Title

Author(s)

The politics of memory: in search of imaginary homes in

films by Clara Law and Ann Hui

Kwok, Lai-yung;

Citation

Issue Date

URL

Rights

2003

http://hdl.handle.net/10722/39449

The author retains all proprietary rights, (such as patent

rights) and the right to use in future works.

THE POLITICS OF MEMORY: IN SEARCH OF

IMAGINARY HOMES IN FILMS BY
CLARA LAW AND ANN HUI

Kwok Lai Yung

B.A., University of Kansas (2000)

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for

the Degree of Master of Philosophy
at the University of Hong Kong.
June 2003

Declaration

I declare that this thesis represents my own work and that it has not been
previously included in a thesis, dissertation or report to the University of Hong Kong or
any other institution for a degree, diploma or other qualification.

Kwok Lai Yung

30 June 2003

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Esther M.K. Cheung for her helpful
supervision, continuous support and encouragement that are of paramount significance
to the completion of this project. I have to give my sincere thanks to Dr. Tony Mitchell
of the University of Technology, Sydney for his kindness to provide me with personal
copies of his very comprehensive essays on Clara Law and some other ones that
certainly improve the quality of this thesis. Thanks also to the professors and my peers
of the University of Hong Kong who kindly gave me comments on this thesis.

Abstract of thesis entitled

The Politics of Memory: In Search oflmaginaiy Homes in Films by

Clara Law and Ann Hui
submitted by

Kwok Lai Yung

for the degree of Master of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong
in June 2003

Clara Law (Luo Zhuoyao) and Ann Hui (Xu Anhua) are two filmmakers with a
Hong Kong background obsessed with the themes of border crossings, displacement
and memory. This thesis focuses on an analysis of Law's Inmiigratioix Trilogy
Farewell China [Ai Zai Biexiang De Jijie] (1990)Autumn Moon [Qiu Yue] (1992) and
Floating Life [Fu Sheng] (1996)and Hui's Song of the Exile [Ketu Qiuhen] (1990)As
Time Goes By [Quri Kudud] (1997) and Ordinary Heroes [Qianyan JVanyu] (1999)in
an attempt to explore the cinematic remembering of home in connection with their
rewritings of identity in the face of Hong Kong's 1997 handover.
In the aftermath of the 1989 Tianamnen Incidenta corpus of Hong Kong films
emerged which dealt with the experiences of dislocation, relocation, emigration,
immigrationexile and diaspora.

Most critics who have discussed the filmic

representation of identity in these diaspora films have tended to 'totalize" the identity of
Hong Kong peopleand have neglected the different routes implied by the sequels of
the films made by individual filmmakers, Paul Gilroy argues in The Black Atlantic that
diasporic consciousness should embody both root and route, so as not to homogenize

diasporic experience.

Hamid Naficy further proposes that autobiographical and

authorial factors must be taken into consideration in analyzing exilic and diasporic films
as they are engaged more with the experience of individuals and of deterritorialization
itself than with 'the people or 'the masses. My analysis of the different routes taken
by Law and Hui is in sympathy with these approacheswhich have been sadly ignored
in most analyses of Hong Kong diaspora films.
The transformations of these two filmmakers identities are particularly
discernible in their filmic representations of imaginary homes in memory.

The

narrations and reenactments of the past in the films are not pureas they are in some
way (re)constructed in the light of the present. The search for home in memory as
meditated in these films involves a politics of remembering and forgetting, and of
personal and collective memories (Chapter 1).
Law's 'Immigration Trilogy, shows a gradual disconnection between people and
homeland. Home is transformed from a paradigm of the nation-state to a space of
liminality. This transformation involves the ;forgetting5 of previous homeplaces and
the 'remembering' of the familial and personal past (Chapter 2). By contrast, Hui's
films repeatedly recall crucial historicalpolitical and social events connected with the
homeplacedemonstrating a close comection between personal and familial memories
and memories of the homeplace (Chapter 3). Their films suggest politics of memory
in connection with the (re) construction of their identities for the present. I argue
(Chapter 4) that the process of making home requires a coimnitment to one's 'here' and
'now'.
(450 words)

Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction

Rewriting Home in Hong Kong Diaspora Films

The Politics of Memory in Relation to Home in

Contemporary Hong Kong Cinema

10

Clara Law and Ann Hui: Diaspora, Home and Memory

21

Chapter 2 Home in Memory: Transformation from Nation-State to

Liminal Space in Clara Law's Films
Farewell China: Torture between Past and Present

34
42

Autumn Moon: Lost Home in Lost Time

49

Floating Life: The House is Home

59

Chapter 3 Home in Memory: An Ongoing Process of Straggle in

Ann Hui's Films

73

Song of the Exile: Home as a Process of Negotiation

85

As Time Goes By: Remembering as Experiencing

92

Ordinary Heroes: "'Not Forgettingas a Precondition for Change

99

Chapter 4 Conclusion

109

Appendix I: Lyrics of Thinkingo f [Sixiang Qi]

124

Appendix II: Lyrics of My Motherland" [Wo De Zuguo]

Appendix III: Time: The Beautiful Lady Yu[Yu mei-jen] by Li Yu

126
127

Appendix IY: Filmography of Clara Law

128

Appendix V: Filmography of Ann Hui

130
2

3
IX

Bibliography

Chapter 1
Introduction

Rewriting Home in Hong Kong Diaspora Films

The filmic imaginary of Hong Kong people from the postwar period to the
1970s revealed a transformation from a "refugee mentality" to a sense of home in Hong
Kong.1 The "home in Hong Kong" mentality could be shown in the New Wave cinema
that emerged in the late 1970sin which the new generation of Hong Kong filmmakers
were particularly concerned with Hong Kong reality and explored social issues in a
local perspective. Howeverin the early 1980s when the former British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher was negotiating with the Beijing authorities about the future of Hong
Kong, local people started experiencing an identity crisisfeeling anxious for and
uncertain of the future.

In 1984when the Sino-British Joint Declaration that

announced the handover of Hong Kong's sovereignty from Britain to China was signed
Hong Kong entered its transitional period towards 1997. During this period of time
Tianamnen Incident in 1989 was another prominent event that aroused Hong Kong

The notable agents of shaping "home in Hong Kmg" mentality include the coming of age of
postwar baby boomersthe flourishing of popular Cantopop and television drama series, the comeback
of Cantonese speaking films in the late 1970s with the help of young New Wave filnnnakers, Hie massive
construction of resettlement estates since the 1960sthe social movements in the late 1960s and the 1970s
the various measures taken by the British Hong Kong Government after the
"Hong Kong Festival", "Clean Hong Kong Campaign" and setting up connminity centres in various
districts. Some of the literature related to this issue include Lui Tai-lok's "Home at Hong Kong", Helen R
Sin's "Remade in Hong Kong", and Matthew Turner's "60!s/905s Dissolving the People".

people's anxieties and uncertainties.

Other than the process of re-unification with

China in the name of "one country, two systemsexpanding global capitalism and
subsequent increasing flows of transnational migrants also have stimulated many Hong
Kong filmmakers to rethink the notion of home, in the sense that they are urged to
search for their identities. The contemporary Hong Kong cinema from the 1980s to
1990s revealed complex sentiments of Hong Kong people towards home, which is not
restrictive to China or Hong Kong only, but also other places or a state of being.2
In the 1980s and 1990salong with the massive outflows of Hong Kong people
to other countries, stories of diaspora, exileimmigration and displacement began to
flourish in the Hong Kong cinema.3 Sheldon Lu terms these films as "diaspora films
(HK diaspora film 137). Although the term diaspora dispersion in Greekand exile
in Hebrew - originally refers specifically to the dispersal of Jews from their homeland
since the 1st century, it now generally describes the transnational dispersals of people
whose identities are maintained by a symbolic link to a real or imaginary "original

Some of the literature include Rey Chow's Nostalgia of the New Wave: Structure in Wong Karwai's Happy Together
Erens's "Crossing Borders: TimeMemory, and the Construction of Identity in Song of the Exile
Fore's <cLife Imitates Entertainment: Home and Dislocation in the Films of Jackie Chan", Kwai-cheung
Lo's 4Transnationalizatioa of the Local in Hong Kong Cinema of the 1990s", Sheldon Lu's "Filming
Diaspora and Identity: Hong Kong and 1997", and Andrey Yue's ^Mgration-as-Transition: Pre-Post-1997
Culture in Clara Law's Autumn Moon".
3

These films include Yim Ho's Homecoming [Sishu Liunian] (1984), Mabel Cheung's Elegal
Immigrants [Feifa Yimin] (1985)Allen Fong's Just Like Weather [Meiguo JGn] (1986)Ann Hui's Song
of the Exile [Ketu Qiuhen] (1990), Clara Law's Farewell China [Ai Zed Biexiang De Jijie] (1990) and
Floating Life [Fu Sheng] (1996), Stanley Kwan's Full Moon in New fork [Ren Zed
j (1 0)Evans
Chan's To Liv(e) [Fushi Lianqu] (1992) and Crossings [Cuo Ai
Comrades, Almost a Love Story \Tian Mnmin] (1996)and Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together [Chunguang
Zhaxie] (1997).

homeland. The issues that these Hong Kong films explore are what Gina Marchetti
describes as the Chinese experience of dislocationrelocationemigration,
immigrationcultural hybriditymigrancy, exileand nomadismwhich constitute part
of the "Chinese diaspora" imaginary ("Chinese and Chinese Diaspora Cinema" 70). Lu
claims that in the portrayal of Chinese diaspora, these films show a significant
paradigm change in the representation of issues related to nationality, identity, and
citizenship(137). The shift is from a China syndrome in the mid-1980sto an exile
complex or in the former what we might call a persecution complex after 1989and
then to a discourse of flexible citizenship5 and transnationalism around 1997 (137). This
shift in paradigm "indicates a decentreddeterritorialized, and fluid mechanism of
identity formation, a sense of being-in-mobility" (Lu and Yeh 6).
Hong Kong5s relations with China are ambivalent, involving both identification
with and resistance to 'Chinese5 culture and the hegemony of the nation-state" (Lu and
Yeh 6). Represented in cinema, Hong Kong's cultural identity is characterized by the
city's affiliation with and distancing from Mainland China at the same time. Starting
from the period around the signing of the Joint Declaration, the "China factor" has
become the frame of reference for Hong Kong filmic imaginary and has provoked

4 Unlike the Jewish diaspora caused by religious and philosophical reasons, and Ihe Black diaspora
caused by slavery, the dispersal of Chinese is largely due to economic factors and transnationalism.
5 Aihwa Otig coins the term 'flexible citizenshipto describe the strategies of Chinese
cosmopolitans (such as entrepreneurs, professionals and businesspersons) in the affluent Pacific Rim,
including those of Hong Kong, who make use of western countries' inirnigratiori policy for obtairiing
citizenships mainly for the rearrangement of investments, work,femiiy,and education (770).

different sentiments and reactions towards different historical events. In the mid-1980s
Hong Kong diaspora films are characterized by a China syndromein which '^the
return to the motherland is a recurring motif, embedding complex and contradictory
sentiments: fear and anxiety, affiliation and nostalgia. Analyzing Johnny Maks Long
Arm of the Law [Shenggang Qibing] and Yim Ho's Homecoming [Sishu Liunian],
Esther Yau observes that these two filmsboth made in 1984reveal Hong Kong
people's mixed feelings of empathy and distancetowards China, and that their
sensibilities regarding the imminent reunification are "both appalling and rejuvenating"
(Border Crossing" 198). This suggests Hong Kong people's attempt to construct an
autonomous cultural identity between British colonization and Chinese nationalism
(181). In the 1990sthe corpus of diaspora films projects an "exile complex or a
"persecution complexdue to the anxieties triggered by the Tiananmen Incident in 1989
in which
China is now seen as source of oppression and brutality Ethnic
Chinese in diaspora become homelessuprooted, unwelcome
travelers of the world, and they constantly experience alienation
and displacement in daily life. (Lu"HK Diaspora Film 138)
In the later transitional period, contrary to an expected process of (re)sinicizatioii> the
filmic representation of Hong Kong identity articulates both local and global
imagination. Lu claims that "Chineseness" is still important, but it no longer refers to a
"fixed geographic origin and a strict affiliation with some nation-state" (139). Yau
also urges us rethink "Chmeseness" and Hong Kong identity in the context of the local

and the global (At Full Speed 4-5). Transnationalism and global capitalism seem to
have greater impact than the reunification on the transformation of Hong Kong's
cultural identity in the later transitional period.
Although it cannot be denied that transnationalism and global capitalism have
great impact on the process of identity formationthe critics tend to consider them as the
determining factors. More importantly, in the discussions about the paradigm change in
the transformation of identity, the scholars largely tackle the China factor root but
have not dealt with the different routes of individual filmmakers as revealed in these
diaspora films. This may result in totalizing55 Hong Kong identities in which these
diaspora films are seen as "national allegories of Hong Kong. 6 As suggested by
Hamid Naficy, in his discussion about "accented cinema55, term that he coins to
describe the films made by exilic and diasporic filmmakers, the authorial and
autobiographical factors must be taken into consideration.

Argued against the

postmodernist and poststracturalists5 view that authorial subjectivity is absent in texts,

Fredric Jameson in "Third-world Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism" proposes that
"all third-world texts are necessarily...to be read as.... national allegories: "Third-world texts, even
those which are seemingly private and invested with a properly libidinal dynamic - necessarily project a
political dimension in the form of national allegory: the story of ihe private individual destiny is always
an allegory of the embattled situation of the public third-world culture and society
NeverthelessAijaz Ahmad in "Jameson's Rhetoric of Oihemess and the 'National Allegory'" raises two
problems in Jameson's proposal. That Jameson defines thefirst-world, second-world and tliird-world in
terms of western ideologies, especially the tibdrd-world is restrictive to a single 'experience of
colonialism and imperialism'" (79), and that whether all third-world texts are necessarily to be read as
national allegories are problematic. In the case of Hong Kong films, as they are largely Cantonesespeaking, an important factor in the process of constructing Hong Kong identities'Visvistibe mainland
mentality55 in the Mandarin films made in Mainland China (Fu and Desser 2)they are very often
allegorically read by critics in the context of Hong Kong's relationship with Mainland China rather than
with its former colonizer Britain.

he attempts to bring back the disintegrated relationship between the authors and the
texts in the discussion of accented cinema. He points out that accented films are both
authorial and autobiographical: "(E)xile and authorship are fundamentally intertwined
with historical movements of empirical subjects across boundaries of nation not just
the texts" (34). He considers the accented films "allegories of exile and diaspora
rather than "allegories of a people". Naficy stresses that the accented cinema engages
more with the experience of deterritorialization itself than with "the people and "the
masses. In accented cinema,
every story is both a private story of an individual and a social
and public story of exile and diaspora. These engagements with
collectivities and with deterritorialization turn accented films into
allegories of exile and diaspora - not the totalizing "national
allegories" that Jameson once characterized Third World
literature and cinema to be (1986). (31)
The above statement echoes two of the characteristics of "minor literature in the notion
of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari: the deterritorialized nature of the accented cinema
and the integral relationship between the individual narrative and the collective. The
individual narratives in the mainstream or commercial cinema may function as political
enunciations in the social milieu and have collective values. Nevertheless, the exilic
and diasporic filmmakers, who are very often "a minorityin the host country as they
are dispersed groups of people whose identities are symbolically linked with their
previous "homeland", are more concerned with the issues of identity in the community,

unlike those locals who feel that they are already part of i t The individual narratives
of the exilic and diasporic filmmakers, thereforemay project a stronger political act
than those of the mainstream that appeal to the mass.

The authorial and

autobiographical nature of the accented cinema reveals personal experiences of

individual exilic and diasporicfilmmakersbutthese are also the shared experiences of
those in diaspora and exile. This is quite contrary to Jameson's assumption that a
community generates merely a single national consciousness.7 AlsoNaiicy's agenda of
theorizing the accented cinema echoes with what Paul Gilroy proposes in Black Atlantic
that diasporic experiences should articulate not only root but also route. Among the
Hong Kong diaspora films, the different routes of diasporic experiences can be traced in
the films made by Clara Law (Luo Zhuoyao) and Aim Hui (Xu Anhua) during Hong
Kong's transitional period.

Law and Hui are two filmmakers with a Hong Kong

background most obsessed with the themes of diaspora, border crossing, home and
memory.
Among the corpus of diaspora film that emerged in the early 1990sLaw's
Farewell China [Ai Zai Biexiang De Jijie] (1990) and Hui's Song of the Exile [Ketu
Qiuhen] (1990) are also included. Made in the same year, they both articulate an "exile

The three characteristics of minor literature, as proposed by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattariare
the deterritorialization of language, the coimectioo of the individual to a political immediacy, and the
collective assemblage of enunciation" (83). They suggest tihat in ''minor literaturethe individual
narratives embed a collective value as they function as ''political enunciations" in the social milieu. The
connection between the private and public has also been discussed in Jameson's "Third-world Literature
in the Era of Multinational Capitalism" in vMch he argues that "all third-world texts" are injected with a
political dimension in the form of national allegory. Yet, the rationales and subtleties of tMs inextricable
connection between the private and public need to be further developed.
ct

complexor a "persecution complex5' triggered off by Tianamnen Incidentas suggested

by Lu. Afterwards, the major works by Law such as Autumn Moon [Qiu Yue] (1992),
Floating Life [Fu Sheng] (1996) and The Goddess of " 6 7 (2000)and by Hui such as
Summer Snow [Nuren Sishi] (1995)Ordinary Heroes [Qianyan Wanyu] (1999)Visible
Secret [Youling Renjian] (2001)and July Rhapsody [Nanren Sishi] (2002) show that
they gradually speak from a different position in exploring the themes of dislocation and
displacement, and for different audiences.

Law and her husband Eddie Fong

immigrated to Melbourne, Australia in 1995 to "search for greater creative space for
their filmmaking (Yu) while Hui stays in Hong Kong and keeps on making films.
Law's most recent work The Goddess of 1967 was made in Australia with an Australian
crewan English-speaking film which targets Australian and transnational audiences.
However, in Hui's most recent film July Rhapsody
prominently in classic Chinese poetryand the grandeur of the Yangtze River landscape.
The respective shiftings of their subjective position can be revealed in their filmic
representations of imaginary homes in memory.
As seen in the films about diaspora, exile and displacement by Law and Hui, to
tackle the identity crisis triggered off by the recent historical and political events, one of
their ways is to search for home in memory, for the purpose of creating a sense of
continuity from the past facing the uncertain present and future. Many of their films
during the later transitional period are invested in memory and homesuch as the films
mentioned above. The narrations and reenactments of the past in the films are seldom
pure, as they are very often (re)constructed in the light of the present. For the purpose

of (re)constructmg an identity for the presentthe search for home as meditated in these
films involves a politics between personal and collective memoriesand a selective
process of what to be remembered and what to be forgotten.
Scholarship about the dynamic relationships between home and memory in
Hong Kong films is relatively scant.

The major article is Patricia Brett Erens's

Crossing Borders: Time, Memory, and the Construction of Identity in Song of the
Exile in which she sees the film as Hui's personal and political quest by engaging in a
dialogue between the present and the past. Kwai-cheung Lo's "Transnationalization of
the Local in Hong Kong Cinema of the 1990s that analyzes the transformation of
diaspora imaginary to transnational imaginary in Hong Kong films of the 1990s also
touches on the relationship between memory and home.

However, there is no

scholarship about the different routes of diasporic experience revealed in the films by
Hong Kong filmmakers. Gina Marchetti in "Transnational Cinema, Hybrid Identities
and the Films of Evans Chan" analyzes the filmic transformation performed by the
character of Rubie (played by Lindsay Chan) from an organic intellectual to a diasporic
intellectual in To Liv(e) and Crossings to illustrate the many unfixed and uncertain
aspects in the films by transnational filmmakers. Nevertheless, her analysis focuses on
the transformation of the character but not the filmmaker Chan.8 This thesis focuses on

Bom in Mainland China, Evans Chan (Chen Yaocheng) grew up and received education in Hong
Kong. Living in New York, he has made Cantonese-speaking films that target both the Hong Kong and
worldwide arthouse film audiences. Gina Marchetti considers Chan si transnatianalfilmmakerat the very
beginning of his career as a filxmnaker. Chan's major works include To Liv(e), Crossings
Beijing [Bei Zheng] (1998)The Mcp of Sex and Love [Qingse Ditu] (2001)and Bauhinia [Zi Jing]
(2002). He is also a critic and a dramatist.

Law and Hui's search for home through memory during the later transitional period of
Hong Kong to around 1997 when Hong Kong people were experiencing an identity
crisis. Homememory and identity are closely connected, but this thesis is not intended
to analyze whether Law and Hui's films endorse a totalized national allegory" of any
imagined community9 either Hong Kong or the Chinese diaspora. Insteadit will
examine how these two filmmakers offer different perspectives on the possibility of
searching for home through memoryand how the representations of cinematic
remembering in thesefilmsconstruct their different identities in the present.

The Politics of Memory in relation to Home in Contemporary Hong Kong Cinema

Migratory experiences and border crossings have been important themes in
Hong Kong cinemapartly due to the feet that Hong Kong is a place of trajousita
creation of migration as well as colonialism with a highly mobile population (Skeldon
12). Because of its geographical proximity to China, Hong Kong isin Lynn Pan's
words''the threshold and outlet of the motherland, the junction of diaspora and
homeland (373). After Chinese Communist Party took over the Mainland in 1949, a
lot of Mainlanders immigrated to Hong Kong who made up its majority population

Benedict Anderson in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of

Nationalism argues that the modem national consciousness of different groups of people is crystallized by
the increasing popularity of print-commoditiesamong otiiers, such as novelsnewspapers and
magazines in the same language. By reading these printed texts, people who speak the same language but
unknown to each otiier imagbne the commumly in lich they are living. These communities are
constructed through acts of imagination.

10

around the postwar period. Hong Kong is also a transit point or transit shelter for
many Chinese, migrants, refugees and expatriates who embark to other parts of the
world. However, because of Hong Kong's geographical proximity to and its historical
and cultural connections with Mainland Chinaeven though when it was under British
colonial ruleHong Kong people's sentiments have been influenced by political and
social events not only in Hong Kong but also in Mainland China.

Hong Kong's

population has been fluctuated by the major politicalsocial and economic events in
both geopolitical entities. The riots in 1967the Tiananmen Incident in Beijing in 1989
and Hong Kong's handover in 1997 triggered off massive outflows of people from
Hong Kong to other countries. The influx and outflow of massive numbers of people
conjure up an ongoing sense of Hong Kong Chinese as part of the imagined Chinese
diaspora.
A close relationship is maintained between the establishment of Hong Kong as a
leading cinema production centre and the overseas Chinese since the postwar period.
Many contemporary Hong Kong filmmakers are immigrants who have contributed to
the local film industry. The two filmmakers Law and Hui under discussion in this thesis
are immigrants from Macao and Mainland China respectively.

Other prominent

contemporary Hong Kong filmmakers migrated from other places include Evans Chan
Wong Kar-wai and Fruit Chan from Mainland China, Tsui Hark from Vietnam, and
Lawrence Ah Mon from South Africa. Migratory experiences enable many Hong Kong
filmmakers to develop their sensitivity to themes of dislocation, displacement
alienation, diaspora and exile. Having been the most developed cinema production

11

centre among the major Chinese communities after the Second War World, Hong Kong
has produced Mandarin and Cantonese-speaking films which cater for not only the local
but also overseas Chinese audiences. Its markets cover the Chinese communities in
Southeast Asia such as Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam^ and Chinatowns in
North AmericaEurope and Australia. Thereforethe Hong Kong films exploring the
issues of dislocation and displacement should not be regarded as only Hong Kong's
experiences but also diasporic Chinese's. As Stephen Teo points out in "Local and
Global Identity: Whither Hong Kong Cinema?a[W]hen we consider or construct the
identity of Hong Kong cinema, we must consider the identity of the overseas Chinese."
As discussed at the outset, in the past decades, migratory experiences depicted in
Hong Kong films have been accentuated by the signing of the Sino-British Joint
Declaration, Tiananmen Incident and Hong Kong's handover. Although Hong Kong's
reunification with China was represented as a historical moment of homecoming, in
practice it has been a very complicated process involving a wide range of cultural,
political, social and economic factorsagainst the historical background that Hong Kong
had been under British colonization for 150 years. As Ackbar Abbas points outit is
because Hong Kong's colonial history "cannot be forgotten overnight, that has
distanced Hong Kong culturally and politically from China and that will make their
relationship not simply one of reunification (5). To explore Hong Kong's experience
in the transitional periodthe filmmakers have to tackle its past in connection with
China and British colonial period as well.

Against this historical background, the

(re)search of home has become a complicated subject matter for the Hong Kong

12

filmmakers, including those emigrated to overseas countriesto deal with.

Home is an open sigmfier. Home can be one's shelter: It offers him/her security
stability, and comfort. One's attachment to home can be emotional as there is a
cotmnon saying: Home is where the heart is. It is associated with warmth and intimacy.
More significantlyhome generates a sense of belonging. The basic implication of
traditional conceptualization of home is ^ h e stable physical centre of one's universe a
safe and still place to leave and return to (whether house, village, region or nation), and
a principal focus of one's concern and controlaccording to Nigel Rapport and Andrew
Dawson (6). In this sense, one's home is his/her stable physical centre; it can be a
house, a community, and a nation. However, like identity, home also implies difference.
Rosemary Marangoly George suggests that "'home' is built in a pattern of select
inclusions and exclusions.

Home is a way of establishing difference (2).

And

imagining a home is a political act as "homes are not neutral places" (6).
Home can also be imaginary: It can be based on symbolic imagining and
yearning. A home is different from a house: "House is the literal object, the material
place in which one liveswhereas home is anyplace; it is temporary and it is moveable;
it can be built, rebuilt, and carried in memory and by acts of imagination", as pointed
out by Naficy ("Framing Exile 56).

For instance, Salman Rushdiean Indian

diasporic writer who is residing in Englandremarks that everyone can reclaim his/her
homeland by reconstructing an imaginary one through memory of the past (10). This is
particularly true for people in diaspora as diaspora articulates primarily through a real or
symbolic homeland. Home in memory often serves as symbolic anchor of community

13

for diasporic people. They persistently remember ccthere5?? their original homeland,
while inhabiting heretheir host country. In this sensefor the Chinese in diaspora,
China is their "imaginary homeland" and they are inspired by a sense of "Chineseness".
Nevertheless, as discussed aboveGilroy argues that diaspora discourse should
articulate not only root but also route in forming community consciousness so as not to
treat the specific history of any diasporic community subordinated to any nation-state's.
The identity of diasporic people should not be merely symbolically linked with their
"original homeland" but also their ongoing diversified diasporic histories to avoid
homogenizing different groups of people's experiences.
Rey Chow also regards diaspora discourse as a means of challenging the nationstate. In Writing Diaspora, she cautions that "[t]he submission to consanguinity means
the surrender of agency - what is built on work and livelihood rather than blood and
race - in the governance of a community (24). One should ^unlearn that submission to
one's ethnicity such as Chinesenessas the ultimate signified(25). Otherwise, those
on the peripheryfor instance, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Chinese communities in
Southeast Asia and other parts of the world, will be conflicted with violence from the
centre.

Chow argues that "Chineseness" is not a fixed essence but a concept

constructed as a means of appealing to nationalism and patriotism. For the diasporic

Chinese, affiliation with "Chineseness" as a fixed centre55 of ethnic identity will result
in surrendering their autonomy to the dominant. In such a way, she suggests that the
diasporic Chinese should ponder on their identity outside the framework of the nationstate:

14

The denial of the illusion of one's existence on Chinese soil

may in due course force Chinese intellectuals to use the rhetoric
of patriotism and nationalism differently.

Meanwhile, the

physical distance from China means, temporarily at least, legal

and political protection from official Chinese persecution and
thus a chance for securing the horizontalization of discourses
among various spheres of culture that wouldone hopes
eventually replace the current verticalization toward central
power.

p]t will become increasingly necessary to move

outside Chinese territory, geographical and cultural

Such

moving outside is the moving outside of the exiled dissenter,

the refugee, the survivor of catastrophe. It is at the same time a
self-conscious moving into the global space in which discursive
plurality inevitably modifies and defines specific cultural identity
rather than the other way around. (95)
Chow considers that Hong Kong intellectualswho are living "on the peripheryvis-avis "at the centrecan exercisefi<thetactics of intervention" to criticize the nation-state,
as she remarks:
The history of Hong Kong predisposes one to kind of "border"
or parasitepractice an identification with "Chinese culture
but a distantiation from the Chinese Communist regime; a
resistance against colonialism but an imwillingness to see the

15

community's prosperity disrupted. (22)

As discussed earlierimagming home is a political act as it involves inclusion
and exclusion. The search for home through memory in Hong Kong diaspora films is
also a political act as it involves a complex process of negotiations between
remembering and forgetting, and between personal and collective memories. In the
narrations and reenactments of the pastthe filmmakers have to confront Chinese and
Hong Kong pasts, both collective and personal, at the same timewhich are of
paramount importance in the formation of their present identities. Walter Benjamin's
notion of historical materialism illuminates the nature of memory. In Theses on the
Philosophy of History", Benjamin points out that in the view of historiciststime is in
chronological continuum and in a linear state. In this sense, history is homogenous and
filled with empty time. Against the historicists5 notion of timehe puts forward that
history is the subject of a structure whose site instead is filled by the presence of the
now(261). There is a dialogic relationship between past and present, and history is in
a state of continual transformation. The operation of memory is in a similar wayin that
it also articulates the complex relationship between pastpresent and future. According
to Behjimin: To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it 'the way
it really was5 (Ranke). It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashed

at a moment

of danger" (255). As the search for home in memory is very often triggered off by an
identity crisisit rationalizes one's existence in the present and in the future. In this
sensethe relationship between memory and home is not static but dynamic as memory
is always associated with and triggered off by the present. Home in memory is subject

16

to a continuous process of (re)translation(re)coiifiguration? and (re)construction.

Home and memory are closely connected in the formation of identity.
Observing the (re)constructive nature of memory in many German films and television
series about homeDavid Morley and Kevin Robins suggest that identity seems to be
a question of memory, and memories of homein particular5' (10). "The past is home
expresses Rushdie in Imaginary Homeland" (9). In this statement, Rushdie regards
India his "imaginary homeland - rather than the host country England as his home.
For him, the past also refers to culture, tradition and heritage: [T]he past is a country
from which we have all emigratedthat its loss is part of our comtnon humanity" (12).
If the past is staticthen it will bring us to some place of origin or a fixed home.
However, the past does not address us as a simple and factual onebut very often it is
constructed through memoryfantasynarrative and myth, as pointed out by Stuart Hall
(226). Identity is not to be discovered, but it is an on-going process through "the retelling of the past" and "imaginative rediscovery (224). In this contextccthe past does
not mean that it is articulated by some fixed core of memory, but subject to an on-going
act of reprocessing and modifying. Andreas Huyssen also points out that memory is
manifested through the representation in various forms of arts: The past is not simply
there in memory, but it must be articulated to become memory.... The mode of memory
is recherche rather than recuperation3). Memory is to be looked forto be sought.
Nicola Kinganalyzing the narratives about the selfgoes forther that there is a double
process of remembering and representing in (re)coristructing the kind of selfin the
narratives that embed a process of memory (7),

17

One's identity closely ties with both ones personal memory and collective
memory. For Maurice Halbwachs, collective memory is a socially constructed notion.
A shared identity of a group of people, for instance, a family, a class of schoolmates, a
religious groupa social class or a commxmityis not inherited but is maintained by the
individual members5 reminiscences of the past in the perspective of the same group.
Collective memories are "the resultor sum, or combination of individual recollections"
in the same group for the concerns of the present (39). Andfor Jonathan Boyarin,
memory cannot be strictly individual or literally collective. He suggests that what we
are living is
the constitution of both group membership and individual
identity out of a dynamically chosen selection of memories
and the constant reshaping, reinvention, and reinforcement of
those memories as members contest and create the boundaries
and links among themseives. (26)
On the other handrather than the social function of memoryEdward W. Said in
"Invention, Memory, and Place55 stresses the political function of memory: "[C]ollective
memory is not an inert and passive thingbut a field of activity in which past events are
selected, reconstructed, maintained, modifiedand endowed with political meaning
(185). He raises

6C

the role of invention55 that memory and its representation play in

identity, nationalism, power and authorityand stresses the usefulness of memory in

constructing identity, regardless of its authenticity:
[T]he art of memory for the modem world is both for historians

18

as well as ordinary citizens and institutions very much something

to be used, misused, and exploited, rather than something that sits
inertly there for each person to possess and contain. (179)
The role of invention that memory plays in constructing identity is common in
the analyses of reenactments of the past in Hong Kong films. In line with Said's
remarks that "[m]emory and its representations touch very significantly upon questions
of identity, of nationalism, of power and authority" (176)Chu Yiu-wai in
"(In)Authentic Hong Kong: The (G)locar Cultural Identity in Postcolonial Hong
Kong Cinema also stresses ''the use of the past as a basis for constructing localism
after Hong Kong's reunification with China. He argues that Hong Kong imaginary in
the cinemaunlike those of other former colonies in the postcolonial stagetends to play
down its national dimension the Chiim factor so to strive for an autonomous identity.
As revealed in the filmic representation of Hong Kong history in Ann Hui's Ordinary
Heroes, Mabel Cheung's City of Glass [Boli Zhi Cheng] (1998), and Sylvia Chang's
Tempting Heart [Xin Dong] (1999)a hybridized imaginary of local Hong Kong
emerges, which he terms a '"hybridized5 nostalgia for a pure local past.(153). That is
the Hong Kong imaginary attempts to construct a pure local past with the emphasis
on a specific time and space that, paradoxically, Hong Kong's culture is cosmopolitan
and transnational.

Andthis imagery poses important questions to the concept of

Chineseness in the global era. Another critic Kwai-cheung Lo also considers that
memory in some of the Hong Kong films of the 1990s plays ''the role of invention" in

19

constructing Hong Kong imaginary.10 He regards localism as a desire to return home

but in the era of globalization, it is no longer a form of desire to return to one's cultural
origins or to a lost past (274). The Hong Kong films of the 1990s suggest that home
is ultimately a fantasy:
It is a home imagistically built, through the mediations of
transnational capital, more on deterritorialized cultures than
national, on reinvented memories than inherited oneson forms of
creolization than a unified and integrated ethnic content. (274)
HoweverErens has not discussed whether memory and its representation in
Hui's semi-autobiographical film are authentic or invented in "Crossing Borders: Time
Memoryand the Construction of Identity in Song of the Exile
many diaspora films that invest in memory such as Hui's Song of the Exile and Law's
Floating Life, memory revealed through visual and audio flashbacks very often is
regarded as individual life experience that is significant in contemplating the issues of
identities. Erens denotes that through memoryborder crossings are not only political
and geographical but also temporal between present and past. It is through memory that
the female protagonist Hueyin can relive experiences that took place in her previous
homes in various locations and in different times. In search of personal and political
identities for the present"memory serves as the means for recapturing and reevaluating

10

These films are largely produced by United Filmmakers Organization (UFO) vvhich include Back
to Roots [Guitu\ (1994)He's a Woman, She's a Man [Jinzhi Yvye\ (1994)Comrades, Almost a Love
Story [Tian Mmi] (1996) and First Option [Fe Hu] (1996).

the pastas suggested by Erens (44). And, it is through the agency of memory that a
new identity is constructed (48). Her analysis of Song of the Exile is in line with Hall's
notion of identity that it is a matter of becomingrather than being. It is also in line
wilh Benjamin's claim that the images of memory are very often flashed up at the
moment of crisis in the present. Erens examines Song of the Exile in the context of
exile literature and woman's autobiography. Howeversince Hui is a socially conscious
filmmaker, the analysis of this film in the context of a woman's autobiography may
undermine her subjectivity as a Hong Kong belonger during Hong Kong's turbulent
times in the aftermath of Tianamnen Incident. I shall discuss the (re)construction of
Hui's identity through her autobiographieswith an emphasis on the filmic
representations of Hong Kong's historical and social events in Chapter 3.

Clara Law and Ann Hui: Diaspora, Home and Memory

Migratory and border-crossing experiences are important themes in the films by
Law and Hui. They are two filmmakers with a Hong Kong background who have been
recurrently dealing with these issuesamong their contemporaries like Evans Chan,
Mabel CheungStanley Kwan and Wong Kar-wai who have also made diaspora films.11
The works by Law and Hui consistently reveal a strong sense of exilemeditations of
identityand a quest for home. Their characters very often occupy a cross-border space,
11

Ttiefilmsthat explore the issues of diaspora, exile and migratioa by these fourfilmmakersinclude:
Evans Chan's To Liv(e)9 Crossings, Journey to Beijing, The Map of Sex and Love and Bauhinia
Cheung's Illegal Immigrants, An Autumn's Tale [Qidtian De Tonghua] (1987) and Eight Tales of Gold
\Ba Liang Jin\ (1989

21

both temporal and physical, which offers possibilities and mediations of cultural
differences. Many of the films by Law and Hui can be categorized as diaspora filmsas
discussed in Lu and Marchetti's articles about Hong Kong and Chinese diaspora films
that explore the subject matters related to displacement, dislocation, relocation and
migrancy of Chinese.
Memory is also a significant motif in many of Huis films starting from her first
feature The Secret [Feng Jie] (1979). Her other films that invest in memory include
Starry is the Night [Jinye Xingguang Canlan] (1988)Song of the Exile, Summer Sno^
Ordinary Heroes, Visible Secret, and July Rhapsody. Law's three major oeuvres about
migratory experiences Farewell China, Autumn Moon and Floating Life
labeled "Immigration Trilogyby film critics,12 also invest in memory. Reincarnation
of Golden Lotus [Pan Jinlian Zhi Qian Shi Jin Sheng] (1990), which tells the story of a
contemporary young woman who remembers her past as Golden Lotus (Pan Jinlian), a
fictitious character in Chinese classical story Jin Ping Mei, is another of her film that
invests in memory. Many of the films by Hui and Law that invest in memory also deal
with the quest of personal and national identities. This demonstrates that both of them
consider the past significant to the formation of one's identity.
Both Law and Hui have had real migratory experiences in their lifewhich
enables them to be sensitive to the sentiments of displacement and dislocation. They
iimnigrated to Hong Kong at a very young age. Both of them studied films in England.

12

See Yu Sen-lun's "The Outsiders".

22

They had migratory experiences prior to making television programmes and features
that deal with the themes of migration, exileand diaspora. They are filmmakers who
are not just textual structures or fictions within their films; they also are empirical
subjectssituated in the interstices of cultures and film practices, who exist outside and
prior to their filmsas Naficy describes the accented filmmakers (An Accented Cinema
4). The first film that Law made in Australia Floating Life continues to deal with
migratory experiences. Other than Immigration Trilogyher works that deal with
similar themes include They Say the Moon is Fuller Here (1985) which is her
graduation work from the National Film and Television School in England, The Other
Half and the Other Half [Wo Ai Taikong Ren
already "produced images that embrace the feelings and emotionssurroimding the
term of diaspora long before the emergence of cultural discourse on diaspora in Hong
Kong, as noted by Lo Wai Luk (66). Before the signing of the Sino-British Joint
Declaration in 1984she made television drama The Boy from Vietnam [Lai Ke\
(1978) and features The Story of Woo Viet [Hvyue De Gushi] (1981) and The Boat
People [Toupen Huhai] (1982)known as "Vietnam Trilogythat are the first of its
kind in Hong Kong cinema to explore the miserable lives of diasporic Chinese from
Vietnam after they lost their home when Vietnamese Communist Party took over the
regime. Hui's semi-autobiographical Song of the Exile can be regarded as a classic
diaspora film in the history of Hong Kong cinema. This film not only brought her
international acclaim but also has been frequently brought up for discussion about the
issues of diaspora, border crossinghome, memory, and the identities of Hong Kong

23

people and diasporic Chinese.

Autobiographical elements are prominent in Hui's films such as Starry is the
Night and Song of the Exile that are regarded as her semi-autobiographies. Biographical
elements can also be traced in Law's Farewell China and Floating Life)3 Moreover,
most of their films target not merely local but transnational audiences since they are
also for overseas Chinese. Some of their films, for instance, Hui's Song of the Exile and
Law's Floating Life
fact project a universal resonance.

Like the accented filmmakers. Law and Hui

represent a collective need to tackle the various issues related to exile, diaspora and
mirnigration.
As discussed at the outset, Naficy has coined the term "accented cinema to
describe the cinema by exilic and diasporic filmmakers to distinguish them from the
dominant cinemamainly the Hollywood. These films are accented as they reveal
some shared properties different from the mainstream cinema in terms of production^
stylethemefilm language, and especially authorship. For Naficy, accent is "one of the
most intimate and powerful markers of group identity and solidarityas well as of
individual difference and personality (23). The accented cinema is also different from
all alternative cinemas in that its accent is derived from its artisanal and collective

13

Tony Mitchell in his analyses of Clara Law's Farewell China and Floating Life points out these
two films have traces of Law's real life experience. Farewell China tells the story of a Chinese couple's
struggle in New York. Law worked in New York in the early 1980s, so she had migratory experience
there. The migratory route of the Chan family in Floating Life resembles that of Law's parents, in that
they immigrated to Hong Kongfrom Mainland China right iifler Cliinese Communist P^rty took over the
regimeand then to Australia in the 1990s.

24

production modes and from the filmmakers' and audiences' deterrritorialized locations
(23). I would argue that Hui and Law can be considered "accented filmmakers.
Emerged in Hong Kong as New Wave14 filmmakers in different phasesLaw and
Hui attempt to make films with certain aestheticscomplexities in content, and personal
expressions that are not entirely fit into the local mainstream cinema which aims at
appealing to mass entertamment.

Without any funding and support from the

government, Hong Kong cinema is largely a commercial matter that depends on the
market, both local and overseas. This has resulted in a tendency of producing genre and
formulaic films, such as kungfu, comedy, horror, and thriller, with a casting of popular
movies stars. Nevertheless, as Poshek Fu and David Desser point out: "Contrary to the
stereotype that equates Hong Kong films to 'making for money,5 the industry has a
complex history of contestation among various political and ideological-linguistic
positions and aesthetic orientations (1). This is especially true to describe the films
made by New Wave filmmakers whose works are more engaged in personal ideologies
aestheticstechniques, and themes.

14

Hong Kong's New Wave is generally referred to the emergence of a group of young television
directors andfilmmakers in the late 1970s and the 1980s -who shared similar characteristics: they grew up
and educated in Hong Kong, received training in filmmaking in western countries, and normally worked
in television stations before making features. The term "Hong Kong New Wave" aroused some
controversies. Since it is generally agreed that the filmmakers of Hong Kong New Wave did not
introduce a '"new aesthetic landscapewhether they should be collectively called 4<New Wavethe term
of vMch is initially referred to the French New Wave, is questionable. Yet, most critics consider that the
term "Hong Kong New Wave" is appropriate as these young television directors and filmmakers did
introduce novel themes and genres, new cinematic techniques, technical improvements, and stronger
personal expressions, visual styles and aesthetics to Hong Kong cinema. See Law Kar's "An Overview
of Hong Kong's New Wave CinemaHector Rodriguez's "The Emergence of the Hong Kong New
WaveStephen Teo's Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions and ccHong Kong's New Wave
Retrospectand Provisional Orban Council's Hong Kong New Wave: Twenty Years After.

25

Hui emerged in First Wave (from 1979 to the mid-1980s) while Law emerged in
Second Wave (from the late 1980s).15 Teo suggests that the Second Wave is in fact a
delayed part of the First Wave as the filmmakers who emerged in the mid- and late
1980s had worked as assistants to the filmmakers of the First Wave {HK Cinema 184).16
The Second Wave carried on the cinematic aesthetics that the First Wave had cultivated,
but the films were in a more mature kind of experimentai(184). Before joining the
film industry, many New Wave filmmakers had made programmes in television stations
which were training grounds for many young filmmakers, scriptwriters and producers at
that timewhich laid the foundation of social realism in New Wave cinema.17 Since
most of the filmmakers of New Wave had studied in film schools in western countries,
the quality of Hong Kong cinema was improved "in terms of technical competence and
thematic richness" (Abbas 23). Alsothey "had the ability and commitment to tackle
the historical and social experiences of Hong Kong societyTeoHK Cinema 48).
Abbas also claims that [i]t is in the images of the new cinema that the history of
contemporary Hong Kong with all its anxieties and contradictions can be read(17).
Compared with their former counterparts, this group of filmmakers is more concerned

15

The division of First Wave and Second Wave is proposed by Stephen Teo. Some prominent
filmmakers of the First ve include Ann Hui, Patrick Tam, Tsui Hark, Allen Fong, and Alex Cheung.
Thefilmmakersof the Second Wave are those who made theirfibrstfeatures after 1988: Eddie Fong, Clara
Law, Mabel Cheung, Stanley Rwan, Ching Siu-tung and Wong Kar-wai. See Teo's "The Second Wkve
in Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions, pp. 184-203.
16

For instance, Stanley Kwan had worked as an assistant to Aim Hui, and Eddie Fong worked with
Patrick Tam the scripts of Nomad [Liehuo Qingchun] (1982).
17

These television stations are Television Broadcasting Ltd (TVB)Radio Television Hong Kong
(KTHK) and Asia Television (ATV) ( formerly Redi&sion Television).

26

with local affairs in the perspective of Hong Kong residents. Unlike the Hong Kong
filmmakers around the postwar periodmost young filmmakers of New Wave
immigrated to Hong Kong at a very young age or were bom in Hong Kong. They have
little or even no memory of China, but they are conscious of a Chinese past. As Teo
points out:
In expressing their own identity, the New Wave directors had to
tackle the history
culture provided the link with China and its history.

Hence,

Chinese tradition and culture were absorbed as indispensable

motifs. ("The Squint-eyed Gaze" 90)
Although Hong Kong New Wave's films are more engaged in personal
expressions and aesthetics than the mainstream's, they cannot be regarded as
independent or alternative. Ratherthey are part of the mainstream. The filmmakers of
New Wave still have to abide the principles of mass entertainment, as Hector Rodriguez
puts it:
[I]t is not practically feasible for yoimg filmmakers to break away
completely from "commercialism." The main task of the new
directors, then, was to employ existing commercial genres while
adapting them to their individual concerns in accordance with the
criteria of originality and seriousness. (64)
Abbas also points out that Hong Kong cinema cannot reject commercialism and that the
strategy of the new Hong Kong filrmnakers "consists not of finding alternatives to the

27

system, but alternatives within the systems (21).

In the face of Hong Kongs commerce orientated film industry, Hui and Law
strived for gaining subjectivity in making films. They took different strategies and had
successfully become prominent filmmakers. Many of their films are about migratory
experiences, but they have also undertaken a great variety of subject matters and genres.
Furthermore, they have not solely focused on films in a feminist perspective or with an
aim of targeting woman spectators. They have made some rather commercial filmsbut
many others are artistic. Law and her husband Fong made commercial comedies The
Other Half and the Other Half md Fruit Punch [Yes! Yi Zu\ (1991) for the purpose of
supporting themselves, as they disclosed in an interview conducted by Mills Wood (74).
They also needed funding to make the films that they desire, for instance, Autumn Moon
which is made on a very small budget. Moreoververy ofleii, due to a shortage of
funding, they have to handle various jobs such as directing, screenwriting and
overseeing the production by themselves. They immigrated to Australia largely because
they disliked the commercial nature of Hong Kong film industry. Law expressed that
she and her husband would go where they could get more support (qtd in Wood 81).
For instance, Floating Life is partially sponsored by a multi-cultural broadcaster in
Australia. Alsothe films that they made in Australia Floating Life and The Goddess of
1967 brought them greater worldwide acclaim. Law's films are more transcultural and
transnational than Hui's. She was in charge of making one episode in Erotica, a film
comprising four episodes by four women filmmakers from different countries including
Brazil, Germany and the United States. Transnational investments are involved in the
28

making of Autumn Moon which is Hong Kong-Dutch-Japanese production.

Hui, on the other hand, is regarded as one of the filmmakers who successfully
negotiate commercial and arthouse films in Hong Kong. She is a filmmaker who is
trying to negotiate between a desire to create personal cinema and the necessities of
surviving in the difficult atmosphere of Hong Kong film industryas Erens puts it
(Film Work of Aim Hui180). Hui established her fame by making commercial but
also artistic films such as The Spooky Bunch {Zhuang Dao Zheng] (1980)Boat People
The Story of Voo Viet, Summer Snow and July Rhapsody. Her "Vietnam Trilogyand
autographical films are voices of Hong Kong during the time of Hong Kong's turbulent
urge for subjectivity: "This subjectivity was historical; its main objective was to
articulate its own expectation of the future" (Lo 67). Hui worked for big film studio
Shaw Brothers for some years in the 1980sbut most of the times she has been
contracted by different film companies to make films. Her economic capitals for
making films come from not only Hong Kong but also Taiwan and Mainland China.
For instance, the investment in Eighteen Springs [Ban Sheng ]iian] (1997) came from
Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China. She also sought economic capital by herself
from local and overseas sources to make the films that she personally desiredfor
instance, Ordinary Heroes, Hui also co-operated with artists from other regions to
make films. She worked with Mainland Chinese and Taiwanese screenwriters and
artists for the making of Song of the Exile Eighteen Springs and As Time Goes By [Quri
Kuduo] (1997). The different strategies undertaken by Law and Hui will be discussed
in greater detail in the respective chapters on these two filmmakers.

29

Naficy divides the accented filmmakers into three main types largely based on
the varied relationships between the filmmakers and their real or imagined homeplaces
as represented in the filmsnamely, exilic filmmakersdiasporic filmmakers, and
postcolonial ethnic and identity filmmakers. This division is subtler when compared
with Marchettis discussion about the differentiations between organic intellectuals
and diasporic intellectuals in the article on Evans Chan's films. She suggests:
Unlike the organic intellectual who remained rooted in the
community from which he/she emergedthe diasporic intellectual
moves

between

nations cultures,

languages,

and

other

positions. Indeedthe 'position' as well as the locationof the

diasporic intellectual is often difficult to pin down.... [T]he
diasporic intellectual works from the perspective of exile and/or
immigrationfrom the pain as well as the freedom of
displacement.
Naficy's division of exilic and diasporic filmmakers, who are also intellectuals in
Gramsci's sense, focuses more on their relations with homeplaces as revealed in their
films. This demonstrates the crucial connection between home and people in border
crossings.

He suggests that the accented structures of feeling are rooted in the

filmmakers5 profound experiences of deterritorialization, and these dislocatory feelings

are strongly expressed in the accented films chronotopical configurations of the
homeland (27). Naficy uses the notion of "chronotope" (literally, time-space) proposed
by Mikhail Bakhtin as a unit to analyze the specific spatial and temporal settings in the

30

accented cinema in which the narratives unfold:

Accented films encode, embody, and imagine the homeexile,
and transitional sites in certain privileged chronotopes that link
the inherited space-time of the homeland to the constructed
space-time of the exile and diaspora. (152)
Also, these chronotopes are not just visual, but particularly "synaesthetic, involving the
entire human sensorium and memory" (153). Briefly speaking, the exilic filmmakers
focus on Hiere and "then in the homelanddiasporic filmmakers focus on their
vertical relationship to the homeland and by their lateral relationship to the diasporic
communities and experiences, and postcolonial ethnic and identity filmmakers focus on
the exigencies of life hereand "now" in the host country (15). According to this
classification, then the routes that Law and Hui experienced in the past decade can be
more distinguishable. Naficy emphasizes that in the accented films, "identity is not a
fixed essence but a process of becoming, even a performance of identity. Indeedeach
accented film may be thought of as a performance of its author's identity" (6). Each
individual film by Law and Hui under discussion can be seen as the filmmaker's
different identity.

However, briefly speaking, Hui basically remains a diasporic

filmmaker, contemplating her identity both in her relations with both China and Hong
Kong.

Law has shifted from an exilic to a diasporic and then seemingly to a

postcolonial ethnic and identity filmmaker. This can be deciphered in the portrayal of
homes in their respective films.
Other than Law and Hui, quite a number of Hong Kong filmmakers also

31

persistently explore the themes of exilediaspora and migration in theirfilmsbutwill

not be dealt with in this thesisfor Instance, Evans Chan. His films are excluded in this
thesis as they invest less on memory compared with those by Law and Hui. In this
thesis, not all the works made by Law and Hui will be analyzed, but only those that are
invested in memory and home will be explored in detail. These films include Farewell
China, Autumn Moon and Floating Life by Law, and Song of the Exile, As Time Goes By
and Ordinary Heroes by Hui. These films cover a period of over 10 years starting from
1990a critical period of Hong Kong's transition from a British colony to Special
Administrative RegionChina, so they can provide brief picture of the transformation
of these two filmmakers5 identities. Hui emerged as a New Wave filmmaker much
earlier than Law, but for the sake of thematic expositionthe films by Law will be
discussed prior to those by Hui.
Chapter 2 of this thesis focuses on the analysis of Law's "Immigration Trilogy
Farewell China
psychological stages of migration: the disillusionment with the nation-statethe impact
of leaving homeand the construction of a new home in another country. As revealed in
the Trilogythe natural link between the land and the people is gradually disconnected.
Home has been transformed from a paradigm of nation-state to space of liminality.
This transformation involves the forgetting of previous homeplaces and the
Remembering" of the femilial and personal past Chapter 3 focuses on the analysis of
three films by Hui: the semi-autobiography Song of the Exile, autobiographical
documentary As Time Goes By and serni-docximentary Ordinary Heroes.

32

The

"autobiographical5' nature of Song of the Exile and As Time Goes By demonstrates Hui's
urge for formation of identity in connection with the narratives of her life story. The
documentary nature of As Time Goes By and Ordinary Heroes reveals Hui's historical
and social consciousnesses that she has developed since her television days. These
films show repetitive pondering on many historical and social moments in China and
Hong Kong's history. Chapter 4 is the conclusion of this thesissummarizing the
similarities and differences between Law and Hui's films in terms of cinematic
languages and notions of home.

33

Chapter 2
Home in Memory: Transformation from Nation-State to
Liminal Space in Clara Law's Films

This chapter focuses on the analysis of Clara Law's "Immigration Trilogyi.e.

Farewell China
invest in border crossingdisplacement and memory. The Trilogy chronicles three
psychological stages of migration: the disiilusiomnent with the nation-state, the impact
of leaving home, and the construction of a new home in another country. People in
border crossings always find themselves conj&oxitmg the old and the new cultures in the
process of making negotiations in a cross-cultural space. The concept of home in Law's
films is meditated very often in a dual perspective: belonging and detachment at the
same time.

Set in different cross-cultural spaces, the Trilogy reveals an urge to

rearticulate the past - a struggle between remembering and forgetting, and among
personalfamilial and national memories - to deal with the state of homelessness and
uprootedness in a new culture that may be considered home.
Law's works deal with a great variety of genres which include romantic comedy
The Other Half and the Other Half
China, Chinese classic story The Reincarnation of Golden Lotus, costume drama

34

Temptation of a Monk
recurrently deal with the themes of migratory experiences, border crossingdislocation
in an alienated environment, cultural displacementand the search for home and identity.
In her major oeuvres "Immigration Trilogythe episode "Wonton Soup" in Erotique
and even her recent Australian work The Goddess of 1967
themes can be found.
As mentioned at the outset, Law emerged as one of the prominent filmmakers in
the Second Wave of contemporary Hong Kong cinema in the late 1980salong with
Eddie Fong, Stanley Kwan, Lawrence Ah Mon, and Wong Kar-wai. Carried on the
aesthetics introduced by the filmmakers of the First Wave, cinema of the Second Wave
was in a more mature kind of experimentation which ultimately brought greater
international recognition to Hong Kong cinema in the late 80s" (Teo, HK Cinema 184).
After making six feature films2 in Hong Kong between 1988 and 1993, Law immigrated
to Australia in 1995 with her husband Eddie Fong who is also the screenwriter of many
of her films.3 She is now a Melbourne-based filmmaker.

The Reincarnation of Golden Lotus and Temptation of a Monk are both adaptations of Hong Kong
writer Lilian Lee's (Li Bihua) fictions. Lee wrote many scripts for the RTHK's series Below the Lion
Rock in
1970s and 1980s.
2

These six feature films are The Other Half and the Other Half [Wo Ai Taikong Renl (1988)The
Reincarnation of Golden Lotus [Pan Jinlian Zhi Qian Shi Jin Sheng] (1990)Farewell China [Ai Zai
Biexiang De Jijie] (1990), Fruit Punch [Yes! Yi Zu] (1991)Avtwnn Moon [Qiu Yue\ (1992) and
Temptation of a Monk [You Seng] (1993).
3

Eddie Fong (Fang Lingzheng) was bom in 1954. He graduated firom the Department of
Communications, Hong Kong Baptist College (now Hong Kong Baptist University). He had made many
independent and experimental shots and worked as a television scriptwriter before he studied in England
in 1981. His known earliest independent work is Leaving Home [Chu Zou\ an 8mm experimental short

35

Bom in the former Portuguese colony of Macao in 1949Law immigrated to

Hong Kong in 1964 with her parents. She received education in an Anglo-Chinese
school and then in the Department of EnglishUniversity of Hong Kong. Between 1982
and 1985, she studied film at the National Film and Television School in England.
Recalling her days thereLaw has expressed to Milles Wood in an interview that
although she had received British colonial education in Hong Kong, she still found
England "very purely British". This cultural difference made her feel "very alienated
like "living in a vacuum", and was "part of anything(71-2). Those were also the years
when Deng Xiaoping and the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher were
holding meetings about the future of Hong Kong, which troubled Law a lot as she felt
that she might not return to Hong Kong (72)where she had made television drama
series for Radio and Television Hong Kong (RTHK).4 After studying in EnglandLaw
worked as an anchor in cable T V station in Chinatowo, New York for several months.
Though she did return to Hong Kong and made films for some years, she iimnigrated to
Australia before Hong Kong's handover.

made in 1976 (Provisional Urban CouncilHKNew Wave 174). Upon return to Hong Kong in 1982tie
continued to write scripts for television programmes and films. He made Ms first feature An Amorous
Woman of Tang Dynasty [Tong Chiu Ho Fong Ntd] in 1984. Other films by Fong include Cherry
Blossoms [YaDafu Chuanqi] (1988)Kawachima Yoshiko [Chuan Dao Fang Zi] (1990)md Private Eye
Blues [Feiseimg Tsingtani] (1994). Most of his films were well received by Hong Kong film critics.
Fong started to co-work with Clara Law in 1988 for her debut The Other Half and the Other Half.
4
Clara Law's television programmes include ccMissing Persons" \Chu Zoii\ (1980)'Tloating Clouds
[Fu Yun] (1981)"Gone are Those Days" [Wei Shi Qu De\ (1987)am Mortician [Xiang Wo The
Yang De Yige Nvzi] (1987)and "A Man's Elegy" [Nan Shao lf|. 'TVfissing Persons" is a work that
"impresses more as a tautological drama wilii a social message(Provisional Urban CouncilHK New
Wave 174).

36

Many celebrated Hong Kong filmmakers and artists such as John Woo, Samo
Hung, Chow Yun-fat and Jackie Chan have been staying in Hollywood as their working
base for making commercial films starting from the mid-1990s, a phenomenon in the
international film industry which can be seen as a result of the increasing transnational
flows of people. However, the principal reason for Law and Fong's migration to
Australia is that they are more interested in making arthouse films and they find hardly
to compromise with Hong Kong's commerce and entertainment orientated film industry,
as they disclosed in some interviews.5 As discussed in Introduction^ Hong Kong's film
industry is overwhelmingly commercial, without any subsidiaries and sponsorships
from the government. In response to Wbods question about "the major obstacle with
making films in Hong KongLaw said: "There has never been any Government
support and there is no environment to nurture or support you to ensure that youas an
artist, grow (81). Law also disclosed that she decided to study film in England in the
early 1980s because that was the place where she 'Svould feel closest to European
cinema" while, she has "never been very interested in American cinema(71). This
shows her interest in European arthouse films rather than Hollywood commercial films.
Law further expressed in another interview: "...they [feature films] can be pure
entertamment or they can be a work of art. I think film is an art form, and as Tarkovsky

See the following interviews: Law Kar's "Fang wen Fang Lingzheng Luo Zhuoyao tan hal wai ti cai
de chuang zuo(An interview with Eddie Fong and Clara Law: Making of overseas subject matters),
Elise McCredie's "Clara Law: An Impression of Permanence", Kathryn Millard's "An Interview witii
Clara Law5Milles Wood's Clara Law" in Hong Kong Cinema Through the Looking Glass, and Yu Senlun's "The Outsiders.

37

said it hasn't been explored totally yet and it should be given its chance(qtd. in
Millard). The above Law's expressions show her affiliation with arthouse films. The
influences of European films on Law have been revealed through the aesthetics in her
non-commercial films: the subtle uses of visual imagescoloursand musicand the
ways of telling stories. While in Hong Kong, Law made a few rather commercial
features but just for the purpose of getting enough funding for making the films that she
desired. For instance, she directed Fruit Punch, a comedy starring teenage idols Leon
Lai and Vivian Chow, in order to be able to make the low-budget Autumn Moon (qtd. in
Wood 74). In factit is her arthouse films that bring her worldwide acclaims. For
instance, her first feature They Say the Moon is Fuller Here won a Silver Plaque at the
1985 Chicago Film Festival, Farewell China won the Special Jury Award at the 1990
Turin Festival, Autumn Moon was awarded Golden Leopard at the 1992 Locarno
FestivalFloating Life won the 1996 Locarno Festivaland The Goddess of 1967 won
the Best Director Award for Law at the 2001 Chicago Film Festival.
The relocation to Australia began with when Law and Fong wrote the script of
Temptation of a Monk in Australia where they had stayed for several months.
Australia's attraction for them is the much quieter enviromnent that well suitably for
producing creative works, when compared with Hong Kong. More importantly, they
found that in Australia there seems to be more opportunity and more professional
respect(qtd. in Yu). Their relocation to Australia is "a highly astute career movein
Stephen Teo's words in his review of Autumn Moon, as it has yielded Floating Life
(1996) and The Goddess of 1967 (2000)two idiosyncratic and challenging works that

38

cross national-ethnic boundaries but yet are still quintessential Clara Law pictures (and
in. a sensequintessential Australian pictures too).
With frequent migratory experiences, Law is sensitive to the sentiments of
displacement and dislocation in an alienated enviromnent. She once expressed in an
interview: "Pve always been between cultures . S o very often I feel my life is
drifting. I constantly have an urge to find my roots (qtd. in Yu). A constant sense of
living between different cultures but also rootlessness is the common mindset of people
in diaspora or in exile. The displacement of Chinese in diaspora is a recurring theme in
many of Law's films, but it is looked at and explored as an exemplary case of people's
dislocation in an alienated space from the perspective of mankind. Teo points out that
the characters in Autumn Moon are modem nomads5 who must try to deal with their
sense of desolation and lack of identity (HK Cinema 187). This characteristic of
Law's characters can be found in most of her works.
Narrating her migratory experience in the filmsLaw at the same time
contemplates her identity as a Chinese in diaspora. As early as 1983 while Law studied
film m England, she started to explore the subjects of migration, diaspora, and the
search for home and identity. Her graduation work They Say the Moon is Fuller Here
deals with the dilemma of being Chinese in England. The Other Half and the Other
Half is a romantic comedy exploring the effects of emigration in middle class families
when migration to western countries was in foil force in Hong Kong in the 1980s.
"Wonton Soupone of the four episodes in Erotique, tells the story of how Chinese
culture and tradition help foster the romantic relationship of a young Asian American

39

couple who meet each other again in Hong Kong. Law's major films that embrace the
subject of displacement and border crossing include Farewell China
and Floating Life. Thesefilms also invest in memory.
Most of Law's films made in Hong Kong are primarily for Hong Kong and
overseas Chinese audiences.

Starting from Autumn Moon which is about a brief

encounter of Hong Kong girl and a Japanese tourist in Hong KongLaw's positions
are multi-faceted, both local and transnational. The first film that she made in Australia
Floating Life, a story about the migratory experience of a Hong Kong family to
Australiareveals that Law speaks in a much more complex position: Hong Kong
ChineseAsian Australian, transnational and cosmopolitan. The films made by Law
during Hong Kong's transitional period reveal a shift of her position in relation to her
identity. After migration to Australia, the issues that she explores have not entirely
focused on the displacement and dislocation of diasporic Chinese but people of other
cultures, for instance, Australians in The Goddess of1967.
Law's "Immigration Trilogy looks at the processes of irnmigration and the
global dispersal involving the Chinese in diaspora: Farewell China in New York City,
Autumn Moon in Hong Kong, and Floating Life mainly in suburban Sydney. These
films invoke displacementdislocation and alienation with a sense of uprootedness
homelessnessand a longing for attachment to a desired home. The first part of the
Trilogy Farewell China is grounded in a paradigm of the nation-state, as suggested by
Sheldon Lu ("Filming Diaspora and Identity" 141)in which personal and familial
memories are tied to nationalism and patriotism. Family, homehomeland and nation-

40

state are closely linked together and become dispensable. In Chinese culture, "country"
[guo jia] literally denotes that the tie between country and home is unbreakable.
Nevertheless, the ending of Farewell China reveals that whether the nation-state can
provide a peaceful and safe shelter for its habitants is questionable. Autumn Moon
reveals a paradox that the reunification of Hong Kong with China, its imaginary
homeland, is the reason for many Hong Kong residents leaving home. The connection
between people and a locality is transient. In Floating lyfe, the last part of the Trilogy,
we can see that the physical tie between homeand homeland becomes loose. The
characters flee from the previous politically unstable homeplace(s) to search for a
paradiseelsewhere which enables them to establish another home. It can be argued
that the identities of the film Floating Life, the filmmaker Law and its characters are
across different cultures and at the same timerather slippery and unfixed. Tony
Mitchell claims that they operate in a space of liminality that is independent from any
nation-states ("Clara Law's Floating Life 280).

Also, memories of the previous

homeplace(s) as represented in the film become less significant for the characters to
contemplate their identities. In sum. Law's Trilogy embodies what Rey Chow calls the
U6

intellectualization5 of a diasporic consciousness'": the diasporic discourse is an

occasion for the interrogation of roots rather than for the affirmation of "roots"
(Writing Diaspora 22). Thesefilmsfunction as threats to the continuity of nation.
As mentioned in Introduction, Andreas Huyssen in discussing the representation
of memory in media claims that the past is needed to be articulated to become memory.
In this sense, rather than to be recoveredmemory is to be searched.

41

If memory is

central to one's identity, it seems that he/she has a certain degree of subjectivity in the
search of memory for the purpose of constructing his/her own identity. In search of
identity for the present, Law's Trilogy reveals a dilemma in the articulation of the past.
On the one handthe numerous revisitings of the recent past in the Trilogy are very
often characterized by scenarios involving antagonism between identity in relation to
the paradigm of the nation-state and identity as a matter of "becoming". On the other
handthe Trilogy conveys the significance of persisting ethnic consciousness
tradition, heritage and culture - in connection with personal and familial roots to create
an anchor and continuity in a state of mobility and discontinuity.

Farewell China:
Farewell China is the first part of the "Immigration Trilogy. Made in 1990it
is one of the films that articulate an "exile complex or a "persecution complex
triggered off by the Tiananmen Incident in 1989. In the film, "ethnic Chinese in
diaspora become homeless, uprooted, unwelcome travelers of the worldand they
constantly experience alienation and displacement in daily life(Lu, HK Diaspora
Film" 138). The Chinese title Ai Zai Biexiang De Jijie which literally means The
Season of Love in Another Land and the English title Farewell China both provoke a
strong sentiment of the diasporic mindset in another landoutside China which is the
imaginary homeland of Chinese in diaspora. The film is Law's interrogation of the
naturaltie between home and "homeland".

42

Though the film is grounded in the paradigm of the nation-state, as Lu

suggested, Law speaks from the periphery rather than from the centre, ie. the nation.
Mainly set against the backdrop of New York City which is regarded as the ultimate
destination of Chinese in diaspora^ the film narrates the struggle of a couple Nansheng
(played by Tony Leung Ka-fai) and Hong (played by Maggie Cheung) from a village in
Pan YuGuangdong ProvinceSouthern China where is far from the capital Beijing.
The dialogues and voice-overs are multilingual, including Putonghua, English and
Hokka, but the majority is in Cantonese, a dialect spoken by most people in Guangzhou
and Hong Kong. The principal roles are all played by Hong Kong and Asian American
artists Maggie CheungTony Leung Ka-fai and Hayley Man Hei-Lin. The multilocalities (Guangzhou, Shanghai and Chinatown in New York City), multi-languages,
and the inclusion of Taiwanese folk song and American pop music provoke
transnationalism and a strong sense of Chinese diaspora imaginary. The film projects
what Chow calls "a self-conscious moving into the global space in which discursive
plurality inevitably modifies and defines specific cultural identity rather than the other
way around" (Writing Diaspora 95).
The female protagonist Hong's tramnatic experience as a lower-class immigrant
in New York City is revealed through both visual and verbal flashbacks, presented as
the fragmented memories of the Chinese immigrants who met her before. She lived in a
devastating environment, suffered from illness, and was raped one night after work.
Her husband Nansheng has illegally sneaked from China to New York for the purpose
of searching for her. The people of Chinese heritage whom Nansheng encoimters, no

43

matter they migrated from Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong or bom in the
United States, such as the young woman who teaches English, the Taiwanese
shopkeepers of Chinese take-away restaurant, the shopkeeper of the laundry shopand
Jane, young runawaycreate an imagery of the diasporic Chinese in a Chinese ghetto
in New York City. This is also an imagery that how these people struggle for a living in
an other land".

Nansheng's memories of homeland are also revealed through

flashbacks. The shifting landscapes between rural China and urban New York City
create a sense of mobility, and dislocation in place and in time. In contrast with the
corrupted urban New York Citythe poetic rural landscape in China, though backward
seems to be a more idyllic place to make a home. China in Nansheng's subjective
flashbacks is portrayed as open and pastoral, but his wandering journey in New York
City is very often involved claustrophobic space such as motel, car, corridor, and
discotheque. These contrasting images function as refractions of past and present,
"there and hereand the presence and absence of home. The object of desire for
Nansheng is not only his wife Hong but also a complete familyhomeand
homeland. He lives in a constant flux of alienation and confrontation, which is
caused by his inability to erase the memory of his homeland that constantly haunts him
in the series of flashbacks.
The film focuses on the migratory experiences of a couple, Nansheng and Hong,
from Panyu in Guangdong Province of Mainland China. Nevertheless, Law uses a

44

Taiwanese folksong "Thinking O F {Sixiang Qif to enforce the diasporic mindset of

this couple in New York City. The inclusion of a Taiwanese folksong Thinking of
and Communist China's patriotic song "My Homeland [Wo De Zuguo]7 creates
tension between the diasporic and nationalistic mindsets. "Thinkingo f is a Taiwanese
folk song originated from Hang ChuenPing Tung in Southern Taiwan, where residing
the earliest immigrants from Tong Sheng, Mainland China.8 The song depicts the
trauma of Chinese leaving China for Taiwan in the early 20th century.

The title

Thinking o f and repetitions of this phrase in the lyrics project a strong sentiment of
Chinese people in diaspora that they are living here but persistently remembering
"thereie. their homeland China. The phrase That we camot accompany each other
in China in the song reveals that leaving one's homeland is at the same time leaving
one's homewhich results in splitting up of a home. Stanzas of Thinking ofappear in
sequel but fragmentary throughout the film. Lisa Odham Stokes and Michael Hoover
point out that "the lines parallel the action, resonating with characters' feelings and
experiences in an alienated land (156). For instancein a scene where Nansheng is
sleeping by himself in a side street at nighta fragment of Thinking ofappears as nondiegetic music to highlight his state of homelessness. The dialectical interaction of
music and images helps to enhance emotional identification throughout the film.

The complete lyrics in English and Chinese are at Appendix I.

The complete lyrics in English and Chinese are at Appendix IL

Lisa Odham Stokes and Michael Hoover in City on Fire: Hong Kong Cinema
"Clara Law's Farewell China A Melodrama of Chinese Migration1" have discussed "Thinking Of' in
the film already.

45

In the reunion scene of Nansheng and Hong in New York Citythe diegetic
music My Homeland" serves as collective memory and national identity, suggesting
that they temporarily escape to a shared past in Mainland China. The song enforces the
tie between nation statehomelandand homeWritten in 1956My Homeland is
the theme song of Shang Gan Ling, a movie about how the Chinese army successfully
protected Shang Gan Ling from the invasion of the United States during the Korean
War in the early 1950sas noted by Lu ("Filming Diaspora" 283-84). The movie is
regarded as one of the nationalistic artworks for the foundation of the People's Republic
of China. The song portrays a poeticpeaceful and lovely homeland which nourishes
them, and that is well suited for establishing a family: "This is our beautiful motherland,
/ The place where I grew up. / Our vast land is full of radiant and enchanting spring
scenes." 9 The pastoral images remind the viewers of the poetic portrayal of Chinese
rural landscape in the film. Moreover, these few lines construct an imagery of a
naturallink among a placehomeand people.

Then the song appeals to

nationalism, arousing Chinese's patriotism for their homeland: If friends come to visit,
/ We greet them with good wine. / If enemies come/ We 4greet5 them with gunfire.
This stanza reveals that homeland is at a stirring battle, and interpellates its
inhabitants to protect their beautiful motherland. Ernest Renan in "What is a nation?
remarks that "[wjhere national memories are concerned, griefs are of more value than
triumphsfor they impose duties, and require a common effort(19). Likewise, the

This translation is by CRI On Line <http://englishxri.com.ai/english/2002/Jan/43637.htm>.

46

song calls people to patriotism: There can be no home without nation. However, Hong
repeatedly asks Nansheng whether a stranger follows him to her home, and whether
some government officials in China stole her letters that she sent to him. As observed
by Stokes and Hoover and Mitchellthese are the signs showing that Hong suffers from
paranoia.

Her conversation with Nansheng reveals the traumatic memory associated

with the political oppression during the Cultural Revolution.

Law includes the

nationalistic song "My Homeland" in this scene for the purpose of interrogating the
legitimacy of the link between home, c1iomeland5' and nation. She introduces irony in
this scene. Against the diegetic nationalistic song, Hong hugs a teddy bear that is a sign
of transnationalism and a representation of comfort. The effects of Thinking of 5 and
"My Homeland" in this film demonstrate Law's inclusion of music for contrasting
purposes. "Thinking ofhas role of affirmation with the emotions and the actions of
the characters. My Homelandon the contrary, has a role of deconstruction in that the
music is incongruous with the actions of the characters.
Hong and Nansheng are from the lower class, and their painful migratory
experiences suggest that a class issue is involved in diasporic consciousness: They are
not only culturally but also economically marginalized. Hong's traumatic immigration
experience, which is revealed through flashbacks, is another cause of her suffering from
paranoia. In the last sceneNansheng is killed by Hong on the verge of psychosis, Teo
claims that Farewell China is "Law's depiction of the Chinese diaspora as a Dantesque
descent into an American Infemo (New York City) as their lives and mental states
become distorted by migration {HK Cinema 186). Hong's suffering from paranoia

47

suggests that she cannot establish a sense of selfliood in the alienated environment. She
seems to become different persons while speaking different languages: English,
Cantonese and Putonghau. As Jonathan Rutherford puts it:
If we cannot establish that sense of selfhoodonly retreat and
entrenchment are the viable alternatives to a schizophrenic and
disturbed existence. Only when we achieve a sense of personal
integrity can we represent ourselves and be recognized this is
home, this is belonging. (24)
In this senseHong seems to be a "fragmented person but not a 44whole person".
Analyzing the role of memory in delusions (false beliefs) which is one of the
most striking psychological abnormalities associated with schizophrenia, Chris Frith
and Raymond J. Dolan find that delusions are closely related to false memories "in
which the recollection and reconstruction of a past event fails to be properly constrained
by our more general knowledge of the world" (130). It can be said that in Hong's
recollectionthe past event that she rejects is her traumatic migratory experience in New
York City.

In the historical context of Farewell China, and also its time setting

between 1988 and 1989the past event that Hong cannot come to terms with
allegorically is the Tiananmen Incident. Other than the reunion scene with diegetic
music My Homeland", the last scene also shows that personal memory is closely
connected with collective memory. The tragic scene where Nansheng is killed by Hong
takes place in front of a Goddess of Liberty statue in Chinatown which is an image of
the studentsdemocracy movement in Beijing in 1989.

48

This scenario arouses the

collective memory of Tianamen Incident with the violence involved. Walking away in
a dazeHong seems that she does not know where to godepicting that she is in a state
of homelessness. This last scene poses an interrogation to a homeless state that is
caused by political unstability in the nation-state China and displacement in the host
country. As a post-1989filmFarewellChina interrogates the conditions that produce
homelessness, pain and suffering, and meditates the relation between the nation-state
and home.

Autumn Moon: Lost Home in Lost Time

While Farewell China is a contemplation of the Tiananmen Incident, the second
part of the Immigration Trilogy Autumn Moon is a contemplation of the Hong Kong's
handover in 1997a paradox that the reunification of Hong Kong with its motherland
triggers separations of many families. It looks at the impact of immigration on Hong
Kong residents, and interrogates the transitory nature of home.

A "heaviness of

movingin Teo's words, is involved in leaving home which results in loss of memory,
culture and traditioa
A Japanese-Dutch-Hong Kong production, Autumn Moon is originally one of
the six episodes in a project entitled "Asian Beat that all featured a Japanese actor but
were made by different Asian directors (Law"Fang wen Fang Lingzheng Luo
Zhuoyao 54). Law disclosed laterhowever, that she fought hard enough to make her
episode an independent feature film, while all other ones were in fiitile (qtd. in Wood
76). Part of the film's funding was from Law and Fong by making a commercial film

49

Fruit Punch featuring young idols. Teo considers Autumn Moon one of the films in
Second Wave that finds its <fiway into the collective consciousness of world cinema in
the early '90s", along with the films like Wong Kar-wai's Days of Being Wild, Stanley
Kwan's Actress and Jacob Cheung's Cageman (Autumn Moon^). The inclusion of
Japanese artists Masatoshi Nagase and Maki Kiuchi who act as a tourist and a journalist
working in Hong Kong respectively not only introduces transnational and transcultural
dimensions to the film but also enhances Law's notion that the state of dislocation and
displacement is worldwide phenomenon.
Set in Hong Kong during its transitional period towards 1997, Autumn Moon
narrates a brief platonic encounter of a young Japanese tourist Tokio (played by
Masatoshi Nagase) and afifteen-year-oldlocal girl Pui Wai (played by L i Pui Wai) who
soon migrates to Canada to join her parents and brother. This brief cross-cultural
encounter highlights Hong Kong as a transnational and transitory citywhere people of
different cultures gather and disperse. This space also provides a very specific time for
the contemplation of home as Hong Kong is in the transitional state from a British
colony to a Special Administrative Region of China. The main characters Pui Wai,
Tokio and Miki (played by Maki Kiuchi) seem in a state of rootlessness and
homelessness in the rapidly transforming city. Fong disclosed in an interview by Wang
Haiyan and Mitchell that Autumn Moon is a film that he and Law want to deal with
problems of alienation and the search for home (Mitchell, "Migration" par. 5). 10

10

Since the essay is a typed personal copy provided by Tony Mtchell, instead of page numbers,
paragraph numbers are cited to locate the citations.

50

Ackbar Abbas remarks that a sense of disappearance - the last attempt to

reinvent Hong Kong's local characteristics at the movement of its disappearance - is the
prevalent theme of New Hong Kong cinema. In these films, the local is dislocated
through the introduction of the disappearing city as a major protagonist. In Autumn
Moon, the high-tech and modern skyscrapers, no matter in long shotsclose-ups and
aerial tracking shotscreate sense of alienation, distance and defamiliarization
between the people and the surrounding. As observed by Stephen Rowley in Autumn
Moon and Urban Bewilderment", the shots on the modem skyscrapers highlight that
Hong Kong is a cosmopolitan city, but the streets are very often with only a few or even
without any passers-by, seemingly that the city is deserted by people who migrated to
other places. This portrayal is in sharp contrast with the popular images that the streets
of contemporary Hong Kong are usually overcrowded, as represented in films of the
early 1990s like Wong Kar-wai's Chungking Express. Its portrayal is also distinctive
from that of New York in Farewell China, in which New York is crowded with people
and immigrants, although both are cosmopolitan cities.

Alsoin contrast with the

portrayal of skyscrapers in New York City, Hong Kong's cityscape appears fragmentary
in abstracted geometric pattern. Hong Kong is portrayed as a generic city that seems to
be devoid of memory, history and an identity. This representation of a cosmopolitan
Hong Kong projects an uncanny feeling: the familiar returns as the unfamiliar. Hong
Kong during its transitional period becomes a haunted house". Mitchell points out that
C4

the highly modal, drone-likeminimalist score" that Tats Lau and Tommy Wai

51

compose and perform for the film has the functions of "ambient music pioneered by
British composer Brian Eno: "retaining ' a sense of doubt and uncertainty and
inducing "clam and a space to think (par. 25). Also, "the extended amplified notes
give the piece "a laconic, floating quality which complements sonically the drifting
state of the principal characters as well as the 'parametricfonction of the film's
scrutiny of architectural surfaces(par. 25). This style of music projects a hypnotic
effect. The recurrent appearance of the music accompanying the cityscape enhances the
drifting state and the ambivalent identity of Hong Kong as well as of the characters.
Steve Fore suggests that the landscape and architecture in Autumn Moon do not
function as echoing the characters5 psychological statebut a degree of agency is
involved in the characters in response to the enviromnent:
Rather, in Autumn Moon elements of Hong Kong's built and
natural enviromnent are introduced as part of a desire to construct
a (partial) catalog of disappearance, an image of the receding of the
city's identity just as it is being formed, in conjunction with the
individualized (yet 'typical") histories of characters struggling to
come to terms with their own sense of themselves within that
phenomenon. That isthe characters in Autumn Moon maintain a
degree of agency - they are shown to be capable of acting in
relation tonot just within, their environment. (38)

52

Pui Wai as an imminent migrant and Tokio as a tourist have different degrees of
agency towards Hong Kong, which are manifested in the sequence taken in McDonald5 s
Restaurant11 Law emphasizes the emotional connection between people and place.
Like the cityscape portrayed in the film, emptiness and desertedness are prominent in
this McDonald's restaurant. Except Pui Wai and Tokio, there are no traces of any other
customers and any members of staff. Tokio is puzzled by Pui Wai while asking her to
take him to an authentic traditional restaurant, she takes him to a McDonald's restaurant
where, for him, sells the same food with same tastes all over the world which cannot be
regarded as traditional food. For Pui Wai, the "authentic traditional food" is associated
with her past experience that is now part of her memory. She insists to argue against
Tokio: <4No? it is not the same!" This specific McDonald's restaurant is different from
all other ones as it is the place where she had her childhood birthday parties. She shared
laughter and sadness with her friends and classmates. The comer where her birthday
parties were held is emptyshowing that her parents and friends with whom she shared
happiness and sadness in this McDonald's restaurant have migrated to other countries

11

The McDonald's scene has been discussed by many scholars in their articles on Autumn Moon
which include Steve Fore's Time-Traveling Oader an Autumn Moon
Transition: Pre-Post-1997 Culture in Clara Law's Autumn Moori
Urban Bewildermenf' and Tony Mitchell's ^Mgradcai, Memory and Hong Kong as a 4 Space of Transit5
in Qara Law's Autumn Moort% but slightly with different emphases. Fore focuses on the question of
"authenticity" in connection witii "economic globallzatiai" and "cultural imperialism" that posed by Pui
Wai and Tokio's argument about the McDonalds restaurant and its food. Yue sees the place of
McDonald's restaurant as a site that constitutes thefiiendship of Pui Wai and Tokioand that "serves as a
point of intersection and transitionpan 21). Rowley points out that the McDonald's restaurant acts as a
site of departure of Pui Wai's friends oa the m e hand, and it "functions as a critique of the globalized
culture on die other". It is an example of "cultural homogenization". And, Mtchell considers the
McDonald's restaurant as a site of memory.

53

already. Only memory leaves behind. This is part of the reason why it is painful to
leave a homeplace. Pui Wai will also depart for Canada very soon. Yether memory of
this restaurant and Hong Kong still lingers on. A global and public space is localized
and privatized through Pui Wai's personal memory.
The contrasting identities that Pui Wai as a local resident and Tokio as a tourist
project a dynamic meditation of home in the cross-cultural space in relation to time.
Barry Curtis and Claire Pajaczkowska suggest:
The opposite of tourism is not staying at homebut the
involuntary travel associated with the predicament of the
iirnnigrant. If the tourist travels, for the most part, backwards in
timethen the immigrantthe exile and the diasporic travel
forwards with no promise of a restored home. The uncertainties
and dangers of travel are now part of the experience of the
previously visited - the economic migrants and political refugees
who travel with little hope of return. (202-3)12
Pui Wai's attraction to Hong Kong is emotion and nostalgia as it is a place full of her
childhood memory where she considers homewhile Tokio's attraction to Hong Kong is
a place of consumption: eating, shopping and cruising. Tokio as a tourist in search of
"spoilt beauty" travels forward in space but backward in time. Authentic traditional

12

Steve Fore has already used the same quotation in his analysis of the different time and space that
Pui Wai and Tokio bear in 'Time-Traveling Under an Autumn Moort\ Audrey Yue has also discussed
that Tokio's travel "is a movemmt forward in space but backwards in time" (par. 31).

54

food is the greatest attraction for him. Pui Wai as an imminent migrant travels forward
in space and in timeto Canada, a western country, who is with little chance of returning
home. Understanding that the relationship with her crush will be probably futile, she
decides to discontinue the relationship. She does not desire to leave the familiar here
to the unknown Aherethe space and time that she does not look forward to. She tries
to capture the memories associated with this place at the last moment. Tokio who
always travels around seems without any baggage of the past He becomes a person
who is not concerned with where Ms hometown is. He depends on his video camcorder
rather than his mind to record what he sees during the journey. Yet, through the lens of
his video camcorderalong with his emotional responses to Pui Wai and her
grandmother's melancholy, his journey transforms him from an outsider to an insider,
capturing the subtle sentiments in the rapidly changing Hong Kong.
In the perspective of Tokio, the traditional culture is hardly been traced in the
seemingly lack of history and memory projected by the generic cityscape. Through, the
first and second video footages of Tokio's camcorder, we see the uncharacteristic
buildings and streets through the travelogue's viewfindersand the young women
passers-by in the streets. The third video footage is taken in Pui Wai5s home. David
Harvey argues that in the global era, to resist the rapid changes and the overwhelming
consumerist culture, the home "becomes a private museum to guard against the ravages

55

of time-space compression" (292).13 It is in Pui Wai's home that Tokio can eat what he
considers authentic traditional food made by her grandmother. The homemade food
connotes its individuality and cultural and family tradition. It is not something massproduced such as the McDonaldsbut Tokio considers the homemade food in Pui
Wai's home afixlfillmentof his desire as a tourist. Through his camcordera long take
shotin genuine time and space, of the traditional Chinese food and ingredients in the
refrigerator such as preserved oysters and pickled vegetables highlights the ancient and
mysterious Chinese culture passed from generation to generation.

This shot also

reinforces the image of Pui Wai's grandmother as a guardian of tradition and culture in
the film. Howeverthe Chinese ingredients in the refrigerator are frozen, projecting a
symbol that traditional culture becomes museuinized.
Tokio also uses his camcorder to record the Chinese landscape painting, Cliinese
calligraphy, and old photographs of Pui Wai's grandfather in her home. These things
trigger Pui Wai's memory at the same time.

She recollects those days when her

grandfather taught her Chinese poetry and calligraphy. In this sequence, Tokio also
participates in "a sense of her [Pui Wai's] personal history in Hong Kongas suggested
by Mitchell (par. 22). The non-diegetic music produced by the synthesizer and a variety
of western instruments and Chinese traditional instruments becomes gradually apparent,

13

This point is inspired by Rochelle Siemieaowicz's "Globalizatioo. and Home Values in New
Australian Cinema" in "wMch the author quotes this citation from David Earveys article to siqjport the
claim that the home in The Castle (1997, dir. Rob Sitch) seems to be "a space of resistance ag^nst the
values of instantaneity and disposabnit/'.

56

propelling to the moment when Tokio puts up a Chinese costume of Pui Wai's
grandfather. Mitchell suggests that
the subtle use of Chinese instruments as tonal colouring also
evokes the themes of Chinese identity which are important to the
journey undergone by the three principal characters in the film
without being self-conscious, essentialist or obvious about their
sonic associations, (par. 25)
The non-diegetic music has this function exceptionally in this sequence, as Pui Wai's
memory is associated with her grandfather who embodies traditional Chinese culture.
Pui Wai's grandmother is a symbol of stable root and traditional culture. Her
abandonment by the family indicates a gradual disappearance of traditional culture in
the process of migration. There is a scene where Pui Wai's grandmother is walking
slowly towards her home by herself. The shot is in a low angle, contrasting the
hugeness of the housing estate blocks with the tininess of her body. This scene projects
the loneliness and helplessness of grandmother.

For the purpose of obtaining

citizenship in Canadathe status of grandmother is declared as "Deadon the family's

application form for migration to Canada. The last Tokio's video footage records
grandmother's monologue in the hospital, which is about her preparations for death. In
her monologue, she repeats several times: "Ask them [her children] not to worry...
Come back firom Canada to see me when free.Don't come back if not freeBless
them with a longsafe and prosperous life Grandmothermonologue reveals her
care for her children even though she is abandoned by the family. In this about three-

57

minutes' monologue, the close-up of grandmother's face projects a strong sense of

sentiment that impresses Tokio although he does not understand Cantonese. Pui Wai's
conversations with Tokio are in halting English mixed withfragmentsof Cantonese
which reveals "Hong Kong as a paradox of cultural memories caught between the
empires of Britain and Chinaas argued by Audrey Yue in "Migration-as-Transition"
(par. 14). Grandmother's Cantonese monologue can be regarded as a preservation of
Chinese culture.
Tokio is overwhelmed with rootlessnessand transient feelings after recording
the grandmother's monologue.
traditional culture.

Grandmother represents a stable roothistory, and

Tokio is free to travel around, but at the same time he feels

desolated, without a sense of identity. He expresses his sorrow to Miki that it has been
a long time that none asks him where his hometown is. Teo points out: "Law speaks of
the 'cumulative effect of personal experiences, as in the postmodern age things and
relationships are seen to be without cause and effectbut 'the body has memories5. The
role of sex is the body's way of re-living these memories {HK Cinema 187). The
memories relieved by the body also Represent a link to home (Mitchell, Migration
par. 21). Making love to Miki, Tokio experiences a special homecoming in memory,
which helps him locate the place and time of his home in association with his first
love in the younger days (par. 21).
The film begins with the separation of Pui Wai's family, and ends with her
nostalgia and reminiscences for an imminent lost home in lost time. The first scene
shows that Pui Wai watches indifferently her parents and younger brother depart from

58

their home for Canada, their migration coimtiy. The film's ending is an evening of
Mid-Autumn Festivala Chinese festival for members of fkmily to celebrate
togetherness which is symbolized by the foil moon on lunar 15 August. The deserted
fishing village that Pui Wai and Tokio visit reminds the viewers of the emptiness and
desertedness highlighted in the portrayals of Hong Kong cityscape.

The once

prosperous fishing village became ruins as its former residents had left for other places
to make living. The poem that Pui Wai recites as the voice-over embodies the film
title "Autumn Moon Faded spring flower autumn moon, / The pastwhat do you we
know? / ...at my home last night / The east wind blew. 14 This poem was written by
L i Y u (937 978), a poet and also the last emperor of the Southern Tang Dynasty. It
reveals the emperor's sadness, nostalgia and reminiscences for Ms country when he was
in exile. As Pui Wai is going to leave "here" for unknown "there", her recitation of this
poem also reveals her sentiment that Hong Kong will soon become a home in lost time
which will then exist in memory and in imagination.

Floating Life: The House is Home

Like Autumn Moon, Floating Life is also a contemplation of Hong Kong's
handover: a historical event that triggers migration.

Autumn Moon is about the

transitory nature of homewhile Floating Life is about the process of constructing a new
home in Australia. Farewell China, Autumn Moon and Floating Life explore the trauma

14

The poem is a tune to "The Beautiful Lady Yu[Yu mei-jen]. This translation is copied frotn the
film's English subtitles in the film. A translation of the whole poem by Cyril Birch is at Appendix III.

59

of uprootedness brought about by immigration, but the last parta light comedyoffers
the hope and possibility that new homes can be (re)constmcted in another country.
Floating Life narrates how a Chinese family from Hong Kong, after getting through
much hardships, and cultural and family conflicts, can ultimately establish a new home
in suburban Sydney in Australia. The migratory experience of a Chinese family from
Hong Kong to Australia also provokes a universal resonance.

The last sequel of

Immigration Trilogythe film reveals that the physical coimection between home and
nation is further loosened.
Floating Life is the first film that Law made after migration to Australia in 1995.
It was produced by Special Broadcasting Service (SBS)an Australia's multicultural
and multilingual public broadcaster,15 with partial government funding, according to the
information in F, Harari's The Risk Takers" (Cited in Rochelle). A multilingual film,
Floating Life is the first Australian feature film with English subtitles as the majority of
dialogues and voice-overs are in Cantonese.16 Although the film is also shot in Hong
Kong and Germanyits focus remains on Australia as it tells the story of how a Chinese
family settles down there.
Though the film is partially funded by the Australian government, produced by
crew of Australians, and cast Australian artists, its identity and the position of Law are
controversialwhich have been brought up for in-depth discussions by Teo and Mitchell

15
16

See its website <ht1p://www.subsxom.aii/subs_front/mdex.html>.

See Shelly Kraicer's review of Floating Life.

60

respectively. L u includes Floating Life in his discussion about the transformation of

Hong Kong identities from the 1980s onwards as represented in Hong Kong diaspora
films. David L. Eng focuses on the Hong Kong postcolonial identity in connection with
the gendered loss: The Floating Life suggests that an unacknowledged gendered loss
provides the constitutive occasion for the emergence of a legible postcolonial Hong
Kong identity" (139). Lu and Eng focus on a Hong Kong identity represented in the
film rather than an Asian-Australian one.17 Neverthelesssome scholars consider
Floating Life an Asian-Australian film, Lili Ma, a Mainland Chinese scholar in
Australia, suggests that Law being a Chinese from Hong Kong now residing and
working in Australia occupies the position of both an insiderwho understands the
Chinese experience, and an 'outsider' who has some degree of detachment from that
experience" (158-59). Ma considers that Law's perspective is dual: both Hong Kong
Chinese and Asian Australian. Teo in ^Floating Life: The Heaviness of Moving"
argues that although the film is "almost wholly from an Asian perspective", it "should
ultimately be considered a very Asian-Australian work*5 as it shows goodwill towards
Australia, and its ending projects optimistism towards a possibility of establishing
home there. HoweverMitchell argues that Floating Life "is a film which situates
Australia within a Hong Kong-Chinese migrant diasporicframeworkratherthan the
other way aroimd ("Clara Law's Floating Life 292). His argument is in agreement

17

However, as discussed in Introduction Lu suggests tbat transnationalism and global capitalism

began to have impact on Hong Kong idmtities, as represented by the diaspora films including Floating
Life.

61

with Lu's, both seeing Floating Life in the framework of Chinese diaspora.
Nevertheless, unlike Eng, he focuses less on "melancholia and loss in relation to racial
difference and assimilation" but more on the reconciliation of <4the Chan family's
experiences with Law's own statements about the film (279). He suggests a positive
reading which is based on Law's view about the rootlessness of the immigrants in the
director's statement at the 1996 Pardo Film Festival: "...An immigrant is cut off from
historyboth from one's personal history and the nation's history. He/She has to learn
to live 4 f l o a t i n g l y ( 2 7 9 ) . Mitchell's reading of the film involves authorial and
autobiographical elements of the filmmaker, which echoes Naficy s agenda that these
two elements should be taken into consideration in reading the films by exilic and
diasporic filmmakers. His view is that Law's notion of "living floatingly "hints at a
positive reading of diasporic migrant mobility and flexibility which operates
independently from nation-states in constructing a fluid sense of identity which is able
to benefit from a position of liminality'' (280).
The above scholarsdiversified views about the film's identity reveal that
Floating Life can be what Gina Marchetti describes the films by New York-Hong Kong
filmmaker Evans Chan: slipperyuncertain, unfixed and beyond

nations

("Transnational Cinema"). NeverthelessI would support Mitchells claim that the film
itself and the filmmaker Law are situated in a liminal space that is independent from
nation-states. Like the film's title, the identity of Floating Life and the filmmaker are in
a state of being floatingstill unfixed. Regarding the characters' way of settling down
in Australia, as Mitchell points outthere is a "totdl absence of any exploration of

62

interaction between the Chans and Anglo Australians in the film (284). Other than a
lack of interactions between the Chan family and the Australians, the state of "floating"
is also revealed in the memory represented in the film. James Berardinelii in "Review:
Floating Life remarks that the film title refers to those people who change residency
from one country to another, resulting in losing a sense of stability. Andwith different
points of cultural reference, they are floating as their relatives, all familiar things, and
memories disperse in different parts of the world.
Floating Life is divided into seven episodes: A House in Australia, A House in
Germany, A House in Hong Kong, A House in China, A House in Turmoil, A House
without a Treeand Miu Miu's House. Some of the episodes are narrated through
flashbacks, in different perspectives by members of the Chan family who live in
different parts of the world. For instance, Yen, Bing and Gar-ming's narratives about
their houses in Germany, Australk and Hong Kong are in flashbacks respectively.
These subjective flashbacks are presented as their personal memorybut altogether are
the collective memory of the family. These fragmentary episodes orchestrate a portrait
of a disintegrated femily. That members of a family do not live together in the same
place is a common phenomenon m expanding transnational flows of people. Law's
narrative techniques create a sense of fragmentation, separation, and multi-locality of
the Chan family. Like the placards, the home of each member of the Chan family is
multicultural: Chinese and western. The house is drawn in Chinese black ink and in
Chinese stylewhich suggests that Chinese culture binds each member together.

63

Each member feces an identity crisis at the same time. M r Chan, Mrs Chan and
their two youngest sons face uncertainties andfrustrationsin a new environment upon
arrival in Australia. Bingthe second sister in Australia, suffers from paranoiawhich
results from her desperate assimilation into a new culture by rejecting her past, for
instance, not allowing her young brothers speaking Cantonese and her parents burning
incense for ancestors in her house. Teo in Floating Life: The Heaviness of Moving"
points out that the character Bing is a clear extension of the character Hong in Farewell
China. Bing's subjective flashback reveals that her migratory experience is especially
traumatic as she is the first one who migrates to Australia and she suffers the most. She
urges herself to assimilate into the new culture to overcome the sense of rootlessness,
but the total rejection of the past leads her to sufferfromparanoia. Yen, the eldest sister
in Germany, who does not know how to speak Mandarin, ponders her identity when
being challenged by her daughter Miu Miu that her mother tongue Cantonese is
dialect onlyand Mandarin should be the official Chinese laBguage. Gar-ming, the
eldest son in Hong Kong who is going to join the family in Australia, while burying the
aborted foetus of his girlfriend and also watching the exhumation of his dead
grandfather's bonescontemplates the transience of life on earth and transit inhabitaBcy
in a place. Their identity crises are largely due to the feet that they are iminigrants who
are not living in their place of origin for some reason or other. Like Farewell China and
Autumn Moon, Law in Floating Life reiterates her notion that migration is not an easy
task to handle. The migrants have to deal with the memory and loss in connection with
their previous homewhile at the same time they have to tackle the uprootiessness,

64

displacement and alienation in the new country.

As Eng suggestsFloating Life

emphasises the mouming and melancholia in the experience of immigration and

assimilation: "When one leave one's place of origin voluntarily or involuntarily there are a host of losses both concrete and abstract that must be mourned. These
include homeland, familylanguage, identity (138). In Gar-ming's flashback, his
specific referral to the year 1997 hints that Hong Kong's handover seems to be the
principal reason for the Chan family's migration to Australia. Chan's house in Hong
Kong in the flashback is empty and deserted. Shelly Kraicer in Ms review of Floating
Life suggests that the different localities in the characters5 subjective flashbacks are shot
through "different filers and levels of exposure". The portrayal of Hong Kong is in a
neon-bright, detail-packed and foil color spectrumwhich seems to be gazed through
the distorting mirror of anguished memory, of all the life left behind. This projects an
image that it was a house and home in the past. Bing's house is depicted as grotesque
and eerie, distancing from the human world. While the Chans are in a transitionai stage
between the previous and new homeplaces, they seem to be caught between the past and
the present.
To tackle the sense of rootlessness, the film suggests that memory in relation to
the femily may create a sense of stability among members of the femily living
separately. Maurice Halbwachs suggests: "[T]he family has its own peculiar memory
just as do other kinds of communities.

Foremost in this memory are relations of

kinship" (63). Other than their own stories in the past in connection with their houses,
the locus of memory is the femilial story that binds the different members together.

65

Yen recounts to her daughter Miu Miu that the first time her grandmother saw
grandfather was on their wedding. Gar-imng recalls that it was the year of 1949 when
his parents migrated from Communist China to Hong Kong where they made their
homeThe retrieval of their parents5 migratory experience from Mainland Qiina to
Hong Kong in memory also helps them establish a new home in Australia. There is
almost an absence of national memory as Mr Chan and Mrs Chan left China due to
political violence. They are fleeing from their country, in the second sister Bing's
words. The national memory associates with traumatic experience.
Floating Life also suggests that tracing the ancestors, their immediate pastis
one of the ways of tackling the sense of rootlessness. Yen was bom in Hong Kong,
married a German and has lived there with her husband and daughter Miu Miu. Though
living with her family, she still has a sense of homelessness, as she asks herself: "Where
is my home? I only know my roots are connected to my parents." Straddling over
different cultures, her sense of homelessness represents the mindset of many Hong
Kong migrants overseas. Facing the identity crisisthe most immediate is to trace the
family's roots. Yen's realization that her roots are connected to her parents, reveals that
instead of figuring out her nationality, tracing the genealogy of her family is one way of
locating her identity. The members of the Chan family articulate a sense of home
amidst homelessness by constructing a familial tiein a sense as a substitution of the
national tie. The significance of ancestors in a family has been revealed in Autumn
Moon
performed by Pui Wai and grandmother. In Floating Life

66

regretful for not burning incense and paper money to their ancestors on Ching Minga
Chinese festival for the remembrance of the ancestors.
The significance of ancestors in the family is demonstrated in a sequel in which
Mrs Chan prays to the tablet of the famiiy's ancestors for blessings on Bing who suffers
from illness. This sequel lasts for several minutes, from the view point of Bing. This is
the turning point in the story that Bing reconciles with Mr and Mrs Chan, making it
possible for the femily to establish a new home in Australia. The conflicts between
mother and daughter are caused by Bing's authoritative measures on the family for
entirely assimilating into Australian culture. The willingness of Bing to reconcile with
her mother denotes that she prepares to negotiate with her Chinese past. Mitchell notes
that in Autumn Moon the scene in which grandma teaches Pui Wai the proper way of
lighting incense sticks for the family shrine depicts that "both characters enter a realm
of Chinese ancestral tradition which enables them to develop a stronger sense of
belonging and access sites of cultural memoryMigrationpara. 19).

The

reconciliation scene in Floating Life has the same effect on the mother and daughter.
The significance of "cultural memory9' in Autumn Moon and Floating Life can be
regarded as a transformation from "national memory" represented in the union scene in
Farewell China
A spirit of cosmopolitanism is also embodied in Mrs Chan's confession to the
family's ancestors:
Why after all these years of not having homeland? We are used
to hardships.

The whole family's together in Australia, this

67

paradise on earth. Why can't we have any joy? Why can't we put
down our burden and plant our root in this soil? As long as all of
them establish their families herelead long and prosperous lives,
free from danger, stay together and live happily, then we'll die
without regrets.
In Bruce Robbins's words, cosmopolitanism "has often seemed to claim universality by
virtue of its independence its detachment from the bonds, commitments, and
affiliations that constrain ordinary nation-bound lives" (1). Mrs Chan's confession
shows that though she migrated from China to Hong Kong? and then to Australia, she
does not consider that China or Hong Kong is her homeland.

The portrayal of

original' homeland, China, is in sharp contrast with that in Farewell China, In the
episode A House of China", what we can see the house in China is only referred to a
photograph of Chan's ancestral house. Contrary to Rushdie's notion that <6the past is
homeMrs Chan's home is not situated in the pastbut in a "paradise on earth where
joy and safety can be provided to her and her family. In this sense, the construction of a
home can be tentatively and potentially everywhere. This mindset also manifests in
Chan when he looks at a photograph of a traditional Chinese house. Unlike Rushdie's
emotion when he looks at the photograph of house in Bombay where he was bom: it
[the photograph] reminds me that it's my present that is foreign, and that the past is
home" (9)Chan is impressed by the ancestral house in that "old homes radiate
harmony and strength". He admires the spirit that is embodied in the ancestral house.

68

At the end of the film, after the conflicts among the members are resolvedChan
plans to build a replica of his ancestral house's garden in the backyard of their house in
Australiarevealing the determination of the Chan family to settle down in Australia,
making there as home. Chan's act is to ''transplant" Chinese tradition and culture to
the host country as an emotional tie with the past. The concept of home is expressed
through the attachments and belongings of individuals to tradition and heritage.
Robbins points out: "instead of an ideal of detachment, actually existing
cosmopolitanism is a reality of ^attachment, multiple attachment, or attachment at a
distance(3). And"[h]abitation that is complex and multiple is already shot through
with unavoidable distances and indifferences, with comparison and critique; yet it does
not thereby cease to be a mode of belonging3). In this senseliving in the liminal
space can also generate a sense of belonging. This can also be home.
However, in the portrayal of the Chan family's settling down in Australia, Law
only focuses on the internal family conflicts, butas Mitchell points outvery little on
the interactions between the family and the Anglo-Australian society. In the portrayal
of Bing's attempt to assimilate into the society, only a sequence depicts her relationship
with her Australian colleagues in the officebut Bing seems retiring. The principal
concerns of Bing and Mr and Mrs Chan in Australia are their housesprivate spheres,
rather than their relationships with the community or the society. The replica of Chan's
ancestral house in the backyard also serves to maintain cultural difference. They
display an identity distinct from the imagined national identity as non-assimilated.
Their persistence of maintaining cultural difference threatens and destabilizes

69

homogenous national identity. To include them as nationalcitizens of Australia may

depend on the Australians' act of re-imagining their nation as a multi-cultural one.

Law's Farewell China

gradual loosened connection between one and his/her nation.

The Immigration

Trilogy functions as threats to the continuity of nation-states. The ending of Farewell

China suggests the disillusionment with the nation-stateAutumn Moon reveals a
paradox that the reunification of Hong Kong and China triggers the residentsloss of
homeand the way of "living floatingly depicted in Floating Life can be operated
independentlyfiromnation-states. Law persistently underlies that the state of migration,
exile and diaspora is traumatic. On the one hand, in the host country, uprootedness,
alienation and displacement inflict people's mind. On the other handmigration brings
about a loss of historymemorytradition and culture in the previous homebut, for
Law, these are the essences to create a new home. The Trilogy begins with a tragedy
Farewell China and ends on Floating Life a light comedy. The last part seems to offer a
solution to the traimia of migration: living in a liminal space as a mode of existence.
The film itself also reveals Laws strategy of identification. The naturaF or eternal
link between a place and the people seems to no longer exist.
Law's TrUogy reveals that people in diaspora may not be longing for returning
to their original home(s) (place of origin or of parents'/ancestorsorigin) in view of
the fact that very often political and social instabilities are the reason for exile or
migration. There is always a dystopia/utopia tension between Hiere(s)and here(s).

70

These films focus on the problems and contradictions of the daily life affected by
historical and political turbulences.

Her characters do not directly confront these

turbulences such as Tianamnen Incident and Hong Kong's handover in 1997.

She

makes use of various cinematic devicesfor instancecolour and music, to delineate the
characters' mental disturbances inflicted by these events. The implication of historical
and political events may be sensed in the disturbance that invades the characters'
emotion and mind. The viewers are also invited to contemplate the past in coimection
with the construction of identity through images that appear to be trivial, for instance,
traditional Chinese songs, Chinese cuisine, music, family rituals, and festival
celebrations.
Moving away from the monumental national memory, Law focuses more on
personal and familial memories for the construction of identity. In search of home
linking memory entirely to a national past may reinforce the concept of nation as an
essentialized and homogenous "imagined community". For the people in diaspora, by
doing thisthey will also position themselves at the margin to centre the "homeland".
Ratherher films are concerned with how family history and memory determine one's
identityto a certain extent. In discussing the Chinese cosmopolitans, Kwok Bun Chan
raises the significance of familial tie in binding the members living separately:
Although family members are physically set apart from each
otherthe familyas collectivist emotion, sentiment, ideaor
ideal provides a transnational source of unit... A familial contract

71

is more enduring and binding partly because it is also based on

emotionswhich makes itas a contract, unique. (209)
To tackle conflicts and difficulties in negotiating with the new culturethey position
themselves in relation to the development of the family with the help of their tradition,
heritage and culture. To deal with the sense of mobility, rootlessness and continuous
drifting, their identity is embodied in the selective process of memory. This is also as a
means of resisting to entirely assimilate into the new culture, so as not to subordinate to
another "imagined community. While home in Law's films reveals a transformation
from a paradigm of the nation-state to a space of liminality, homein Aim Huis films
suggests a different transformation, which will be discussed in the next chapter.

72

Chapter 3
Home in Memory: An Ongoing Process of Struggle in
Ann Hui's Films

As discussed in the previous chapter, the portrayals of homeplaces in Clara

Law's "Immigration Trilogy reveal a gradual loosened coimection between people and
homeland. Home is transformed from a paradigm of the nation-state to a space of
liminality. In contrast with Law'sfilmsthoseby Ann Hui reveal recurrent physical
and emotional attachment to the homeplaces. This chapter focuses on the analysis of
three films by Hui that invest in memory relatively heavily during Hong Kong's later
transitional period: Song of the Exile, As Time Goes By and Ordinary Heroes. These
films depict Hui's self-reflexiveness of Hong Kong peopled home in different local
perspectives facing the identity crisis around 1997.
Starting from the late 1970sHid has been one of the most influential
filmmakers in Hong Kong. She is a forerunner of the Hong Kong First Wave, along
with Allen Fong, Patrick Tam, Yim HoAlex Cheungand Tsui Hark. Hui was bom in
Northern China in 1947 of Sino-Japanese heritage: a daughter of a Chinese father and a
Japanese mother. She emigrated from Mainland China to Macao and then to Hong
Kong in postwar period. Hui was member of the 1960s new generation who had
received elite British colonial education in Christian Anglo-Chinese secondary school
and then in the University of Hong Kong. She received a bachelor's degree in English
73

and in 1972 a Master's degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Hong
Kong. Hui went to the London Film School to study films in 1974. After returned to
Hong Kong in 1975, she worked as an assistant to King Hu (Hu Jinquan)1 and as a
director of drama series and documentaries in television stations. During the 1970s and
1980s the three television stations were training grounds for many young filmmakers,
which helped to establish a style of social realism in Hong Kong's New Wave cinema.
Hui later joined the film industry and emerged as a New Wave pioneer in the
late 1970sa decade that was regarded as the mature stage of Hong Kong people's
local consciousness". Among the many First Wave filmmakers in their formative
period of career, Hui was considered the one who was particularly concerned for social
and political issues. Ackbar Abbas points out that the filmmakers of new Hong Kong
cinema situate themselves in a position of critical proximitythat iswhere one is
always a part of what one is criticizing" (27).

The New Wave filmmakers have

developed a sense of belonging to Hong Kong. During the days when Hui worked as
director of television dramas and documentaries in Television Broadcasting Limited
(TVB) and Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK)many of her works explored social
issues such as "Ah Sze[A ZM] in series Social Worker [Bei Dou Xing],2 and "The Boy
from Vietnam" [Lai Ke], The Road[Lu\ and The Bridge [Qiao] in series Below the

King Hu (1932-1997) is famous for his martial art films especially^ Touch ofZen [HsiaNv] (1970)
Mdiich won an award in the 1975 Cannes Film Festival, and Legend of the Mountain [Shan Chung
Chu'uan Chi] (1979). Stephen Teo argues that Hu's films embed a national style (ccHKs New Wave in
Retrospect" 18).
2

This is a television series produced by TVB about social workers. "Ah Szeis a story of a woman
immigrantfrom Mainland China \ ^ o becomes a prostitute in order to make living in Hong Kong.

74

Lion Rock [Shizi Shanxia]? The Below the Lion Rock series were produced by RTHK,
a govemment-ftrnded broadcasting station with a mission to address the residents5
concerns and to criticize local social conditions. In 1977 and 1978Hui joined the
Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) and made six one-hour television
episodes for its drama series ICAC [Lianzheng Gongchu] which dramatize the issues of
corruption and bribery in Hong Kong.4 Some of

television dramas were so

socially and politically sensitive that they were banned from broadcasting by the then
Television and Films Authority,5
As seen from the contents of the above television dramas, Hui started to concern
with the conditions of immigrants and lower class people at the very early stage of her
career. Her features are characterized by political activism and social realism, a style
that she has well developed since her television days. This style is prominent not only
in her earliest films such as The Secret and The Boat People but also the recent ones
like Ordinary Heroes in terms of ttemes and aesthetics.

The series Below the Lion Rock was launched in 1972. Its name was changed to Hong Kong, Hong
Kong [Xianggang Xianggang] in the 1980s. "The Road" tells the story of three women drug addicts
from the lower class. "The Boy jfrom Vietnam" is thefirst part of Aim Hui's Vietnam Trilogy. Theotho4
two parts are The Story of Voo Viet and The Boat People.
4

This is a television series about the work of ICAC. Set up in 1974, ICAC Is an independent
govenmient-funded organization with the aim of getting rid of corruption in Hong Kong.
5

These include A Real Man and "Thefovestigatim made for ICAC vMch both dealt with police
corruptioa These two episodes were banned because of the violent attacks m the ICAC office by some
police officers in November 1977 (Guang 3> "The Bridge55 of Below the Lion Rock series was banned
due to its criticism on the govermnenfs policies and bureaucracy.

75

Since her debut The Secret in 1979a thriller with complexities and artistic
techniques, Hui has been praised for introducing her thoughtful ideas to the commercial
Hong Kong film industry.

Many of her films were acclaimed as achieving both

commercial and artistic successes such as The Spooky Bunch

Summer Snow. In contrast to Clara Law who considers that she is never part of the
Hong Kong mainstream (qtd. in McCredie)Hui considers that she is always part of it.
Hui once expressed that the commercial system of Hong Kong film industry could still
allow filmmakers to produce good films if they made an effort. As discussed in
Introductionin the face of the commerce and entertainment oriented Hong Kong
cinema, the New Wave filmmakers have to find alternatives within the system. Hui's
approach of blending commercial, artistic and social elements in her films seems so
successful that she has become an influential veteran filmmaker in Hong Kong. She
injects comic elements in horror films The Spooky Bunch and Visible Secrets. Yet
these films preoccupy "Svith the world of ghosts and the linking of a character's
personal history with a broadercultural past," as Stephen Teo comments on Hui's
horror films with comic effects {HK Cinema 149). Though a woman filmmaker, Hui5s
films do not particularly focus on woman's issues.

She has remarked that except

Summer Snow, she had never tried to deal with women issues(qtd. in Lai 53). Hui
has made a wide range of genres: ghost stories The Spooky Bunch and Visible Secret
thrillers The Story of Woo Viet and Zodiac Killers [Jidao Zhuizhong] (1991)
adaptations Love in a Fallen City [Qingcheng Zhi Lion] (1984) and The Eighteen
Springs, melodramas Song of the Exile and July Rhapsody, martial arts epics Romance

76

of Book and Sword [Shujian Enchou Lu] (1987)and documentaries Prodigal's Return
[Gt// Qun Lai Xi] (1992) and As Time Goes By. Erens points out that Hui's approach of
making various genre films allows her not to be singled out as a feminist filmmaker and
thus not to be excluded from the mainstream ("Film Work of Ann Hui 179-80).
Hui had co-operated with artists from both commercial and arthouse film
sectors.

Although it is the filmmakers of Second Wave in the 1990s such as Clara

Law, Stanley Kwan and Wong Kar-wai who brought Hong Kong films into the
intemational scene, as Teo claims (HK Cinema 184), HuFs works had been shown in
international film festivals in the early 1980swell before that was achieved by the
filmmakers of Second Wave. The Spooky Bunch won the Best Foreign Film at the
London Film Festival and was shown in the Berlin Film Festival in 1981. The Boat
People showed the world that there was more to Hong Kong cinema than stylish
mayhem and that it had a politically engaged and deeply humanistic sensibilityand
Song of the Exile "solidified her intemational standing" (Fu and Desser 4). Some of her
films were so well received that big film companies employed her to make films; for
instance, Love in a Fallen City was made for Shaw Brothers. She was also employed
by film companies to make films that targeted more serious audiencesuch as Song of
the Exile
Wu wrote many scripts for Taiwanese arthouse fiimmaker Hou Hsiao-hsiensuch as
Dust in the Wind [Lianlian Fengchen] (1986)City of Sadness [Beiqing Chengshi]
(1989) and The Puppet Master [Hsimeng Jemheng] (1993). Hui also sought economic
capital by herself for making filmsthe subject matters of which lack commercial

77

flavour but she desired to explore. She spent many years on seeking investment from
local and overseas film companies for making Ordinary Heroes (Guang 9092).
Similar to Lawwith migratory experiences in her younger daysHui is also
sensitive to the sentiments of displacement and dislocation in a state of homelessness.
Searching for home during historical, political and social transitions is a recurrent
theme in her films. The impacts of historical, political and social events on individuals
are intertwined with cultural displacementidentitiesand selfhood. As pointed out by
Shu Kei^he gist of Hui's preoccupations is the momentum of history and political
events interacting with personal lives126). Lisa Odham Stokes and Michael Hoover
note that the identity of Hong Kong Chinese in Hui's films is explored very often in
light of the diaspora that followed some historical events such as Communist Party's
take-over of Mainland China's sovereignty in 1949 and the aftermath of Vietnam War
in the 1970s (143). Her Vietnam Trilogy - "The Boy from VietnamThe Story of Woo
Viet and The Boat People is interpreted by many critics allegorically as a revelation of
Hong Kong people's collective anxiety in the historical relationship with Mainland
China: What happened in Vietnam may also happen in Hong Kong after the handover.
In the films that Hui made in the later transitional periodthe historical events also
include Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984Tiananmen Incident in 1989and Hong
Kong's handover in 1997.
The contrasting critics5 comments on historical and political consciousness in
Hui's films have been brought up for discussion by Stokes and Hoover. For instance
Li Cheuk-to criticizes that Hui's conservative style offers no "objective or logical

78

analysis (Cited in Stokes and Hoover 143). Alsoin Li's perspectiveHui's Love in a
Fallen City lacks a mature understanding of politics and at the same time shows a
knack for self-pity ("The Return of the Father169). In contrast to Li's comments, Lo
Wai luk considers that Hui is sensitive to historical, political and social events, and she
expresses ''the concern of the times, either in subject matter, narrative structure or in
dramatic development" (66). In factas Erens points outHui is unwilling to take sides
on political issuesand this may be the reason why some critics criticize her as
politically naive ("Film Work of Ann Hui" 179). The ambivalence of Hui's stance on
political issues is because of her humanistic approach in dealing with them. She has not
explored the historical, political, and social issues radically, even in her most ambitious
film Ordinary Heroes which is about the Hong Kong social activists in the 1970s and
1980s. Even though the backdrops in the films are significant historical and political
transitions, Hui's consistent humanistic approach gives the works a softened tone.
Memory is also a recurrent theme in Hui's works. Her first feature The Secret
in the perspective of Evans Chan, showed his "generation that Hong Kong had a past
even a haunted past (Cited in Rodriguez 65). Teo points out that in many of her earlier
films like The Spooky Bunch
and Sword and Song of the Exile
cultural memories and suggests that it is a decisive factor determining the psyches and
events of the present (HK Cinema 150). The exploration of this theme continues in her
recent films Ordinary Heroes^ Visible Secret and July Rhapsody. The revelation of
history and the past in her films is very often through personal memory of the characters

79

which are presented in subjective flashbacks. Thefrequent use offlashbacks is one of

the distinguishing cinematic characteristics in her films. Flashback is an image or a
filmic segment that is understood as representing temporal occurrences anterior to those
in the images that preceded it(Turim 1). Maureen Turim suggests that flashbacks in
film project a multi-dimensionality:
In factflashbacks in film often merge the two levels of
remembering the past, giving large-scale social and political
history the subjective mode of a single, fictional individuars
remembered experience.

This process can be called the

"subjective memory which here has the double sense of the

rendering of history as a subjective experience of a character in the
fictionand the formation of the Subject in history as the viewer of
the film identifying with the fictional characters positioned in a
fictive social reality. (2)
According to Turim, in the reenactment of the past in flashbacks, the personal history is
presented as images of memory. At the same timethese are also images of a shared
past, a collective history. The subjectivity of individual character is manifested in the
unfolding of the collective pastwhich the viewers may also identify with. In Hui's
filmsthe momentum of history is not seen from an objective viewpointbut from a
subjective onetreated as personal experiences of the individual (Teo, "The Squint-eyed
Gaze93). In the reenactment of history in her films throughflashbacksHuireclaims
the subjectivity of not only her own as afilmmakerbut also the Hong Kong people.

80

Lo observes that in many Hui's earlierfilmsforinstance The Story of Woo Viet,

The Boat People, Romance of Book and Sword, and Zodiac KiUers, very often the
characters' journeys are involuntary. They are forced to leave homeor homeland
because the circumstances become increasingly threatening.

Regarding the link

between people and their homeland in the abovefilmsLonotes:

The physical connections of blood and ties with the motherland
and its history may no longer exist; subconsciously, however, they
continue to strike responsive chords in us.

Thereuponlife

becomes rootless; the sense of drifting grows every day. (66)

In this regard, 4Cthe involuntary action of leaving one's home, community or country is a
subconscious desire for a homea community or a motherland67). This physical
disconnection resonates in Law's Irmnigration Trilogy. As discussed in the previous
chapterLaw's Trilogy shows that the physical and emotional connections between a
subject and his/her homeland are gradually loosened. The senses of rootlessness and
longing for home are still observed in Hui's works in Hong Kong's later transitional
period. Howeverthere are traces, in contrast to those films mentioned by Lo, that a
tightened connection between the self and home can be observed. Li points out that Hui
has progressed naturally to the reality of China the China factor in Hong Kong's
affairsnot least because of the 1997 issues" ("The Return of the Father168).
Compared with Law'sfilmshistorical,political and social events are explicitly
crucial in the formation of one's identity in Hui's films. These events are often
intertwined with the narratives.

The social movements in the 1970s and 1980s

81

recurrently appear in Hui's films. Lui Ta-Iok calls the 1970s of Hong Kong the "social
awareness decade when Hong Kong belongers and social activists actively fought for
welfare and human rights: The social movements of the 1970s built up the
consciousness that it is the people themselves who are the xnotivating force for reform
(91). This is the mature state of developing Hong Kong people's "local consciousness55.
However, with the announcement of the Sino-British Joint Declaration in the early
1980sthe people of Hong Kong were suddenly put into an uncertain situation in which
identity crisis and social anxiety were resulted. To tackle the identity crisisHui in her
films attempts to reevaluate the past for pondering on the present and future.
In Hui's films that will be discussed in this chapter, the notion of home is
articulated mainly through one's commitment to one's community when it is at the
times of political and social turbulences. This notion of Home is contrary to that in
Law's films associated with securitysafety and a better livelihood. Song of the Exile
like Law's Farewell China
complexwhere China is seen as a brutality and violent force. Violence may be aroused
due to submission to ethnical and national affiliation, which is represented by the hard
life that Hueyin's grandparents lead in Commimist China. Yetunlike the ending of
Farewell China
words of Hueyin's grandfather who has traumatic experience during Cultural
Revolution: China still has hope/5

Furthermorej through re-visiting the past in

memory, Hueyin and her Japanese mother decide to stay in Hong Kong where they
finally consider home. In As Time Goes By Hui traces her memory with her college

82

peers of the University of Hong Kong and her mother on the eve of Hong Kong's
handover. The intense emotions of Hui and her mother provoked by memories of the
city's past once again re-affirm Hong Kong as home. Ordinary Heroes is a semidocumentary of the social movements of the 1970s and 1980s in Hong Kong. By
narrating the stories of some real life social activists, Hui tries to restore the spirit of
social activism to capitalist Hong Kong. The principal characters in the above films
show a determination to face the uncertainties of Hong Kong in its transitional period.
A blurred boundary between genres is found in the films under discussion: Song
of the Exile is a semi-autobiography, As Time Goes By is an autobiographical
documentary and Ordinary Heroes is a semi-documentary.6 The blurred boundaries
between fiction and autobiography, autobiography and documentary, and documentary
and fiction in these three films respectively are situated in a space what Abbas describes
as between fact and fictionwhen he discusses the characteristics of genres in the
new Hong Kong cinema. For Abbas, this is a space that allows the given-to-be-seen "to
retain a certain critical speculative edge" (26). At the very early stage of her career, Hui
also tended to blur the boundaries for creating genre films with political overtones and
turning political endeavors into personal statements (Erens, "Film Work of Aim Hui
177). The blurred boundary between genres in the above three films creates a politics

Another prominent Aim Hui's work that is between fact and ^fiction during Hong Kong's later
transitional period is "The Prodigal's Return[Gui Qun Lai Xi\ (1992)a television "fictional
documentar/' made for RTHK. This documentary is about Taiwanese composer and singer Hou
Dejian's return to MaMand China, involvement in the Tiananmen Incident, and subsequent departures
from China to Taiwan and then to Australia.

83

of identity. Through the narrative of a subject's life storythe autobiographical film

plays a role in the construction of the subject's identity. As Stuart Hall indicates,
cinema is not a second-order mirror, but the representation within cinema can constitute
people as new kinds of subjects (236-37). The documentary film intends to present
images of reality to the viewers. A space between fact and fiction can allow Hui
to address the historicalpolitical and social issues in a softened tone.
Exiles in a foreign land is a natural subject in Huis worksas noted by
Erens, since Hui "considers the Chinese a diaspora nation throughout the world" and
she explores the theme of quest for "personal identity within the increasing complex
notion of national identity (179). However, Hui has "the good sense to question it
[China] at the same time as she dwells on it (Teo, The Squint-eyed Gaze 93). As
discussed in the previous chapter on Law, her "Immigration Trilogy exemplifies what
Rey Chow proposes to criticize the nation-state on the periphery. Contrary to Chow's
proposalHui ponders on "Chineseness" not outside the framework of nation, but
withinwith an attempt to negotiate with the collective. Her investigations include what
it means to be "Chinese" and the conventional notion of Mainland China as homeland
in a double perspective: both a Hong Kong belonger and Chinese. Contemplating
homeHui always takes into consideration the China factor in the history of Hong
Kong. This will be shown in the threefilms by Hui under discussion.
The rationale of choosing Song of the Exile
Heroes for detailed discussion is because they are particularly invested in memory and
explore the issues of home and identity. My point of departure is the emergence of the

84

diaspora films in the year of 1990of which Law's Farewell China and Hui's Song of
the Exile both article an "exile complexso to trace the different routes as represented
in their films afterwards. Therefore, Hui's films made before 1990 that explore the
issues of exile, diaspora and migratory experiences such as Love in a Fallen City and
semi-autobiography Starry is the Night are excluded from detailed discussion. Zodiac
Killers, which is made in 1991tells the story of Chinese and Hong Kong students in
Japan is also excluded since it is not invested much in memory.

Song of the Exile: Home as a Process of Negotiation

Set in 1973, Song of the Exile is a melodrama which tells the family history of a
young Chinese woman Hueyin (played by Maggie Cheung) and the reconciliation with
her mother. After leaving home to study at the London Film School for some years
Hueyin returns to Hong Kong for her sister's wedding. As Hueyin is at odds with her
mother Aiko (played by Luk Siu-fan) since childhood, she has to face the inevitable
conflicts with her mother. Also, this is a critical moment for her to think about where
her home is. After her sister's wedding, Hueyin accompanies Aiko to visit Japan, It is
not until this moment that she knows the fact that her mother is Japanese who married
her father in Northern China near the end of the Second World War in which China and
Japan were rivalries. The conflicts in the family that Hueyin has to face are not only
hers with her mother but also those of the older generations. The memory-images in
Hueyin's flashbacks are propelled by mother-daughter' s reconciliation. At the end of
the trip in Japan, she reconciles with her mother and they both consider Hong Kong

85

home. Hueyin s life shares a lot of similarities with Hui: They were both bom in
Northern China of a Chinese fether and a Japanese mother, iimnigrated to Macao and
then to Hong Kong in the early 1960sand studied at a film school in London. This
film is Hui's semi-autobiography as she disclosed that it was her own story (qtd. in
Guang 41) although the film does not explicitly show this out.
In fact in earlier times, Hui started to ponder on her own life experience in
Starry is the Night which is about a love affair of a graduate from the University of
Hong Kong and a professor. This love affair spans a period of over 20 years,firomthe
1960s to 1980sagainst the backdrop of a series of Hong Kong social and political
events that include the 1967 riotsthe student movements in the 1970s and the first
district elections in the 1980s. The past is revealed through subjective flashbacks of the
female protagonist. Biographical elements can be traced in this film. Being a graduate
from the University of Hong Kong and passing childhood in Macaothe female
protagonisfs background is reminiscent of the filmmaker's. Hui recollects her younger
days as part of the collective memory of Hong Kong from the 1960s to the 1980s.
Compared with Starry is the Night
in relation to her life more intensely. The Chinese film title Ketu Qiuhen (literally
Guest Route Autunm Regretis derived from a traditional Cantonese aria expressing
the sentiments of a sojourner who persistently remembers his beloved whom he meets
in the journey. Fragments of this song appear in the movie highlightmg a sojourner's
constant yearnings for a sense of belonging. The members of Hueyin's family lived in
various localities including China, Japan, Macao, Hong Kong, and herself in London.

86

Her Chinese grandparents are patriotic and nationalistic, who start to teach Hueyin
Chinese literature when she is a kid. In the hope of contributing to establish a new
China during the Cultural Revolution, Hueyin5 s grandparents return to China and
promise to bring her back home once the country is safe. Hueyin's Japanese mother
Aiko persistently remembers her native homeland Japan. For Hueyin herself, she does
not have a sense of belonging to Hong Kong at the very beginning of the film. Every
character urges to search for home and a strong sense of displacement is manifested
in the film.
Some critics suggest that the emergence of autobiographies Starry is the Night
Song of the Exile and As Time Goes By in Hui's works is due to her "Forty Complex",
that isas Hui reached the age of 40it is a critical moment for her to look back the
times of her life. By representing the social changes and upheavals between the 1960s
and 1980sHui makes these films as a means of encapsulating her youth, one of the
most significant phases in her life (Po 122). More importantly, Hui as a filmmaker with
a strong social consciousness in the face of the identity crisis during the transitional
period recalls her personal past as an act of contemplating the identity of her own as
well as of a Hong Kong resident. As discussed above, Turim suggests that flashbacks
in film often merge the two levels of remembering the past. The voice-over right at the
beginning of the film states that it is the recollection of the narratorthat isthe
protagonist Hueyin, immediately enhances her subjectivity in presenting memory. By
presenting Hueyins memory through flashback in relation to her life in different
localities and periods of timeHui reenacts a shared past of many immigrants from

87

Mainland China and Macao who settled down and grew up in Hong Kong in the 1960s.
Jens Brockmeier points out that the unfolding of the life course in an autobiographical
narrative is a process of "retrospective reconstructionthat is, a recollection of the
historical order of life events" (270). However, the author does not narrate exactly all
the events or in chronological orderas he/she has an intention in mind of projecting
his/her life history in a meaningful way. In this sensethe writing of autobiography
merges with the project of identity construction (270).
Susan Egan, in analyzing the autobiographies by diasporic writers and
filmmakers such as Maxine Hong Kingston, Trinh T. Minh-ha and Michael Ondaatje in
the United States, undermines the significant of history in the formation of identity.
Egans favours Avtar Brah's concept of "diasporic spaceto describe the subject of
physical displacement for addressing particularly the issues in connection with the
interactions of centre and margin, dominance and subordination, and other
confrontations.

For Egans, the diasporic space suitably describes place and

boundary and activities of transition in literal and in metaphorical terms. It names the
site of creative tension as more significant than the timeline of history (120-21). She
also argues: "Frequently riding ideological shifts, personal experience also creates
geographies of the mind that use space as more pliable imaginative structure than
time (123).

Egaxi's argument undermines history and the past, which can be

manifested in memorymyth and narratives in the formation of identity of the people in

border crossing when they confront the present with the past.

88

As seen in Hui's semi-autobiographies, history is a significant aspect in the

formation of the characters' identity. Time is not less pliable than space. Flashbacks in
Hui's autobiographies are used for revealing memory of different locations as well as
of different periods of time to highlight the clash of the individual against the
momentum of history.

One of theflashbacksthroughAiko's memoryreveals her

encounter with Hueyin's Chinese father in Northern China in the Second World War.
As China and Japan were at warAiko after marriage had to begin her life of exile in
China and later in Macao and Hong Kong. This flashback suggests that personal fate is
integrated with history. As Teo points out:
Hui's use of flashback conveys a strong underlining of events,
hencea feeling of historical change as well as personal change.
Despite or perhaps because of - the changes, her characters get
on with their lives and get still more entangled in historic events:
herehistory acts as one's nemesis. (The Squint-eyed Gaze 94)
Hui's films repeatedly reinforce an idea that one's life is always interactive with
historical events.
More significantly, Hui has a specific goal in the depiction of the historical
events in connection with her notion of home. She searches for home in place as well
as in time.

In discussing the construction of time in (auto)biography? Brockmeier

points out the significance of the time of the actual scene-setting in which a narrative is
toldwhich he calls "the scene-setting time": This is all the more momentous because
it is only here that 'story-time5 and 'discourse-time' are brought into a common (and

89

circular) perspective" (275-76). He argues that the fusion of the time of the story and
the plot results in "autobiographical time, the time of one's life history (276). This
particular mode of time is significant in the construction of one's identity in
autobiographies. Made in 1990Song of the Exile is set in 1973. The significance of
this scene-setting time is that during the 1970s Hong Kong was on its way to a political
and social awakening. In the film, quite a lot of social and political upheavals such as
the student movements and the anti-corruption demonstrations are revealed through the
television news. After reconciling with her mother, Hueyin stays in Hong Kong and
works as a television journalista job that can allow her critically observe the society.
Hueyin's concerns with the political and social events demonstrate her commitment to a
community that she can call home. For Hui? the political and social consciousness of
the Hong Kong people shovm in the 1970s is the spirit of home.
There is a flashback revealing Hueyin5 s departure for boarding school through
the view of her mother Aiko. Erens points out that in this manner, Hui yokes together
the subjectivity of both mother and daughter", and this also hints at a mother-daughter's
reconciliation later in the film (Film Work of Aim Hui188). Abbas and Erens have
noted that the cinematic presentation of memory through flashbacks in Song of the Exile
is to re-evaluate the past in the light of the present. These flashbacks reveal wrong
impressions of the past, which are later corrected because of the present situation
(Abbas 38Erens 188). The discrepancies between the past and the present revealed in
flashbacks are largely due to the muteness of Aiko who does not know how to speak
Cantonese. She is the "foreigner" of the familythe silent Other. It is not until Aiko

90

knows how to speak Cantonese that she has her own voice. Song of the Exile can be
seen as the Voiceof the exile. During the trip in Japan, Hueyin who does not know
any Japanese experiences a strong sense of alienation and displacementwhich enables
her to understand her mother's spiritual trauma as an exile away from hometown. Aiko
realizes that her home in memory no longer exists. The home in Japan is uncanny to
her because what is familiar now becomes unfamiliar. As suggested by Abbas: Her
[Hui's] song of the exile is . a rational song of reconciliation, a song about the end of
exile through understanding" (38). The mesh revealed in the flashbacks brings out
Hui's view that home is established on an urge for understanding, comprising and
negotiating.
The China factor is inescapable. Even though Hueyin considers Hong Kong
homeher visit to her grandparents in Guangzhong and her sentiments towards China
amid the Cultural Revolution suggest that she still has to face the reality of China. The
political and social disturbances in. China during the Cultural Revolution can be seen as
echoes to the aftermath of Tianamen Incident. The last shot of the film is a flashback in
which young Hueyin plays happily with her grandparents in a park in Macao on a sunny
day. This scene projects a peaceful atmosphere. This is the ideal home that she would
like to attain. Yetin view of the political and social turmoil in China, this state has not
been achieved.
Song of the Exile still reveals hope on China. Hui once remarked that when the
film was made half waythe Tiananmen Incident occurred. This Incident disturbed
many people at that time. The scriptwriter Wu Nien-jun adds a dialogue by Hueyin's

91

grandfather to Hueyin near the end of the film: Hope is on you. You are China" (qtd.
in Guang 42my translation). Both Farewell China and Song of the Exile can be
classified as family melodrama. If Farewell China is situated in a paradigm of the
nation-state, Song of the Exile is ambivalent.

Memories of Hueyin's childhood,

adolescence and adulthood appear, but they do not bring her to some place of origini.e.
China, where is regarded conventionally as homeand/or homelandof the Cliinese
in diaspora. In the cases of Aiko and Hueyin's grandparents, they show disillusionment
after return to their respective homelands. The ending that Hueyin settles down in
Hong Kong and does not stay with her grandparents in China seems to challenge China
as a nation-state. Yet, the cohesive connection between Hong Kong and China cannot
be ignored. This is shown by the concerns that Hueyin shows to both Hong Kong and
China. Home is not an individuars matter, but involves other members of the family,
and is extended to the whole community and the nation-state as well. This notion of
home is further reinforced in her autobiographical documentary As Time Goes By.

As Time Goes By: Remembering as Experiencing

As Time Goes By is an autobiographical documentary in that it is autobiography
in content and documentary in form. In this documentary, the filmmaker, narrator and
protagonist is the same person, Hui. In As Time Goes By
thoughts of Hong Kong since her childhood in the 1940s with some her college friends
and her Japanese mother on the eve of Hong Kong's handover in 1997, Like her semiautobiographies Starry is the Night and Song of the Exile, this autobiographical

92

documentary focuses on her personal memory shot through the historical trajectory in
relation to political, social and cultural aspects. Nevertheless, unlike the above two
feature films, this autobiographical documentary does not aim at targeting the
mainstream audience, as documentary is not a popular genre in Chinese communities.
In such a case, Hui can have morefreedomin manipulating her subjectivity in making
this film. Erens suggests that As Times Go By is Hui's personal statement on the
handover" (192). It is her personal memoir of British colonial Hong Kong.7
Jim Lane suggests that the different forms of autobiographical documentaries
correspond to a self that is constructed.

In the case of self-portraits, the self is

constructed in relation to the external world, which includes the hometown, citynation,
religiouspolitics, or art etc (95). In As Time Goes By9 Hui as a prestigious filmmaker
in Hong Kong focuses on her life in relation to Hong Kong rather than to her art. Hui
and her college peers talk about her films. For instance, they mention that she likes
including classic Cantonese times in her films, such as Guest Route Autunm Regret" in
Song of the Exile, which shows that Hui favours traditional Chinese culture even though
she received formal British colonial education since childhood. Yetthe focus is not her
art. Throughout the documentary, no clips of her films are shown. Also, no interviews
of Hui's counterparts in the film industry are included. The subject of As Time Goes By
is not Ann Hui the filmmaker but is Hong Kong, the conmiunity she considers home.
7

Other th^n Ann Hui's As Time Goes By

Xi\ (1997) is also a personal memoir that cmtemplates Hong Kong's reunification with China. Recalling
the past, Kwan meditates Ms identity, sexuality and art. Both of these autobiographical documentaries
reveal the nostalgia and uncertainties triggered off by the handover.

93

The perspective in this autobiographical documentary is that of a Hong Kong resident

rather than that of a fibnimker.
The autobiographical documentary begins with Hui and her college peers5
gathering in a Chinese restauranta public space. There are also other shots in public
spaces that are memorial to Hui; for instanceNorth Point where Hui and her family
stayed right after arriving in Hong KongSt. Paul's Convent High School and the
University of Hong Kong where Hui studied before.

These public spaces are

represented in a rather peaceful and quiet atmosphere, almost without the appearance of
any passers-by or vehicles. In the absence of '"preseirtnessthese timeless images
project a nostalgic sentiment. There are shots in which Hui strolls in an outlying island
Cheung Chan where Hui considers that the residents still maintain feisurely and
peaceful life-style that is difficult to trace in the urban Hong Kong. More prominently
Hui takes tram traveling along Hong Kong Island, passing by the business areas
Central and Admiralty. The evening scenery of the city is spectacular, but is slightly
distorted in a blurred colour, with the sentimental gaze of Hui on the streets, projecting
a sense of melancholy. These nostalgic images reveal the lack of the present: a femiliar
home. Other than public spacesthere are also shots in Hui's homea private space
where the interview of her mother is conducted. Together with Hui's personal memory
of her lifefamily and the citythe shootings of these private and various public spaces
blur the boundaries between herselfher family md the city. Her persoiml history is
inextricably mtertwmed with the historical circmnstances of Hong Kong. This fosters

94

Hui's notion of home that it is not m individual matter, but involves other members of
the femily and the community,
Hui's college peers in the gathering include those who are engaged in academic
politicaland business positions, such as Margaret Ng who is a barrister and a legislator
and Jim Tak-lung who is famous in the fields of mass media and academy. Bom in the
1940s and received colonial education in prestigious educational institutions, they
belong to the elite class under British colonial rule. They are representatives of the
leaders of the societyand have contributed a lot to the development of Hong Kong. In
their middle agethey passed the first half-life in Hong Kong under colonial rule, and
will pass the second half-life under the SAR government if they continue to stay in
Hong Kong. Facing Hong Kong's political and social transitions, they are also at a
critical transition of their life. In the director's statement published in Artslink, Hui
states that she is interested in the people and As Time Goes By is about the people of
Hong Kong:
What Hong Kong means to me is not the placebut the people.
To make this film makes me reflect on the people I intimately
knowand of myself - how I have become the person I am. So I
grouped some schoolmates together to have a chat about our
past...especially our education and our cultural lives (which I
have never pondered on before), and it has led to some
enlightenment even for myself - our limitations and our strength.
(HKAC 16)

95

Among the college peersthe focus is on the Legislative Councilor Margaret Ng and the
entrepreneur in the media sector Jim Tak-lxmg, as they are famous public figures who
are concerned with political and social issues in Hong Kong.

In factthey had

participated or involved in the student movements when they were imiversity students
in the 1960s. In the documentary, very often their personal memories are triggered off
by the others' verbal recollection of the past A dynamic relation between personal and
collective memory manifests in this process of recalling the past by tbis group of people.
As discussed at the outset about the framework of collective memoryMaurice
Halbwachs claims that collective memory is the resultor smn, or combination of
individual members' memory about the specific group (39). By placing himseWherself
in the perspective of the groupeach individual member may affirm that 44the memory
of the group realizes and manifests itself in individual memory" (40). The gathering in
the restaurant is shot in "home video" style, with an aim of enhancing the intimacy
among the group members, as well as between the group members and the viewers, that
isthe general public. Their personal memories are thus transcended to a collective
level, indicating that of the collective identity of Hong Kong people.
The forward movement of this autobiographical documentary is propelled by the
transformation of Hong Kong's political, social and cuituml matters since the 1940s
and the anticipation of uncertainties towards the handover. Througb personal memories
of Hui and her peers, As Time Goes By takes a contemplative approach to look at these
changes. As an autobiographical documentary, it persistently links the conversations
and interviews with black-and-white photographsstills, newsreels and newspapers

96

cuttings, which are presented as memories of the individual speakers. Hui and her
college peers' accounts of the events are chronological, that isstarting from their
childhood, then the life at secondary schools and at the University of Hong Kong.
Some monumental events in Hong Kong colonial history are mentioned such as the
riots in 1967 and student movements. Trivial matters are also talked about such as the
popularity of western popular music in Hong Kong and parties at the University.
Memory is presented both in visual and audio flashbacks. As they grew up in the
heyday of colonial Hong Kong, a lot of visual images are reminiscent of British colonial
culture, for instancethe Catholic Anglo-Chinese secondary schoolthe University of
Hong Kongand the church activities. There is almost an absence of China and
Chinese culture in visual image, except the newspaper cuttings of the martial arts serial
fiction by Jin Rong. HoweverChinapatriotism and Chinese culture often appear in
the audio flashbacks, for instance, their discussions about the leftist student movements,
Chinese literature and classic Cantonese tunes.

Though having received colonial

education starting from childhoodthey did not reject Chinese culture. Nor did they
reject western culture.

Being Chinese in British colonial Hong Kong, in Salman

Rushdie's wordstheir cultural identity "is at once plural and partial" (15). This is an
accommodation of adapting to both British colonial and traditional Chinese cultures.
The heterogeneity of Hong Kong cultural identity also manifests in language.
The dialogues of Hui and her college peers are in Cantonese, but those of her interview
are in Putonghua. Since As Time Goes By is a collaboration of Hong Kong and Taiwan
artistsit seems justifiable for Hui to speak in Putonghua. However, by speaking

97

Putonghua, Hui situates herself not merely in the position of being a Hong Kong
resident but also of being a Chinese. The same position can be found in Song of the
Exile^ which she contemplates the cultural identity of Hong Kong as part of the Chinese
diaspora. For Hui, the identities of Hong Kong people are multi-faceted. They are not
"essentialist". Hui cites her mother as a perfect example of Hong Kong resident. Being
Japanese, Hui's mother learned several languages; Cantonese when she got inarried to a
Chinesethen English when she visited her daughter in USA.

She plans to learn

Putonghua after the handover. The point that Hui wants to make is her mother's spirit
in adapting to the ever-changing conditions.
Rushdie suggests that memories, like broken mirrors, are fragmentary (11
The broken glass is not merely a mirror of nostalgia" but also a useful tool with which
to work in the present12). In As Time Goes By, the appearance of the fragmentary
memory images is in connection with the contents of the speakers' conversations and
contemplation of the present. These images emerge for the purpose of re-visiting the
place where they have been living over several decades. By remembering the pastHui,
her peers and her mother are also in the process of experiencing once again the difficult
times that they faced in the past decades, which allows them to expect such kind of
difficulties in the ftdxcre. The concept of "home55, which is meditated from different
personal experiences and in different perspectivesexplicates how to come to terms
with personal and collective histories and position oneself in the coimiiiraty's future.

98

Ordinary Heroes:
Among Hui's films under discussion. Ordinary Heroes projects the strongest
sense of social consciousness. The film is primarily designed as a semi-documentary of
social movements from the late 1970s to the late 1980sended in the aftemmth of
Tianamnen Incident. Right at the beginning of the film, it is stressed that the story is
about social activities in Hong Kong in the 1980s and that many of which did happen in
reality. The lives of real life activists such as Ng Chung YinFather Franco Mella
whom is called Ah Kam in thefilmandLeung Kwok Hung are also intertwined with
the narratives of these social activities. Before making the film, Hui had interviewed
some social activists including Father Mella. Hui's idea of making Ordinary Heroes
was initiated by a piece of news about the death of drifterwho later was found out
also a social activist. Hui expresses in the interview about Ordinary Heroes: When
people talk about Hong

Kong",

they neglect to talk about people involved in Hong

Kong society and people involved in social causes. No one had made a film about them
either (qtd. in Ho 18). In As Time Goes By, Hui explores how the university students
of the 1960s perceive the impacts of social movements, among others; whereas in
Ordinary Heroes
involved in these activities.
Erens points out that the form and subject matter of Ordinary Heroes show that
Hui goes back to her television days in the 1970s before she joined the film industry
(192). As mentioned earlierHui made many documentaries about social issues during
the 1970s with a style of realism when she was working for TVB and RTHK. Teo

99

observes that the style of Ordinary Heroes reminds the viewers of Huiss television work
The Bridge" made in 1978 (HK?s New Wave Retrospect" 21). "The Bridge is one
of the television programmes that she made for RTHK's Below the Lion Rock series
which Hui ako takes a semi-documentary approach. Similar to "The BridgeOrdinary
Heroes explores the social issues from 46the same multi-feceted viewpoints and in
contrasting perspectives" (21), Hencethe filming of Ordinary Heroes has double
meanings for Hui. Exploring the political and social movements of the 1970s and
1980sat the same time she does again what she did in those years. In a scene in
Ordinary Hemes, Hui acts as a television director who interviews Ah Kam and other
activists about the repatriation of boat brides from Hong Kong to Mainland China. This
act is reminiscent of her job as a television director in the 1970s when she was making
television documentaries and drama series about social issues.
Although Hui always claimed that she was apolitical and she never intended to
address politics in her films, she has disclosed in an interview that she chose the social
movements of the 1970s and 1980s as the subject matter of Ordinary Heroes because
she cSvanted to talk about Hong Kong on the eve of 1997and that she was
"consciously trying to use the film to express [her] own views" (qtd. in Ho 18). The
film is not explicitly about the handover as it is ended in a candlelight vigil for the
crackdown of Beijing students' democracy movement in 1989. Howeveraddressing
the political issues indirectly is one of the characteristics of contemporary Hong Kong
movies. The issue of 1997similar to the Tiananmen Incidenthas impact on Hong
Kong people re-thinking their cultural and national relations with ChinaL Facing an

100

identity crisis aroimd 1997making film about social movements of the 1970s and
1980s reveals Huis ideology that the past is fundamental to one's identity.
Ordinary Heroes is one of the many post-1997 films that contain amnesia
of memory as a plot device. L i points out that amnesia has become a recurring theme
in Hong Kong post-1997filmswhichcalls "attention to the people's troubling loss of
and search for identity as well as their difficulty in processing memories of yesterday
and outlooks for tomorrow" ("In Transition 15).8 When read allegorically, these films
exhibit Hong Kong people's perplexities caused by the identity problem around 1997.
Ordinary Heroes is composed of three episodes: "To ForgetTen Years of
Revolution" and Not to Forget. The "Ten Years of Revolution" refer to the period
from the late 1970s to the late 1980s when Hong Kong experienced many social
upheavals. By putting the episode Ten Years of Revolution" between To Forget and
cc

Not to ForgetHui attempts to bring out the point that it is crucial for Hong Kong

people whether or not they can come to terms with the past turbulent years.
A tension is created between forgetting and remembering in the episodes To
Forget" and 6<Not to Forget". The two protagonists Tung (played by Lee Kang-sheng)
and Sow (played by Rachel Lee) are members of the same activist group. Tung is the
one who remembers the past, while Sow is the one who forgets the past. Sow suffers
from amnesia after a traumatic incident. She loses the memory of her previous love
8

Some of the other films include Domue Yen's Legend of the Wolf\Zhan Lang Chuan Shuo] (1997)
Samo Hung's Once Upon a Time in China and America [Huang Feihong Liu Zhi SiyuXionghsf\ (1997)
Fruit Chan's The Longest Simmer \Qunian Yanhua Tebie Dud] (1998)Jackie Chan's Who Am I [Wo Shi
Shui\ (1998)Ip Kam-hung's Metade Fumaca [Ban Zhi Yan\ (1999), and Teddy Chan's Purple Storm
\_Ziyu Fengbao] (1999).
IX

IX

affair as well as the social straggle in the past decade. Tung who has a crash on Sow
heips her to regain memory. It turns out that in order to maintain, the affectionate
relationshipTung hopes that Sow never regains memory, while Sow pretends to forget
the past even though she has recovered from anmesia. This is a painful straggle of
forgetting against "remembering". A lyrical song "Utterance of Thousand Words"
acts as an agency of Sow's recovery.

This lyrical song appears in the story world,

which is in sharp contrast with the non-diegetic mechanical music that frequently
appears during the times when Sow suffers from amnesia.

The mechanical time

enhances Sow's solitude and alienation from the society while she loses memory.
Losing memory of the pastshe seems entirely out of place in the society.
The social straggle of the 1970s and 1980s is flashed back through Sow's
memory after recovery. Near the end of the episode "Ten Years of Revolution"^ it is
finally revealed the tramnatic incident that causes Sows amnesia is the rape by the
leader of the activist group Yau (played by Tsang Kwan-ho)with whom she has a love
affair for many years. The rape happens right after a demonstxaticm in protest against
the crackdown of the Beijing students5 democracy movement in Tiananmen. Li points
out that Sow's rape and amnesia are a metaphor for the collective trauma of Hong
Kong people" in the aftermath of Tianamnen Incident {HK Panorama 2001 128). The
candlelight vigil for the Tiaixaiimen Incident is shot in slow motion. Together with the
misery in the participants' fece? this scene projects the disillusionment and helplessness
of Hong Kong people facing political and historical turbulences in the past decade.
Sow's recovery of memory suggests that she has to fece the inescapable traumatic past.

102

Remembering becomes a process of achieving closer proximity to completeness. Not

forgetting the past is a precondition for change when Hong Kong people fece
uncertainties towards the handover.

6C

Not to Forget as the last episode emphasizes the

importance of remembering the social straggle in the past which contributes a lot to the
making Hong Kong as "homefor many local residents.
Hui does not portray monumental figures in the past for the purpose of
glorifying the past in pursuit of constructing an identity for the present. Yet, Ah Kam
and Ng Chun-yin, like those monumental historical figures such as Chairman Mao and
Deng Xiaoping mentioned in Gus Mok's street theatre, also contributed to the
transformation of Hong Kong society. Ah Kam is an Italian Catholic priest who has
been actively fighting for the rights of marginalized people, especially the new
immigrants from Mainland China. Passed away in 1994, Ng Chun-ym is a real life
activist active in the 1970s and 1980s. A Marxist, Ng was the publisher of a radical
political monthly The Seventies
League in Hong Kong. Ng participated in various political, social and labour activities,
which included the rescue of dissidents in Mainland China but he was arrested and
detained there. Ng's life is chronicled in Gus Mok's street theatre The Story of Ng
Chun-yin. The street theatre is presented as several sequences intertwining with the
storyframing its historical context.

Furthermore, its traditional street storytelling

creates an alienation effect: the street theatre and the story offer dialectic comments to
each other. On the one handthe depiction of righteousness and perseverance in Ng's
character seems to criticize the hypocrisy in Yau's character. On the other handthe

103

weaknesses showed in the activists in the story confront with the portrayal of Ng Chunyin as a myth in the street theatre. The street theatre is staged in Temple Street where
is peopled by the lower class and under-privileged. This act attempts to highlight the
"ordinariness" of many activists who are rooted in the communities of the general
public.
Lui points out that the dissident activities of the 1970s "grew from a concern of
social issues and of society at large. This was a generation with a more imbued sense of
belonging compared to that immediately after the war (92). Hui tries to bring back this
social consciousness as the spirit to establish a place that we call home. Rushdie in
Imaginary Homeland quotes a statement of Milan Kundera: "The struggle of man
against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting", and he further remarks:
"Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their
own images; they fight for the same territory. And the novel is one way of denying the
official, politicians' version of truth" (14). Hui's making of Ordinary Heroes has a
similar role that the writer plays in Kundera's statement.

Hui has remarked: Right

before 1997people wanted to paint a rosy picture of Hong Kong, but Hong Kong had
its dark sides and these people were there. These are people history won't write
about When people talk about Hong Kongthey always talk about the big-timers? the
punks" (qtd. in Ho18). Ordinary Heroes as an imaginary text recounts the struggle,
pain and confusion of the social activists of the 1970s and 1980s that are ignored in the
"official historyof Hong Kong. This film acts as a record of these social activists5

history, which may be or would be forgotten. This is the history that Hui can identify
with.
Though the setting of Ordinary Heroes is entirely in Hong Kcmgthe depiction
of "local" is not homogenous or "essentialist5'.

As mentioned in Introductioa,

discussing three films made after 1997 which include Ordinary Heroes
argues: Unlike other xiational imaginaries in the postcolonial stageHong Kong has to
de-emphasize the national dimension so as to retain its autonomy (even though it is
merely fictive) (153). In this contextthe "national dimension" refers to China. Some
features in Ordinary Heroes play a role of de-emphasizing the nationalist Chinese
dimension. For instancethe story's focus on Italian priest activist Ah Kam, the casting
of Taiwanese actor Lee Kang-Sheng as the male protagonistand the inclusion of a
Taiwanese popular song as the agency of Sow's regaining memory introduce
transnational and transcultural dimensions to the film. Yetthe Hong Kong imaginary
in Ordinary Heroes is not entirely "free from the domination of the China factor55. In
the episode Ten Years of Revolutionmany scenarios involve antagonism among the
governmentsocial activists and marginalized people when the activists fight for the
rights of the marginalized people. These social activities very often involve new
immigrants from Mainland China, for instance, the boat brides who fought for staying
in Hong Kong with members of their families. In the depiction of Ng Chim-yin's life in
the street theatre, Ngfrequentlyreturned to China and got involved in political activities.
Near the end of thefilmAh Kam left Hong Kong for Mainland China to continue his
social work there. And^ the activists also participated in the demonstrations in Hong

105

Kong in support of the Beijing students5 democracy movements in 1989. A close

relationship between Hong Kong and China manifests in many of these social and
political activities. The social activists are in a position of critical proximity they
criticize the community that they are part of. They commit themselves to the social and
political activities not solely in Hong Kong but also in Mainland China. The social
boundary between Hong Kong and China becomes blurred. The imaginary of Hong
Kong identities in Hui'sfilmsare moiti-laceted and the factor of China is indispensable.

The reenactment of history in the above Huis films may be romanticized but
not exoticizei This illustrates Hui's notion that the past is of paramoimt importance to
one's growth and identity. In search of homeshe brings past and present into a
dialogue rather than produces an exotic reenactment of a past. For herthe past of Hong
Kong is a site of straggle and turbulences, so as the present and the future. The retrieval
of the past is for expecting a lot of uncertainties and struggles in the future after the
handover.
Hui's semi-autobiography Song of the Exile and autobiographical documentary
As Time Goes By do not bring her to "some place of originThe place of origin for her
is problematic, as she was bom of a Chinese father and a Japanese motherbut grew up
in Macao and Hong Kong. Living in Hong Kong over several decades, she has been
translated culturally. In quest for identity, Hxii looks for heterogeneity rather than a
fixed essence* Her autobiographicaP narratives do not rely on esscntialisniy or an
ethnic identity.

The construction of the self in narratives is "a provisional and

continuous processrather than the 4recovery' of an 'original i d e n t i t y ( K i n g 17).

Identity is an ongoing process of becoming rather than beingAs suggested by Hall;
"Diaspora identities are those which are constantly producing and reproducing
themselves anewthrough transformation and difference (235). In search of home
during the transitional periodHui also does not look back to an essentialist localism.
Her films highlight heterogeneity and multifaceted layers of the society. The emphasis
on the character Aiko in Song of the Exile and the inclusion of her mother's interview in
As Time Goes By highlight Hui's notion of home that it is "inclusion" rather than
exclusion.
In contrast with Law's Triology, Hui's films discussed in this chapter show a
more cohesive connection between individual and the society. The sense of belonging
is not derived by simply assimilating into a new culture, but by committing to the
locality. By putting the recurrent appearance of the 1970s and 1980ssocial movements
in Song of the Exile
social consciousness.
The role of individual agency is important in making and transforming home.
Though Hui is concerned with historical, political and social events, the people whom
she focuses on are not moimmental historical figures. The people depicted in Song of
the Exile and As Time Goes By are those around her: her family (especially her Japanese
mother) and college peers. Those in Ordinary Heroes are "ordinary" ones who straggle
for a better livelihood in Hong Kong. For Hui, Hong Kong is a site for continued
negotiation and rearticulation. The quest for home elsewhere that can provide us with

107

security, stability and well being can never be attained, as we are living in condition that
is constantly threatened by circumstances beyond control Also, conflicts always arise
when people fight for individuai benefits. Jonathan Rutherford in A Place Called
Home remarks that "there are no ready-made identities or categories that we can
unproblematically slip into (25). Hui's films reveal the same notion. Home is an ongoing struggle for security, stability and well being of a locality. Home is manifested in
this struggle.

108

Chapter 4
Conclusion

The films by Clara Law and Ann Hui under discussion in this thesis cover a
period of almost ten years, starting from 1990 when Farewell China and Song of the
Exile were made respectively by these two filnunakers after the Tianamnen Incident to
around Hong Kong's handover in 1997. Although these two filmmakers have similar
background with cultural roots in China and Hong Kong, they have taken different
routes which have been revealed both in their films and in their life during Hong
Kong's later transitional period. The backgrounds of these two filmmakers are quite
similar: both of them immigrated to Hong Kong at a very young age in the 1960s
received colonial education, studied film in England, and emerged as vanguards in the
First Wave and Second Wave respectively. Law migrated from Hong Kong to Australia
in 1995largely for her quest of art. She is now regarded as a Hong Kong-Australian^
transnational and cosmopolitan filmmaker. Hui stays in Hong Kong and continues to
make films primarily targeted local and trans-regional Chinese audiences.

Their

respective films parallel the transformation of their own biographical experiences. As

Hamid Naficy suggests, the accented cinema is authorial and autobiographical; the
making of the accented cinema can also be the making of the filmmaker's identity. The
films under discussion provide a brief picture showing how Law and Hui re-wrote their
identities in their attempt to search for home in memory. Law's films reveal gradual

0
1

physical and psychological disconnectionfrom the previous home with the emphasis on
the spatial factor: the physical portrayals of the previous and present homeplaces. Hui's
filmson the contrary, reinforce the physical and psychological connection with home
emphasizing the temporal factor: the crucial historical^ political and social moments of
her previous and present homeplaces.
Modifying Naficy5 s classification of accentedfilmmakersIwould argue that
the position of Law is transformed from an exilic to a diasporic and then seemingly to a
postcolonial, ethnic and identity filmmaker. This transformation can be revealed in the
portrayals of homeplaces in her films. In the first part of the 61mrnigration Trilogy
Farewell China
The second and third parts Autumn Moon and Floating Life show a gradual physical and
emotional disconnection from the previous homeplaces, China and Hong Kong. Hong
Kong in Autumn Moon is represented as a deserted city. The portrayal of Hong Kong as
a transitional home in Floating Life is gazed through the distorting mirror of anguished
memoryin Shelly Kraicer's words. Alsothere is almost an absence of China visually.
A photo of the ancestral house is represented as Chinaa replica of which can be built
in the backyard of a suburban house in Australia, Moreover, Law's focus of Floating
Life is on how to set up a home in the host country Australia. The identities of the films
and the filmmaker herself are gradually transformed from a paradigm of nation-state to
a liminal space, which can be operated independently from the homeland and the host
country. Although there is an absence of previous homeplaces in Laws most recent
film The Goddess of 1967, it must be noted that this film still reveals the influence of

110

Chinese culture on her. With Australia as the settingthe film narrates the encounter of
an Australian young woman with a Japanese touirist. The girl's past in connection with
her family is revealed through flashbacks. Eddie Fong has disclosed that he and Law
"consciously adopt an oriental way of storytelling" in this fi1m; by which he means the
scatter projection5 method of traditional Chinese painting" (Yu). This demonstrates
that Chinese culture is still an integral part of Laws art and life.
While many vanguards of the First Wave such as Yim Ho, Patrick Tam and
Allen Fong have gradually retreated from the film industry, Hui is one of the very few
filmmakers who are still active in the Hong Kong cinema since the late 1970s, Hui
being a veteran of contemporary Hong Kong cinema, still commits herself to local film
culture. Andher recent films such as Ordinary Heroes consistently reveal political
idealism and social activism, a major characteristic of New Wave. She remains an
organic intellectual who works for the community that she emerges as an intellectual.
She can also be regarded as a diasporic filmmaker who is concerned with the vertical
relationship to China and her lateral relationship to Hong Kong. In contrast with Law's
filmsHui's films show a recurring physical and psychological attachment to Hong
Kongby pondering on local historical, political and social events in connection with
China in the past decades. In her semi-autobiography Song of the Exile, through the revisitings of the various places in memoryshe considers Hong Kong home. This is
suggested by the female protagonist Hueyin's concern with and commitment to Hong
Kong's social events. In Hui's later works, such as As Time Goes By and Ordinary
Heroes under discussion in this thesis, Visible Secret and July Rhapsody

111

persistently identifies herself with Hong Kong with the injection of China factorAs
discussed in Chapter 3it is not entirely because of Hong Kong's handover that she has
to deal with the reality of China when contemplating her identity. The quest of root is
still Hui's major concern in her works.
Traces of these two filmmakers' different routes have already been found in
their respective films of 1990. Law's Farewell China and Hui's Song of the Exile both
articulate an exileor a persecutioncomplex, which is a major feature of the corpus
of diaspora films that emerged in the 1990s. These two films both reveal the two
filmmakers' contemplation of their personal and national identities by situating
themselves in the trajectories of significant Chinese historical events such as the
Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Incident. The films suggest that people in diaspora
may not consider their originalhomeland as homeThe nataraTtie between
"home" and homeland is loosened. However, the sentiments projected from these two
films are not identical. The violence projected in the last scene of Law's Farewell
China
suggests the female protagonist's total disillusionment with the nation-state which leads
her ai state of homelessness. Compared with Farewell China
of the Exile is less disillusioned with the nation-state as it still reveals hope on China,
through the voice of Hueyin's grandfather. Hueyin's facial expression shows her
sorrow over the torment of those patriotic and Bationalistic Chinese like her grandfather.
The ending is in line with Hui's humanistic approach to deal with historical and
political events.

112

The ongoing construction of Law and Hui's identity involves a politics of

memory. The films of bothfilmmakers show that one's past is central to one's identity
but with different articulations of memory. Laws films focus largely on the relation
between personal and familial memories. These personal and femilial memories are
also connected with the national history, but most of them are disturbing socio-political
events, for instance. Cultural Revolution, Tianamnen Incidentand Hong Kong's
handoverthat force the characters leaving home. The disturbances resulted from these
events are reflected in the mentality of the characters. The "forgetting" of the national
history can facilitate people to live in a liminal space. The family becomes the most
significant anchor of attachmentwhich, is for passing down heritage, tradition, and
culture from generation to generation. Compared with Hui'sfilmsthe historicalsocial
and political events in Law's films are not explicitly depicted, but the subtle changes of
the characters' mentality inflicted by these events are revealed through colours,
landscape and music. This enhances a sense of sentimentality to her films. The
portrayals of different places through a diversified spectrum of colourand the idyllic or
eerie delineation of the rural and urban landscapes suggest the distinctive emotions that
the characters respond to the surroundings.
In contrast with LawHui very often uses visual and verbal flashbacks to bring
the past and present into dialoguesas noted by Patricia Brett Erens in her articles on
Hui's films. Hui focuses on the interrelations between personal femilial and national
memories. She introduces China md Hong Kong's histories and position herself in
relation to the development of the family and the self. By ercphasizing the interactions

113

between people and socio-political eventsthrough the semi-autobiography Song of the

Exile^ autobiographical documentary As Time Goes By and semi-documentary Ordinary
Heroes
community. The personal memory in Hui's films is closely connected with the femily
and the commumtiessocio-historical events. Though these events are disturbingin
contrast with the characters in Law's films, those in Hui's films make an effort to come
to terms with them. Hui's films offer a sense of the importance of memory tied to the
notion of struggle. In her view, the past is the foundation of the present struggle and the
foture as its justification.
As mentioiied in Introduction^ Erens in her analysis of Hui's Song of the Exile
does not bring up the authenticity and invention of memory in the discussion. Memory
and reenactments of the recent past in the films by Law and Hui are differentfromthose
in the corpus of nostalgic films that emerged in the 1990s such as Wong Kar-wai's Days
of Being Wild [A Fei Zhengzhuan] (1990)Lawrence Liu's Lee Rock [Leilm Zhuan]
(1991 )Peter Chan's He A in f Heavy, He 3s My Father [Xin Namiong Nandi] (1992) and
Mabel Cheung's City of Glass. Melancholy mouming for a lost past
these nostalgic films. However, unlike the films by Law and Hui analyzed in this thesis
the reenactments of the recent past in these nostalgic films are simply a matter of
foregrounding that produces no effect on the central concerns and actions of the
characters.

They are mainly for appealing to visual and sensual pleasures by

highlighting the fashionsinterior decorationsand life style.

The past is mainly

reenacted through style and lacks a historical dimensioiL Nevertheless, in Law and

114

Hui s filmsthe reenactments of the recent past do not intend to appeal visual and
sensual pleasures. Instead, they are important to the resulting actions of the characters.
Alsothey invite the viewers to ponder on the impacts of the crucial historical, political
and social moments in the formation of personalcultural and national identities.
Memory in their films is fragmentary but not entirely fictive. Compared with those
nostalgic filmsmemories that are represented in diaspora films are much closer to
"reality" since they are regarded as thefilmmaker'sreal life experiences.
Music plays an important role in articulating the identities of the characters in
the films by Law and Hui. Music in Law's films is very often used for highlighting the
transnational, floating and multiple identities of the characters in border crossing.
Songs and music are often performed by a variety of western and eastern musical
instruments, for instance"Thinking o f in Farewell China and the non-diegetic music
in Autumn Moon and Floating Life. This brings the viewers to an imaginary realm of
transnationalism and transculturalism. The modal chords of the music enhance floating
and unsettling feelings while the sound played by synthesizers seems to technologize
the characters5 identities. In Hui's Song of the Exile and some of her other films, other
than enhancing the atmosphere of the scenes and the mental state of the characters,
music provides historical and cultural settings. Hui includes the songs very often in
their original forms in the films such as Bob Dylan's Mr Tambourine Man and the
classic Cantonese aria Guest Route Autumn Regret" in Song of the Exile, the songs by
Beatles in As Time Goes By, and Teresa Tang's "Utterance of Thousand Words" in
Ordinary Heroes. These traditional and popular songs invite the viewers to a realm of

115

specific historical and cultural setting. The songs in Hui's films have similar functions
that Simon Frith suggests in "Towards an Aesthetic of Popular Music": shaping popular
memoryorganizing our sense of time and triggering off our memory. However, very
often these songs are displaced in place and in time. For instance, "Mr Tambourine
Manan American popular song of the mid-1960s, appears against the backdrop of
London in the early 1970sand the song "Utterance of Thousand Words" of the 1970s
by Taiwanese singer Tang appears against the backdrop of Hong Kong in the 1980s.
On the one hand, this suggests the transnational nature of culture in the recent decades.
On the other hand, these songs enforce a sense of displacement and relocation of the
characters that they have to tackle with in terms of personal and cultural identities.1
As seen from the outflow of residents from Hong Kong to other places in the
past decadesit is a family rather than an individual on the move. Law's Immigration
Trilogy also focuses on the issues related to the family. Both Law's Farewell China
and Hui's Song of the Exile can be classified as family melodrama. As suggested by
Wiinal Dissanayake:
melodramas, with their strong action, emotional intensities, and
rhetorical excessesassume an antirealistic orientation.

The

excesses and extremes in melodrama become signifiers of the

Tony Mlliams argues that A m Hui's choice of'"Mr Tambourine Manin the opming scene where
Hueyin in Londoa "serves as a thematic counterpoint to Haeyin's desire to isolate herselffrom,formative
cultural and family ties which define her very personality5' (96).

116

alienation of their characters and useful openings through which

we can discern the play of ideology. (2)
The sentimentality in Law's Farewell China seems to criticize the people's irrational
emotional attachment to the nation-state. Being the first part of "Immigration Trilogy
the film can be seen as the beginning of disillusionment with the nation-state^ The
following two parts also function as threats to the nation-state. This is underlined by the
traumatic memory of the national past, and lack of interaction between the family and
the conmiunity, Hui's Song of the Exile, however, shows a style of social realism that
she has well developed in her television days. By introducing the realistic elements to
the films, she very often plays down, the melodramatic potential of the narratives. Tony
Williams in his analysis of Song of the Exile in the context of melodrama remarks:
Hui avoids primary color motifs common to many western
melodramatic films and evokes instead somber, often shadowy,
imagery. This treatment reinforces imagery common to certain
Chinese melodramas where individual and family problems axe
often shaped by and even subordinate to relevant classsocial and
historical forces and eventsfactors usually marginalized in their
western melodramatic counterparts. (96)
In such a wayHui can craft a much broader ethnichistorical, and political canvas to
delineate the social, historical factors influencing the domestic and mdividiial conflicts
between the charactersas pointed out by Williams (97). The portrayal of China in

117

Song of the Exile, which highlights the urban landscape and the people, projects a
historical rather than a iimeless moment of China delineated in Law's Farewell China,
Hui's realism and documentary style is also prominent in As Time Goes By and
Ordinary Heroes as the former is an autobiographical documentary and the latter is a
semi-documentary. Documentary and historical consciousness are closely connected,
as claimed by Bill Nichols; "Documentary offers access to a shared, historical construct.
Instead of a world, we are offered access to the world" (109).

However, the

filmmaker's subjectivity is maiiifested in the documentary:

This is indeed the world we see but it is also a world, or more
exactlya view of the world. Documentary remains distinct in its
representation of the historical world, the world of power,
dominanceand control, the arena of struggleresistance, and
contestation. Documentary asks us to agree that the world itself
fits within the frame of its representations, and asks us to plan our
agenda for action accordingly. (115)
The nature of documentary, as suggested by Nichols, is in line with Hui's social and
historical consciousness provoked in these films. The blurred boundary between
documentary and autobiography of As Time Goes By
fiction of Ordinary Heroes is Hui's tactics of linking politics to the personal, which
underlie the interactions between individualj society and history.
Both Law and Hui's films demonstrate a need for agency when people face
political and social turbulences. As discussed in the section Autumn Moon: Lost Home

118

in Lost Timean agency is shown in the characters in response to the rapidly

transforrning surroundings. This reveals an emotional and cultural attachment between
a person and a place. Thusa sense of heaviness is shown in the charactersmigration
from one place to another one. The turbulent pasts of China and Hong Kong are the
major reasons for Chinese and Hong Kong Chinese to leave home.

Migration

demonstrates a certain degree of human agencyespecially in the middle-class and

upper middle-class who have the capital to escape from political and social turbulences
and to seek a safe and stable home elsewhere. In both critical and filmic discourse
some critics such as Sheldon Lu suggest that flexible citizenship, along with
transnationalism, becomes a way of "empowerment and agency" ("HK Diaspora Film"
139). Howeverit should be noticed that the majority of people who can benefit from
"flexible citizenship" is the middle and upper middle-class as they have enough capital
to apply for citizenships of other coimtries. Yetthe middle-class peopleas seen in
Floating Life
transformation of identity revealed in Law's films should not be regarded as a liberating
process. For Law, home is still an important site to safeguard against time-space
compression in global capitalism since it can maintain heritagetraditionand culture.
Human agency also manifests in Hui's characters. Although they stay in Hong Kong
facing the uncertainties that are brought about by various political and social events
they strive for a better livelihood by committing themselves to the society. The notion
of home in both of these filmmakers' films reveals resistance to global capitalism.
Hui's dissatisfaction with capitalism is articulated through her attempt to restore the

119

social activists' spirits of the 1970s and 1980s in Hong Kong.

The massive outflow of people from Hong Kong triggered off by the handover
during the mid-1980s and 1990s constitutes part of the Chinese diaspora. Both Law and
Hui look at the processes of emigration and dispersal that involve the Chinese globally.
While contemplating their identities, these two filmmakers also integrate their
individual identities with the Chinese in diaspora. As discussed in the previous chapters
Rey Chow suggests that the intellectuals ponder over their identity outside the
framework of the nation-state.

In line with Chow's proposal. Law ponders

"Chineseness" on the periphery and poses interrogation to the nation-stateas revealed

in the "Inrnugration TrilogySlightly different from Law, Hui ponders "Chineseness"
on the periphery, but within the framework of the nation-state. As noted by ErensHui
regards the Chinese as a diaspora nation throughout the world" and she meditates the
question of personal identity within the notion of national identity ("Film Work of Ann
Hui 179). Ponderiag "Chineseness" within the framework of the nation-state does not
mean a submission to the vertical poweras the position of "critical proximityin Hui's
films provokes force from below. In search of home daring the transitional period,
Hui does not look back to an essentialist "Chineseness" and localism. The films by
Law and Hui project different forces to the nation-state respectively: those by the
former are external forces while those by the latter are internal ones.
Homi Bhabha has argued that the modem Western mtioa is being written and
re-written by those who live at the marginal sites in view of the mass migration and
colonial expansion in the imd-nineteenth century.

120

These include the colonized

immigrantspeople in exile and diaspora, among others. It is from the margins that the
idea of a nation as a homogenous community is being interrogated radically. He states:
The scraps, patches and rags of daily life must be repeatedly turned into the signs of a
national culture^ while the very act of the narrative performance interpellates a growing
circle of national subjects (Bhabha 297. Cited in George 190). In discussing the
immigration literature, Rosemary Marangoly George argues that Bhabha's claim "holds
only for immigrants who actively desire for themselves an integration into a national
culture as national subjects" (190). As seen in Law's Floating Life
Trilogythe Chan family from Hong Kong tackles the sense of rootlessness by
transplanting Chinese traditional culture to the host country, which is symbolized by the
construction of a Chinese ancestral house's replica in the backyard of their house. It
seems that the characters feel comfortable for the time being to live in the suburban in
Australia without much interaction with the coirimimity. The linmigrairts9 resistance to
integrate into the national culture hardly enables them to re-write the nation. The lack
of interaction between the characters and the community can also be found m the other
two parts of "Immigration Trilogy". In Farewell China
Hong and Nansheng encounter are largely Chinese immigrants in Chinatown, a Chinese
ghetto.

The portrayal of China through flashbacks is idyllic and pastoral, but no

interaction between the people and the society is shown there. The reason why Hong
and Nansheng are prohibited from retomng home is unclear. Autumn Moon focuses
largely on the friendship of Pui Wai and Tokio. However, in the portrayal of Mainland
China in Hui's Song of the Exile, it includes the involvement of Hueyin's grandparents

121

in the Cultural Revolution. Hui's films depict a more cohesive connection between
individual and the society. In the reenactments of the past in herfilmsthereare more
interactions between people and the society. The autobiographical and/or documentary
nature of Song of the Exile, As Time Goes By and Ordinary Heroes demonstrates Hui's
concerns for the construction of her selfhood with the society as a whole. The sense of
belonging is not derived by one's assimilation into a new culture, but by one's
commitment to now5and "here".

Further Investigation
As mentioned in Introduction, Evans Chan is another filmmaker with a Hong
Kong background whose works are worthy of analyzing in tracing a route of diasporic
experience that may be different from Law and Hui's. Migratory experiences and the
quest for identity are recurrent themes in Chan's

films.

Gina Marchetti's

"Transnational Cinema, Hybrid Identities and the Films of Evans Chan" has discussed
the filmic transformation of the character Rubie in To Liv(e) and Crossings
of the filmmaker. This thesis focuses on the films by two women filmmakers, but
[d]iasporic experiences are always genderedas remarked by James Clifford (313).
The exploration of Chan's films may reveal subtler findings in the filmic transformation
of diasporic and exilicfilmmakerswith a Hong Kong background.
The emergence and diminishing of Hong Kong diaspora films have a historical
context. When the outflows of Hong Kong residents reached its peak in the early 1990s
in the aftermath of Tiananmen Incident, diaspora films flourished. However, this genre

122

is subsided alongside the gradual decreasing migration figures. Memory is also an

important theme in Hong Kong cinema around 1997. As mentioned in Chapter 3
amnesia is a recurring motif in many Hong Kong films right before and after 1997.
Although this motif appears less frequently in Hong Kong films in the recent years, the
connection between remembering/forgetting and Identities represented in the films by
filmmakers other than Law and Hui around 1997 is worthy of further explorations.

123

Appendix 1

Lyrics of Thinking of[Sixiang Qi 1

Thinking of

When my ancestors decided to leave China

They never knew what it was like there

Full of worries they thought

The foreign land must be very different...

That we cannot accompany each other as in China

My parents are very unhappy

It is very difficult in the beginning

Because everything is so unfamiliar

Thinking of

My homeland, not that it's the best

Only that I cannot forget it

One can live anywhere

Thinking of

The land, my motherland

Thinking of
How each day passes and I sow

For the sake of my children

That they might be given the best education

To live freely and grow up a complete person

The English and Chinese lyrics are copied from the subtitles in Farewell China.

124

Thinking of

Who would want to leave one's homeland

I only want to return sooner

Time, please wait awhile

Chinese people are born with patience unbounded

125

Appendix II

Lyrics of My Motherland

[Wo De Zuguo

River is wide and large,

]1

Gentle breezes send the fragrance of rice to both sides of

the riverbank.
I just live by the side of the riverbank

And have long been accustomed to the work song of the

boatmen and their white sails.

This is our beautiful motherland,

The place where I grew up.

Our vast land is foil of radiant and enchanting spring

scenes.

Young women are beautiful as flowers;

Young men are strong as mountains.

If friends come to visit

We greet them with good wine.

If enemies come

We "greet" them with gunfire.

This is our great motherland,

The place where I grew up.

Our ancient land is full of peaceful sunlight.

Translation by CRI On Line <http://english.cri.com.cn/english/2002/Jaii/43637.htm>.

126

Appendix III

Tune: "The Beautiful Lady Yu[Yu mei-jen ]1

byLiYu(^)

When will the last flower fallthe last moon fade?

So many sorrows lie behind.

Again last night the east wind filled my room

O gaze not on the lost kingdom under this bright moon.

Still in her light my palace gleams as jade

(Only from bright cheeks beauty dies).

To know the sum of human suffering

Look at this river rolling eastward in the spring.

Translation by Cyril BirchAnthology of Chinese Literature 352.

127

Appendix IV

Filmography of Clara Law

They Say the Moon is Fuller Here, UK, 1985English/Mandarin, 80 min5 colour.
The Other Half and the Other Half [Wo Ai Taikong Ren ]Hong Kong
1988Cantonese, 90 mincolour.
The Reincarnation of Golden Lotus [Pan Jinlian Zhi Qian Shi Jin Sheng
]Hong Kong, 1990Cantonese, 99 min, colour.
Farewell China [Ai Zai Biexiang De Jijie ]Hong Kong, 1990
Cantonese/Mandarin/English, 115 min, colour.
Fruit Punch [Yes! Yi Zu Yes ]Hong Kong, 1991Cantonese, 100 min, colour.
Autumn Moon [Qiu Yue ]Hong Kong/Japan, 1992Cantonese/Japanese/English,
108 mincolour.
Temptation of a Monk [You Seng ]Hong Kong, 1993Cantonese118 min, colour.
Erotique (Segment "Wonton Soup)USA/Germany/Brazil/Hong Kong, 1995120 min,
colour.
Floating Life [Fu Sheng ]Australia1996English/Cantonese/German, 95 min
colour.
The Goddess of1967

Selected television programmes

"Missing Persons" [Chu Zou ]Police Drama series [Zhi Fa Zhe ]RTHK
1980.
"Floating Clouds" [Fu Yun ]Hong Kong, Hong Kong series [Xianggang ianggang
]RTHK1981Cantonese, 47 mincolour.

128

Gone are Those Days" [Wei Shi Qu De ]Novelists series [Xiao Shuo Jia Zu
]RTHK, 1987Cantonese, 23 min5 colour.
I am a Mortician" [Xiang Wo Zhe Yang De Yige Nuzi ]
Novelists series, RTHK, 1987Cantonese, 23 min, colour.
A Man's Elegy" [Nan Shao 17 ]Novelists seriesRTHK, 1987Cantonese, 23
min, colour.

129

Appendix V
Filmography of Ann Hui
The Secret
The

[Feng Jie ]Hong Kong1979, Cantonese, 89 mincolour.

Spooky Bunch [Zhuang Dao

colour.

]Hong Kong, 1980, Cantonese, 97 min,

The Story of Woo Viet [Huyue De Gu Shi ]Hong Kong, 1981Cantonese,

90 min, colour.
Boat People [Toupen Huhai ]Hong Kong1982Cantonese, 111 min, colour.
Love in a Fallen City [Qingcheng Zhi Lian ]Hong Kong, 1984Cantonese,
100 min, colour.
Romance of Book and Sword [Shujian Enchou Lu ]China/Hong Kong,
1987Cantonese, 95 min, colour
Princess Fragrance [Xiangxiang Gongzhu ]Hong Kong, 1987Cantonese,
95 min, colour.
Starry is the Night [Jinye Xingguang Canlan ]Hong Kong, 1988,
Cantonese, 98 min, colour.
Song of the Exile [Ketu Qiuhen ]Hong Kong/Taiwan, 1990Cantonese/
Japanese/English, 98 min, colour.
Zodiac Killers [Jidao Zhuizhong
mincolour.
My American Grandson [Shanghai
mincolour.

Hong Kong, 1991Cantonese/Japanese, 97

]Hong Kong, 1991Cantonese, 90

Summer Snow [Nuren /]Hong Kong, 1995Cantonese, 106 min, colour.

Ah Kam [Ah Kam ]Hong Kong, 1996Cantonese90 min, colour.
The Eighteen Springs [Ban Sheng Yuan ]? Hong Kong, 1997Cantonese, 126
mincolour.
130

Ordinary Heroes [Qianyan]Hong Kong, 1999Cantonese, 128 min,

colour.
Visible Secret [Youling Renjian ]Hong Kong, 2001Cantonese, 98 min,
colour.
July Rhapsody [Nanren Sishi ]Hong Kong, 2002Cantonese, 103 min, colour.

Selected television programmes

Ah Sze[A Shi ]Social Worker series[5^z Dou Xing ]Hong Kong, 1977.
"The Boy from Vietnam" [Lai Ke ]Below the Lion Rock series [Shizi Shanxia
]RTHK, Hong Kong,
"The Road" [Lu ]Below the Lion Rock series, RTHK, Hong Kong, 1978Cantonese,
45 mincolour.
"The Bridge[Qicio ]Below the Lion Rock seriesRTHK, Hong Kong, 1978
Cantonese50 mincolour.
"Prodigal's Return[Gui Qun Lai Xi ]Below the Lion Rock seriesRTHK,
Hong Kong, 1992Cantonese, 47mincolour.
As Time Goes By [Quri Kuduo ]Taiwan/Hong Kong, 1997Cantonese/
Mandarin, 58 min, colour.

131

Bibliography

Abbas, Ackbar. Hong Kong Culture and the Politics of Disappearance. Hong Kong:
Hong Kong University Press, 1997.
AhmadAijaz. "Jameson's Rhetoric of Otherness and the 'National Allegory.The
Post-colonial Studies Reader, Eds. Bill AshcroftGareth Griffiths and Helen
Tiffin. London: Routledge, 1995. 77-82.
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism London: Verso, 1991.
Anderson, Linda. Autobiography. London: Routledge, 2001.
Anglen. On Not Speaking Chinese: Living Between Asian and the West. London:
Routledge, 2001.
Bal? MiekeJonathan Crewe, and Leo Spitzereds. Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in
the Present Hanover: University Press of New England1999.
Barken, E.and Marie-Denis Shelton, eds. Borders, Exiles, Diasporas. Stanford:
Stanford University Press1998.
Benjamin, Walter. "Theses on the Philosophy of History." Illuminations. E d Hannah
Arendt. New York: Schocken1968. 253-64.
Berardinelii, James. Floating Life: A Film Review by James Berardinelii." 20 June
2003 <http://movie-reviews.colossus.net/movies/^floating.html>.
Berry, Chris. "A Nation T(w/o)o Chinese Cinema(s) and Nationhood(s)." Colonialism
and Nationalism in Asian Cinema. Ed. Wimal Dissanayake.
Indiana University Press, 1994. 42-64.
BhabhaHomi. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge1994.
132

Bloomington:

BordwellDavid. Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press2000.
Boyarin, Jonathan. SpaceTime, and the Politics of Memory." Remapping Memory:
The Politics of TimeSpace. Ed. Jonathan Boyarin. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1994. 1-37.
Brinker-Gabler, Giselaand Sidonie Smitheds.

Writing New Identities: Gender

Nation, and Immigration in Contemporary Europe. Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press1997.
Brockmeier, Jens.

"From the end to the beginning: Retrospective teleology in

autobiography

Narrative and Identity: Studies in Autobiography, Self and

Culture, Eds. Jens Brockmeier and Donal Carbaugh.

Philadelphia: John

Benjamins Publishing Company, 2001. 247-80.

BrowneNick, Paul G. PickowiczVivian Sobchackand Esther Yaueds. New Chinese
Cinemas: Forms
1994.
Chan, Kwok Bun. "A Family Affair: Migration, Dispersaland the Emergent Identity
of the Chinese Cosmopolitan." Diaspora 6.2 (1997). 195-213.
ChanNatalia Siu Hung. "Rewriting History: Hong Kong Nostalgia Cinema and its
Social Practice." The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity, Eds. Poshek
Fu and David Desser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press2000. 252-72.
Cheung, Esther. Crisis & Identity: Representations of Nation and Home in Hong Kong
Cultural Imaginary. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1997.
ChowRey.

"Nostalgia of the New Wave: Structure in Wong Kar-wai's Happy

Together Camera Obscura 42 (1999): 30-49.

133

Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies.

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.

ChuYiu-wai.

(In)Authentic Hong Kong: The (G)LocalCultural Identity in

Postcolonial Hong Kong Cinema. Post Script 20.2-3 (2001) 147-58.

ChuaSiew Keng. Song of the Exile: The Politics of Home.Jump Cut 42 (1998):
90-93.
Clifford, James. "Diasporas." Cultural Anthropology 9.3 (1994): 302-38.
CRI Online.

"My Motherland." 20 June 2003 <http://english.cri.com.cn/english/

2002/Jan/43637.htm>.
Curtis, Barry, and Claire Pajaczkowska. Getting there': travel, time and narrative."
Travellers' Tales: Narratives of Home and Displacement Eds. George Robertson,
Melinda MashLisa TicknerJon Bird, Barry Curtis and Tim Putnam. London:
Routledge, 1994. 199-215.
Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1989.
Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. "What is a minor literature?" Trans. Dana Polan.
Reading Kafka: Prague, politics
York: Schocken Books, 1989. 80-94.
DesserDavid. Diaspora and national identity: Exporting Chinathrough the Hong
Kong cinema." Post Script 20.2-3 (2001): 124-36.
Dissanayake, Wimal. "Introduction." Melodrama and Asian Cinema. Ed. Wimal
Dissanayake. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 1-8.
EganSusanna.

Mirror Talk Genres of Crisis in Contemporary Autobiography.

Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.

134

EngDavid L. "Melancholia/Postcoloniality: Loss in The Floating Lifer Qui Parle

11.2 (1999): 137-50.
ErensPatricia Brett. "Crossing Borders: TimeMemoryand the Construction of
Identity in Song of the Exile
The Film Work of Ann Hui." The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity.
Eds. Poshek Fu and David Dresser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000. 176-95.
Foster, Gwendolyn Audrey. Women Filmmakers of the African & Asian Diaspora:
Decolonizing the Gaze Locating Subjectivity. Southern Illinois: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1997.
ForeSteve. "Life Imitates Entertainment: Home and Dislocation in the Films of Jackie
Chan." At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World. Ed. Esther
C.M. Yau. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press2001. 115-41.
---."Time-Traveling Under an Autumn Moon. Post Script 17.3 (1998): 34-46.
Frieth, Simon.

"Towards an Aesthetic of Popular Music

Classic Essays on

Twentieth-century Music. Eds. Richard Kostelanetz and Joseph Darby. New York:
Schirmer Books, 1996. 340-54.
Frith, Chrisand Raymond J. Dolan. "The Role of Memory in the Delusions Associated
with Schizophrenia." Memory, Brain
Elaine Scarry. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000. 115-35.
Freiberg, Freda. "Border Crossings: Ann Hui's Cinema." Senses of Cinema. 20 June
2003 < http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/02/22/hui.html>.

Fu, Posheked. The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts

Cambridge University Press2000.
135

FuPoshekand David Desser. "Introduction." The Cinema of Hong Kong: History

Identity. Ed. Poshek Fu. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 111.

Garcia, Roger. "The Melodramatic Landscape." Cantonese Cinema Retrospective

(1950-1959). Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1978. 36-39.
George, Rosemary Marangoly. The Politics of Home: Postcolonial Relocations and
Twentieth-century Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
GilroyPaul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993.
Gorbman, Claudia. "Film Music. Film Studies: Critical Approaches. Eds. John Hill
and Pamela Church Gibson. Oxford: Oxford University Press2000. 42-45.
Guang, Baowei bian. Xu Anhua shuo Xu Anhua [](Ann Hui on Ann
Hui). Xianggang: Bian zhe zi kan, 1998.
HaMarie-Paule. "Cultural Identities in the Chinese Diaspora.Mot Pluriels 7(1998).
20 June 2003 <http://www.arts.uwa.edu.au/MotsPluriels/MP798mph.html>.
HalbwachsMaurice.

On Collective Memory. Ed. and Trans. Lewis A. Coser.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press1992.

Hall, Stuart.

"Cultural Identity and Diaspora Identity: Community, Culture,

Difference. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990. 222-37.

Hamilton, Gary G.? ed.

Cosmopolitan Capitalists: Hong Kong and the Chinese

Diaspora at the End of the 20th Century. Seattle: University of Washington Press
1996.
Harvey, David.

The Condition

of Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989.

136

HoElaine Yee-lin. "Women on the Edges of Hong Kong Modernity: The Films of Ann
Hui." At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World. Ed. Esther C.M.
Yau. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. 177-206.
Ho, Sam. "As Time Goes By: Ann Hui's Ordinary Heroes.^ Hong Kong Panorama
98-99. Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1999. 18-19.
Hong Kong Arts Centre. Artslink. June 1998: 16.
HuyssenAndreas. Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia. New
York: Routledge1995.
Jameson, Fredric. c'Nostalgia for the Present." Classical Hollywood Narrative. Ed.
Jane Gaines. Durham: Duke University Press, 1992. 253-73.
. "Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism." The Jameson
Reader. Eds. Michael Hardt and Kathi Weeks. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers
2000. 315-39.
Kain, Geoffrey, ed. Ideas of Home: Literature of Asian Migration. East Lansing:
Michigan University Press, 1997.
King, Nicola.

Memory

Edinburgh University Press, 2000.

Kraicer,

Shelly.

Floating Life

Chinese Cinema.

20

June

2003

<http://www.chinesecinemas.org/floating.html>.
Lai, Linda. "An Interview with Ann Hui: The World View of Eighteen Springs
Trans. Sam Ho. Hong Kong Panorama 97-98. Hong Kong: Urban Council1998.
51-53.
LandyMarcia. Cinematic Uses of the Past. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press1996.
137

Lane, Jim. The Autobiographical Documentary in America. Madison: University of

Wisconsin Press2002.
LawKar. "An Overview of Hong Kong's New Wave Cinema At Full Speed: Hong
Kong Cinema in a Borderless World, Ed. Esther C.M. Yau.

Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press, 2001. 31-52.

. " F a n g wen Fang Lingzheng Luo Zhuoyao tan hai wai ti cai de chuang zuo
[!J]("An interview with Eddie Fong and
Clara Law: Making of overseas subject matters"). Overseas Chinese Figures in
Cinema, Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1991. 52-54.
LeungNoong-kong. "The Changing Power Relationship between China and Hong
Kong: An examination of the concept of 'home5 and its function in Hongkong
movies in the 40's & 50
s . Changes in Hong Kong Society Through Cinema.
Hong Kong: Urban Council: 1988. 21-28.
Li, Cheuk-to. "Ann Hui's Selected Works." Hong Kong Panorama 2001-2002. Ed.
Bono Lee. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Arts Development Council, 2002. 109.
Cinema in Hong Kong: Contemporary Current. Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press1997.
---."In Transition: Industry and Identity Hong Kong Panorama 98-99. Hong Kong:
Urban Council1999. 13-15.
.The Return of the Father: Hong Kong New Wave and its Chinese Context in the
1980s.New Chinese Cinemas: Forms, Identities
al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 160-79.
LiYu. The Beautiful Lady Yu." Trans. Cyril Birch. Anthology of Chinese Literature.
Ed. Cyril Birch. New York: Grove Press1965. 352.
138

LoKwai-cheung. "Transnationalization of the Local in Hong Kong Cinema of the

1990s. At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World. Ed. Esther
C.M. Yau. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press2001. 261-76.
LoWai Luk. "A Child without a MotherAn Adult without a Motherland: A Study of
Ann Hui's Films.Hong Kong New Wave: Twenty Years After. Hong Kong:
Provisional Urban Council, 1999. 65-71.
LuSheldon. "Filming Diaspora and Identity: Hong Kong and 1997." The Cinema of
Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity.

Eds. Poshek Fu and David Desser.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 273-88.

-. Hong Kong diaspora film and transnational TV drama: From homecoming to exile
to flexible citizenship." Post Script 20.2-3 (2001): 137-46.
ed. Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood
University of Hawaii Press, 1997.
Lu, Sheldon H.and Yeh Yueh-yu. "Introduction: Centennial reflections on Chineselanguage Cinemas." Post Script 20.2-3 (2001) 3-8.
Lui, Tai-lok. "Home at Hong Kong,Changes in Hong Kong Society Cinema. Hong
Kong: Urban Council, 1988. 83-92.
Ma, Lili. "Reconciliation between generations and cultures: Clara Law's film Floating
Life'' Otherland Literary Journal 1 (2001): 157-68.
MacDougall, David.

"Films of Memory."

Transcultural Cinema. New Jersey:

Princeton University Press, 1998. 231-44.

MarchettiGina. "Chinese and Chinese diaspora cinema: Plural and transnational.
JpCW 42 (1998): 68-93.

139

 "Transnational CinemaHybrid Identities and the Films of Evans Chan. 20 June

2003 <http://members.tripod.com/~ginacao/>.
Martin, Michael T.

Cinemas of the Black Diaspora: Diversity, Dependence, and

Oppositionality. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995.

McCredieElise.

"Clara Law: An Impression of Permanence."

20 June 2003

<http ://www.realtirnearts.net/rt43/mccredie.html>.
MillardKathryn. "An Interview with Clara Law." Senses of Cinema. 20 June 2003
<http://www.sensesofcinema.eom/contents/01/13/law.html.
Mitchell, Tony. "Boxing the cRoo: Clara Law's Floating Life and Transnational Hong
Kong-Australian Identities." UTS Review 6 (2000): 103-14.
."Clara Law's Farewell China - A Melodrama of Chinese Migration Hybridity:
Journal of Cultures, Texts and Identities 1.2 (2001): 22-44.
-

"Clara Law's Floating Life and Hong Kong-Australian 'flexible citizenship'."

Ethnic and Racial Studies 26.2(2003): 278-300.

--- "Migration, Memory, and Hong Kong as a c Space of Transitin Clara Law's
Autumn Moon Cultural Studies Review, forthcoming July 2003.
Morley, David. Home Territories: Media
2000.
Morley, David and Kevin Robins,

place like Heimat: Images of Home(land) in

European Culture." Space and Place: Theories of Identity and Location. Eds.
Erica Carter, James Donaldand Judith Squires. London: Lawrence & Wishart
1993.3-31.
NaficyHamid. An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking. New Jersey:
Princeton University Press2001.
140

 Framing exile from homeland to homepage." Home

Media, & the Politics of Place. Ed. Hamid Naficy. New York: Routledge, 1999.
1-13.
Nichols, Bill.

Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary.

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.

OngAihwa.

"On the Edge of Empires: Flexible Citizenship among Chinese in

Diaspora." Positions 13 (1993): 745-78.

Pan, Lynn. Sons of the Yellow Emperor. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1990.
PoFan. "The Helpless Sympathizer in Ann Hui's Films." Hong Kong Panorama
2001-2002. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Arts Development Council, 2002. 121-23.
Renan, Ernest. "What is a nation?" Nations and Identities: Classic Readings. Ed.
Vincent P. Pecora. MaidenMass.: Blackwell Publishers, 2001. 8-22.
Provisional Urban Council. Hong Kong New Wave: Twenty Years After. Hong Kong:
Provisional Urban Council, 1999.
RapportNigel, and Andrew Dawsoneds. Migrants of Identity: Perceptions of Home
in a World of Movement Oxford: Berg, 1998.
Robertson, GeorgeMelinda Mash, Lisa TicknerJon BirdBarry Curtis and Tim
Putnam, eds. Travellers
Routledge1994. 199-25.
Robbins, Bruce.

"Introduction Part I: Actually Existing Cosmopolitanism,

Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling beyond the Nation. Eds. Pheng Cheah and
Bruce Robbins. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1998. 1-19.

141

RodriguezHector. "The Emergence of the Hong Kong New Wave." At Full Speed:
Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World. Ed. Esther C.M. Yau. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press2001. 53-69.
RowleyStephen.

Autumn Moon and Urban Bewilderment."

20 June 2003

<http://home.mira.net/~satadaca/postmod 1 .htm>.
Rushdie, Salman.

"Imaginary Homelands."

Imaginary Homelands: Essays and

Criticism 1981-1991. London: Granta, 1991. 9-21.

RutherfordJonathan. "A Place Called Home: Identity and the Cultural Politics of
Difference." Identity
London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990. 9-27.
SagarAparajita. "Homes and Postcoloniality." Diaspora 6.2 (1997): 237-51.
SafranWilliam. "Diasporas in Modem Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return."
Diaspora 1.1(1991): 83-99.
Said, Edward W. "Invention, Memory, and Place." Critical Inquiry 26 (2000): 175-92.
Samp, Madan.

"Home and identity." Travellers' Tales: Narratives of Home and

Displacement Eds. George Robertson et al. London: Routledge, 1994. 93-104.

Shu, Kei. "Ann Hui's Selected Works: Starry is the Night Hong Kong Panorama
2001-2002. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Arts Development Council, 2002. 126.
Siemienowicz, Rochelle. "Globalization and Home Values in New Australian Cinema."
Journal ofAustralian Studies. (1999): 49.
SinclairJohn, Kee PookongJosephine Fox, and Audrey Yue. "Diaspora identities:
Chinese communities and their media use in Australia." 20 December 2002
<http:/Avww.gu.edu.au/centre/cmp/Smclair.html>.

142

SiuHelen. Remade in Hong Kong." Hong Kong Goes Back Ed. Geremie R. Barme
et al. London: Writers & Scholars Intemational Ltd., 1997. 145-51.
Skeldon, Ronald.

Reluctant Exiles? Migration from Hong Kong and the New

Overseas Chinese. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1994. 3-18.
Stein, Michael. Floating Life: Fu Sheng." Intersections 8(2000).

20 June 2003

<http://wwwsshe.murdoch.edu.au/intersections/issue8/stein_review.html>.
Stokes, Lisa Odhamand Michael Hoover. City on Fire: Hong Kong Cinema. London:
Verso1999.
Stringer, Julian.
Cinema."

Cultural Identity and Diaspora in Contemporary Hong Kong

Countervisions: Asian American Film Criticism. Eds. Darrell Y.

Hamamoto and Sandra Liu. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000. 298309.
Teo,

Stephen.

Autumn Moon

Senses of Cinema.

20 June 2003

<http ://www. sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/12/autumn.html>.

--- Floating Life: The Heaviness of Moving." Senses of Cinema. 20 June 2003
<http://www.sensesofcinema.eom/contents/01/12/floating.html>.
--- Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions. London: British Film Institute, 1997.
---."Hong Kong's New Wave Retrospect." Hong Kong New Wave: Twenty Years After.
Hong Kong: Provisional Urban Council, 1999. 17-23.
"Local and Global Identity: Whither Hong Kong Cinema?Senses of Cinema. 20
June 2003 <http://www.sensesofcinema.eom/contents/00/7/hongkong.html>.
The Squint-eyed Gaze." The China Factor in Hong Kong Cinema. Hong Kong:
Urban Council, 1997. 86-94.

143

Turim, Maureen. Flashbacks in Film: Memory & History, New York: Routledge,
1989.
Turner, Matthew. "605s/90?s Dissolving the People." Hong Kong Sixties: Designing
Identity. Eds. Matthew Turner and Irene Ngan. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Arts
Centre, 1996. 13-34.
Urban Council. Border Crossings in Hong Kong Cinema. Hong Kong: Urban Council,
2000.
Urban Council. Changes in Hong Kong Society Through Cinema. Hong Kong: Urban
Council, 1988.
Urban Council. Fifty Years of Electric Shadows. Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1997.
Urban Council. Hong Kong Cinema in the Eighties. Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1991.
Urban Council. Hong Kong Cinema in the Seventies. Hong Kong: Urban Council,
1984.
Urban Council. Hong Kong Cinema in the Sixties. Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1982.
Urban Council. Overseas Chinese Figures in Cinema. Hong Kong: Urban Council
1992.
VillellaFiona A. "Materialism and Spiritualism in The Goddess of 1967r Senses of
Cinema.

20

June

2003

<http://www.sejnsesofcinema.com/ccmteixts/01/13/

goddess.html>.
Williams, Tony. Song of the Exile: Border-Crossing Melodrama." Jump Cut 42
(1998):94-100.

144

WongSiu-lun.

"Deciding to StayDeciding to Move, Deciding Not to Decide

Cosmopolitan Capitalist: Hong Kong and the Chinese Diaspora at the End of the
20th Century, Ed. Gary G. Hamilton. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
135-51.
Wood, Milles. Clara Law Hong Kong Cinema Through the Looking Glass. Surrey:
FAB Press1998. 70-83.
Yau, Esther C.Med. At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001.
. B o r d e r Crossing: Mainland China's Presence in Hong Kong Cinema." New
Chinese Cinemas: Forms
University Press, 1994. 180-201.
. "Introduction: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World." At Full Speed: Hong
Kong Cinema in a Borderless World. Ed. Esther C.M. Yau.

Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press, 2001. 1-28.

YuSen-lun. "The Outsiders.Taipei Times 31 December 2000. 20 June 2003
http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2000/12/31/story/0000067920>
Yue? Audrey. "Migration-as-Transition: Pre-Post-1997 Culture in Clara Law's Autumn
Moon Intersections 4(2000). 20 June 2003 <http://wwwsshe.murdoch.edu.au/
intersections/issue4/yue.html>