Shanghai Triad

The Chinese director Yi Mou Zhang and the gifted actress Li Gong’s love story went to the peak during shooting Red Sorghum in 1987 and ended in Shanghai Triad in 1995. Many outsiders assumed that Li Gong was the reason of Director Zhang’s broken marriage. Who knows? Love for artists is miserable anyway. The only fact I care is director Zhang’s movies. My dad is a big fan of his works. Therefore I was influenced spontaneously by what I constantly hear from him.  Nearly ten years ago, when I was in middle school, my dad and mom brought me to the movie theatre and we watched The Story Of Qiu Ju. It won three of us tears. I saw Li Gong’s eyes with confusing, sense of alienation, expectations, curiosity, stubbornness and happiness. I fell in love her acting from the moment on.

Shanghai Triad, it is the story of a gang boss in 1930s Shanghai and his willful, troublesome mistress. It’s seen through the eyes of a small boy from the country who loses his innocence in eight bloody days. Li Gong acts a nightclub singer who mocks and taunts her man. More specific, she is not viewed by him as his woman but a toy. He is rich and a powerful boss of a Shanghai crime triad. Their relationship sees by a boy who comes from the countryside and becomes little servant of Xiao Jin Bao (Li Gong). His assignment is to work as a personal servant for her and he has been taught by his godfather how to serve her as the best. The godfather’s word is law in his little world and can never resist. I’m not crazy about this whole movie because the feeling pushes me to think that there’s something missing. And Li Gong’s performance seems not happy towards the plot or something. It is just one movie I won’t go back to see again.

The World of Suzie Wong

       I love this movie a lot. I was so surprised by how they make two social classes crash when a lady of the night and a wealthy man fall in love in the movie The World of Suzie Wong. It is like a Chinese version of Pretty Woman. A pretty girl called Suzie who makes a living as a prostitude met the American architect Robert Lomax, who travels to Hong Kong to paint. Suzie met him on the boat pretending as a high-society heiress. She tries to imagine herself not as ashamed as her job at night in another role but an elegant virgin with a rich father. When the night comes, she has to go to the reality and has to face what she most hates deep in her heart. This movie was shot in a huge studio where looks like the real Hong Kong. The actress herself, Nancy Kwan, a Hong Kong-born Eurasian-American. The World of Suzie Wong can be seen the first formal work piece on the screen to Nancy Kwan. After auditioning Stark, she was luckily chosen to feature the role of Suzie in the movie. However, from the record, the reasons don't sound very comfortable to me. Stark wanted an Asian actress because slanting the eyes of a white actress would merely look artificial. He also praised Kwan's features: an "acceptable face" and "being alluringly leggy and perfectly formed". In most of the Hollywood movies, Asian woman always play the one who do anything to get a white man to like her. They have been viewed as a gentle China doll all the time. This made a lot of people think that an Asian woman would be the best wife who serves her husband on anything in order to making him happy. This point has been shown in the movie of Sayonara as well. The story was shot after WWII when the inter-racial marriage was not allowed. But  three American soldiers feel in love with the local Japanese women. One out of three got married with a Japanese lady and built their cozy  Japanese style home. We can see how a timid doll-like housewife the Japanese lady is and how lucky the American soldier thinks he is in the world. It is always like this and the stereotype of Asian woman implants in the society and hardly to erase.

The Joy Luck Club

      

        Amy Tan, an American writer who has wrote several works, the most well-known one is called The Joy Luck Club. It has translated in 35 languages. In 1933, this book was adapted into a successful movie with the same name of the novel. According to the understanding of Amy Tan's own life story, I can see that she was inspired by her own experience to write The Joy Luck Club. The movie/ novel is about mother-daughter relationship. There are four pair mother-daughters. It is about four Chinese American immigrant families. Mothers are all good friends and daughters grew up together. They always get together in the Joy Luck Club where people play Chinese traditional game Mahjong for money while feasting a variety of foods. From the beginning of the movie, June's mother passed away. She is asked to take her mom's place at the Mahjong table. As the story goes on, I hear stories of the old times and the new. When parents struggle to adjust to America, their American children must struggle with the confusion of having immigrant parents. The relationships between the mothers and daughters show a gap of no understanding. 

       While watching the movies, I couldn't help thinking of my mom and the bit changes of my own personalities that affect somewhat between us. My mom is just like all traditional  Chinese parents who have great ambitions for their children. She hold high hopes for me since I was very little. When I received my grade for final, or even a quiz, the red number on the paper was always lower than she expected. It was just never enough. When you get 80 (let's take 100 as a full score), she would say if you try a little harder, 90 should be shown; When you receive 90, she would expect the full score. As my personal view, Chinese parents love their children as much as American parents, or even I can say, more than American parents. Their way expressing love is being their for us as always. They don't speak love but do it. They hide the love part but show the strict face and attitude to stimulate the potential parts of their children. Yes, we are beautiful apples in their eyes. They just don't understand actually the most important element for planting apples is provide sufficient NATURAL LIGHT!

First Asian American Star in Hollywood

" I'm Anna May Wong. I come from old Hong Kong. But now I'm a Hollywood star. " This is what Anna May Wong sang in her performance . She was the first Asian American to become an international star in Hollywood. It's a pity that I have never heard of her name and any of her works in her Hollywood period. I created a toll to check how many people would be familiar with her and her life story through a Chinese website where most of my friends in China get on. I was not too surprised by the result. One out of 15 people has voted that she has heard about her name before; the other 14, all voted to have never heard of her at all. In her career, she focused on silent and sound film, television, stage, and radio as well. However, the first movie she featured the leading role is The Toll of the Sea. I like it not only because I don’t watch silent movie a lot, but also I think she did a good job at the age of 17.

In the movie, Anna May Wong played a young and naïve Chinese girl Lotus Flower who finds an American man, Allan in the water by her village. They fell in love and he promised to bring her back to America. While watching, I was thinking of a series of questions in my mind. Will he come back for her, this poor girl? Or will he just forget her forever? Apparently, the scriptwriter did not amaze me too much. I think Anna May Wong did very good performance. Like some other movies of hers, she always ended up losing her life or losing her heart. I really mean that because she views his man, in The Toll of the Sea, as her everything in the future. But he abandoned the love and affection between them. She was heart-broken with losing her husband, later on, giving her own daughter to her husband and another American woman. As usual, it is always what Asian performers get in American movies.

The reason why I love silent movie is that, I could focus more on their performance. The background music goes up and down by Lotus Flower’s emotion. And at the end, the scrip in my head is when Lotus Flower saved Allan by the water, the inhibitant said to her “be aware of strangers”!