Chinese Identity
“Forget all those passed, let’s start over.” These are the first words pronounced by Po-Wing addressing to Yiu-Fai when they met again in Argentina. One summer when I was in London I was busy with mailing a postcard home. When I got a red stamp with Queen Elizabeth II to put it upon the card, suddenly I remembered the time when I was only 12, the days when Hong Kong was still a colony. Standing in front of the red mailbox, I thought of Yiu-Fai visiting Zhang Zhen’s family in Taipei in Yiang Ming Street, but the home we grew up at was only in my memory. The scene in the film “Happy Together” is in all red and green, so I was deeply impressed by the contrast. As a result, when “Hollywood, Hong Kong” was on TV screens, I thought it is all about amnesia and nostalgia. Nostalgia was about finding something we never found, and as a result we were only experiencing those things we experienced and nothing more. But I gradually found that, it was filmed by Fruit Chan. In an interview, Fruit Chan said he would never film the movie without red and green, which represents sex and violence – Hong Kongese are sensitive to red, as they handover to each another.
Director Fruit Chen dealt with the confusion of identity people have to face after the gaining of sovereignty. Undergoing different political systems, both Taiwan people and Hong Kong people change their attitudes towards motherland from nostalgia to disappointment because they perceived that the culture and values they had set up in colonization would be changed under the different rules. Taiwan people also suffered enough, as well as the people from colonized British countries did. Since 1894 till 1945, Taiwan had been ruled by Japan for 51 years after China ceded Taiwan to Japan in Treaty of Shimonoseki. According to one of the websites in China, in the course of Japanese colonization Taiwanese language was prohibited while Japanese education was conducted at schools and Chinese books were banned. Japan made attempts to assimilate Taiwanese culture. Meanwhile, the current Japanese government exploited Taiwanese natural resource by enslaving Taiwan people relentlessly. Taiwanese self-awareness was being suppressed until 1919, when Taiwan people were influenced by the democratic movement in China. In 1945 Taiwan was liberated to the embrace of Mainland China.
In seven years after handover Hong Kong entered the historical ‘post-colonial’ period, but a post-colonial Hong Kong had to face another ‘post colonialism’, which refered to the objectification and the remaining influence of colonialism. Different from the despotic sovereignty of Japanese government, Hong Kong people could enjoy limited democracy. In 1841, Hong Kong was officially turned over to the British government in the light of Nangjing Treaty. From then on, Hong Kong had been governed by alien monarchy for more than 100 years. In contrast with Japanese rulers, British government allowed the exercise of Cantonese, and conducted bilingual education. Likewise, as an exploiter, British government took advantage of Hong Kong’s geographical position as trading center in Asia. Hong Kong people had more chances to meet people from various cultures, and had more colorful culture than Taiwan did. In 1997 Hong Kong was turned over to China.
Though influenced by different political systems, Taiwanese and Hong Kong people were undergoing similar process from overexpectation for motherland’s rule, to disappointment at the unfair treatment they had suffered in postcolonial period. Postcolonialism is the aftermath of colonialism. However, in the “Hollywood, Hong Kong”, we can not find the two products of colonialization, aftermath and amnesia, even the product of post colonialism, hybridity, too. In contrast, there is only a ‘virtue locality’ left, as well as the phenomena of diaspora and immigration. The two elements actually compose a ‘post-colonial cosmopolitan’. Post-colonialism and globalization starts with something different but end similarly. ‘National myth’ was destroyed due to the rise of globalization, cities turned to highly commercial ones, Chan chose to film Tai Kuen Chen, which was located opposite to Hollywood Plaza. Some reviewers interpreted it as the ‘binary opposition of new and old, rich and poor’ – while China (Hollywood Plaza) imitating U.S.A., Hong Kong is turning to disable after handover. However, Hong Kong once said, ‘I won’t be so stupid to buy the flat’. Tai Kuen Village as the last squatter problem, it reflected an inefficient ruling of British Government. With the help of new power, squatter clearing is in relation to the clearance of old power, which follows a commercial centre with the diminishing of ‘aura’.
Under the influence of globalization, is a commercial centre free from ‘nation’? If nation is only an imagined one and exists in a homogeneous empty time, Hollywood Hong Kong seems to tell its story from the start. Unlike the development of other countries, Hong Kong has never come across gender, race and political problems, but directly and only tackle economic crisis. It means that Hong Kongnese have long been using commodity to replace nation myth. In contrast, nation is like a specter inside Hollywood Hong Kong, providing a sense of simultaneity and togetherness. ‘When the film is already on cast, Tai Kuen Village doesn’t exist any more’, Fruit Chan said. As shown by Chang and Ming using internet and ICQ to contact a prostitute, Hong Kong, Tai Kuen Village is virtualized, and even it itself becomes a ‘virtual locality’ when the film comes to TV screens. Although it is in fantasy, we are still waving the red flag towards Hollywood Plaza like Xi and father Chug, till we see a red flag with no face but still here those sounds from the wind, the same as we are chasing something in our life, but we lose ourselves before we see the end.
However, between lost and found, everything is merely a representation. In one shot, Chang was asked, ‘How do you solve your physical need?’ Chang dreams of dating Hong and smile naively; in another shot, Dong peeped at his father, and soon he projected his fantasy on her when he stepped on the sea coast. In their dreams, Dong Dong or Hong Hong has become a spectacle. Colonizer and colonized depend mutually, the latter being not only admired but hated as well, this is due to the circulation of desire. Hence, does the true friendship between Xi and Dong Dong imply that we can only end up in unsentimental optimism without desire of capitalism? Ray Chow thought that Hong Kong is enjoying Western economic advantages but also resisting them; on the other hand, they are longing for Chinese identity while they are afraid of losing self-control. Therefore, they try to exploit the two in order to survive, and gradually form a third space. As the hybrid vigour, Hong Kong can perform different identity: an invader and an invaded. If one has to say Hong Kong is hybridized, it is more suitable to use ‘hybrid of capitalization’ to describe them.
“Hollywood, Hong Kong” tells a story of how a girl aroused chaos around a man. Fruit Chan uses a prostitute to image China in particular. It is a surprise for him to connect gender and postcolonialism by a color, red, and put it all in an alien condition. Sex belongs to projection while violence belongs to history (the coherent history in grand narrative). For the colonizer, women are once equal to ‘a black land’. Women without history, and they do not exist in history too, hence, gender and colonialization are always linked together. However, Fruit Chan subverted the original metaphor of patriarchal society, colonized and colonizer, subject and object. For ‘mother’ is always the symbol of a nation, to symbolize a mother Fruit Chan uses a prostitute, thus saying that nowadays blood connection is losing its position ant trade together with benefit advance.This is the point that contradicts women identity, it only sharpens the gender issues in the society.
But women are not presented as inferior in “Hollywood Hong Kong”. In fact, we can hardly find a subaltern. At first sight China, Great Britain and other capitalist countries are definitely an invisible power, which all settled in Hollywood. And Hong Kong presented as Tai Kan Village where the immigrants and male can only wait for death, just like Xi and Dong Dong waving their flag, but Chang can only mimicry by his underwear, shouting ‘I am here, I am here’ and eventually fading out into space. Is Hong Kong a subaltern? Immigrants needed to talk in their way but their native language was suppressed by Hong Kong Government. Nevertheless, Dong Dong and his Mistress had their own language and the way to exploit people. Most importantly, they were not alone. If we distinguish inferior by age, we will be surprised to find out that children are stronger that adults. Does a subaltern speak or not?
In the beginning of the film “Public Toilet”, Dong Dong is already a Chinese although he stills an orphan which was born in a toilet. If life reloaded, maybe the words ‘Forget all those passed, let’s start over’ are still his (Po-Wing’s) one and only theme. And then they continue to move, from Hong Kong to Argentina, and to Taiwan, likewise Tong Tong travels through North-East to Korea and to India. I will never forget what Hong Kong said, ‘we can never escape from Wuzhishan ’. If our life journey is also a Journey to the West, I think we are definitely travelling with humanistic privation, with the lustful Chu and impulsive Sun, so as to experience trauma. But the interesting thing is that we can perform spider or Tong as long as we fit in, and lastly, till we reach the ‘other side’.
Marches or old songs were sung in a tavern to celebrate their liberation from Japan. Nevertheless, after the outbreak of the rebellion of February 28, 1947, sympathy for the wounded women irritated native Taiwanese, and some of them turned to clandestine rebellion against Kuomintang. They, accordingly, were killed or arrested by the current government.
In “Hollywood, Hong Kong”, director Fruit Chen indicated that Hong Kong people had the same nostalgia for China after turnover. Tiny’s waving red flag could be considered as a sign welcoming the Chinese rule. Still, director Fruit Chen expressed his disappointment at China’s rule by subtly using the displacement of arms and waving the white flag with the red word
Taiwan people and Hong Kong people must face the problem of self-identity after the shift the rulers. After displacement of the independence cultural hybridity forces the decolonized people to readjust themselves to a new culture, which could cause another process of colonization for them. For instance, the friendship between Hino and the brother of Mss may espouse comradeship between Taiwan and Japan had been cultivated in the period of colonization. The colonized can not surpass the colonizers in class, but through a long-term cultural intercourse, the colonized can be more or less elevated to intellectual or racial equality with the colonizers. However, though the native Taiwanese and the mainlanders are of the same origin, cultural discrepancy divided them into two different “race formation.” (Barker,193) With the arrival of mainlanders, the native Taiwanese had to learn , and suffered from the prosecution which stemmed from the difference in language, especially after the outbreak of the rebellion of February 28.
Hong Kong people face the same dilemma of self-identity as Taiwanese. Before handover, three tides of immigrations happened in Hong Kong, and the last one was caused and accelerated by the incident of the 4th of June, that deepened Hong Kong people’s fear of handover, and prove indirectly the Hong Kong people have got accustomed to their own culture and values set up during the former colonization. Though, according to a survey conducted by Hong Kong Policy Research Institute Ltd, democracy and the economic depression happen under the influence of global depression. Director Fruit Chen can not fully identify with Chinese sovereignty and question the identity of Hong Kong people. Pig Mama in “Hollywood Hong Kong” may be the striking parody of confusing identity. First of all, the Chinese quack predicts that pig mama may substitute the mother’s position in Chu family. Then, after eating the meat of the dead Chinese mistress, the image of Pig mama is mixed with the Chinese mistress. Finally, the prediction of the quack came true, and Pig mama ended in playing a motherly role. The position of the Chu family representing Hong Kong people is degraded into that of Pig mama symbolizing China. The usage of shifting identity may be the personal viewpoint of director Chen, but it may also unravel the general unwillingness of accepting the Chinese identity.
Though both directors leave gloomy mood and confusion of identity at the end of these two films, they also leave the audience the hope about the future. In “A City of Sadness”, the men were almost dead except for the elders, the women and the children, but life would go on after the tragedy. In “Hollywood, Hong Kong”, the appearance of another Keung with two right hands may reveal that director Chen’ hoped to restore the original democracy. Their hopes of setting up and continuing their own culture and values are demonstrated behind the films.
Reference
Bressler, Charles E.. Literary Criticism. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1998
Barker, Chris. Sites of Culture Studies. London: Sage, 2000
Chris Barker. Cultural Studies, Theory and Practice. London: Sage Publication, 2000.
Derrida, Jacques. ‘Plato’s Pharmacy’, Dissemination. London: Athlone Press, 1972.
Walter Benjamin. ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, illumination. New York: Schocken Books, 1968.
www.chinataiwan.org.html
www.marimari.com.html