer, Ah Fook Aiqing menghuan hao / Fascination Amour A jihua / Project A Alang de gushi / All About Ah Long Acan chuqian / A Honest Crook Acan dang chai / The Sweet & Sour Cops Acan you nan / Prohibited Area Acan zhengzhuan / Story of a Refugee Afu zhengzhuan / The Little Man, Ah Fook Anzhan / Running Out of Time Ashi / Ashi Ai zai biexian jijie / Farewell China Annamadelianna / Anna Magdalena Baguo lianjun / The Boxer Rebellion Baicuo mihun zhen / The Misarranged Love Trap Baijin long / White Golden Dragon Baiyu laohu / Jade Tiger Baiyun guxiang / White Cloud Village Ban wo tongxing / One of the Lucky Ones Banjin baliang / The Private Eyes Bianyuan ren / Man on the Brink Bansheng yuan / Eighteen Springs

152

Filmography

Biaojie, nihao ye! / Her Fatal Way Bo hao / To be Number One Boli zicheng / City of Glass Chengji chalou / The Tea House Chu liuxiang / Clans of Intrigue Chun / Spring Ci Ma / Blood Brothers Da Juedou / The Duel Da junfa / The Warlord Da zhangfu / Operation Manhunt Dage Cheng / Big Brother Cheng Dalang taosha / Waves of the First Civil War Daxiang li / The Country Bumpkin Dengdai liming / Hong Kong 1941 Dianzhi bingbing / Cops and Robbers Diexue shuangxiong / The Killer Dong Cunrui / Dong Cunrui Dongjing gonglue / Tokyo Riders Du xia / God of Gamblers Duoqing jianke wuqing jian / The Sentimental Swordsman Feiying jihua / Operation Condor Feichang turan / Expect The Unexpected Feng jie / The Secret Fenghua xueyue / Moods of Love Fengyun xiongba tianxia / The Stormriders Fushi lianqu / To Liv(e) Fuzi qing / Father and Son Gaodu jiebei / Full Alert Gong pu / Law with Two Phases

Filmography 153 Gongyuan 2000 / 2000 AD 2000 Gongzi duo qing / Greatest Lover Gudao tiantang / Orphan Island Paradise Guima shuangxing / Games Gamblers Play Guo hun / Soul of China Guochan lingling qi / From China with Love Guofu xinniang / A Mainland Bride Guonan caizhu / The Tycoon Traitor Haomen yeyan / The Banquet Hejia huan / Mr. Coconut Hong quan yu yong chun / Shaolin Martial Arts Hongfan qu / Rumble in the Bronx Hongqi pu / Legend of the Banner Hongri / Red Sun Hongse niangzi jun / Red Detachment of Women Huang Feihong / Once Upon a Time in China Huang tudi / Yellow Earth Huangjia fan / The Law Enforcer Huayang nianhua / In the Mood for Love Huanying degong / Hot War Hudie furen / Madame Butterfly Huoku youlan / Orchid in the Fire Huoshu yinhua xiangying hong / Bright Night Huyue de gushi / The Story of Woo Viet Ji Gong / The Mad Monk Jia / Family Jia zai Xianggang / Home at Hong Kong Jiandan renwu / First Strike Jianghu liaoduan / Pursuit of a killer Jianyu fengyun / Prison on Fire

154

Filmography

Jimao xin / The Letter with feathers Jingcha gushi / Police Story Jingwu men / Fist of Fury Jinping shuangyan / The Golden Lotus Jinye xingguang canlan / Starry is the Night Jitong yajiang / Chicken and Duck Talk Ketu qiuhen / Song of the Exile Kongbu ji / Intruder Lai ke / Boy from Vietnam Laoguo jie / Bank-busters Lei luo zhuan / Lee Rock I Lianzheng fengbao / Anti-corruption Lin Azhen / Lim Ah Chun Liunian piaopiao / Durian, Durian Luyin / The Cold Blooded Murder Liujin suiyue / Last Romance Liuwang zhi ge / Song of the Exile Liuxing hudie jian / Killer Clans Long zai tian ya / Dragon Fight Longhu fengyun / City on Fire Longxiong hudi / Armour of God Luding ji / Royal Tramp Ma Yongzhen / The Boxer from Shantung Maishen qi / The Contract Manbo nulang / Mambo Girl Meigui de gushi / The Story of Rose Meishao nian de lian / Bishonen Menglong guojiang / The Way of the Dragon Minzu de housheng / Roar of the People Mulu xiongguang / Victim

Filmography 155 Nanyang abo / Uncle in Kuala Lumpur Nanzheng beizhan / From Victory to Victory Niangre yu dada / Nianre and Dada Nianhua recao / Crazy Sex Pan Jinlian zhi qianshi jinsheng / The Reincarnation of Golden Lotus Pili xianfeng / Final Justice Qi jin gang / Seven Wonders Qi xiaofu / Painted Face Qian Long xia Jiangnan / The Adventures of the Emperor Chien Lung

Qian Long xia Yangzhou / The Voyage of Emperor Chien Lung

Qianhuo / The Mission Qiang / The Wall Qian nuyouhun / Chinese Ghost Story Qianyan wanyu / Ordinary Heroes Qibai wanyuan da jie an / Million Dollar Snatch Qigai yingxiong / Hero of the Beggars Qing she / Green Snake Qingcheng zhi lian / Lover in a Fallen City Qinggong mishi / Sorrows of the Forbidden City Qingguo qingcheng / The Empress Dowager Quan ji / Duel of Fists Quanzhi dadao / The Group Quanzhi shashou / Full Time Killer Qunian yanhua tebie duo / The Longest Summer Renzai Niuyue / Full Moon in New York Shandong kuang ren / The Man is Dangerous Shenggang fengyun / Border Line Story

156

Filmography

Shenggang qibing / Long Arm of the Law Shenggang yihao tongji fan / Rock ’N’ Roll Cop Shengming xian / Life Shensi guan / Justice, My Foot Shexing diaoshou / Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow Shida cike / Ten Assassinations Shida qi’an / Ten Sensational Cases Shidi chuma / The Young Master Shihao fengbo / Typhoon Signal No.10 shizi shang xia / Below the Lion Rock Shouzu qingshen / Brother Shu jian en chou lu / Romance of Book and Sword I & II Siqianjin / Our Sister Hedy Tangshan asao / Woman from China Tangshan daxiong / The Big Boss Taoxue wei long / Fight Back to School Tiancai yu baichi / The Last Message Tianchang dijiu / Everlasting Love Tianxuan dilian / When I look Upon the Stars Tianmimi / Comrade, it is almost a love story Tiantang meng / Way to Hell Tianya mingyue dao / The Magic Blade Tiaohui / Jumping Ash Tiexue qijing / Road Warriors Touben nuhai / The Boat People Wangfu shanxia / Beneath Mt. Wangfu Wangzhong ren / The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Wanshui qianshan / Crossing over Mountains and Rivers Weilou chunxiao / In the Face of Demolition Woai chufang / Kitchen

Filmography 157 Wo he chuntian you ge yuehui / I have a date with Spring Wo shi shui / Who am I? Woyao taowang / Set me Free Wu Zetian / Empress Wu Tse Tien Wu zhuang yuan Su qier / King of Beggar Wuxun zhuan / The Story of Wuxun Xianggang 73 / Hong Kong 73 73 Xianggang zhizhao / Made in Hong Kong Xingyue tonghua / Moonlight Express Xiao Guangdong / Little Guangdong Xiao laohu / Little Tiger Xiao nanren zhouji / The Yuppie Fantasia Xiaobing zhangga / Zhangga, A Boy Soldier Xilu xiang / Little Cheung Xin da zhangfu / Operation Manhunt II Xin jingwu men / Fist of Fury 1991 Xin nanxiong nandi / He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Father Xin tixiao yinyuan / Lover’s Destiny Xiquan zai / Once Upon a Mirage Xiyou ji / Chinese Odessey Xue ran xiangsi gu / Blood stains the Valley of Love Xuejian baoshan cheng / Blood Splashes on Baoshan Yan Ruisheng / Yan Ruisheng Yanzhi / Rouge Yanzhi kou / Rouge Ye meigui zhilian / Wild, Wild Rose Yelin yue / Moon Under the Palm Grove

158

Filmography

Yige haoren / Mr. Nice Guy Yige zitou de danshen / Too Many Ways to be No.1 Yinghua Yinghua / Para Para Sakura Yingtai qixue / The Last Tempest Yingxiong bense / A Better Tomorrow Youji jinxing qu / March of the Guerrillas Yunchang yanhou / Cinderella and her little Angels Yunu siqing / Her Tender Heart Zaijian Zhongguo / China Behind Zan xiansheng yu Zhao Qianhua / Warriors Two Zhonghua yingxiong / A Man Called Hero Zhongnanhai baobiao / Bodyguard From Beijing Zhu men yuan / Sorrow of the Gentry Zhuangzi shi qi / Zhuangzi Tests his Wife Zhujiang lei / Tragedy on the Pearl River Ziyu fengbao / Purple Storm Zongheng sihai / Once a Thief Zui Quan II / Drunken Master II (II) Zuihou guantou / At this Crucial Moment Zuoci xi Cao / Zuo Ci Teases Cao Cao

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Journals, magazines and newspapers Da texie (Close Up), Hong Kong 1976–8. Da yinghua, Hong Kong 1988–90. Dangdai dianying, Beijing 1984–97. Film Biweekly (Dianying shuang zhou kan), Hong Kong 1978–97. Ming Bao Monthly, 1990–2000. South China Morning Post, Hong Kong 1979–97. Wen Hui Bao, Hong Kong 1980–97. Xianggang dianying (Hong Kong Screen), 1960. Xianggang yingxun ziliao zoukan (Hong Kong Film Materials Weekly), 1993–4. Xin Bao, Hong Kong 1980–97. Yi Lin, Hong Kong 1937–8. Yinse huabao (Spotlight), Hong Kong 1986–91. Yinse shijie (Cinema Art), Hong Kong 1970–91.

Personal interviews Allen Fong, film director, at Hong Kong Arts Centre, 9 March 1994. Ann Hui, film director, at Hong Kong University, 10 March 1994. Angle Tong, Director of Hong Kong Film Archive, at Film Archive, 23 August 2001. Camy K.H. Mak, Chief Entertainment Standards Control Officer (Film), Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority, Hong Kong, Wanchai, 15 November 1993. Chan Pak-shen, Chief Editor, Film Biweekly / City Entertainment, 23 August 2001 Hong Kong. Clara Law, film director, at Tsim Sha Tsui, 7 March 1994. Cynthia Liu, Senior Manager of Hong Kong Film Archive, at Film Archive, 25 February 1994. Edward K. S. Tang, producer, Golden Way Films Ltd. at Golden Harvest, 18 March 1994. Fruit Chan, film director, Mandarin Hotel Central, 22 August 2001. Gordon Chan, film director, Mandarin Hotel Central, 20 March 1994. Joe Chueng, the President of the Hong Kong Film Directors Association, 22 August 2001. Joey Kong (Kong Cho Yee), Chairman of Hong Kong Theatres Association, Causeway Bay Centre, 17 February 1994, Hong Kong. John Chueng, Managing Director of Media Asia, at Media Asia 23 August 2001. Law Kar, film critic and programme coordinator of Hong Kong international film festival, Hong Kong Cultural Centre, 8 November 1993 and 1 March 1994. —— Head of the Research Section, Hong Kong Film Archive, 23 August 2001.

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Lawrence Ah Mon, film director, Hong Kong Cultural Centre, 15 March 1994. Li Cheuk-to, film critic and programme coordinator of Hong Kong International Film Festival, Hong Kong Arts Centre, 29 November 1993. —— President of Hong Kong Film Critics Society, 22 August 2001. Michael Hui, film actor, director and producer, at Jackie Chan’s studio Kowloon Tang, 22 March 1994. Ng Ho, Associate Professor in Cinema and Television, School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University, 4 March 1994. Ng See-yuan, film producer and director, at Seasonal Film Corporation, 18 March 1994. Peter Tsi, Chief Executive, Hong Kong Kowloon & New Territories Motion Picture Industry Association, at MPIA office, on 11 March 1994. Tony Shu, Executive Secretary in Movie Producers and Distributors Association of Hong Kong and Kowloon Ltd. at MPDA office, 18 March 1994. Raymond P.M. Wong, actor, script-writer in Cinema City, producer and director of Mandarin Films Distribution and Mandarin Films Ltd. at Central, 12 March 1994. Winnie Tsang, Manager in Panasia Films Limited, Golden Harvest, at Golden Harvest Studio, 20 March 1994. Wu Kam-yin, Assistant secretary for Recreation and Culture, Recreation and Culture Branch, Hong Kong Government Secretariat, at Wanchai, March 7 1994. Yu Mo-wan, film historian, at Tuen Mum, 25 November 1993, 1 March 1994.

Index

A Better Tomorrow / Yingxiong bense 68, 74 Abel, Richard xiii, 63 Aces Goes Palaces / Zuijia paidang 130 Ah Mon, Lawrence 68 Anderson, Benedict x Anti-Corruption / Lianzheng fengbao 65, 68, 97 anti-Japanese war films 16, 67; see also defence films, minzu revolutionary films Applause Pictures 124, 125 At This Crucial Moment / Zuihou guantou 16 Balibar, Etienne x, 92 bentu cinema xvii–xviii Big Boss, The / Tangshan daxiong 38 Blood Splashes on Baoshan / Xuejian Baoshan cheng 9 Blood Stains the Valley of Love / Xue ran xiangsi gu 36 Boat People, The / Touben nuhai 65 Burton, Julianne xii Cai, Chusheng 9, 12, 20–1 Cantonese cinema 13; see also yueyu pian; film 7–8, 12–14, 17–18, 21, 30–1, 36–7; melodrama 18; youth films 18, 37; shehui lunli 15 Cathay 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 38, 52, 53 Chakravarty, Sumita xii Chan, Evans 92, 110–14, 118, 137 Chan, Fruit 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132 Chan, Gordon 126 Chan, Jackie xviii, 71, 74, 75, 77, 81–4, 105, 128, 130, 137 Chan, Peter 66, 76, 115, 124 Chang, Alfred 54, 66

Changcheng 11–12, 38 Chen, Qingwei 56, 74 Chen, Qixiang 45, 46, 47 Cheng, Jihua 6, 7, 9, 11, 15, 30 Cheung, Alex 65, 68 Cheung, Maggie 75, 106 Chicken and Duck Talk, The / Jitong yajiang 74 China Behind / Zaijian zhongguo 97 China Star 124, 125, 127 Ching, Siu-tung 115 Chow, Raymond 51 Chow, Yun-fat 74, 75, 105, 124 Chu, Yuan 64, 67 Cinema City 53, 54 City of Glass, The / Boli zicheng 129 Comrade, It is almost a love story / Tianmimi 76, 115–18 Contract, The / Maishen qi 74 Cops and Robbers / Dianzhi bingbing 65, 68 Cultural Revolution, The 27, 39, 44, 97, 100, 131, 135 D&B 53, 54 Da Zhonghua 10 Davis, Darrell William xi, xv, 61 defence films 15, 16; see also antiJapanese films diaspora 24–6 diasporic Chinese Cinema 22, 28–41, 52, 56–7; see also haiwai Huaren cinema diasporic triangular relationship 23, 24–8, 36 Diawara, Manthia xiii, 63 Diegues, Carlos xiii, 63 Drunken Master II / Zuiquan II 75 Du, Yunzhi 6, 7, 9, 11

182

Index

Durian, Durian / Liunian piaopiao 128 Everlasting Love / Tian Chang dijiu 18 Expect the Unexpected / Feichang turan 131 Family / Jia 18 Farewell China / Aizai biexian jije 76 Father and Son / Fuzi qing 18, 77, 84–6, 112, 137; see also Fong, Allen film criticism xv, 19–21, 38–9, 58–62, 132–3 film industry xi–xiii, 5–14, 28–32, 51–8, 122–7; Cantonese 8, 12–14, 31; Mandarin 10–12, 29–32; quasinational 51–8 film market xiii, 8, 10–13; diasporic 28–32, 51–4; quasi-national 54–8, 122–7 First Strike / Jiandan renwu 75 Fist of Fury / Jingwu men 38, 74 Fong, Allen xviii, 18, 65, 77, 84–6, 112, 137; see also Father and Son Foster, Robert 92, 94 Full Alert / Gaodu jiebei 130 Full Moon in New York / Renzai Ni¸yue 105–10, 114, 137; see also Kwan, Stanley Games Gamblers Play / Guima shuangxing 74 Golden Harvest 38, 51–2, 54–6, 67, 72, 123–4; Golden Harvest Pictures (China) 125, 127–8 Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, The / Wangzhong ren 47 Gu, Long 67 Guan, Wenqing (Kwan Man-Ching) 15 Guangyi 30, 38, 53 Gudao tiantang / Orphan Island Paradise 9 Guibernau, Montserrat x, 94 Guohun / Soul of China 11 Guolian 32, 38 guoyu pian 38; see also Mandarin films guzhuang pian (traditional costume films) 7, 15 haiwai Huaren cinema x, xv, xvii; see also diasporic Chinese cinema haiwai Huaren ix; see also diaspora, diasporic triangular relationship Hall, Stuart 92, 95, 114 Hayward, Susan xiv, 63, 65, 68, 72, 73

He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Father / Xin nanxiong nandi 66 Hedetoff, Ulf 92, 95 Higson, Andrew xi, xiii, 63, 77 Ho, Tung 6 huangmei xi (Mandarin Opera films) 36, 67 Hui, Ann xviii, 65, 70, 75, 77, 87–90, 113, 127, 129, 137 Hui, Michael 66–7, 74, 130 Hung, Sammo 70–1, 74–5 imagined community 50 In the Face of Demolition / Weilou chunxiao 18 In the mood for love / Huayang nianhua 130 Jumping Ash / Tiaohui 68 Jarvie, Ian 17–18, 52 Jiang, Boying 10 Killer, The / Diexue shuangxiong 68, 74 Kung and Zhang 45–6, 64 Kung Fu Comedy 68, 70–1, 81 Kwan, Stanley xviii, 66, 92, 105–10, 114, 118, 137; see also Full Moon in New York Lane, Kevin 27, 102 Last Message, The / Tiancai yu baichi 74 Lau, Shing-hon 18, 59, 62, 136 Lau, Siu-kai 27, 44 Law Enforcer, The / Huangjia fan 68 Law with Two Phase / Gongpu 68 Law, Clara 76 Law, Kar 10–11, 31, 34, 38, 46–7, 59–61, 65, 69, 73 Lee, Bruce 38, 74 Leong, Po-Chih 65, 68 Leung, Noong-kong 59, 68, 96–7 Li, Beihai 15 Li, Cailiang 13 Li, Check-to 51, 59, 60, 67, 73, 99, 102, 128 Li, Cheng-feng 18 Li, Danny 68 Li, Hanxiang 32, 67, 74 Li, Minwei 5–7, 15 Li, Tie 18, 19 Li, Zuyong 10–11 Lianbang 32 Lianhua 6–7, 15 Lifeline / Shengming xian 15

Index 183 Lim, Ringo 68, 124, 127, 130 Lin, Dai 34 Lin, Nien-tung xvi, 14, 21, 38, 60, 62, 136 Little Cheung / Xilu Xiang 127, 131 Little Guangdong / Xiao Guangdong 16 Little Tiger / Xiao Laohu 16 Loke, Wan Tao 32 Long Arm of the Law / Shenggang qibing 92, 98–105, 114, 127, 137 Longest Summer, The / Qunian yanhua tebie duo 127, 129, 132 lunli 8, 35, 85 Luo, Feng 70 Luo, Mingyou 5–7 Ma, Eric 45, 46, 47, 59 Made in Hong Kong / Xianggang zhizhao 130, 132 Mak, Johny 54, 65, 68, 72, 92, 98–105, 114, 118, 127, 137 Mandarin films 10–11, 17, 31–7, 60–1, 73; see also huangmei xi; Martial arts 36, 67 March of the Guerrillas / Youji jinxing qu 9 Media Asia 124–7 Milkway 127 Million Dollar Snatch / Qibai wanyuan da jie an 64 minzu cinema xv minzu revolutionary films 8, 9; see also anti-Japanese films, defence films minzu xv, xvi, 35, 83 Misarranged Love Trap, The / Baicuo mihan zhen 96–7 Mission, The / Qianghuo 130 Mo, Kangshi 96, 97 nation x national cinema ix, xi, 1 Ng, Ho 24, 39, 53, 59, 60, 70 Ng, See-yuen 64, 65, 68, 97, 122 O’Regan, Tom xi, 96 Once a Thief / Zhongcheng sihai 105 Once Upon a Time in China / Huang Feihong 70 One Country, two systems 119–25, 132, 138 Ordinary Heroes / Qianyan wanyu 129 Para Para Sakura / Yinghua, Yinghua 124, 128

Pendakur, Manjunath xii, xiii Petrie, Duncan xii, xiii, 63 Prison on Fire / Jianyu fengyun 68, 74 Project A / A jihua 73, 77, 81–4, 137 Pu, Wanchang 31 Qin, Jian 36 Qinggong mishi / Sorrows of the Forbidden City 11 quasi-national cinema xviii–xix, 41, 120 quasi-national identity 63, 76, 91–118, 138 qusi-nation x, 43–51, 63, 77, 91, 98, 110, 114, 120–1 Roar of the People / Minzu de housheng 16 Rock N’Roll Cop / Shenggang yihao tongjie fan 115 Romance of Book and Sword I and II / Shujian enchou lu 70 Rouge / Yanzhi 6, 15 Rouge / Yanzhi kou 66 Rumble in the Bronx / Hongfan qu 71 Running Out Time / Anzhan 130 Safran, William xvii, 25–6 Scott, Ian 3, 44–5 Secret, The / Fengjie 65 Sek, Kei 59–61, 69–70, 81, 98–9, 113, 129 Shao, Cunren 30 Shao, Zuiweng 29 Shaolin Soccer / Shaolin zuqiu 124 Shaw Brothers 7, 29; see also Shaw, Run Run, 30, 32, 38–40, 51–6, 59 Shaw, Run Run 7, 30; see also Shaw Brothers Shaw, Runme 30 shehui lunli pian 15 Shu, Kei 26, 34, 59, 65 Shu Shuen (Tang, Shuxuan) 97 Situ, Huimin 12 Smith, Anthony 78, 91–6 Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow / Shexing diaoshou 71 Song of the Exile / Ketu qiuhen 75, 77, 87–90, 113, 137 Song of the Exile / Liuwang zhige 16 Spring / Chun 18 Star East 124 Story of Woo Viet, The / Huyue de gushi 65 Story of Wuxun / Wuxun zhuan 11

184

Index

2000 AD / 2000 gongyuan 124 Taishan 31 Teo, Stephen 17, 35, 61 Tianyi 7, 15 To be Number One / Bohao 68 To Liv(e) / Fushi lianqu 92, 110–14, 137 To, Johnny 130 Tokyo Riders / Dongjing gonglüe 124 Tong, Stanley 124 Too Many Ways to Be No. 1 / Yige zitou de danshen 130 Tragedy on the Pearl River / Zhujiang lei 18 triangular relationship xviii, 1, 2–5, 22, 24–8, 42, 48, 72–3, 77, 81–2, 84, 91–2, 98, 118–19, 129, 132, 134–5, 137–8 Tsui, Hark xviii, 54, 70, 72, 124 Turner, Mathew 45, 94 Tycoon Traitor, The / Guonan caizhu 16 Typhoon Signal No.10 / Shihao fengbo 19 Xia, Yan 12–13 Xinlian 30 Xinhua 31 Wai, Ka-fai 130 Wall, The / Qian 18 Wang, Jing 127 Wang, Kai-wai 130 Warlord, The / Da junfa 74 Way of the Dragon, The / Menglong guojiang 38, 74

White Cloud Village / Baiyun guxiang 9 White Golden Dragon / Baijin long 7 Who Am I? / Woshi shui? 128 Wong, Kirk 115, 124 Wong, Manfred 59, 127 Wong, Raymond 125 Woo, John 68, 105, 124 Wu, Hui 18, 96 wulitou 71 wuxia pian (Martial Arts films) 7, 15, 36 Yeoh, Michelle 71, 124 Yonghua 10–11, 29 Young Master, The / Shidi chuma 71 Yu, Mo-wan 5, 13–16, 19, 35, 54, 56, 59–60 Yu, Ronny 124 Yuen, Kuei 115 yueyu pian 38, 59, 61; see also Cantonese cinema Zhang, Che 67 Zhang, Shankun 11–12, 31 Zhonghua minzu cinema xv–xvii Zhonglian 14, 30 Zhou, Huashan 45, 46–7 Zhuangzi tests his Wife / Zhuangzi shiqi 6, 15 Zuo Ci Teases Cao Cao / Zuoci xi Cao 15