Transnational Chinese Cinema Research Articles

What is transnational Chinese Cinema today? Or, Welcome to the Sinosphere

ABSTRACT A decade ago, I wrote a piece called ‘What Is Transnational Cinema? Thinking from the Chinese Situation’. It argued that knowledge is situational and perspectival; what transnational cinema is depends on when and where you are looking from and writing about. It observed and analysed two current phenomena relevant to understanding what Chinese transnational cinema was then: the growth of cross-border Chinese film production involving the People’s Republic, Hong Kong, Taiwan and more, known as ‘Chinese-language cinemas’ (huayu dianying); and the larger phenomenon of globalisation. This article asks what has changed since and proposes ‘cinemas of the Sinosphere’ as an idea to encompass those changes. However, the term refers to two very different phenomena. First, it responds to the higher profile of films that are part of a Chinese cultural sphere but not in a Sinitic language, rendering the idea of ‘Chinese-language cinemas’ inadequate. Second, it acknowledges the re-emergence of the nation-state and what some people call the ‘Second Cold War’ or what I call a ‘Two Globalizations’ phenomenon, and it refers to the cinema of the People’s Republic of China under the conditions of the Belt and Road Initiative and the non-Chinese cinemas that respond to it.

The Early Transnational Chinese Cinema Industry, Fu Yongchun (2019)

Review of: The Early Transnational Chinese Cinema Industry, Fu Yongchun (2019) London: Routledge, 156 pp., ISBN 978-0-42949-006-4, e-book, £29.59 ISBN 978-0-36766-134-2, p/bk, £29.59 ISBN 978-1-13859-237-7, h/bk, £96.00

Introduction: on transnational Chinese cinema(s), hegemony and Huallywood(s)

ABSTRACTChina’s past status as a semi-colony and historical fragmentation into three main territorial entities has meant that defining what constitutes Chinese cinema(s), or indeed cinematic Chineseness, has always been at the forefront of heated debates surrounding transborder practice, production and conceptualisation. Such deliberations have intensified recently due to intensified efforts to render Chineseness a cultural signifier increasingly implicated with transborder cinematic products designed to compete with Hollywood on the global stage. The introduction to this special issue, entitled ‘Situating “Huallywood:” Histories, Trajectories, and Positionings’ opens up these debates to the field of transnational Chinese cinemas, setting out a range of new questions and perspectives that problematize established understandings of Chinese-Western cinematic relations.

Diasporic Chinese family drama through a transnational lens: The Wedding Banquet (1993) and Saving Face (2004)

Abstract The immigrant Chinese family has increasingly been represented in transnational Chinese cinema(s) over the past three decades. Two representative films, The Wedding Banquet (Lee, 1993) and Saving Face (Wu, 2004), are chosen to shed light on Chinese filmmakers' engagement with the complex process of identity formation for immigrants through the artifice of family conflict. Both movies examine how homosexuality can pose a threat to traditional Chinese family ethics such as filial piety, family continuity and family reputation, and how the seemingly incompatible ideological standpoints can be accommodated in the end. In both cases, on the one hand the depicted denial of homosexuality comes from its association with failed family education and bad ethnic and cultural practice, and its violation of traditional Chinese values. Therefore, sexuality becomes linked to the effect of Americanization and what it means to be Chinese. On the other hand, the 'undesirable' homosexual identity can be accepted or at least tolerated within the family as long as the family lineage is ensured, or the family remains intact. The disaporic subjects show us that submission to one's ethnicity can be modified or unlearned.

Orientalism Writes Back: Discourses of ‘Chinese’ DissemiNationalism in Transnational Martial Arts Films

This essay revisits Edward Said’s famous conception of Orientalism and places it against the context of transnational Chinese cinemas, in particular Hong Kong and Taiwan cinemas, to examine how the concept is unpacked and reconstructed in a way that is often described as ‘self-Orientalism’—the self-exoticising of local fabrics to satiate Western consumers. Focusing on three films, Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle (2004), Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), and Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Assassin (2015), I argue that the act of self-Orientalising, rather than a passive submission to Western spectatorship, has served to rewrite and recode the idea of Chinese nationalism to present an alternative form of nationalism which I call dissemiNationalism and an alternative discourse to the mainland-centric narrative.

The Reconstruction of the Image of Chinese Female Immigrants in Full Moon in New York, Siao Yu, and Finding Mr. Right

The Reconstruction of the Image of Chinese Female Immigrants in Full Moon in New York, Siao Yu, and Finding Mr. Right Kaby Wing-Sze Kung This article explores the changing cinematic images of Chinese women immigrants in the United States, focusing on three films by directors from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, respectively, in order to demonstrate ways in which contemporary transnational Chinese cinema introduces alternatives to established stereotypes. Full Moon in New York (1989) by Stanley Kwan (關錦鵬), Siao Yu (1995) by Sylvia Chang (張艾嘉), and Finding Mr. Right (2013) by Xiaolu Xue (薛曉璐) all illustrate how the social, political, and economic changes that have taken place in China since the 1980s have inspired contemporary Chinese filmmakers to construct new images of Chinese female immigrants. The new transnational Chinese cinema develops female characters who are more complex than the stereotypical images of the Lotus Blossom or the Dragon Lady (Tajima 309), and introduces elements of Chinese culture that are less known to Western viewers. To this end, the characters may represent stronger traditional views, as in Kwan's film; may adapt multicultural traits, as in Chang's film; or may be American Dreamers, as in Xue's comedy. In the early history of Chinese immigrants in the United States, Chinese women were stereotyped as "exotic curios, sexual slaves, drudges, or passive victims" (Yung 3). Based on these stereotypes, most Hollywood films portrayed Chinese women in a derogatory manner. In "Lotus Blossoms Don't Bleed: Images of Asian Women," Renee Tajima states that "Asian women in film are, for the most part, passive figures who exist to serve men, especially as love interests for white men (Lotus Blossoms) or as partners in crime with men of their own kind (Dragon Ladies)" (309). In light of this, the images of Asian women in American cinema could be confined to two types: "the Lotus Blossom (also known as China Doll, Geisha Girl, shy Polynesian beauty), and the Dragon Lady (Fu Manta's various female relations, prostitutes, devious madames)" (309). One prominent example of a Lotus Blossom is featured in the aptly [End Page 424] named film Lotus Blossom (1921), starring Lady Tsen Mei, while one famous example of a Dragon Lady is Anna May Wong's character in Thief of Baghdad (1924) (Tajima 309). Owing to deep-rooted prejudice, many influential forms of Western popular culture have marginalized Asian women (Uchida 167); in order to create new images of Chinese immigrants, the three directors discussed here use Self-Orientalism to deconstruct traditional Western stereotypes and then reconstruct images of Chinese women immigrants by focusing on depicting their female characters' personal frustrations and struggles while living in the United States. Although the three directors are from different Chinese locales and depict different types of problems that Chinese immigrants in America face in different eras, they all focus on female immigrants' struggles for survival in their new milieu. They depict Chinese female immigrants as powerless, with no choice but to stay in America. In light of this, comparison of these three films reveals different facets of the images of Chinese female immigrants. Xiaolu Xue, from China, Sylvia Chang, from Taiwan, and Stanley Kwan, from Hong Kong, each bring distinct backgrounds, idiosyncratic ideas, and particular filmic techniques to the depiction of Chinese immigrants to the United States. Each film also presents the experiences of Chinese female immigrants in a different historical period: Full Moon in New York is set in the 1980s, Siao Yu was filmed in the 1990s, and Finding Mr. Right was made in the 2010s. Stanley Kwan's Full Moon in New York tells the story of three Chinese women in New York. Zhao Hong (Siqin Gaowa) who is from mainland China, has just married Thomas, an American-born Chinese man, and is trying to adjust to her new American lifestyle. However, she is not completely content, as she longs to bring her mother to America. Li Feng Jiao (Maggie Cheung) is from Hong Kong and is burdened with managing a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, working as a real estate agent, and confronting her homosexuality. Wang Hsiung Ping (Sylvia Chang), an actress from Taiwan, attends multiple auditions for stage performances without much success. The...

Negotiating identity in the diasporic space: transnational Chinese cinema and Chinese Americans

Within the field of Asian American studies, there has been an abundance of research on the cinematic representation of Chinese Americans in association with identity. While one type of study primarily focuses on the Orientalist discourse and racial politics in the Hollywood films, another approach highlights the production and distribution of Asian American independent media. Taking the representation of Chinese American families in transnational Chinese cinema as a point of departure, this article adopts a narrative analysis approach to illustrate the re-articulation of Chinese cultural identity. Following the premise that experience is pertaining to the construction of the identity of Chinese immigrants, four kinds of experiences are categorized – historical, educational, family and immigration. Representative characters are chosen as reference points from four films: Pushing Hands (Ang Lee 1992), The Guasha Treatment (Zheng Xiaolong 2001), Saving Face (Alice Wu 2004) and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (Wayne Wang 2007). The disaporic subjects demonstrate how Chinese cultural identity has been shaped by various experiences.

Projections of Diasporic Sensibilities through Travel: Wong Kar Wai in/and My Blueberry Nights

This article argues for My Blueberry Nights as a projection of Wong Kar Wai’s diasporic sensibilities through the trope of travel. How does the film expand and problematize classical notions of diaspora within the discourse of transnational Chinese cinemas? As such, how does it expand the notion of Chinese diasporas within the context and constraints of transnational Chinese cinemas? How does it complicate the already intricate and tangled ideas of movement, stasis, and home? We can only hope to profitably answer these questions by understanding, first of all, the diachronic, multifaceted, and multispatial nature of travel.

Across Cultural and National Borders: Diasporic Chinese Family in Pushing Hands

Being embedded in the interdisciplinary area of media and culture studies, this articlel explores the family melodrama in transnational Chinese cinema drawing upon theoretical discussions with regard to the historical emergence of melodrama in correspondence to, as Th. Elsaesser says, “periods of intense social and ideological crisis”. While serving as a reflection on the tension between tradition and modernity displayed in the domestic domain, Ang Lee’s Chinese-characterized family melodrama also illustrates the differences between Chinese and Hollywood family melodrama. Linked to the ongoing debate about “melodrama as a cross-cultural form”, in the process of analyzing the film text, our perceptions of generic dislocation or displacement, transcultural entanglements and globalization in light of contemporary cultural practices will be furthermore complicated.

New horizons of transnational Chinese-language film studies: An interview with Sheldon H. Lu

ABSTRACTSheldon Hsiao-peng Lu went to study in the United States in 1979 and was awarded a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Indiana University in 1990. He taught at University of Pittsburgh for many years before taking up a Professorship in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Davis in 2002. He founded the Film Studies programme and was its first Director. His research areas include world cinema, post-socialist film, transnational Chinese cinemas, modern Chinese literary and visual culture, Chinese traditional narratology, cultural theory, globalization studies, and East-West comparative poetics. His publications include Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender (1997); Chinese-Language Film: Historiography, Poetics, Politics (2005); China, Transnational Visuality, Global Postmodernity (2001); Chinese Modernity and Global Biopolitics (2007); Chinese Ecocinema in the Age of Environmental Challenge (2009); and From Historicity to Fictionality: The Chinese Poetics of Narrative (1994).

Gender Politics and Neoliberalism in China: Ann Hui's The Postmodern Life of My Aunt

The Hong Kong filmmaker Ann Hui's The Postmodern Life of My Aunt [2006] mirrors the neoliberal conditions of contemporary China, which have had a devastating impact on women in the People's Republic. The film vertiginously crosses genres, and the narrative moves from light comedy to melodrama as its style vacillates between Pop Art excess and social realism. This essay looks at what makes The Postmodern Life of My Aunt “postmodern” within the context of post-Mao, post-Deng China. It also considers how transnational Chinese cinema opens a space for criticism from female filmmakers with a particular vision of Chinese women within global film culture.

Filmic imaginations of the Malaysian Chinese: ‘Mahua cinema’ as a transnational Chinese cinema

This essay locates the Chinese films of Malaysia within contexts ranging from the national to the transnational. First, it attempts to position the films of Chinese Malaysian film-makers alongside Malaysian national cinema as well as the Mahua (Malaysian Chinese) literature that developed in Malaysia over the last one century or so. Second, the paper de-territorializes the Chinese films of Malaysia as transnational and transcultural entities. It further examines Malaysian Chinese films as a ‘new’ transnational Chinese cinema developed in connection with other transnational cinemas in the contemporary cosmopolitan world. It asks how this cinema is ‘transnational’ and if it bears some specific meaning of ‘Chinese-ness’ as it develops in today's globalizing Malaysia.

Transnation/transmedia/transtext: border-crossing from screen to stage in Greater China

This essay attempts to reconceptualize transnational Chinese cinema along transmedial and transtextual lines by examining two collaborative stage projects devised by major film-makers and theatre practitioners from Hong Kong, Taiwan and the People's Republic of China under the aegis of Hong Kong art collective Zuni Icosahedron. The multimedia performances Journey to the East ‘97 and Experimental Shakespeare: King Lear exemplify a trend in Chinese transnationalism which transgresses and transcends not only regional and geopolitical borders but also textual, linguistic and disciplinary ones. The essay further investigates the ways in which transmedial frictions and interactions are exploited in these productions to articulate chronotopic dichotomies of presence/absence and appearance/disappearance in relation to Hong Kong's fate and inter-Chinese political developments after 1997.

The ‘transnational’ as methodology: transnationalizing Chinese film studies through the example of The Love Parade and its Chinese remakes

This essay critiques unreflective celebration of transnational Chinese cinema and proposes the ‘transnational’ as methodology. By examining the dual modes of address in a Hong Kong remake of a Lubitsch musical comedy, I demonstrate the importance of scrutinizing border politics and the ‘foreignization’ of Chinese cinema in its transnational production and reception.

Celluloid Comrades: Representations of Male Homosexuality in Contemporary Chinese Cinemas (review)

Reviewed by: Celluloid Comrades: Representations of Male Homosexuality in Contemporary Chinese Cinemas Jens Damm (bio) Song Hwee Lim. Celluloid Comrades: Representations of Male Homosexuality in Contemporary Chinese Cinemas. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘I Press, 2006. 247 pp. Paperback $54.00, ISBN: 978–0–8248–2909–4. Song Hwee Lim’s Celluloid Comrades is one of the most outstanding works on queer representation in Chinese cinemas. The title refers to the popular term tongzhi (comrade), which is widely used in academic discourses referring to “queer” and “gay and lesbian.” The work is divided into six chapters; the introduction and the first chapter deal specifically with theoretical questions, while the following five chapters present one or two movies as examples of a particular perspective. In the introduction, Lim first dwells on the difficult question of how to define “Chineseness,” seeming to share Ray Chow’s (2000) view1 that any essential definition should be avoided; an effort should be made, instead, to challenge the picture of a “homogenously unified, univocal China.” The cinematic representation of homosexuality is understood as part of a deconstruction project; awkward questions can thus be avoided concerning the inclusion of films by Taiwanese directors that are aimed either at the Taiwanese independence market or at a purely international audience. Lim also questions the idea of a “transnational Chinese cinema”2 (Sheldon Hsio-peng Lu 1997, p. 3) and a “Chinese-language cinema”3 (Yueh-yu Yeh 1998), avoiding the issue of “Chineseness” by proposing to examine the function served by each specific configuration, that is, the highlighting of the legitimizing discourse behind various films and their differences (p. 6). Lim, in addition, provides a comprehensive overview of various terms, such as “homosexual,” “queer,” “gay,” and “lesbian” and the Chinese tongzhi (comrades), or tongxianglian, and the difficulties of employing one of these as a generally “objective term” (pp. 7–13). In general, Lim’s work builds on three different academic disciplines: Chinese studies, gender and sexuality studies, and film and cinema studies. He employs critical theory, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies as a theoretical background (pp. 13–34). He is also aware of the “real world” underlying the problem of homosexuality and in an excursus he talks about the problem of same-sex desire in China, where it is subject to “administrative and party disciplinary action” (Li Yinhe 1998);4 this makes open discussion of the topic in films and other media rather difficult (pp. 28–33). Taiwan, on the other hand, is known for its vibrant—commercialized and academic—gay/lesbian/queer movement and representation, and can without doubt be described as the most tolerant of all Chinese (huaren) societies (pp. 33–37). Hong Kong is somewhere in the middle: male homosexuality was decriminalized in Hong Kong a decade after it was decriminalized in Great Britain, but homosexuality was and always has been stigmatized in conservative society (pp. 37–40). [End Page 166] In chapter 1, “Screening Homosexuality” (pp. 19–40), Lim provides an overview of the representation of homosexuality in movies from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan with the respective societal backgrounds, political changes, and influences, ranging from censorship in the PRC to the state-sponsored production of movies in Taiwan. He draws our attention to the topic of homosexuality in movies such as The Wedding Banquet, Farewell My Concubine, and The River, but also explains the reasons for the great popularity of Chinese cinema on global screens in the 1990s, mentioning a wide range of films, from Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to the much more complex adaption of typical Hong Kong movie scenes in the Matrix trilogy by the choreographer Yuen Wo-ping (p. 19). Two very different sources contributed to the success of these films: in the PRC, it was the Fifth Generation directors, such as Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou, who grew up during the Cultural Revolution whose films led Chinese intellectuals to reflect on their own history. In Taiwan, it was the new Taiwan cinema with Hou Hsiaohsien and Edward Yang, who employed a postcolonial approach to focus on the everyday lives of citizens, thus questioning the long years of authoritarian and elitist rule under the Kuomintang (p. 20). After...

Review: Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender by Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu

Review: Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender by Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu