Movie: Mambo Girl (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUAXLBm3heY)

After watching the movie, you should write two arguments, and the reading and the movie should use quote

Requirement：

1. Purpose: to cultivate the habits of critical reading by making arguments and providing evidence 

2. Content: identify an argument (not merely a topic) from a required reading (with direct quotations and page numbers) and discuss it in relation to the designated film of the day 

3. Focus: your ability to articulate someone else’ argument and state your interpretation of a film in relation to that argument; mere factual information or plot summary won’t count as argument 

4. Length: 1 double-space page or 350 words for each short paper; the portion in excess of the limit will not be graded for credit 

5. Grading: out of 10 points for each commentary, 3 for identification of an argument and logical transition, 3 points for film discussion focused on details, and 4 for writing (grammar, expression, coherence, style)

6. Make sure you have a clear argument or statement: find a focus to organize your writing

7. A general plot or characterization summary earns little credit

8. Analyze film in detail (e.g., mise-en-scene, smiles or other facial expressions, camera angles)

9. Rephrase key words for better connection between the reading and your film analysis (e.g., metaphor, allegory, realism)

10. Always use the readings assigned in the same week as primary films; the same formula for commentaries 2-3

11. You only need to quote from 1 reading in the week, NOT 1 from each reading in the week

12. Your quote must be relevant to the rest of your discussion

13. Avoid a long quote or 2 or more quotes in a commentary

14. Similarly, avoid discussing 2 or more ideas because there is no space to do that adequately

15. Proofread your paper or grade yourself to improve before submitting

16. No need for a separate Works Cited page, but use in-text reference (e.g., Teo, page #)

among studios, which was fairly common at the time, brings us to other prominent
studios in the mid-1920s.

A crop of new studios
Unlike most other studios of the time, three brothers, Li Minwei (Lai
Man-wai), Li Haishan (Lai Hoi-san) and Li Beihai (Lai Pak-hoi), established
Minxin in Hong Kong in 1923. Born in Japan and educated in Hong Kong, Li
Minwei was active in the civilized play, organizing two theater troupes in 1911
and 1913. When Brodsky passed through Hong Kong on his way to the United
States in 1913, Li negotiated a deal with him and directed Zhuangzi Tests His
Wife (Zhuangzi shiqi; 2 reels) as a release of Huamei (literally, ‘Sino-
American’). Based on Cantonese opera, the film features Li’s brother Beihai as
Zhuangzi, Li himself as the wife, and Li’s wife Yan Shanshan (Yim Shan-shan) as
the wife’s maid (thus making her the first Chinese screen actress). The special
effects of moving ghosts created by Brodsky’s associate R.F. Van Velzer
impressed the Li brothers and strengthened their determination to pursue a film
career. The film was never shown in Hong Kong, but it was taken to the States
by Brodsky and was reportedly screened in Los Angeles in 1917 (Law
2000: 46).

With their own company Minxin, the Li brothers produced documentaries,
comprising of mostly sports and ethnographic spectacles. Notable among them
were several celebrated episodes of Beijing opera performed by the star Mei
Lanfang, shot in Beijing in 1924. Also noteworthy was the historical footage of
Sun Yat-sen (Sun Zhongshan), the leader of the Republican Revolution. Minxin
had purchased film equipment from overseas and appointed Moon Kwan (Guan
Wenqing) as an adviser, but it had no luck with feature production in Hong
Kong. Probably due to Li Minwei’s ties to the Nationalists, the colonial govern-
ment delayed processing Minxin’s proposal for building a studio in the territory,
forcing the Li brothers to set up shop across the border in Guangzhou and
spend HK$9,000 shooting Rouge (Yanzhi, dir. Li Beihai, 1925). Adapted from
Liaozhai Record of Wonders (Liaozhai zhiyi), a collection of classic fantasy
and ghost stories, the film starred Li Minwei’s other wife Lin Chuchu (Lam
Cho-cho) as the female lead and had a decent ten-day run in Hong Kong,
earning HK$10,000. Unfortunately, a prolonged labor strike from June 1925
to October 1926 paralyzed the entire region of Hong Kong and Guangdong
(Fonoroff 1997: xiii–xiv).

Li Minwei was forced to bring part of their equipment to Shanghai and formed
a new Minxin studio. Shanghai Minxin announced its enlightenment aims in a
manifesto written by Ouyang Yuqian, a noted dramatist, in 1926: to produce
high-quality films and to introduce to Europe and America the ‘excellent ideas,
pure morality and honest custom’ of the Chinese people (ZDZ 1996a: 49). To
these aims Minxin employed Ouyang Yuqian, Bu Wancang and Sun Yu, all rising
stars in film directing and screenwriting. Minxin’s seventeen features released in

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Shanghai included some of the best films in the late 1920s, including Romance of
the West Chamber (Xixiang ji, dir. Hou Yao, 1927; 10 reels).

A less influential industry player, Great Wall was established in Shanghai in
1924 by a group of overseas Chinese. As early as May 1921, several Chinese
Americans were determined to learn film basics out of their irritation at
humiliating portrayals of the Chinese in American films. They organized a film
company named ‘Great Wall’ based in Brooklyn, New York, and produced two
documentaries introducing Chinese costumes and martial arts. After shipping
their equipment to Shanghai in 1924, these patriots were disappointed by the
dismal reality at home and wanted to intervene in social reform by means of
filmmaking (ZDZ 1996a: 85–6). Their rationale for producing ‘problem films’
was that, since China was fraught with various social problems in urgent need
of solution, only by addressing these problems in films could they achieve the
objectives of ‘changing morale and criticizing society’ (J. Zhang and Cheng
1995: 75). Each film was to focus on one social problem, and the problems taken
up include love, marriage and women’s careers, all reflected in the films Hou Yao
directed for them.

In addition to Hou, Great Wall had on its payroll Cheng Bugao and Sun Shiyi,
as well as Wan Laiming and Wan Guchan, the latter two producing the earliest
Chinese cartoon shorts for the company. Great Wall titles were critically
acclaimed for their forward-looking vision, and their combined artistic taste
and moral integrity earned the appellation a ‘Great Wall school’ (ZDZ 1996a:
1065–6). However, their reputation as a distinct ‘school’ (pai) was short-lived
as the company became involved in martial arts film production in 1927 against
its original commitment to contemporary problems. Great Wall reportedly
owned a distribution office in the US (ZDZ 1996a: 1362), but the company was
financially insecure and had to close in 1930.

Like Great Wall, Shenzhou (Cathay Film Corporation) was established on a
budget of 50,000 yuan in Shanghai in 1924 by Wang Xuchang (who studied at
the Ecole du Cinéma in France) and his friends, with a specific policy: ‘to subtly
influence and change the audience’ (qianyi mohua) (S. Li and Hu 1996: 91).
Shenzhou filmmakers emphasized humanism and opposed sensationalism. As a
result, their films paid special attention to the screenplay, acting, photography,
art design, intertitles, as well as characters’ psychology and a film’s overall
ambience. Although the company was shut down in 1927, the high standards
of its melancholy, tragic films had earned the appellation a ‘Shenzhou school’
(ZDZ 1996a: 87, 1062). Like Great Wall, Shenzhou’s operation was too short
to have an impact on the industry. These two early ‘schools’ of filmmaking,
therefore, existed more as collective aspirations than as viable industry forces.

Great China-Lily Pictures Company (Da Zhonghua baihe) was the result of a
merger of two film companies in 1925: Great China Pictures and Lily. Feng
Zhen’ou founded the former, and Wu Xingzai the latter, both in Shanghai in
1924. Financial difficulties compelled the two companies to merge after pro-
ducing, respectively, two and four films. In their combined operations, Great

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China-Lily produced around fifty titles in five years and claimed such talents as
Lu Jie, Shi Dongshan and Wang Yuanlong. Initially, Great China-Lily exhibited a
tendency towards a European style, best exemplified in Shi Dongshan’s films of
high aestheticism. Shi believed that film was the most comprehensive and most
enchanting art form capable of expressing the beauty of sounds, colors, shapes
and movements – in brief, natural and man-made beauty of all kinds (ZDZ
1996a: 371). In spite of their ideological affinity with bourgeois lifestyle, Shi’s
films were praised for their elegant looks and artistic details, which brought hope
that Chinese film could finally become ‘art’ (ZDZ 1996a: 1145, 1268–72).

Dan Duyu, Yin Mingzhu and Shanghai Photoplay
An older studio that exhibited a similar tendency of Europeanization and
aestheticism was Shanghai Photoplay Company, founded by Dan Duyu with a
budget of 1,000 yuan in 1920. Dan was a well-known Shanghai painter who
specialized in female figures, especially nudes, and ran a brisk business producing
decorated commercial calendars that displayed fashionable beauties (S. Li and
Hu 1996: 33, 270). A graduate of the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, Dan was
skilled in oil painting and watercolors as well, and his hobby of photography led
him to purchase a film camera from a foreigner. With no acquaintances around
with any knowledge of cinematography, Du decided to disassemble the camera
himself and reassemble the pieces. After a dozen times, he was able to handle the
machine with ease.

Shanghai Photoplay was a typical family company not only because many
employees lived with Dan’s family in the studio complex but also because the
studio employed several of his family members and relatives. The best known
among them was Yin Mingzhu, a socialite studying at the East–West Women’s
School. Yin’s fluent English, her Pearl White-type of clothing and her versatile
skills in modern activities (e.g., dancing, swimming, horse-riding, bicycling and
car-driving) had earned her the nickname ‘Foreign Fashion’, or ‘Miss FF’ for
short. With her performance in Dan’s debut Sea Oath, Yin became the first
Chinese female movie star (Du 1988: 56).

Unfortunately, Yin’s traditionally minded mother immediately forbade her
from acting, sending her instead to serve as a clerk in a Japanese clinic. The loss
of Yin prompted Dan Duyu to recruit Yin’s equally fashionable schoolmate,
Fu Wenhao, better known as ‘Miss AA’ (short for her English name, Anna) and
the first woman to drive a private car in Shanghai, as the female lead in The
Revival of an Old Well (Gujing chongbo ji, 1923; 6 reels). The film premiered
at the Embassy to popular acclaim and was rush-ordered by Southeast Asian
distributors. Miss AA became an instant star but her mother, like Yin’s, forbade
her to act. Fortunately for Dan, Yin had convinced her mother of the value of a
film career by this time. After her leading roles in Dan’s subsequent two films,
Yin and Dan were married in Hangzhou in 1926, the first among many screen
couples to come.

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In addition to directing and screenwriting, Dan was also skillful with cinema-
tography, lighting, editing and laboratory work. Once, while watching a foreign
film in a theater, he detected from a flash on an actress’s eyes that a reflector had
been used to augment interior lighting. Back in the studio, he experimented with
a silver sheet reflection board and successfully directed sunlight to where it was
otherwise dark. In addition to experimenting with film techniques, Dan trained
numerous up-and-coming film artists. Shi Dongshan, for instance, began his
career as an art designer with Dan, played in a few films and then launched
his directorial debut with Shanghai Photoplay.

The press consistently praised Dan’s films for their distinctive aestheticism in
set design, lighting and frame composition (ZDZ 1996a: 1069). In 1926 Zheng
Zhengqiu acknowledged that the blooming Chinese film industry had owed
much to Dan, a pioneering, multi-skilled artist who regarded film as ‘an art of
motion’ and who ‘had no equals’ in China (ZDZ 1996a: vi, 1217–18).

Genre considerations: opera movies and comedies
Apart from the family drama, early Chinese cinema experimented with a number
of incipient genres. Among them, opera movie and comedy came first, romance
and family drama were popular in the early through to the mid-1920s, and
costume drama/historical films and martial arts films took over the market in the
late 1920s.

Opera movies (xiqu pian), based on existing stage plays, were among the
earliest Chinese attempts at filmmaking (Farquhar and Berry 2001). This
seemingly accidental choice was motivated by a kind of cultural unconscious. In
terms of narrative, opera movies tell stories already familiar to the audience, thus
posing little new challenge. In terms of visual style, the ‘electric shadows’ added
a more exotic dimension to the familiar operatic acts and therefore appeared all
the more attractive to the audience. In terms of price, the cheaper movie tickets
translated into higher attendance rates since viewers otherwise prevented from
seeing leading actors perform on stage were now able to watch them on screen.4

In short, opera movies created a win–win situation for producers, exhibitors and
audience alike.

This explains why opera movies came to be the first choice for several studios.
The Fengtai Photography Shop in Beijing filmed the leading actor Tan Xinpei in
Conquering the Jun Mountain (Ding Junshan, 1905; 3 reels), the first Chinese
short feature, which premiered at the Grand Shadowplay Theater to public
acclaim in 1905 and was shipped to southern provinces like Jiangsu and Fujian.
Delighted at his unexpected success, the shop owner Ren Jingfeng arranged to
have other popular operatic shorts filmed in the subsequent years. Similarly,
among the early releases of the Motion Picture Department of Commercial Press
were two opera movies directed and performed by Mei Lanfang in 1920. In
most cases, early opera movies depended more on celebrity attraction than on
cinematic means, although limited special effects were occasionally used, such

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as adding shots of clouds to accompany Mei’s role as a fairy maiden flying in
the sky.

The comedy was a genre that accounts for numerous shorts in the early years.
The China Cinema Year Book 1927 lists twenty-eight domestic comedies (xiaoju)
– most in 2 to 3 reels – in a chapter separate from feature films (zhuangju, literally
‘serious plays’). Early comedies were largely slapsticks (da’nao xiju), marked by
a good deal of aggressive or violent action as the source of humor (ZDZ 1996a:
1390). Popular Western comedies featuring Max Linder, Charlie Chaplin and
Buster Keaton were a direct source of inspiration, but humorous acts before or
between Chinese stage plays also provided ready materials. In the silent era,
humor was situational rather than verbal, and to engage the audience the
filmmakers depended on exaggerated gestures and facial expressions.

Few studios took pride in the comedy, but in 1925 Xu Zhuodai and Wang
Youyou named their company ‘Kaixin’ (literally, ‘delighted’) and specialized
in comedies so as to achieve ‘the sole goal of delighting the audience’. Their
comedies (huaji ju or humorous plays) generated little interest in the press,
which attributed the insufficiency of Chinese comedies to the lack of worthy
screenplays and comic talents (ZDZ 1996a: 672–7).

Hong Shen defined the comedy (xiju) as a genre that pokes fun at a variety
of contradictions in everyday situations. For him, there is a distinction between
huaji ju, which provokes laughter through the absurd and the eccentric, and
xiju, which aims at mild criticism and must avoid both the hyperbolic and the
wearisome. He intended his Roses in April (Siyue lidi qiangwei chuchu kai, dir.
Zhang Shichuan, 1926; 10 reels) to be a light comedy that ridicules enamored
men and cunning women. To realize his vision of the comic, Hong employed
long takes – with 5 to 6 shots each over 150-feet long – to get the best out of his
cast (ZDZ 1996a: 309). A departure from the previous action-filled slapsticks,
Roses in April expanded the comedy’s critical functions and signaled the genre’s
maturity as a narrative form.

Beyond genres: allegory, feminization
and Europeanization

A closer look at a typical urban romance here may help us better comprehend
the multiple meanings that exceed a purely genre analysis as well as critical
issues debated in the press of the 1920s. In lieu of setting the battle of vices
and virtues in an ethical framework as in family drama, Back Home from the City
(Chongfan guxiang, dir. Dan Duyu, 1925; 9 reels) allegorizes the perils of
unbridled urban adventures. Time (Guangyin) sends her five daughters on a
one-month tour of the city, and they stay with Aunt Indulgence (Ni’ai) and
Uncle Coward (Queruo). Delighted at the arrival of pretty country maidens,
Indulgence’s prodigal son Money (Jinqian) frequents nightclubs and restaurants
with Simplicity (Sunü, played by Yin Mingzhu), the eldest and most beautiful
sister, while his playboy friends Flattery (Xianmei) and Seduction (Yinyou) date

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with Youth (Qingnian) and Vanity (Xurong). Only Chastity (Zhenjie) resists
urban extravagances and finds it more interesting to visit the studio of Sincerity
(Chengken, played by Shi Dongshan), Coward’s nephew who is a Western-style
painter (a narcissistic reference to Dan himself).

Shortly afterward, Beauty (Meili), one of the sisters, dies from excessive
drinking, and Money has Chastity imprisoned in a secret room because he does
not want her to interfere with his plots. As is characteristic of such urban tales,
Money soon abandons Simplicity for Coquetry (Yaoye). After Coward’s business
goes bankrupt, Simplicity and Vanity stay with Scheme (Yinxian), who eventually
steals all their belongings. In the meantime, Vanity has eloped with Seduction,
and Youth has returned home. Coquetry now flirts with Flattery, who gets into
a fight with Money that kills them both. Alone, Simplicity wanders to the
mountains and realizes her mistakes in front of a Buddha statue. Finally, Chastity
escapes and joins Simplicity on a trip ‘back home from the city’ (ZDZ 1996b:
1: 143–56).

Arguably, Back Home from the City functions only marginally as an old-
fashioned cautionary tale. Conceptually as well as artistically, the film aligns itself
with what Miriam Hansen terms vernacular modernism in international cinema,
manifested at multiple levels ranging from its thematic concerns and narrative
strategies to mise-en-scene, visual style, modes of performance, spectatorial
identification and address to the film’s potential horizon of reception (Hansen
2000: 13). Indeed, Back Home from the City is as much a star vehicle as a screen
primer for everything modern (or Western) in cosmopolitan lifestyles: fashion,
make-up, architecture, interior design, furnishing, mode of transportation and
the like. Fundamental to the film’s attractions is its spectacular display of modern
images for mass consumption. As Money indulges in decadence and Coquetry
flaunts her sexuality on screen, the film works as much to furnish new objects
of desire as to generate new desires for the modern, not necessarily at the
ideological level but more at the material level of everyday life. However, the
1920s horizon of reception was such that the film finds it obligatory to invoke
conservatism by adding an anti-climatic closure where Simplicity and Chastity –
two paragon female virtues – must return to the safe haven of their rural home.

Back Home from the City opened at the Embassy and received positive reviews.
Bi Yihong praised the film for its ‘philosophical’ depth and its almost perfect
execution of lighting and set design. Although he faulted the film for its all too
obvious use of allegorical names and its obsessive close-ups of Yin Mingzhu,
Bi believed that the film deserved a mention in the history of Chinese cinema
(ZDZ 1996a: 1104).

Eulogies of aestheticism aside, several critics had enumerated problems in films
of the contemporary life by the mid-1920s. In a 1926 article, Hu Zhifan divides
current films into three types: the romantic, the social and the anecdotal (tanci
pai). First, the ‘romantic film’ is the formulaic story of a scholar meeting a beauty
drawn from traditional Chinese narratives, but filmmakers have modernized the
formula by making the poor scholar a talented writer or artist, and the demure

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beauty a coquettish socialite. Second, the ‘social film’ is the exposé of social evils,
dwelling excessively on playboys and prostitutes’ ‘modern’ activities equally
tempting to Shanghai residents. Third, the ‘anecdotal film’ is the adaptation of
tanci narratives, and since tanci (or pingtan), a style of storytelling performed in
lyrics and songs, was immensely popular in the Yangtze Delta region, tanci films
are especially ‘welcome by ladies and misses’. While mentioning moral tales
(e.g., family dramas) and comedies as other types in passing, Hu opines that
fragile beauties and bookish gentlemen will lend no assistance to a weak nation
(Da Zhonghua Baihe 1926).

Implicit in Hu’s article is a criticism of two tendencies – feminization and
Europeanization – that dominated Chinese filmmaking in the mid-1920s. Hu’s
article was published as an endorsement of The Migration Act (Zhibian waishi,
dir. Wang Yuanlong, 1926; 8 reels), a film that depicts the heroic act of southern
farm workers migrating to the northern frontier. As Wang Yuanlong asserted
in 1926, The Migration Act sought ‘Easternization’ by way of promoting
‘indigenous Chinese culture’ and thus represented a departure from his previous
espousal of wholesale ‘Westernization’ (ZDZ 1996a: 303). In a film review,
Zhou Shoujuan praised The Migration Act as a ‘ground-breaking’ film that
delighted the audience with rural, natural beauty and exemplified a distinctive
‘national characteristic’ (ZDZ 1996a: 1160–1).

CINEMA AND SPECULATIONS, 1927–9

In a sense, what happened in the late 1920s was the return of ‘Chineseness’ with
a vengeance – a kind of legendary, magical ‘Chineseness’ that spun out of con-
trol. As Bao Tianxiao predicted in 1926, ‘the development of Chinese cinema
would not materialize through the film romance where the so-called stars faked
their feelings; it could only materialize through the historical film’ (ZDZ 1996a:
629). He asserted that screen images of Chinese sages and heroes could benefit
mass education on the one hand and correct the Western misconception of and
contempt for the Chinese on the other. Albeit affiliated with Mingxing, Bao
actually shared a conviction with the founders of a rising studio, Tianyi.

Tianyi and costume drama
The Shaw (Shao) brothers – Zuiweng (Renjie), Runde (Cunren), Runme
(Renmei) and Run Run (Yifu) – founded Tianyi (Unique Film Production
Company) in Shanghai in 1925 and intended their pictures to ‘promote Chinese
civilization and eschew Europeanization by emphasizing ancient morality
and ethics’ (Tan 1995: 18–19). A lawyer and businessman, Shao Zuiweng had
collaborated with Zhang Shichuan and Zheng Zhengqiu in 1922 in managing
the Laughter Stage (Xiao wutai) which specialized in the civilized play (ZDZ
1996a: 53). But contrary to Mingxing’s focus on contemporary issues, Tianyi

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was interested primarily in adapting Chinese folk tales, myths and legends already
popular among audiences, an interest in line with its conservative ideology
(ZDZ 1996a: vii).

Under its pretext to advance national traditions, Tianyi released two note-
worthy costume dramas in 1926, both directed by Shao Zuiweng. The Lovers
(Liang Zhu tongshi; 12 reels), adopted from the tanci version of a popular folk
tale about Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, fated lovers who were reunited only
in death as two butterflies, took the nation by storm. A longer feature, White
Snake, I–II (Yiyao baishe zhuan; 18 reels), broke all records of Chinese films
in Southeast Asian markets, where tickets were sold as high as 6 yuan a piece
(ZDZ 1996a: 89).

Admittedly an umbrella term, the costume drama might be extended to
subsume genres such as the opera movie, the historical film and
romances set in ancient times – all these also designated as ‘ancient plays’ by
Commercial Press. But in a strict sense, the costume drama refers to a kind of
historical film adapted from the tanci repertoires and a wealth of unofficial histor-
ies, traditional novels, vernacular stories and folk tales. Initially a reaction to
Europeanization in domestic productions, costume dramas might have been
triggered by imported epics like The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecile B. DeMille,
1923) (S. Hong 1995: 6). Most costume dramas dwelled on the narrative for-
mula of either ‘scholar meets beauty’ (caizi jiaren), as in The Lovers, or ‘hero
loves beauty’ (yingxiong meiren), as in Sex Trap, I–II (Meiren ji, dir. Lu Jie et al.,
1927; 24 reels). Since location shooting could be minimized and stage props,
sets and costumes were readily available, the majority of costume dramas tended
to be imitative in nature and, worse still, cheaply made. Historical accuracy was
rarely an issue, and some producers rushed films to the market in a matter of a
week or so. The Tianyi costume drama trend crested in 1927, bringing into its
whirlpool other major studios.

There were, however, a few outstanding titles in this genre. Sex Trap, I–II, an
adaptation of an episode from the classical novel Romance of Three Kingdoms
(Sanguo yanyi), was a big-budget production. At a time when the average
investment per film was 5,000 yuan, Great Wall-Lily poured 150,000 yuan into
this two-part film that involved its four leading directors for an entire year in
addition to thousands of extras (S. Hong 1995: 7). This attempt at producing
‘well-made films’ was aimed at driving low-priced imitations out of the market
(ZDZ 1996a: 1418), but it could also backfire, as illustrated later.

Romance of the West Chamber: negotiating wen and wu
Before proceeding with the next commercial trend, we should pause now to
consider another ‘well-made’ costume drama that anticipated the rise of martial
arts films. Indebted to a long genealogy of literati writing and traditional theater
(Harris 1999), Romance of the West Chamber is a Minxin release rich in literary
quality, dramatic effect and cinematic artistry.

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1929 due to internal disputes over Mingxing’s apparent abuse of power (ZDZ
1996a: 1421).

The importance of Southeast Asia (Nanyang)
Tianyi prospered despite United Sixth’s intervention and the press criticism of
its commercialism (ZDZ 1996a: 88–9). One decisive factor that distinguished
Tianyi from its competitors was its far-sighted venture in Southeast Asian
markets. Often referred to as ‘Nanyang’ (literally, ‘south ocean’), these markets
included colonies along the Pacific Ocean such as Singapore, Kuala Lumpur
(Malaysia) and Rangoon or Yangon (Burma) under Britain, Java (Indonesia)
and Bangkok (Thailand) under Holland, Annam (Vietnam) under France,
the Philippines and Honolulu under the US. Around 1926 many theaters in
Southeast Asia had signed contracts with Mingxing and the United Six, but
Tianyi sent Runme (age 25) and Run Run Shaw (age 19) to the region in
order to develop their own network. They traveled to big cities as well as rural
communities and soon convinced a number of distributors and exhibitors to
join their cause (Du 1978: 157–9). Together they managed to exhibit Tianyi
titles to overseas Chinese audiences, over 70 per cent of them merchants, coolies
and plantation or farm workers (ZDZ 1996a: 1408). The popularity of their
accessible films generated a huge demand for Tianyi products. By 1931, Tianyi
managed 139 theaters in Southeast Asia (J. Zhang and Cheng 1995: 948) and
thus commanded a leading edge that would facilitate its expansion to Hong Kong
in the 1930s and restructuring as the all-powerful Shaw Brothers decades later.

Initially, Southeast Asia was intended as an alternative market because of a
limited domestic ownership of theaters, which translated into a lower share of
box-office returns in Shanghai (which averaged above 2,000 yuan per title for
domestic features) and other Chinese regions and forced Chinese studios to seek
additional incomes through the sales of film prints overseas.8 As the Chinese
diaspora welcomed domestic films out of nostalgia for the homeland and nation-
alistic pride, Southeast Asian distributors became regulars in the Shanghai
industry. Yet, no single company dominated the overseas markets at first. As early
as 1924, Mingxing signed a contract with a Singapore theater in an attempt to
discourage the exhibition of films by other Shanghai studios. Starting in 1926,
Tianyi increasingly shipped its films to Taiwan and other Southeast Asian
communities (ZDZ 1996a: 117). According to one estimate, overseas sales of a
quality film could generate 2,400 yuan from Singapore and Malaysia, 1,800 yuan
from Thailand, 2,700 yuan from Indonesia, 800 yuan from Vietnam – a total of
7,700 yuan exclusive of the Philippines and other countries (Du 1988: 129–30).
Although there is a lack of further statistics, it is probable that Southeast
Asia might have become the mainstay or even the ‘exclusive’ market for many
Shanghai companies in the second half of the 1920s.

However, by 1927, higher taxes and stricter censorship in Southeast Asia, as
well as the lower production quality of commercial pictures, combined to reduce

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the Chinese diaspora’s interest in domestic films. This was a fatal blow to the
industry because, even with their intentionally apolitical titles which posed no
ideological challenge to the colonial rule in the region, Shanghai companies
could no longer automatically count on the overseas Chinese’s patriotism for
profits (ZDZ 1996a: 111, 170; Zhu 1998: 65).

The rise of the theater chains: Shanghai,
Beijing and beyond

To restructure the domestic industry, Chen Dabei recommended building
theaters in inland cities so that the Shanghai studios could rely less on Southeast
Asian markets (ZDZ 1996a: 735). However, the problem was that the spread of
cinemas across the nation was a slow process and foreigners who had little inter-
est in domestic pictures controlled most of the theaters in China. According to
one estimate, by the end of 1926 approximately 156 cinemas existed in China,
and foreigners owned a majority of them (S. Cheng et al. 1927: chap. 33). The
number reached 250 in 1930, of which only fifty or sixty showed domestic films
(Zhu 1998: 61).

The city with the largest concentration of cinemas was Shanghai, with thirty-
nine (i.e., 25 per cent of the national total) in 1927. Among Shanghai’s most
celebrated venues were the Carlton (Kaerdeng), Odeon (Aodi’an), Palace
(Zhongyang), Pantheon (Baixing), Peking (Beijing) and Venus (Jinxing)
theaters, as well as those owned by the Ramos Amusement Company and
managed by W.N. Ginsburg, which included the Carter (Kate), Embassy (Xia-
lingpeike), Empire (Enpaiya) and Victoria (Weiduoliya) theaters. Architecturally,
most of these theaters featured European-style (e.g., art deco) exteriors and
interiors. The contemporary photographs of the Odeon and Peking Theaters
displayed interiors similar to that of a grand opera house, with central
chandeliers, spacious balcony and comfortable seats throughout. As proprietor of
the Peking Theater, the Shanghai Amusement Company ran an advertisement in
The China Cinema Year Book 1927, boasting the theater’s pillar-free structure,
dim pathway lighting, effective ventilation and courteous staff.

Significantly, despite the dominant foreign ownership of distribution and
exhibition, Chinese personnel managed many of the Shanghai cinemas. In the
spring of 1926, Zhang Changfu and Zhang Juchuan established the first Chinese
theater chain, Central Movie Company (Zhongyang) in Shanghai. They leased
five theaters in Shanghai and one in Hankou – at the rate of 60,000 yuan a year –
from the millionaire Ramos, who subsequently returned to Spain and concluded
his two decades of pioneering show business in China. Together with Zhang’s
Palace, these theaters specialized in domestic films and were affiliated with
Mingxing, whose distribution offices in Northern, Central and Southern China
were under Zhou Jianyun’s management. As Zhou reported in 1928, with an
investment of 100,000 yuan, Central Movie Company made a profit of over
40,000 yuan in 1927, while the Peking Theater alone made a profit of

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over 60,000 yuan, which means that other theaters had deficits. In January 1928
the Carlton had an income of over 70,000 yuan (S. Li and Hu 1996: 105;
ZDZ 1996a: 724).

In comparison with Shanghai, the capital city Beijing claimed merely fourteen
cinemas in 1926, including the Popular Cinema (Tongsu) and the Star Cinema
(Mingxing). As a rare example of what the Chinese could achieve in early film
exhibition, Luo Mingyou deserves special attention. Born in Hong Kong in
1902, Luo attended the Law School of Peking University in 1918 and in 1919
started to manage Zhenguang (literally, ‘truth light’), a cinema built on the
location of the old Dangui Teahouse. Zhenguang featured foreign films of
high artistic quality, distributed film plot sheets and projected Chinese subtitles
during the show. Luo’s weekend matinee discounts for students (at 0.1 yuan)
(see Table 2.2, p. 16) made his theater a huge attraction for the young audience.
Unfortunately, a fire destroyed the theater in late 1919.

With the help of his uncle Luo Wengan, who served as the Minister of Justice
in the Beijing government, Luo Mingyou raised enough funds to construct a
new Zhenguang Theater in 1921. It was a modern, three-storied, steel and
cement structure boasting granite pillars and stairways, glass walls, a rooftop
garden and over 800 cushioned seats. Luo reduced disturbance inside the
theater by relocating the service of snacks and drinks to a separate area. The
theater employed a band conducted by a former Russian professor to accompany

Figure 2.4 Hollywood in Shanghai: billboards outside the Peking Theater

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every show and a benshi (screen narrator) to interpret the silent foreign film
to the audience as the story unraveled on screen (ZDZ 1996a: 177–80). As
manager, Luo raised the standards for film exhibition in China and continued to
reject cheap pictures in his programs (Hou 1996: 199–218).

When his business had increased to ten cinemas in Beijing and Tianjin, Luo
established Northern China Film (Huabei) in 1927 and recruited young talents
such as Zhu Shilin, Fei Mu and Shen Fu. Luo’s distribution and exhibition
business prospered, and by 1929 he owned more than thirty cinemas in five
provinces, including those in northeast China (Du 1988: 136–7). In 1929, Luo
decided to invest in production, teaming up with Minxin to film Memories of the
Old Capital (Gudu chunmeng) and Wild Flower (Yecao xianhua), both directed
by Sun Yu in 1930. Luo’s influence reached its peak in the early 1930s with his
Lianhua, but during the 1920s he had proved himself to be a unique player in the
foreign dominated exhibition sector.

In pursuit of a profession: film publications and
film schools

The emergence of film criticism was evident by the mid-1920s, a time when the
total number of film periodicals ranged from thirty to forty titles (Luo et al.
1992: 1: 3). Over the decade the conceptualization of film had shifted from
film as play (hence, shadowplay or photoplay) through film as more than play to
film as art. In 1921 Gu Kenfu argued that the shadowplay is the most ‘realistic’ of
all plays; in 1928 Ouyang Yuqian declared that film is ‘a synthetic art’ and that
‘photoplay’ is only part of ‘motion picture art’ (Luo et al. 1992: 1: 4–5, 99). In
general, critics of the time were more familiar with drama and more willing to
advance the literary and dramatic arts than to explore film as a visual art.

In addition to regular film or entertainment columns in major newspapers,
three groups of early film publications were most noteworthy. First, the promo-
tional magazine issued irregularly by a major studio introduced a particular film
and sometimes included the studio’s policy, filmmakers’ reflections as well as film
criticism. Second, film periodicals, special issues and regular sections of literary
and popular journals carried up-to-date film reviews and articles on domestic and
foreign films. Third, film books contributed directly to the evolving industry
and in many ways anticipated film as a legitimate subject of new knowledge.
Among the major studios publishing numerous promotional magazines during
this period were Great China-Lily, Great Wall, Mingxing and Tianyi, and
filmmakers often participated in criticism.

In addition to magazine articles, a few film books helped establish film as a
legitimate subject of new knowledge in the 1920s. Xu Zhuodai published Film
Studies (Yingxi xue, 1924), the earliest Chinese book on film studies. Drawing on
miscellaneous foreign sources, the book tackles topics ranging from the elements
and types of film to screenwriting, directing, acting, cinematography, art design
and special effects. Hou Yao’s Writing Scripts for Shadowplays (Yingxi juben

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zuofa, 1926) covers a variety of topics on screenwriting, such as the functions,
values and elements of shadowplays, special film terms (printed in English), as
well as dramatic structure and techniques. Of particular importance in Hou’s
book is his list of thirty-two ‘inappropriate’ subjects for shadowplays. They
include violence against women, juvenile delinquency, capital punishment, child
abuse, ugly nude poses, incitement of mutual hatred, violent conflict between
labor and capital, excessive gunshots, rape, prostitution, painful pregnancy and
labor, incest, gambling and smoking (Luo et al. 1992: 1: 55–6). Albeit too
restrictive and impractical, Hou’s list, accompanied by another list of twenty-one
‘appropriate’ subjects, represents an early example of self-censorship by Chinese
filmmakers.9 Another publication, The China Cinema Year Book 1927, was
the first of its kind in China, providing the most comprehensive information
imaginable at the time (S. Cheng et al. 1927).

Indeed, Chinese filmmakers were working hard as they were fully cognizant
of the urgent need to bring out a new generation more knowledgeable about
film. As a result, a crop of film schools came into being in the 1920s, many of
them under major sponsoring studios. Apart from Mingxing’s school founded
in 1922 (ZDZ 1996a: 32), 1924 saw the appearance of three film schools
in Shanghai. China Motion Picture Company (Zhonghua) set up the China Film
School with volunteer instructors who offered classes on acting, cinematography
and screenwriting. Every week students could see two Western films free of
charge at the Isis Theater owned by the studio’s boss, Zeng Huantang. In
nine months, the school brought out stars like Hu Die (ZDZ 1996a: 1604).
The other two schools were the Great China Film School and the Changming
Film Correspondence School founded by Wang Xuchang and Xu Hu. In its
one-year operation, Changming taught students as far away as Japan and the
Philippines, and it published the first Chinese film textbook, which covered
topics ranging from the history, functions, genres and national characteristics
of cinema, to directing, screenwriting and cinematography (Luo et al. 1992:
1: 11–46).

Altogether, fourteen Chinese-owned film schools operated in Shanghai at one
time or another during the 1920s, in addition to three by foreigners (S. Cheng
et al. 1927: chap. 40). These schools functioned principally as training programs
for acting and did not produce famous directors or screenwriters. But at the very
least, they represented early filmmakers’ conscientious attempts to ensure that
Chinese cinema would reach a higher level of professionalism in the near future.

CRITICAL ISSUES: ARTS, ARTISTS AND
ARTISTIC THEOR Y

Before leaving the period of early cinema, we should consider the technical and
artistic aspects of filmmaking and tackle the critical issues related to early ‘artists’
and their conceptions of film. This section also addresses such topics as ‘films of

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theater people’ and ‘shadowplay theory’, which did not surface in the period but
are critical to our understanding of it.

Arts: learning the film basics
As Cheng Bugao recollects, when Zhang Shichuan started directing in the early
1910s, the fixed camera, exaggerated acting and a limited shooting range was the
typical style. Zhang and his contemporaries relied on the 200-foot reel film,
which lasted three minutes and twenty seconds.10 While shooting, the camera-
man had to crank the reel in the motor-less camera at approximately 120 rounds
per minute in order to achieve the speed of sixty feet per minute, and his work
was humorously compared to ‘churning the ice cream’. A faster or slower speed
would result in the distortion of facial expressions or bodily movements on
screen. Before the introduction of the glass-wall studio, the crew used an open-
air tent, and sometimes the painted backgrounds of pavilions and the like would
move with the wind without being noticed by the filmmakers, and would create
funny-looking scenes on screen (ZDZ 1996a: 1577–82).

Yet, such difficulties did not prevent Chinese filmmakers from experimenting
with new film techniques. The Motion Picture Department inserted in Dream
of Immortality (Qingxu meng, dir. Ren Pengnian, 1922; 3 reels) the following
special effects: a broken water jar reappears in one piece, a man walks through
a wall, and an inanimate object moves by itself. Such camera tricks were

Figure 2.5 Chinese filmmaking in the 1920s: fixed cameras and exaggerated acting

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greatly welcomed by the audience (ZDZ 1996a: 1460). By 1924, Mingxing
cinematographer Dong Keyi had figured out how to use double exposure to
shoot an actor playing two roles. In 1926 Dong used miniature models to shoot
the scene of colliding trains in Lonely Orchid. In the late 1920s he designed
special effects, for example flying swordsmen, which further enchanted the
audience. A martial arts film, Four Heroes from the Wang Family (Wangshi sixia,
dir. Shi Dongshan, 1927; 10 reels), was reportedly the first to use a dolly shot in
China (ZDZ 1996a: 1414).

In 1927 Dan Duyu had already experimented with underwater photography in
The Spider Cave. Two years later, Zhang Shichuan and Hong Shen directed six
cameras simultaneously shooting a soccer game on location for A Patriotic Game
(Yijiao ti chuqu, 1929), a sports picture based on a real-life game between a
Chinese team and one consisting of foreign expatriates in Shanghai (S. Li and Hu
1996: 251). In the late 1920s, the public fascination with film techniques was
such that film periodicals published articles explaining camera tricks such as
double exposure, stop motion, matte shot, glass shot, miniature and slow motion
(ZDZ 1996a: 950–71).

A Chinese film aesthetic?
By the end of the 1920s, Zhang Shichuan had developed his style of directing
and typically repeated sequences of frontal, eye-level shots from the long shot
through the medium shot to the close-up (J. Li 1995: 40–1). Such ‘three-step’
presentations foregrounded acting and accustomed the audience to a con-
ventional film language in close proximity to their experience with the Chinese
stage (Hong Kong Arts Centre 1984).

Other artistic features characteristic of early Chinese cinema can be
enumerated here. Influenced by traditional theater, early films did not use lavish
sets and props, and painted backgrounds were usually simple, more symbolic
than realistic. Influenced by traditional art, early films first relied on a single
source of light and then preferred flat lighting to chiaroscuro lighting, paying
more attention to black-and-white contrast than to varied shades and tones that
embodied a three-dimensional or sculptural fullness. Spatial relations were also
based on traditional aesthetics. As if on stage, the main characters usually stood
up front, at or near the center, thus commanding the viewer’s attention, while
supporting characters were grouped around in accordance with their respective
social positions. The preference for characters’ left–right movements rather than
forward–backward ones further enhanced the illusion of watching a stage play.
In contrast to frequent subject movements, camera movements were kept at a
minimum, so techniques such as panning, tilting, tracking and dolly shots were
all rarities at the time (K. Hu 1996).

On the surface, minimal camera movements and monotonous shot sequences
might suggest that early Chinese filmmakers were fearful of film techniques.
However, apart from the technical and technological inadequacies hinted above,

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a more direct cause for such ‘techno-phobia’ was the entrenched preference for
stable spatio-temporal frameworks in traditional Chinese art and theater. As
with the traditional stage, a safe viewing distance – physical as well as psycho-
logical – was always appreciated, so that the spectator was less likely to identify
actively with screen characters than to remain passively as an onlooker of screen
actions.

This does not mean that early Chinese filmmakers were conscientious in
exploring a ‘Chinese’ film aesthetic. As a matter of fact, many ‘Chinese’ practices
resemble what Noël Burch calls a ‘primitive mode of presentation’ or PMR in the
early cinema of the West. Among other unfamiliar structures, the PMR consisted
of ‘a spatial approach combining frontality with non-centered composition and
distant camera placement to create a “primitive externality”; a lack of narrative
coherence, linearity, and closure; and an underdevelopment of character’
(Gunning 1998: 256). To say the least, early Chinese filmmakers’ reliance
on traditional art and theater was perfunctory, superficial and reactive to the
audience’s changing needs (K. Hu 1996: 58).

Artists: ‘films by theater people’
Three features characterize early film artists in China. First, with a few exceptions,
most leading directors and screenwriters were self-taught artists who did not
receive formal training in film. Second, again with some exceptions, most were in
one way or another affiliated with theater or drama of the time. In fact, Zheng
Zhengqiu, Li Minwei, Hong Shen and Hou Yao had already been well-known
drama figures before they embarked on their film careers. Third, except for
studio founders, most artists were highly mobile and often moved between
studios, a practice that would continue in the next two decades.

Appropriately, critics have referred to the products of this early generation as
‘films by theater people’ (xiren dianying). The term first surfaced at a forum
held during the 1983 Hong Kong retrospective of early Chinese cinema. Huang
Jichi used xiren dianying to describe films by Zheng Zhengqiu and others
influenced by the civilized play. In contrast, wenren dianying (films by literature
people) was coined to refer to the leftist artists who emerged first as fiction
writers and playwrights in the 1930s and who emphasized film’s literary quality
(wenxue xing) and developed a new method of realism. A third alternative,
that of yingren dianying (films by film people), was associated with directors
like Sun Yu who received film training at Columbia and Wisconsin but who
worked closely with literature people. Inasmuch as early cinema is concerned,
‘films by theater people’ obviously dominated the scene (Hong Kong Arts
Centre 1984).

As Fei Mu observed in 1935 (ZDZ 1996a: iii), ‘films by theater people’ drew
directly on the civilized play, a new form of non-operatic play that participated
in spreading nationalist sentiments in the years leading to the Republican
Revolution. After 1911, however, the public interest in political issues declined,

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and the civilized play faced a severe downturn. By switching attention away
from the political arena toward the domestic sphere, theater people like Zheng
Zhengqiu quickly revived the civilized play and produced several popular stage
plays in the 1910s (Zhong et al. 1997). Although the latter-day civilized play was
criticized for its abandonment of political intervention and its submission to con-
servative ideologies (J. Cheng et al. 1981: 1: 21–3), as a whole the genre served
an indispensable function by cultivating a staple of audiences for the emergent
shadowplays.

In its own turn, the civilized play drew on traditional Chinese narratives,
including various types of storytelling. Like traditional narratives, both the
civilized play and ‘films by theater people’ are character-driven, focusing on a
complex of relationships and interactions between characters, unraveled in a
unilinear temporal development, marked by convoluted plots and coincidences.
All these are narrative elements traceable to the literati’s genre of ‘romance’
(chuanqi) from the Tang dynasty. It should not be a surprise to see the famous
Tang story of Scholar Zhang and Beauty Yingying finds its cinematic representa-
tion in Romance of the West Chamber. Interestingly, the Chinese emphasis on
convoluted plots and incredible coincidences resembles that of the nineteenth-
century European novel, which came to China via translation in the late Qing
and exerted a considerable impact on butterfly fiction (ZDZ 1996a: 1511–13).
It was only natural that ‘films by theater people’ would benefit from cooperation
with butterfly writers as well (W. Chen 1992: 294).

Shadowplay theory: an indigenous brand?
The shadowplay theory as ‘indigenous’ invention starts with an exegesis of the
term ‘yingxi’. As Gu Kenfu reasoned in the 1920s, ‘since it is called shadow-
play, film ought to treat play as essential and shadow as supplementary; the
priority of play necessitates the conveyance of play by means of shadows’ (J. Li
1995: 40). Writing in 1986, Chen Xihe speculated that the prioritization of
‘play’ (with related elements such as drama, narrative, theme) over ‘shadow’
(image, technique, structure) has consolidated the centrality of the script in the
Chinese conception of film. Indeed, the centrality was systematically formulated
as early as 1926 in Hou Yao’s Writing Scripts for Shadowplays.

As Chen claims, from script to set design, ‘shadowplay’ is saturated with
dramatic elements, and this is a unique artistic phenomenon in early Chinese
cinema. Nevertheless, Chen believes that, as ‘an aesthetic concept’, the shadow-
play has transcended its historical boundary and has become a fundamental idea
in the Chinese conception of film, which has persisted right to the mid-1980s.
Chen abstracts from Hou’s book ‘a complete system of film theory based on
the core idea of shadowplay’ and contends that the shadowplay theory, as an
independent entity ‘endowed with strong Eastern colors’, stands ‘shoulder to
shoulder with’ and ‘in diametric opposition to major systems of Western film
theories’ (Luo et al. 1992: 2: 291–2, 305).

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To illustrate the shadowplay theory, Chen neatly charts the perceived
differences between the Chinese and the Western conceptions of film. The
Chinese regard ‘play’ as essential whereas Westerners regard ‘shadow’ as essen-
tial. The Chinese treat ‘shadow’ as an expressive means to complete the play
whereas Westerners treat ‘play’ as an individual mode of ‘shadow’. The Chinese
are obsessed with debates on dramatic and literary qualities whereas Westerners
are obsessed with differentiating montage and the long take. The Chinese
only study montage and the long take so as better to present ‘play’, whereas
Westerners approach dramatic theory only as pure techniques. All this reflects
two different ways of thinking: the Chinese are holistic whereas Westerners are
analytic (Luo et al. 1992: 2: 296).

In his 1986 exposition of the shadowplay theory, Zhong Dafeng observes the
influence of the civilized play on early Chinese conceptions of film. Instead of a
binary list of East–West differences, Zhong concentrates on the ‘dual structures’
of the shadowplay theory. On the surface is a theory of dramatic techniques, but
‘beneath the cover of dramatization, the deep structure . . . of the shadowplay
theory has produced an ontology of film narration based on film’s functions and
objectives’ (Luo et al. 1992: 2: 315). Again, Hou’s 1926 book is cited as
example, and his neglect of film’s technical aspects such as shots and editing is
taken as the sign of early Chinese filmmakers’ ignorance of the ontology of film.

A number of problems undermine if not invalidate the arguments for the
shadowplay theory. First, its claim to being ‘indigenous’ is untenable because the
evidence cited in support comes from a few Chinese who drew extensively on
Western dramatic or literary theory in the 1920s. Indeed, in the same year when
his book came out, Hou Yao published an article citing a British critic’s theory
of literature – an art that comprises elements such as emotion, imagination,
thought and form. Since these four essential elements are crucial to film itself,
Hou advanced a thesis that transcended national and cultural boundaries: ‘Film is
literature! Film is live literature!’ (ZDZ 1996a: 500–1). Second, the kind of film
theory differentiating between drama and film Chen and Zhong refer to either
had not been formulated or had not been translated in the 1920s. Instead of their
perceived fundamental differences, historically Western and Chinese filmmakers
were equally occupied with the dramatic aspects of film arts in the silent period.
Third, to the extent that the shadowplay theory privileges narration and the
social function of narrative, it is not so much a distinguishing feature for Chinese
film as it is for Chinese narrative in general. What is missing in the shadowplay
theory, in this respect, is a critical distinction between Chinese and Western
narrative theory. Given unsolved problems like these, the best way to appraise the
conception of ‘shadowplay’ is not to abstract it as an indigenous theory, but to
contextualize it in early Chinese cinema as a convenient practice through which
filmmakers successfully reached out to the audience familiar with traditional
theater and fiction.

N A T I O N A L T R A D I T I O N S , 1 8 9 6 – 1 9 2 9

56
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Second, in the phase of competing studios (1956 to 1965), the two largest
companies in Hong Kong – Cathay-owned MP&GI and Shaw Brothers – had
evolved into arch-enemies engaging in fierce competition to dominate the Hong
Kong and Southeast Asian markets. In addition to cultivating their own stars and
production personnel, they invested in modern musicals, opera movies and youth
romances that appealed to a wide spectrum of audiences. Female stars prevailed
in the era of singing and dancing known as ‘Mandarin pop’ (shidai qu), and
screen fashions became a major attraction for a society that gradually moved
from poverty and scarcity to sufficiency and affluence. Meanwhile, Cantonese
cinema enjoyed its ‘golden age’, its opera movies as popular as ever and its urban
melodramas attaining a new level of sophistication.

Third, in the phase of reinventing genres (1966 to 1978), the Cultural Revolu-
tion in the PRC spelled box-office disaster for the pro-PRC companies, while
the termination of Cathay’s feature production and the emergence of Golden
Harvest in the early 1970s heralded a time of reinvention in studios and genres.
The new-style martial arts film represented by Zhang Che’s visceral swordplay
and Bruce Lee’s heroic gongfu fights dominated the screen, and masculinity and
violence replaced femininity and romance as male stars eclipsed their female
counterparts. By the mid-1970s the Hui brothers’ comedy became a serious
contender to martial arts pictures, and Cantonese cinema was revived after a
dreadful decline in the early 1970s. The inauguration of the Hong Kong Inter-
national Film Festival in 1977 declared the significance of Hong Kong cinema
in the world, and the thriving television industry cultivated a group of young
artists who would soon make a major impact with Hong Kong new wave cinema.
‘Since the 1970s, [Hong Kong] has been arguably the world’s most energetic,
imaginative popular cinema’ (Bordwell 2000: 1).

FROM SHANGHAI TO HONG KONG, 1945–55

The postwar transition from Shanghai to Hong Kong involved not just two
waves of migration into the territory but also the new immigrants’ psychological
adjustment to make Hong Kong their new home as well as the new focus of their
cinematic experience. Inasmuch as film history is concerned, the relationship
between Hong Kong and Shanghai has long been a fruitful one and can be traced
to the early twentieth century (HKIFF 1990: 102–15).

Highlights of early Hong Kong cinema, 1896–45
Hong Kong’s film history started in 1896 when the Lumières sent its staff to
shoot documentaries in this exotic British colony. As mentioned in Chapter 2,
Brodsky’s Shanghai-based Yaxiya managed to produce short features in Hong
Kong, thus making Stealing a Roast Duck, directed by Leung Siu-po (Liang
Shaopo) in 1909, the first feature in Chinese film history. In 1913 Brodsky

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established Huamei in Hong Kong and produced its only release, Zhuangzi Tests
His Wife, with the assistance of Li Minwei and Li Beihai. In 1923 the Li brothers
founded Minxin in Hong Kong but had to relocate its operations to Shanghai
due to a prolonged labor strike in 1925–6, which involved 250,000 out of
600,000 Hong Kong residents.2 From then until 1930 no film was produced
in Hong Kong, whereas about a dozen came out in Guangzhou (Fonoroff
1997: xiv).

The revival of filmmaking in Hong Kong began in 1930, but the real driving
force was the founding of Lianhua in Hong Kong and the opening of its Hong
Kong studio (headed by Li Beihai in 1931), which produced six features. Inter-
estingly, the first two full-sound Cantonese talkies were made outside Hong
Kong in 1933: White Gold Dragon came from Tianyi in Shanghai and Romance
of the Songsters (Gelü qingchao, dir. Chiu Shu-sen) from Grandview in San
Francisco (Fonoroff 1997: xiv–v).3 Hong Kong ceased silent film production in
1935 and the era of Cantonese sound cinema came into being.

The success of the two talkies in Hong Kong and the overseas Chinese
communities convinced Tianyi to set up a sound studio in Hong Kong, and

Figure 5.1 Zhuangzi Tests His Wife (1913): a Hong Kong short feature, with Li
Minwei

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Grandview to relocate its production to Hong Kong, both in 1934. Chiu
Shu-sen originally agreed with Luo Mingyou to operate under the name ‘Over-
seas Lianhua’, but he resumed the name ‘Grandview’ when Lianhua closed
its Hong Kong studio in 1934 due to financial problems. A significant player
in Hong Kong, Grandview was innovative and projected new images on the
Hong Kong screen. Life Line (Shengming xian, dir. Moon Kwan, 1935) was a
‘national defense’ picture produced ahead of its Shanghai counterparts, which
was temporarily banned by the Hong Kong censors (Law 2000: 53).4 After
leading patriotic film productions in the late 1930s, Grandview completed
the construction of its Hong Kong studio in Diamond Hill in 1940, which
was unfortunately destroyed in the 1941 Japanese bombing. During the war
Grandview relocated its production to San Francisco and produced twenty-one
films in black and white and four in 16mm, color.

Hong Kong filmmakers refused to cooperate with the Japanese invaders and
no Chinese-funded feature was produced inside Hong Kong from the end of
1941 to the beginning of 1946.5 Local movie theaters, estimated at twenty-
eight in 1938, had no access to Hollywood films and had to show Cantonese
features produced prior to the occupation as well as a limited number of
Japanese films and Shanghai Mandarin titles whenever available (Fonoroff
1997: xvi).

The postwar revival, 1946–9
Large-scale migration occurred during and after the war. The onset of the
resistance war brought an influx of refugees to Hong Kong, where the popula-
tion swelled from 0.98 million in 1936 to 1.64 million in 1941. A reverse
trend started in December 1941 when Japan occupied the city and Hong
Kong residents headed for China’s hinterland or overseas. By the time of
Japan’s surrender in 1945, Hong Kong had a population of 0.6 million. A
second wave of migration to Hong Kong followed and the city’s population
increased to 1.75 million by 1947. A third wave of refugees poured into the
territory in 1949, and by 1 May 1950 when the PRC officially closed its
border, Hong Kong’s population exceeded 2.23 million (Jarvie 1977: 58) (see
Table 5.1).

A film production boom matched the postwar population boom: 419 titles
were produced between June 1946 and December 1949, compared with 571
titles between March 1930 and December 1941.6 Unlike the 1930s, the postwar
period was characterized by a significant increase in both Cantonese and
Mandarin cinema. From five in 1946, the number of Cantonese features jumped
to 154 in 1949, while Mandarin features grew from four in 1946 to twenty-five
in 1949. Indeed, in 1948 Cantonese cinema already broke its 1939 record of
120 titles (see Table 5.2). Most postwar Cantonese films were Cantonese opera
movies; they accounted for 30 per cent of all Cantonese titles produced in
the 1940s, with fifty-eight released in 1949 alone. Obviously, such production

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capacity had surpassed the pre-occupation era when Cantonese opera movies
constituted 24 per cent of all Cantonese titles produced in the 1930s, with
thirty-three released in 1939 (HKIFF 1987: 18–19). As in the 1930s, leading
male stars Sit Kok-sin and Ma Sze-tsang (Ma Shizeng) returned to the screen,
accompanied by their protégés and younger colleagues from the opera world.
Significantly, several postwar Cantonese dramas resembled their Shanghai
counterparts in that both reenacted wartime traumas and re-staged family
separation and female suffering.

On the other hand, the increased Mandarin-speaking population and new
film talents from Shanghai ushered in a new era in Hong Kong cinema. Not
surprisingly, when the first postwar Hong Kong film was released in December
1946, it was a Mandarin title because many producers believed that, with access
to mainland cities now, Mandarin cinema commanded a larger market than
Cantonese cinema (M. Yu 1998: 87–9). Like most postwar Mandarin companies,

Table 5.1 Theaters, attendance and population in Hong Kong, 1926–96

Year Theaters Attendance
(million)

Visits per
capita

Population
(million)

1926 — — — 0.6
1936 — — — 0.98
1938 28 — — —
late 1930s 31 — — —
1941 — — — 1.64
1945 — — — 0.6
1947 — — — 1.75
1948 33 — — —
1950 — — — 2.23
1955 64 — — 2.5
1959 — 66 22 3
1960 67 — — —
1961 72 — — 3.1
1965 — 90.54 — —
1967 — 100 27 3.7
1971 — — 21 4
1975 — 54 — —
1977 75 60 — —
1979 80 65 — —
1982 89 66 — —
1985 104 58 — —
1988 133 66 12 5.5
1993 — 44 — —
1995 — 28 — —
1996 — 22 — —

Sources: Bordwell 2000: 34, 66, 75; Chan 2000: 69; Cheuk 1999: 11–20; Fu 2000a: 205;
HKIFF 1982: 18; HKIFF 1991: 72; Jarvie 1977: 58; M. Yu 2001: 41.

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Table 5.2 Annual number of feature productions in Hong Kong, 1913–2002

Year Total
films
released

Cantonese
films

Mandarin
films

Amoy-
dialect
films

Other

1913 1 — — — 1 silent short
1914 2 — — — 2 silent shorts
— — — — — —
1925 6 — — — 6 silent
1926 1 — — — 1 silent
— — — — — —
1931 3 — — — 3 silent
1932 2 — — — 2 silent
1933 5 5 — — —
1934 15 15 — — —
1935 32 32 — — —
1936 49 49 — — —
1937 85 85 — — —
1938 87 83 4 — —
1939 125 120 5 — —
1940 89 84 5 — —
1941 80 74 6 — —
1942 3 3 — — —
1943 6 5 1 — —
1944 2 2 — — —
1945 1 1 — — —
1946 9 5 4 — —
1947 89 72 16 1 —
1948 141 123 18 — —
1949 179 154 25 — —
1950 187 169 17 1 —
1951 169 141 17 11 —
1952 217 163 44 10 —
1953 183 132 42 6 3 3-D films
1954 159 116 28 14 1 widescreen
1955 210 169 22 18 1 Chaozhou
1956 252 167 64 20 1 Chaozhou
1957 240 142 58 39 1 Chaozhou
1958 286 156 57 70 3 Chaozhou
1959 343 169 76 89 9 Chaozhou
1960 276 202 71 — 2 Chaozhou, 1 Shanghainese
1961 257 211 45 — 1 Chaozhou
1962 233 200 31 — 1 Chaozhou, 1 Shanghainese
1963 251 203 38 — 8 Chaozhou, 2 others
1964 224 175 43 — 5 Chaozhou, 1 Shanghainese
1965 205 169 32 — 4 Chaozhou
1966 166 125 40 — 1 Shanghainese
1967 172 105 67 — —
1968 149 87 61 — 1 Chaozhou
1969 135 71 64 — —
1970 118 35 83 — —

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Great China, established in 1946, appointed on its board such illustrious
Shanghai producers as Yan Youxiang, Zhang Shichuan and Zhou Jianyun. Its
production staff included leading Shanghai artists like Zhu Shilin and Dan Duyu.
Great China leased Nanyang’s facilities and produced thirty-four Mandarin titles

Table 5.2—Continued

Year Total
films
released
Cantonese
films
Mandarin
films
Amoy-
dialect
films
Other

1971 86 1 85 — —
1972 87 — 87 — —
1973 94 1 93 — —
1974 101 — — — —
1975 97 — — — —
1976 95 — — — —
1977 87 — — — —
1978 99 — — — —
1979 109 — — — —
1980 116 — — — —
1981 110 — — — —
1982 106 — — — —
1983 87 — — — —
1984 86 — — — —
1985 88 — — — —
1986 87 — — — —
1987 76 — — — —
1988 115 — — — —
1989 117 — — — —
1990 120 — — — —
1991 125 — — — —
1992 215 — — — —
1993 242 — — — —
1994 181 — — — —
1995 150 — — — —
1996 116 — — — —
1997 84 — — — —
1998 89 — — — —
1999 100 — — — —
2000 133 — — — —
2001 133 — — — —
2002 92 — — — —

Sources: Chan 2000: 547; HKFA 1997b; HKFA 1998; HKFA 2000; HKIFF 1984; HKIFF
1986; HKIFF 1987; HKIFF 1989; Z. Qi 2002: 84; Shackleton 2003; M. Yu 2000; M. Yu 2001.
Notes: The figures here exclude those features produced but not exhibited in the given year
or those exhibited for the second time. The 1926 film was produced before the labor strike in
1925–6 and films released between 1942 and 1944 were produced before the fall of Hong Kong
in December 1941.

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before it ceased operation in 1949 (HKIFF 1995: 92–104). An All-Consuming
Love (Chang xiangsi, dir. He Zhaozhang, 1947; Mandarin), set in wartime
Shanghai, articulates the postwar pathos of separation and lost love, and Zhou
Xuan’s famous song ‘Shanghai at Night’ (Ye Shanghai) intensified the emotional
ties between Hong Kong and Shanghai. Also set in Shanghai, two other Zhou
Xuan vehicles from Great China, Orioles Banished from the Flowers (Huawai
liuying, 1947) and Song of a Songstress (Genü zhi ge, 1948), both directed by
Fang Peilin in Mandarin, further underscored the obsession with Shanghai.
Most of Great China’s Mandarin productions were exhibited in Hong Kong with
separate Cantonese soundtracks and sold better than their Mandarin prints. As
a result, Great China also ventured into Cantonese cinema and produced nine
such titles.

A lesser-known company was Longma (Dragon-Horse), which Fei Mu
founded in 1949 with support from Wu Xingzai, another powerful Shanghai
producer. After Fei Mu died in 1951 at age 45, Zhu Shilin took charge of
production and directed seven Longma releases celebrated for their distinct
realist style. With his focus on ordinary urbanites in films like Spoiling the
Wedding Day (Wu jiaqi, 1951; Mandarin), an acclaimed comedy, Zhu gradually
directed the attention of postwar Mandarin cinema from its ‘mainland complex’
– especially its Shanghai obsession – to a humane examination of social realities in
contemporary Hong Kong. For film scholars like Lin Niantong, Zhu surpassed
Italian neo-realism and took the tradition of 1930s and 1940s Chinese film
comedy to new heights (ZDZ 1998: 54).

Another noteworthy postwar company was Grandview, which reopened its
business in Hong Kong in 1947 and released All That Glitters (Jinfen nishang,
dir. Huang Hesheng, 1942), a 16mm color feature produced in San Francisco.
Under Chiu Shu-sen, Grandview made remarkable technical advancement,
producing the first 35mm full-color Cantonese feature in 1948, the first 3-D
feature in 1953 and the first widescreen format film in 1954. Like most
Cantonese companies of the time, Grandview stayed out of postwar politics in
Hong Kong.

Of business and politics, 1949–55
The postwar battles between the KMT and the CCP were carried far beyond the
military fronts and lasted long after the division of China into the PRC and
Taiwan in 1949. For political reasons, numerous former leftist filmmakers, such
as Cai Chusheng, Ouyang Yuqian, Shi Dongshan, Yang Hansheng and Yu Ling,
had moved to Hong Kong and were active in film production and criticism there
in 1948. In 1949, while most of these leading leftists had returned to the PRC to
assume leadership positions, a group of remaining Shanghai artists organized the
Fifties Company (Wushi niandai) in Hong Kong and collectively produced two
films. Wang Weiyi had already directed an acclaimed Cantonese feature for
Nanguo, Tears Over the Pearl River (Zhujiang lei, 1949), which dramatizes class

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conflict and female oppression in the tradition of postwar Shanghai critical real-
ism. For Fifties Wang directed Fiery Phoenix (Huo fenghuang, 1950; Mandarin),
a title that might have inspired the name for Phoenix (Fenghuang), a company
founded in 1952, the year when Fifties was disbanded after most of its members
had departed for the PRC. Phoenix also recruited several Longma personnel
and appointed Zhu Shilin as head of production, a post he held for the next
fifteen years. Known in particular for its Mandarin comedies poking fun at the
petit-bourgeois mentality, Phoenix served as a left-wing base in Hong Kong in
the following decades.

The ideological battle between the KMT and the CCP was best illustrated in
the postwar career of Zhang Shankun, a controversial industry leader in occu-
pied Shanghai. In 1947 Zhang cooperated with Li Zuyong, a Shanghai–Hong
Kong industrialist who had a master’s degree in literature from the US, and
together they set up Yonghua (Yung Hwa Motion Picture Industries – ‘Yong’
from Li’s given name and ‘hua’ from Zhang’s former Xinhua). Li poured in
US$3 million, built two studios in Kowloon Chai and purchased up-to-date
equipment. He was ambitious and, with Zhang’s help, enlisted first-rank artists
from Shanghai. Produced on a budget of over HK$1 million, Soul of China
(Guohun, dir. Bu Wancang, 1948; Mandarin) was an acclaimed patriotic histor-
ical film. Its success was followed by Sorrows of the Forbidden City (Qinggong
mishi, dir. Zhu Shilin, 1948), a drama of imperial court intrigues that was shown
in China and exported to Japan, Europe and the Middle East (M. Yu 2000:
66). Remarkably, Yonghua also released films by noted leftist or progressive
artists that dramatize class conflict in a more radical way than its contemporary
mainland counterparts. Evidently, postwar Hong Kong was a place where
clearly demarcated political camps had yet to emerge and where filmmaking was
primarily a business.

A market-savvy businessman, Zhang withdrew from Yonghua in 1948
because he was worried that, with extravagant production standards and the
uncertainty of the mainland market, the company would soon encounter finan-
cial problems. Zhang accepted the invitation of Yuan Yang’an, a former presi-
dent of the Shanghai Attorneys Association, who raised money and established
Great Wall Pictures (Changcheng) in 1949. With Zhang serving as production
manager, Great Wall released two Mandarin features directed by Yue Feng in
1949. Even with Great Wall’s early box-office success, Zhang was immediately
plagued by financial problems and was forced to quit Great Wall on account
that he owed the company HK$3 million. According to his wife Tong Yuejuan,
the real reason was Zhang’s refusal to accept the CCP’s invitation – conveyed
by his Shanghai acquaintances like Xia Yan – to return to the PRC, but
nonetheless Zhang borrowed cash and settled his debts (G. Zuo and Yao 2001:
90–5).7

After Zhang’s departure, the company was restructured as Great Wall Movie
Enterprises in 1950. In spite of its alleged PRC affiliation, Great Wall ran a suc-
cessful business in the 1950s, promoting directors like Tao Qin and cultivating

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new stars like Xia Meng. In fact, Lin Dai (Linda Lin), four-time winner of the best
actress award at the Asian Film Festival, first signed with Great Wall in 1950.
Great Wall’s releases were consistently popular and topped the annual Mandarin
box-office in 1951–2. A Night Time Wife (Jinhun ji, dir. Li Pingqian, 1951;
Mandarin), a light urban comedy, brought in HK$133,000 in first-run revenues
and sold briskly overseas, although it was banned in the PRC for its alleged
bourgeois ideology. Modern ‘Red Chamber Dream’ (Xin honglou meng, dir. Yue
Feng, 1952; Mandarin), a reinvention of the classic novel set in a present-day
city, featured Yan Jun and Li Lihua and grossed HK$214,000. Nonetheless, it is
not certain whether this film made a profit since the production lasted almost a
year and cost HK$1 million (M. Yu 2000: 44–7, 90–3) (see Table 3.2, p. 90).

By 1951, Yonghua was short on cash and owed its employees salaries for as
much as three and a half months, which resulted in a strike organized by
Shanghai artists. In December 1951 Yonghua fired fourteen employees. In a
radical move in January 1952, the Hong Kong government expelled more
than twenty left-wing film people to the PRC, including Bai Chen, Liu Qiong,
Shen Ji, Shu Shi and Sima Wensen, without giving them an adequate reason or
advance notice (M. Yu 2000: 66–7, 98–9).

Figure 5.2 Sorrows of the Forbidden City (1948): postwar Mandarin cinema in Hong
Kong

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The expulsion was radical because the colonial government had not imposed
film censorship as strictly as the KMT had in postwar China. Due to relative
freedom, postwar Hong Kong had become a perfect site for the former leftists
to create their idealistic works of art with financial support from capitalists. A
significant number of postwar Mandarin titles exposed official corruption (set in
the early Republican era or during the resistance war), class oppression (disguised
as sexual exploitation or forbidden love) and the collapse of the feudal family. In
spirit, these postwar Hong Kong productions continued the leftist film move-
ment of the 1930s and resembled their postwar Shanghai counterparts. A May
1950 Hong Kong news report claimed that, ‘almost without exception, all Hong
Kong film producers were manipulated by the Communists’. Since then, the
Hong Kong government had formally instituted its censorship operations and
stepped up pressure on ‘Communist’ films. In any case, the 1952 expulsions were
meant as a warning signal to Hong Kong producers and artists alike. Ironically,
exactly around this time, even ‘left-wing’ companies had begun to lose their
mainland market as their releases, such as Fiery Phoenix, were criticized by
the new socialist regime as spreading petit-bourgeois ideology and containing
poisonous ingredients (M. Yu 2000: 24–5, 63).

Meanwhile, Zhang Shankun had resumed filmmaking with his Hong Kong
Xinhua (Hsin Hwa) in 1951. Little Phoenix (Xiao Fengxian, dir. Tu Guangqi,
1953; Mandarin), a romance set in the early Republican revolution, was one
of ten Xinhua films in which Zhang cast Li Lihua, who was paid HK$75,000
per film or half of the film’s budget (see Table 3.1, pp. 64–5). Li’s high fee was
considered the beginning of the expensive star system in Hong Kong and its
effect was debated in the media (Du 1988: 535–6).

To strengthen their political ties, Zhang and his wife twice joined the Hong
Kong film delegation to visit Taiwan and met with Chiang Kai-shek in 1953 and
1954. Zhang also cooperated with his wartime friend Kawakita Nagamasa in
producing an Eastmancolor film. Traveling between Taiwan and Japan while
making several films at the same time, Zhang was exhausted and died in Tokyo in
January 1957 at age 52.

After Zhang’s death, his wife Tong Yuejuan continued Xinhua’s productions
until 1962. She had managed an anti-PRC association in Hong Kong following
her 1953 visit to Taiwan and in 1957 renamed it ‘Hong Kong and Kowloon
Cinema and Theatrical Enterprise Free General Association’ (Ziyou zonghui,
‘Free Association’ hereafter). At the height of the cold war, Free Association had
demarcated artists and film companies into ‘left-wing’ and ‘right-wing’ groups.
Since the pro-KMT businessmen controlled the overseas markets, Free Associ-
ation had considerable influence on Hong Kong film productions, and many
artists were forced to declare their political allegiance publicly. The size of the
Hong Kong film and theater delegations to Taiwan grew from eighteen in 1953,
to sixty-four in 1954 and 110 in 1956, and their members included Chen Hou,
Hu Die and Li Lihua. An ideologically opposite case, however, was the decision
of Hung-hsin Nui (Hongxian Nü), a leading actress of Cantonese opera and a

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rising film star, to return to Guangzhou with her husband Ma Sze-tsang in 1955,
preceded by Sit Kok-sin’s similar move to the PRC a year before.

Film historian Law Kar (Luo Ka) questions the validity of political labeling.
He cites the fact that Li Zuyong turned to the KMT regime in 1955 only
after Yonghua was financially insolvent. Unfortunately for Li, Taiwan’s loan of
HK$500,000 through CMPC accelerated Yonghua’s demise because an ensuing
anti-Communist film made in 1957 could not sell in Hong Kong and major
Southeast Asian cities for political reasons. Li died in 1959 at age 56, far from
realizing his initial dream of building a Chinese movie empire. The inadequacy of
political labeling is further evident in the releases from Asia Pictures (Yazhou),
founded in 1953 with the support of the US-based Free Asia Association.
Reputedly an ‘anti-Communist’ operation, Asia Pictures produced Half Way
Down (Ban xialiu shehui, dir. Tu Guangqi, 1955; Mandarin), which promotes
solidarity among a group of poverty-stricken mainland intellectuals stranded
in a Hong Kong slum and criticizes the corrupting forces of money and the
bourgeois lifestyle. Ironically, by portraying individual dignity, traditional
ethics and alienation in Hong Kong society, Half Way Down resembles many
contemporary ‘left-wing’ releases from Great Wall (HKIFF 1990: 10–20).

Between Cantonese and Mandarin cinemas, 1950–5
In 1950 Cantonese film production reached an all-time high of 169 titles, out of
which 109 films were produced by the same number of one-picture companies –
an indicator of a speculative trend in filmmaking at the time. One reason for such
a surge in production was the addition of a new theater chain dedicated to
Cantonese cinema, which translated into an increase of five to six theaters and a
new demand for fifty more films per year in order to feed the theaters. In com-
parison, Mandarin-spoken productions dropped to seventeen titles in 1950, in
part because Great China had folded due to the closure of the mainland market,
but also because Yonghua’s production was suspended due to the loss of its key
staff to the PRC. But a lack of exhibition venues continued to plague Mandarin
cinema. In 1951 only six theaters showed Mandarin films, and out of forty-two
Mandarin titles released in 1953, twenty-four of them were actually produced
in 1952. Nonetheless, Mandarin production could sustain itself because the
advances from overseas sales alone were nearly sufficient to fund the production
costs of HK$80,000 per title. In 1953 and 1954, Cantonese productions
declined to 132 and 116 respectively, and the United Nations’ economic sanc-
tions imposed on the PRC and Hong Kong in the wake of the Korean War were
cited as a direct cause. For film critics, however, the decrease in Cantonese pro-
ductions was a good thing because it was matched by an increase in production
values and artistic quality (M. Yu 2000: 5–127).

Despite its popularity, postwar Cantonese cinema had a rather poor critical
reputation, mainly due to its fast pace of production – seven to ten days for an
opera movie or a martial arts picture and twelve to twenty days for a drama

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(Fonoroff 1997: xviii). To change the situation, 164 film artists signed a public
manifesto in April 1949 and declared their intention to stop making films detri-
mental to the national interest and social morale, to unite and stand firm in their
position and to bring glory to Cantonese cinema (M. Yu 1998: 211). The result
was the third ‘film purification’ campaign in Hong Kong, which, more than
the previous two, successfully brought new images to Cantonese cinema.8 In
July 1949 Ng Cho-fan (Wu Chufan) and several other Cantonese film artists
organized the Southern China Film Industry Workers Union (Hua’nan yinglian,
‘Workers Union’ hereafter) and dedicated themselves to raising artistic standards
and promoting social welfare for filmmakers in the region.

In 1952, following a much publicized separation of Cantonese opera and film
stars in Hong Kong, a collective of twenty-one Cantonese film artists founded
Union Film Enterprises (Zhonglian), which best exemplified the spirit of ‘film
purification’. In spite of a sluggish market, in which more than sixty Cantonese
movies had been abandoned in mid-production during 1952–3, Union Film
Enterprises released five features in 1953 to critical and popular acclaim. One of
their strategies in elevating artistic standards was adapting well-respected literary
works in Cantonese, most eminently Ba Jin’s triology. Family (Jia, dir. Ng Wui
[Wu Hui], 1953) reached a quarter of the Hong Kong population, Spring
(Chun, dir. Lee Sun-fung [Li Chenfeng], 1953) won an honorary prize from the
PRC government in 1957 and Autumn (Qiu, dir. Chun Kim [Qin Jian], 1954)
topped the box office, making HK$250,000. With his additional Cantonese
adaptations of modern Chinese literature, Lee Sun-fung emerged as a master of
the melodrama in the 1950s (HKIFF 1986: 67–83). Another strategy of Union
Film Enterprises was to expose social problems, in particular those of unemploy-
ment and housing shortages. In the Face of Demolition (Weilou chunxiao, dir.
Lee Tit [Li Tie], 1953), which cast teenager Bruce Lee, encouraged the urban
poor to help each other and influenced a great many subsequent films.

As members of a collective, Union Film Enterprises’ artists received one-half
to one-third of the income they normally did when working for other companies.
In order to make ends meet, they also formed several branch groups, each
of which raised production money on its own and distributed its products under
the name of Union Film Enterprises. Due in part to its ideological position
and also in part to its members’ active role in the Workers Union, Union Film
Enterprises was classified by Free Association as ‘left wing’, its name was black-
listed by Taiwan and its access to overseas markets was limited (HKIFF 1982:
39).9 However, the artists learned to evade the political labeling by establishing
their own companies in subsequent years and carrying on Union Film Enterprises
tradition.

The divergence of Cantonese and Mandarin cinemas in Hong Kong was con-
spicuous in the early 1950s since their respective production staff rarely mixed,
they served two separate audiences in Hong Kong and overseas, and their charac-
teristics could be contrasted in opposite terms. Indeed, a scholar furnishes this
list of opposing terms: for Cantonese cinema, cheap, simple, unpretentious, folk

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roots, southern, energetic, whereas for Mandarin cinema, expensive, arty, pre-
tentious, urban roots, northern and stiff (Jarvie 1977: 86). The two-track industry
practice was evident in 1952 when Huang Zhuohan founded two companies
in Hong Kong. His Lingguang Company specialized in distribution in the
1950s and would venture into Cantonese production in the 1960s. His Liberty
Company (Ziyou) was dedicated to Mandarin productions and later was
renamed First Film and based in Taiwan, where it rose to prominence as the
fourth largest Chinese production company in the 1970s. A boss of two com-
panies, Huang thus envisioned Hong Kong as a city of two cinemas for many
years.

If divergence characterized the film industry in Hong Kong, convergence
was sometimes found in genres and themes shared by Cantonese and Mandarin
cinemas. Like Union Film Enterprises, several Mandarin companies also
emphasized literary adaptations. Union Film Enterprises’ 1953 success might
also explain the predominance of twenty-one literary adaptations and nineteen
ethical dramas in Cantonese productions of 1954. Previously in Cantonese
cinema, martial arts pictures dominated in 1950, comedies in 1951 and 1953,
and singing films (gechang pian) in 1952. Another point of convergence between
Cantonese and Mandarin cinemas was the attention to serious – and often tragic
– social issues. A Mother’s Tears (Cimu lei, dir. Chun Kim, 1953), a Cantonese
release based on an ‘airwave novel’ (tiankong xiaoshuo) or radio storytelling and
featuring Hung-hsin Nui,10 explored ethical questions and set a box-office record
of 450,000 tickets and HK$400,000 in revenue. In March 1954, a newspaper
report indicated that Cantonese cinema had made great progress and films of
immortals and demons had disappeared from the screen (M. Yu 2000: 5–158).

The impact of the new Cantonese cinema represented by Union Film
Enterprises was both immediate and profound. In 1954 Cathay’s International
Films Distribution Agency (Guoji) in Hong Kong set up a Cantonese production
team. Active in Mandarin productions since the early 1950s, Shaw and Sons
quickly followed suit with their own Cantonese production group in 1955. Also
in 1955, Kong Ngee (Guangyi), the third largest film enterprise in Singapore,
established Kong Ngee in Hong Kong. In addition to working for Kong Ngee,
members of Union Film Enterprises also participated in Sun Luen Films (Xinlian,
founded in 1952) and Overseas Chinese Film (Huaqiao, founded in 1956), and
together these ‘four major’ Cantonese companies contributed to the golden age
of Cantonese cinema.

COMPETING STUDIOS, 1956–65

Unlike the precarious postwar market that was crowded with small one-picture
companies, Hong Kong cinema entered its studio era between 1956 and 1965,
marked by cut-throat competition between Cathay and Shaw Brothers, which
kept luring each other’s top artists and outpacing each other’s production plans.

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Genres were reinvented and repackaged, and melodious songs, exuberant dances
and beautiful actresses enriched the screen experience.

Cathay and MP&GI: urban modernity and
youth culture

As head of Singapore-based Cathay, Loke Wan Tho managed more than 100
theaters in Malaysia and Singapore and had for many years distributed Yonghua’s
films. But Yonghua incurred a debt of HK$500,000 after a fire destroyed its film
warehouse and a few unreleased prints in 1954. A generous loan from Taiwan
in 1955 helped Yonghua temporarily when the land which Yonghua leased for
its studio was reclaimed by the Hong Kong government. To build a new studio
in Hammer Hill and relocate its facilities, Yonghua agreed to a restructuring plan
and accepted Cathay’s additional investment of HK$2 million. From this time,
Yonghua existed merely in name. In 1956 Cathay’s International Films (Guoji),
which managed Yonghua’s facilities and had co-produced features with Yan Jun,
was merged into MP&GI, Cathay’s fully-fledged Hong Kong production com-
pany, which quickly emerged as a Mandarin cinema stronghold in the late 1950s
(HKFA 2002).

The early MP&GI production staff preferred urban comedy and emphasized the
integration of Chinese and Western cultures. Their films transformed Shanghai’s
opposing ‘conservative’ and critical traditions and transformed Mandarin cinema
(R. Huang 2001: 29–33). Directed by Tao Qin, whom MP&GI recruited
from Shaw Brothers, Our Sister Hedy (Si qianjin, 1957; Mandarin) won the best
picture award at the 1957 Asian Film Festival and established MP&GI’s rising
reputation. The film follows four very different sisters living with their wealthy
widowed father (Wang Yuanlong). The eldest sister Hilda is virtuous but
traditional, and one by one her boyfriends fall for her second sister Helen, a
gorgeous temptress. The third sister (Lin Cui) is pretty but mischievous and
frequently intervenes on Hilda’s behalf, and her youngest sister Hazel is simply
naïve. While disparaging towards both outdated Confucian morality and out-
landish Western behavior, the film simultaneously encourages the preservation
of family values and the pursuit of individual happiness. The upbeat mood,
energetic soundtrack, funny situations and fashionable parties all highlight a new
attitude toward urban modernity in Hong Kong.

The celebration of urban modernity and its attendant youth culture is even
more evident in Mambo Girl (Manbo nülang, dir. Yi Wen, 1957), an MP&GI
Mandarin release that established Ge Lan as ‘the number one screen musical
personality of the era’ (Fonoroff 1997: 188). The film opens with a close-up of
two dancing feet, and the camera pulls back to show Kailing (Ge Lan), a cheerful
high school student, dancing to the applause of her swinging hipster friends.
After a few rounds of songs and dances, Kailing suddenly turns sorrowful when
she discovers that she is adopted. She searches the urban labyrinth and finds her
birth mother working as a nightclub janitor, but her mother refuses to confirm

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their relationship. Kailing is profoundly touched by her adoptive parents, who
organize a birthday party and turn Kailing back into a cheerful ‘mambo girl’.

Hailed by Stephen Teo (Zhang Jiande) as Hong Kong’s ‘first musical master-
piece’, Mambo Girl also reveals the persistent question of identity in Hong Kong
cinema. ‘For the Chinese population of Hong Kong, torn between living in the
colony and wishing to return to the mainland, this [question of identity] is a
familiar predicament on the symbolic level’. Nonetheless, in its preferred solution
to the birth puzzle, Mambo Girl ends with the birth mother secretly watching
a happy family reunion with Kailing from outside the house, and then shows her
slowly walking away, a dark shadow in the background. The film thus embraces
the modern bourgeois lifestyle at the expense of a painful memory of the
unspeakable haunting past, and the attitude of ‘fun, rhythm, innocence and
youthfulness’ prevails in the new generation (HKIFF 1993: 35, 40, 64).

Corresponding to changes in screen attitudes and moods, MP&GI’s new
urban films also illustrate changes in the representation of the female body as
a cinematic attraction. If Calendar Girl (Longxiang fengwu, dir. Tao Qin, 1959;
Mandarin), the first MP&GI release in Eastmancolor, is still conservative in its
classic Broadway-style costumes, then Mad About Music (Yingge yanwu, dir. Yi
Wen, 1963; Mandarin) takes a new direction, with its two female leads dancing
in revealing dresses. Even Air Hostesses (Kongzhong xiaojie, dir. Yi Wen, 1959;
color, Mandarin), a romance shot on location in Taiwan, features a scene in
which the would-be air hostesses line up for a physical examination wrapped
in bath towels, radiant with identical smiles on their faces. As well us displaying
youthful idols with charming faces and healthy bodies, Air Hostesses is further
graced by Ge Lan’s big hit, ‘I Want to Fly Up to the Blue Sky’ (Fonoroff
1997: 127, 189–91).

In addition to cultivating its contract directors and stars from Hong Kong
and Taiwan, MP&GI also enlisted talent from overseas. One screenwriter who
contributed to the popularity of MP&GI family dramas during this time was
Eileen Chang. Her comedies of manners, which ridicule old-fashioned ideas but
typically conclude in a compromise, were popular in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
In Taipei’s Chinese rankings, for example, The Battle of Love (Qingchang ru
zhanchang, 1957) and The Wayward Husband (Taohua yun, 1958), both dir-
ected by Yue Feng, were placed second in 1957 and ninth in 1958, respectively.

Among other similar films, Chang’s sequels to The Greatest Civil War on Earth
(Nanbei he, dir. Wang Tianlin, 1961), which topped Hong Kong’s Mandarin
cinema box office in 1961, are worth mentioning.11 The tongue-in-cheek
exaggeration of the ‘greatest’ is matched by the reversed meaning of ‘civil war’ in
the Chinese title, which denotes ‘integration’ and ‘compromise’ between nanbei
– the ‘south’ (Hong Kong) and the ‘north’ (the mainland) – the nuance missing
in the English title. Indeed, it is this missing nuance that constitutes the focus
of the comedy series: the ‘mixing’ (he) of Cantonese and Mandarin cultures in
Hong Kong society. Both directed by Wang Tianlin, Chang’s Mandarin sequels
The Greatest Wedding on Earth (Nanbei yijia qin, 1962; b/w) and The Greatest

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Love Affair on Earth (Nanbei xi xiangfeng, 1964; b/w) continue to present
‘mixed’ couples but emphasize ‘happiness’ (xi), ‘affection’ (qin) and ‘family
unity’ (yijia). In a sense, MP&GI’s ‘south–north’ dramas represent yet another
example of convergence in Hong Kong cinema – the mixing of Cantonese- and
Mandarin-speaking casts in the same films. Interpreted at a symbolic level, this
points to a self-confidence which Hong Kong filmmakers had obtained by
the early 1960s: that by confronting rather than evading the hybridity of their
cultural identity they could expect nothing but ‘happy’ endings.

The contemporary orientation in its musicals and family dramas does not
mean that MP&GI disregarded history. In fact, drawing on MP&GI’s favorite
plot of two or three women romantically involved with the same man, Sun,
Moon and Star (Xingxing, yueliang, taiyang, dir. Yi Wen, 1962; Mandarin)
achieves an epic scope in its dramatic rendition of the resistance war and its
devastating effects on Chinese people. With the location shoot done partly in
Taiwan, this two-part film won the best picture prize at the inaugural Golden
Horse Awards in 1962 and ranked second in the 1962 Taipei box office with
NT$1,755,185.

As reflected in the annual Taipei top ten listing of the time (R. Huang 2001:
50–6), MP&GI dominated the Mandarin cinema market in the late 1950s,
although Shaw Brothers caught up quickly and gained an upper hand after
1962. Various personnel changes affected MP&GI operations in 1962. After the
untimely death of Loke Wan Tho in 1964 and after producing 110 Mandarin
features, MP&GI changed its name to ‘Cathay Hong Kong’ but gradually lost
out to Shaw Brothers.

Shaw Brothers: costume dramas and Li Hanxiang
When the Great China folded and returned its leased studio to Nanyang, Shao
Cunren established Shaw and Sons (Shaoshi fuzi, its logos including SS) in 1950
and embarked on Mandarin productions, because a Mandarin title could be sold
at a higher price than a Cantonese one. Shaw and Sons employed such directors
as Tu Guangqi, Tao Qin and Wang Yin and produced seventy features, none of
which achieved much distinction. By 1957, Run Run Shaw, who had up until this
time given HK$250,000 per film to Shaw and Sons, was extremely upset by
the popularity of recent MP&GI releases in Southeast Asia. He brought HK$5
million to Hong Kong, founded Shaw Brothers Hong Kong (Shaoshi xiongdi,
its logos including SB) with his brother Runme, and relegated Shaw and Sons to
the business of distribution and exhibition in Hong Kong. Run Run recruited
Raymond Chow (Zou Wenhuai) as Shaw Brothers’ head of publicity, and the
studio’s international outlook resulted in prominent US news coverage of Shaw
Brothers enterprises. Located in Clear Water Bay, Shaw Brothers ‘Movietown’
opened in 1961 with brand new studios, standing sets, processing and recording
facilities and even staff apartments. Operating twenty-four hours a day,
Movietown enabled Shaw Brothers to work its 1,200 employees in ten-hour

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BETWEEN NATIONALISM AND
COLONIALISM: MAINLAND EMIGRES,
MARGINAL CULTURE, AND HONG KONG
CINEMA 1937-1941

Poshek Fu

Hong Kong has been marginal to twentieth-century Chinese culture. This
marginality stems both from the fact that Hong Kong is situated at the fringe
of China’s geopolity and from a popular stereotype of the city as a “cultural
desert.” This imagery began to circulate around the 1920s among some
mainland intellectuals seeking refuge in the British colony who, as the chil-
dren of the May Fourth Enlightenment, were ill at ease not only with the
“exotic” local dialect but with what they considered its hybridized culture:
simultaneously Westernized, feudal, colonial, and provincial. Westernized as
it appeared, Hong Kong had never experienced a cultural revolution compa-
rable to the May Fourth Movement and its cultural discourse controlled by
colonizers, taipans, compradors, and Confucian moralists. To many mainlan-
ders it was a desert at the periphery of Chinese culture where no progressive,
diverse modes of cultural practice could possibly exist. This stereotypical
representation has until recently dominated both the popular and scholarly
imagery of Hong Kong.1

The colony’s cinema, its major mass cultural product, has also been largely
ignored by China scholars.2 Movies “made in Hong Kong” were perceived
as merely “made for money”: box-office driven, frivolous, devoid of artistic
and social meaning. One of the early critics was Shanghai modernist writer
Mu Shiying, who, after a brief stint with the Cantonese cinema, ridiculed it as
“the biggest joke in the world and the greatest humiliation of the human
race.”3 Coming from the center of new Chinese culture, Mu’s smug sense of
cultural superiority was all too evident.

This marginalization of Hong Kong is integral to what could be called a
“Central Plains syndrome” (da Zhongyuan xintai) that has been embedded in
a centralizing, antiimperialist state-building discourse underlying twentieth-
century representation of Chinese culture. It comes as no surprise that a master
film historian such as Cheng Jihua would block out Hong Kong’s dynamic
contribution to the birth of Chinese cinema altogether.4 Cheng does include
Hong Kong in his authortative history text on Chinese cinema but privileges

199

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200 POSHEK FU

only the two periods (1930s and late 1940s) during which mainland intellec-
tuals had allegedly policed and guided the local movie scene.5

In fact, since the beginning of the twentieth century, Hong Kong has been
a dynamic site of disparate discourses and practices that centers particularly
around the notion of mass culture. The colony was the largest center of dialect
filmmaking in Republican China, and after the Communist takeover, it re-
placed Shanghai as the ”Hollywood of the East.” Although dominated from
the outset by commercial concerns, Hong Kong cinema has a complex history
of contestation between various political and ideological positions and aes-
thetic orientations. It was in this way not so different qualitatively from the
mainland cinema where, aside from the few cannonized leftist films, the
dominant mode of the Republican screen was profit-driven, popular entertain-
ment fare. Likewise, since its beginning around 1900, Hong Kong cinema has
been a significant part of the Chinese cinema, connected as much by business
rivalries as by artistic and financial interactions.6

This cinematic connection became particularly intricate during the first
years of the Second World War, between 1937 and 1941, when Hong Kong
was swarming with filmmakers, stars, and critics who fled the mainland to
seek refuge in the colony or to stop over on their way to the unoccupied
interior. Many of them brought a political intensity and sense of moral ur-
gency, as well as a creeping Central Plains syndrome, to the ideological
contestation in the local cinema between patriotism and profit and the collision
of national demand with local interest. Wartime Hong Kong cinema provides
us, therefore, a privileged vantage point from which to explore the marginali-
zation of Hong Kong in the Chinese geocultural imagination.

At the same time, the war engendered an incipient sense of local identity
among the people of Hong Kong. Identification, as broadly defined, is articu-
lated in terms of the relation of self to other, subject to object: We define
ourselves in relation to the other. In a colonial situation, it is common knowl-
edge that the colonizer, in Sartre’s words, “has been able to become a man
through creating slaves and monsters” out of the natives – lazy, incompetent,
and primitive.7 This situation was further complicated in the case of Hong
Kong by its marginalization in the China-centered discourse of nationalism
and modernization. Contaminated by British colonization, it was seen by the
mainland cultural elites as a land of “slavishness,” “decadence,” and “back-
wardness,” obstructing the progress of the national project. The war drama-
tized this double marginality. While the colonial government excluded the
“Chinese,” the racial Others, from the military defense of the colony, dias-
pora from the mainland sought to mobilize the colonized to defend the ‘ ‘moth-
erland” against Japan. At the same time the mainland emigres continued to
ascribe to them traits of the contaminating Others.

The war also dramatized Hong Kong’s sociocultural difference with and
geopolitical apartness from the mainland. I would argue that it was a combi-

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BETWEEN NATIONALISM AND COLONIALISM 201

nation of this incipient sense of difference and this double marginality (in the
nationalist and colonial discourses) that generated a construction, still tenta-
tive, of an ambivalent, hybrid identity that continues to haunt Hong Kong
natives today: They are caught in between identification with the past and the
present, with the centralizing nationalism of the mainland and the hybrid
tradition of Hong Kong. This ambivalent identity was subtly but powerfully
projected in the local cinema. Based on some recently discovered films, this
chapter discusses the industrial practices and production strategies of the
wartime Hong Kong film industry, the ways in which the mainland emigres
police and “otherize” the local cinema, and its representation of a collective
sense of identity for the colonized subjects.8

I

The Second World War in China began on July 7, 1937, with the fighting at
the Marco Polo Bridge. Four months later, the premier center of Chinese
filmmaking, Shanghai, fell to Japan. Unlike the war-torn inland, the British
colony of Hong Kong stayed outside the hostilities. As a result, there was a
massive influx of wartime refugees into the colony seeking safety. Between
July 1937 and July 1938, for example, according to official figures, a quarter
of a million people crossed the border. In the next two years, another half a
million mainland Chinese fled to the “haven of tranquility,” sometimes at the
rate of 5,000 a day, swelling the city’s population from less than 1 million in
mid-1937 to 1.7 million in 1939.9 Some of these refugees were social notables
such as the underworld boss Du Yuesheng and the Beijing opera star Mei
Lanfang, whose wealth and exuberant lifestyle provided an impetus to the
consumer economy. But the bulk of refugees were destitute. They created an
abundance of cheap labor, which coincided with a large demand for war
materials from “Free China.” As a result, there was an economic boom in
the city. Thus, besides the great increase of foreign trade, the number of
factories with more than twenty workers, which constituted the backbone of
Hong Kong’s small manufacturing economy, jumped from 689 in 1937 to
1,200 in 1941.10

The Hong Kong film industry thrived in this favorable environment. By
1939 the industry boasted more than forty film studios employing about 2,000
people. As an important center of Cantonese production since the late 1920s,
the industry was dominated by Cantonese-speaking natives. But the war
brought in many Mandarin-speaking film people from Shanghai, only a few
of whom bothered to learn the local dialect. Thus, in general, film directors,
cinematographers, and scriptwriters were better able to rebuild a career in
local production than actors, whose performances were invariably affected by
behind-the-scenes dubbing.

One major reason for the unwillingness of these Shanghai emigres to learn

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202 POSHEK FU

the local dialect was their sense of cultural superiority. In their eyes, the Hong
Kong cinema, as a part of the colony’s sociopolitical culture, was “back-
ward.” Compared to the prewar Shanghai cinema, it was small in capitaliza-
tion, lacked artistic sophistication, and was undeveloped in technology. In
fact, prewar Hong Kong was seen as a colonial backwater, in comparison with
the thriving, glamorous Shanghai, which was the center of the regions’s
international trade.l ] Hong Kong cinema was also politically irrelevant. Unlike
the mainland film industry, except for occupied Shanghai, which was since
1937 centralized under the Nationalist government in Chongqing to rally the
nation for continued resistance, and unlike Hollywood, which was trans-
formed by its alliance with Washington from “peacetime entertainment to
wartime engagement,” Hong Kong cinema remained aloof from politics.12

This political aloofness was in fact largely a result of colonialism. Typical
of colonial situations, the Hong Kong government treated the colonized, in
the words of Albert Memmi, as no more than an “anonymous collectivity,”
a “mark of the plural.”13 They were suspicious and unworthy; they were the
Other. Racism was rampant in the colony, where social life was racially
segrated. For example, not only were the natives not allowed to live in certain
residential areas like the Peak, which was “reserved” for Europeans, they
were paid less than the Europeans for the same work on the grounds of race.
Only in 1937 were Chinese allowed to become subinspectors in the police
force, and even then they were placed under the orders of British junior to
them. Sir Alexander Grantham, the first Governor of postwar Hong Kong,
summed up the colonial attitude pointedly: “The basis of the [European]
arrogance and [snobbery] is the assumption that the European is inherently
superior to the Asian, taking such forms as the exclusion of Asians from
clubs, downright rudeness or a patrionizing manner.”14

On the other hand, Hong Kong had been a “relative haven of tranquility”
compared to the political turmoil and social chaos of the mainland since the
1860s. Most Chinese came to the colony to seek refuge from wars and
rebellions. Their objectives were to survive and, among the rich, to protect
their wealth. Indeed, the small, close-knit local elite was “created by property-
owning lineages,” especially from south China.15 This created a strong tradi-
tion of political conservatism in the colony. Exacerbated by colonial prejudice,
this tradition bred, in the apt phrase of two Hong Kong scholars, ” a fear of
politics” within the local Chinese community.16 As a European professor at
the elite University of Hong Kong exclaimed, “[the Chinese] asked only that
they should be left alone, they asked for no shares in political control. . . .
They have no spirit of willing sacrifice for the community.”17

No wonder the British made no attempt to involve the locals when they
prepared for the defense of Hong Kong in 1937. To begin with, partly because
of its limited commercial importance, London saw little strategic importance
in the colony. Instead, its naval defense in the region was centered in Singa-

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BETWEEN NATIONALISM AND COLONIALISM 203

pore.18 In Hong Kong, only British of “European birth” were subject to
conscription. The colonized were relegated to the racially segregated auxiliary
forces (the “Chinese Company”) and to “junior positions in civil defence.”
The colonial government exhibited no interest in mobilizing the city’s media
industry for war propaganda, except installing in 1939 a chief censor (concur-
rently the University of Hong Kong’s vice-chancellor) to police newspapers,
pamphlets, and entertainment in Chinese.19 The film industry was thus “left
alone” in the wilderness of market calculations.

Between 1938 and 1940, the heyday of wartime cinema, there were more
than forty movie companies in the colony, most of them small independents
making about one film each year. Only six major producers boasted their own
movie studios and stars on contract. They included the Daguan Film Company
(Chiu Shu-sum/Zhao Shushen), Nanyang Productions (Shao Zuiweng), and
Nanyue Studio (Zhu Qingxian). The latter two were founded by Shanghai
businessmen in 1932-1933.20 In general, these studios were poorly equipped,
rarely employing more than two cameras on a shot. For example, the industry
was shocked in 1938 when Nanyue imported several high-voltage projection
lights from Shanghai.21 Independents had to rent film stars and studio spaces,
as well as postproduction facilities from the six majors. Thus production
scheduling was tight and control over filming equipment and stars’ shooting
schedule led often to nasty fights.

The market for wartime Hong Kong cinema was limited. As the major
center of Cantonese productions, Hong Kong had marketed its products
throughout south and southwest China prior to the war. After 1938, when
south China was under Japanese rule, its outlet was limited to Hong Kong,
Macao, and the Cantonese communities in Southeast Asia (mainly Singapore,
Malaysia and Philippines) and the Americas.22 After an economic boom be-
tween 1937 and 1938, the industry increasingly contracted as a result of the
inflationary spiral in 1939, when food prices began to rise quickly and export-
import trade flattened due to the Japanese hold on the Pearl Estuary and the
onset of the European war.23 This change of fortune was demonstrated clearly
in the drop of the industry’s gross profits from more than HK$900,000 in
1938 to much less than HK$500,000 in 1939.24

This sensivity to market conditions and backward technology during the
war exacerbated the industry’s prewar problems of low budget production and
“sloppy craftsmanship.” The average cost of a Cantonese feature-length
picture in 1937-1939 was about HK$7,000 to $8,000 (contemporary Shanghai
films cost an average HK$30,000).25 To beat the market meant to cut costs.
Production companies paid little budgetary attention to scriptwriting or cine-
matography, investing only in the proven box-office records of movie stars.
Restrained by the scheduling problems of studio space and stars’ filming time,
these companies were under tremendous pressure to finish their projects fast.
Seven to ten days per film became the industry norm during the war.26 Actors

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204 POSHEK FU

were compelled to work hard and fast. The majority of them signed on with
one of the six majors on a one- to three-year basis; during that period they
were required, on paper, to make nine or ten films each year. Except for a few
superstars like Sit Gok-sin (Xue Juexian), who commanded about HK$3,000
a film, most actors got a basic salary of somewhere between HK$80 and
HK$300 a month, which barely stayed abreast of the rising cost of living in
post-1939 Hong Kong. To survive, most actors had to find extra work from
other independents, which would in turn pay a charge to their home compa-
nies. Movie businessmen could make huge profits by loaning out their con-
tracted stars. For example, the standard charge for “borrowing” the leading
man Ng Chor-fan (Wu Chufan, Fig. 32) from Nanyang in 1940 was a hefty
HK$ 1,200 per film. That was why all the majors required their stars, whether
they needed extra income or not, to work for other studios. As a consequence,
each star would end up making more than thirty movies a year, usually

Figure 32. Film star Ng Chor-fan (Wu Chufan). Courtesy Hong Kong International Film
Festival.

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BETWEEN NATIONALISM AND COLONIALISM 205

working on several projects at the same time. Indeed, Cantonese opera idols-
cum-movie superstars such as Sit Gok-sin had to be literally dragged, still
wearing stage makeup, to movie studios right after finishing their stage per-
formances at midnight. It was hard to expect them to perform at a high artistic
level under these conditions. Thus “sloppy craftsmanship” (cuzhi lanzao)
came to be the standard criticism of wartime Hong Kong cinema. This “slop-
piness” accentuated, as will be shown, the projected image of Hong Kong
cinema as frivolous and “feudal.”

II

Between 1937 and 1941, the film industry turned out an average of more than
eighty features each year. Most pictures were various modes of popular genres
like folk drama, tragic romances, and period pieces that were adapted directly
from Cantonese operas, folk tales, and popular novels as well as Hollywood
fantasy.27 Just as in wartime Hollywood, where no new “project of cultural
creation” was involved in its filmic expressions in spite of the war mobiliza-
tion, Cantonese genres were built on a foundation of generic elements devel-
oped in prewar films: simple and bipolar narratives, melodramatic aesthetics,
emotional identification, and stereotypical characters. Consciously invoking
and appropriating past forms, as Leo Braudy notes, genre films derived their
power from an affinity with the “existing audience.” In fact, all of these
filmic elements became generic because they seemed to “answer well to the
experience, intelligence, and feelings of the audience.”28

Who was the audience for Cantonese movies in the war years? The lack of
business statistics or company archives has presented a formidable challenge
to Chinese film historians trying to reconstruct the demographic and class
make-up of the film audience. Judging from the number and location of
venues, however, it seems that Hollywood and Mandarin productions attracted
the colony’s small, close-knit community of economic and cultural elites who
were cosmopolitan, bilingual, and conservative (supporting, if not necessarily
serving in, the colonial parliament, the Legislative Council) and yet racially
ambivalent.29 Of the thirty-one theatres in Hong Kong, eighteen showed Hol-
lywood films, and two showed Mandarin. There were four first-run venues in
town, including the plush Queen’s Theatre in the Central District and the Lee
Theatre in Causeway Bay, which had since 1940 showed Mandarin films from
Shanghai. The Cantonese pictures were mostly shown in second- and third-
run venues like Jiurufang, Chongqing, and Guomin, which were located in
lower-middle and working class neighborhoods, and which staged Cantonese
operas alternatively. Fares ranged from HK$1.2 to HK$3 for Hollywood
premiers and HK$0.4 to HK$1 for Cantonese pictures, and HK$0.05 to
HK$0.2 for second- and third-runs.30 Thus the averge moviegoer to whom
Cantonese filmmakers appealed was an illiterate or semiliterate urbanite who

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206 POSHEK FU

was economically disadvantaged, steeped in the moral universe of local per-
forming arts, and unexposed to the May Fourth discourse of modernity and
enlightenment. To most of the Cantonese audience, motion pictures repre-
sented a less expensive and more regular alternative to opera performances.
Thus the popularity of opera-related films and the immense drawing power of
opera-cum-screen stars in Cantonese cinema both before and during the
war.31

For modernizing intellectuals from the mainland, Cantonese movies were
without exception “frivolous,” “superstitious,” “escapist,” and “racy,”
serving only to perpetuate the “evils” of feudal mentality. The famous leftist
emigre Cai Chusheng, a Shanghai-born Cantonese film director, expressed his
contempt unreservedly: “Owing to the backwardness of Hong Kong culture
as a whole, it inevitably has a proportional effect on its cinema. Thus, al-
though Hong Kong has produced many, many movies, and although ‘artists’
here claim that Hong Kong has replaced Shanghai after its fall to Japan to be
the center of Chinese cinema, all of these movies are frivolous and vulgar
commodities. It is impossible . . . to find any title that would make Hong Kong
deserving the claim of a cinematic center – national defence films.”32 Obvi-
ously, this critique stemmed from an anxiety over the decentering of Chinese
cinema33 and the insistence that Hong Kong, for its political irrelevance and
lack of authenticity, remained on its periphery. Yet I have found no documen-
tary evidence so far to justify Cai’s claim that Hong Kong was trying to
project itself as the new center of Chinese cinema. His anxiety might have
reflected rather a projected superiority of the mainland filmmaking commu-
nity.

From 1938 until 1941, most of the filmmakers and intellectuals among the
mainland emigres were from Shanghai, the foremost center of Chinese mo-
dernity before the war. It is interesting to note that Shanghai, for its Western-
ization and semicoloniality, was itself the object of nationalist outcry and
conservative attacks. It was “the other China.” But when Shanghai intellec-
tuals and artists came to the colony, they became the “Chinese” by imposing
a slavish otherness on the Hong Kong natives. This happened both because of
their perception of Hong Kong as “inferior” and “alien” to Shanghai, owing
to its total contamination by the British colonization,34 and as Leo Ou-fan Lee
points out, Chinese intellectuals had always imagined themselves as the voice
of the nation, at the center of national discourses.35

Many of these intellectuals and artists found the colony a charming yet
souless city, and its men of culture dull and slavish. They were nostalgic for
the excitement and cultural vitality of the war-torn homeland and constantly
chastised the city for its “indifference to the national resistance.”36 As the
leftist writer Lou Shiyi complained: “When I know that I have to stay here
for a while and to live together with all these listless, rotten (meilan) people,
I become melancholic.”37 They justified their melancholic exile in Hong Kong

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BETWEEN NATIONALISM AND COLONIALISM 207

as a “necessary sacrifice” to enlighten as well as to mobilize the colony to
China’s defense. As one critic wrote with a biting tone, “Three or four years
ago Hong Kong people had no culture to speak of. Only most recently have
us mainlanders (waijiang lad) come and brought culture here.”38 That smug
sense of cultural superiority was all too evident.

It was thus only natural that another diasporic filmmaker Yan Meng would
castigate the local films as inferior to those of the mainland cinema: “Edu-
cated Chinese are invariably scornful of Cantonese cinema. [Hong Kong
filmmakers with social conscience are therefore] full of pain and anguish on
the one hand, and deeply humiliated on the other. What we need to do instead
is to change our approach to filmmaking.”39 This critique obviously grounded
itself in the nationalism and enlightenment values that constituted the May
Fourth discourse of modernity. Thus, for its politically irrelevant, “frivolous
and vulgar” culture, Cantonese cinema in Hong Kong continued to be the
suspicious, illegitmate Other to this enshrining national tradition.40

The marginalization of Cantonese production did not begin with the war.
Since around 1931, the Nationalist government had been trying to outlaw
dialect (i.e., Cantonese) production in its effort to create a new national guoyu
(Mandarin) cinema as part of its centralizing, state-building project. The
Nanjing government framed its prohibition in the nationalist discourse of
antiimperialism and modernization. The Cantonese screen was represented as
projecting a “feudalistic” and “superstitious” mentality, which allegedly
impeded China’s progress to modernity and needed to be swept away. This
drive enjoyed widespread support among Chinese intellectuals espousing the
May Fourth goals of nationalism and enlightenment as well as Shanghai
studio heads who had been competing with their Hong Kong counterparts for
market share in south China, the Americas, and Southeast Asia. To kill off
Cantonese production would assure a larger profit and market control for the
Shanghai industry.41

Underneath this virulent representation of Cantonese film was the Nation-
alist government’s attempt to reunify the country by strengthening its hold on
Guangdong province (formerly headquarters of the anti-Nanjing separatist
regime of Hu Hanmin and the militarist Chen Jitang) with which Hong Kong
had close geocultural connections based on kinship, language, and ethnicity.42
The modernizing Chinese intelligentsia rallied behind this state-building drive.
Under the “centralizing nationalist ideology” that pervaded the intellecual
discourse of twentieth-century China, they saw an unpoliced perpetuation of
a south-centered cultural discourse as a politico-linguistic weapon against
their “hegemonic imaginary” of an independent nation.43 Cantonese cinema,
in this vein, was represented as promoting both a local dialect as well as an
alternative imagination of collective identity based on regional ties, which, in
their minds, impeded the modernizing project of state-building, linguistic
unity, and antiimperialist autonomy. Underlying this anxiety was the Chinese

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208 POSHEK FU

intellectuals’ creeping consciousness of da Zhongyuan xintai, which, by priv-
ileging the “Chineseness” of the north plain, held in contempt all cultures in
the periphery of the mainland. By the 1930s, the Nationalist government and
the Communists, in pursuing their antiimperialist agenda, had reformulated
and celebrated the “old idea” of a primodial identity for all Han Chinese of
a shared origin in the north China plain. This Central Plains syndrome repre-
sented a hierarchy of cultural differentiation derived from geographic, territo-
rial, and cultural boundaries between the mainland core and the outlying
periphery. Hong Kong was on the margin, and the colonization accentuated
its marginality in the Chinese geopolitical imagination.44 Thus the mainland
intellectuals could readily dismiss its lack of an articulated nationalism and
elite culture as a “cultural desert” and ridiculed and condemned its cinema
as the inferior Other.

In response, the Hong Kong motion picture industry took the lead in 1936
in lobbying the National Government and succeeded in postponing the prohi-
bition for three years on the condition that it would pay for the expense of
setting up a Central Censorship Bureau in Guangzhou to expedite the review
of dialect movies.45 The bureau had to approve all Hong Kong products before
public release. By redirecting the Nanjing government’s strategic attention,
the war saved the industry from dissolution. However, a sense of uncertainty
and bitterness was prevalent among local filmmakers who wondered aloud
why the Cantonese cinema was singled out for such an unfair attack and how
long this suspension would last.46 This demoralization, combined with the
problems of small capitalization and primitive technology, aggravated the
sloppy tendencies of the local film industry. Most studio heads saw filmmak-
ing as a short-term money-making venture, a vehicle of speculation to be
quickly exploited when the market looked lucrative.

Although the prohibition was postponed, the framing rhetoric of the cine-
matic critique remained in the early years of the war only to be transformed
from a discourse of modernity to one of patriotism. During the war, Hong
Kong cinema was condemned for its narcotic lure, blunting the patriotic spirit
of the people. Peng Yangnong, editor of the pro-Nationalist emigre magazine
Yilin {The Arts), expressed this rankled vox populi: “[Hong Kong films] are
full of sex and ghosts and monsters. They coincide with the demands of the
Fascists.”47 Another critic concurred: “Filmmaking has been known [in
China] as a harbinger of cultural changes (wenhua xianqu). But it is now
divorced from our times, betraying the War of Anti-Japanese Resistance, as if
it has forgotten that there is a gap between [Hong Kong filmmakers] and the
homeland. It makes us wonder why there would be people living in a dream
world, ignoring everything: our homeland, our hometown, justice, and even
their own existence. The only thing they really care about is money.” (my
emphasis).48 This equation of entertainment film with dreamy escapism was
typical of the May Fourth tradition of privileging bourgeois realism as the

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BETWEEN NATIONALISM AND COLONIALISM 209

artistic medium of social engagement, unifying the discursive positions of
both the leftists and rightists. Indeed, in terms of cultural politics, there was
little contention between the Nationalists and their nemesis, the Communists.49
It also brought to fore the elitism of modernizing Chinese intelligentsia who
viewed the predominately mass-appeal Cantonese production as polluting the
people and thereby carrying an odor of treason.

In fact, the marginalization of Hong Kong became the emigre community’s
structuring theme for its institutional and cinematic discourses. To rally the
colony to China’s defense, mainland filmmakers sought to create an alterna-
tive hegemony to cleanse the local entertainment industry of vices. This space
was embedded in the mainland politics of Nationalist-Communist relations.
Under the wartime United Front, both parties had branches and various open
or semi-overt agencies in Hong Kong aimed mainly at taking advantage of
the city’s willingness to reach out to and police the Chinese diaspora com-
munities. For example, in the late 1937 the Communists had established an
office of the Eighth Route Army to raise funds from and distribute propaganda
to the Chinese diaspora as well as to gather military intelligence.50

The inland filmmakers involved in creating the alternative hegemony in-
cluded former Lianhua Studio boss Luo Mingyou, young director Yan Meng,
leftist filmmakers Situ Huimin and Cai Chusheng, and Nationalist film critic
Peng Yannong, all of whom had recently fled Shanghai. They frequently
invoked the authority of the Nationalist government to legitimize their polic-
ing power. Indeed, they were the nation. For example, in addition to their
involvement in various kinds of patriotic activities organized by the Nation-
alist or the Communist cells, they also sponsored the annual Guomindang All-
Nation Spiritual Mobilization Campaign for the local cinema in which all
participants were required to sit through a long series of patriotic speeches by
prominent artists (e.g., Hong Shen and Cai Chusheng) and political dignitaries
(e.g., Madam Sun Yat-sen) before swearing unswerving loyalty to Chong-
qing.51 They also worked with the Nationalist Overseas Chinese Commission
to introduce visiting officials to local studio heads and filmmakers. At a
welcoming party for the Film Censorship Chief Xu Hao, who came to bring
the local cinema in line with the official propaganda policy, Cai Chusheng
reported that Japan was targeting HK$2 million to “buy over” Cantonese
cinema. In other words, any studio executive who continued to make “frivo-
lous” and “trashy” films must have been bought by the enemy. According
to one report, all the guests “fell silent.”52

These mainland diasporas articulated and circulated their nationalist dis-
course in such publications as the Nationalist-sponsored Yilin and Huashang
bao {Chinese Business News), which was financed by the Office of the Eighth
Route Army, and/or set up networks of elite mobilization through patriotic
organizations like Zhongguo dianying jiaoyu xiehui Xianggang fenhui (Fed-
eration of Chinese Film Education, headed by Luo Mingyou) and Xianggang

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210 POSHEK FU

Zhongguo dianying bihui (Chinese Cinema PEN, [International Association
of Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists, and Novelists], headed by Peng
Yannong), both local chapters of national film organizations based in Chong-
qing. Probably to highlight the “backwardness” of the local film world, these
groups were open only to those locals who were “patriotic” and led a “clean
life” free of such vices as opium addiction and prostitution (although there
was no mention of how to test the applicants). Chinese film personnel, as
everywhere in the world, were publicly conceived as extravagant, self-
indulgent, promiscuous, and scandalous.53 Yet none of these organizations
excluded people from the mainland on the basis of “cleanliness.” To single
out the Hong Kong industry was to underscore its inauthenticity and margin-
ality. Parallel to this institutional discourse was a discursive boundary between
“patriots” and “traitors.” The former group included some local filmmakers
like the opera idols Sit Gok-sin and Ma Shih-tsan (Ma Shizheng) and stars
Bak Yin (Bai Yan), Lo Tun (Lu Dun), and Ng Chor-fan, who either identified
with the mainland cause or did not want to offend the northerners. All the rest
were excluded as, presumably, the unclean, unworthy others.

The emigre filmmakers’ nationalist discourse centered around two structur-
ing notions: Hong Kong was a part of the mainland but also marginal. To be
truly patriotic, then, was not only to mobilize the city to China’s defense but
also, ultimately, to subvert Hong Kong, that is, to leave and discard the colony
for the authenticity of China. This theme came off forcefully in several
patriotic films made by the emigres. Between 1937 and 1941, the China Film
Studio of Chongqing set up an office in Hong Kong to acquire film equipment
from overseas and to recruit personnel from the mainland community. To take
further advantage of the colony’s openness, in 1939 it founded Dadi (Good
Earth) Studio to make Mandarin films. Its staff included all the famous
Shanghai filmmakers like directors Cai Chusheng, Situ Huimin, Fei Mu, and
female leads Li Lili and Li Zhuozhuo. A year later Dadi closed. Cai and Situ
then founded Xinsheng (New Life) Film Company, which lasted long enough
to finish one Mandarin picture. All four of the releases of Dadi and Xinsheng
– The March of Guerrilla (Youji jingxinqu, Situ Huimin, 1938), The Paradise
of the Solitary Island (Gudao tiantang, Cai Chusheng, 1939), and Homeland
(Baiyun guxiang, Situ Huimin, 1940) – were apparently targeted for the China
markets as well as the elite sector of Hong Kong. Their principal roles were
played by actors mostly unknown to local audiences and their settings were
mostly framed on the imagined mainland. Particularly significant was the
ideological subtext of da Zhongyuan xintai. All of these films were either
about resistance heroism inside China or about local resisters leaving the
colony’s decadence and inauthenticity to “return” to the mainland. They
invariably represented Hong Kong as an allegorical site of evil and backward-
ness. Moreover, while all the heroes and heroines in these films were mainland
stars, collaborator roles were mostly given to minor Cantonese comedians

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BETWEEN NATIONALISM AND COLONIALISM 211

whose Mandarin was awkward, easily evoking the much-denounced image of
Wang Jingwei, the Cantonese-speaking head of the collaborationist regime,
among the (mainland) film audience!

The narrative structure of The March of Guerrilla, the best known of the
four Mandarin films, was typical of this strategy of marginalization. Directed
and written by Cai Chusheng, the film follows two lovers in a Lake Tai town
who are separated by the Japanese occupation. The enemy destroys their
homes and kills their parents. Here private and public emotions merge into a
strong determination to fight for the nation. The man (played by the Shanghai
star Li Qing) goes off to join a guerrilla group. His fiancee (Rong Xiaoyi, also
from Shanghai) has to stay behind to care for the family. She is arrested and
later raped by the Japanese.

Recent scholarship demonstrates that national imagery is suffused with
gender politics. In the modernizing discourse of the Chinese state, which
represented a male-defined order, woman was the “inessential” other, whose
body and agency were subsumed under the nationalist agenda. It denied
woman both her identity and subject-position in the public sphere.54 The
traditional allegorization of female chastity with national purity was rein-
scribed within the nationalist discourse. The violation of the female body by
foreign invaders symbolized the ultimate victimization of the Chinese state
and the need to valorize the nation by way of mobilizing national loyalties.55

Thus, this imaginative coupling of raped woman and foreign invaders served
to reduce “female” to a signifier of marginalization and sacrifice.

This trope of raped woman was the focus of the narrative structure of The
March of Guerrilla. To stay behind to care for the domestic order rather than
joining the local guerrilla, which, significantly, was an all-male force, the
Rong Xiaoyi character was peripheral to the Chinese resistance. It evokes a
parallel with the Crown colony’s marginality to nationalist politics. Her vio-
lation by the Japanese in the climax sequence, a powerful symbol of intimi-
dation and humiliation, dramatizes the need and, even desire, for complete
sacrifice of the marginal to serve the collective interests.

In the rape scene, which crosscuts with a surprise attack on the Japanese
by Li Qing’s guerrillas set to a soundtrack of Wagner and Beethoven’ there is
none of the erotic allure typical of most rape fantasies in Chinese or Holly-
wood cinema. Instead, the director avoids any on-screen sexuality (probably
for fear of being criticized as frivolous and racy) by allowing only the sexual
desires expressed in the erotic gaze and lascivious and intimidating laughter
of the rapist. Framed in medium shots, rather than low-angle shots, which
create a sense of paralyzing intimidation on the victim’s part, the sequence
projects a confrontational mood, further accentuated by the strutting caricature
of the Japanese colonel, who appears on the screen more a figure for ripe
ridicule than a superhuman Fascist, embodying all the Chinese racial stereo-
types about the enemy: womanizing, alcoholic, and dimwitted. Indeed, after a

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212 POSHEK FU

series of shots and reverse-shots of the victim and the victimizer, the camera
stops at a medium close-up that commands respect. Recovering her courage,
Rong Xiaoyi picks up a knife and kills the marauder.

Transforming herself into a woman warrior, Rong Xiaoyi puts up a Na-
tional flag outside the Japanese compound to direct the guerrilla attack (Fig.
33). She is then shot by a malicious collaborator (Hong Kong comedian Chow
Chi-shing/Zhou Zhicheng) who is trying to run away from the attack. When
the guerrillas discover her death, they angrily throw Zhou down the hill in a
climax of moral revenge and nationalist passion. The movie ends with Li
Qing leading a horse carrying the rape victim’s body covered by the blue-sky
white-sun flag, and marching triumphantly with the all-male troop to the
patriotic tune “Unity Brings Victory.” Symbolically, then, the marginal other
is now accepted into the national body after making the ultimate sacrifice;
Rong Xiaoyi becomes an emblem of patriotic devotion. Although there is no
direct reference to Hong Kong, the marginality and violation of Rong Xiaoyi
and the denial of her subject-position in the form of complete sacrifice would
invoke in some viewers’ minds a symbolic parallel to the need to subjugate
the colony to the national cause.56

The March of Guerrilla shows skillful camera control, but it lacked a
realistic and credible appreciation of the Japanese. Trying to rally resistance,

Figure 33. Rong Xiaoyi puts up a national flag to direct guerrilla attacks against the
Japanese in The March of Guerrilla, 1938. Courtesy Hong Kong International Film
Festival.

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BETWEEN N A T I O N A L I S M A N D C O L O N I A L I S M 213

the movie was full of cliches, exaggerations, and bigotry. The acerbic remark
of RKO producer David Hemstead on cheap Hollywood anti-Fascist farces
was equally pertinent about these Mandarin films: “No Nazi or Japs will be
portrayed as a comic figure for . . . that would only provide a hero or heroine
with windmills against which to battle, and would kill dramatic impact.”57
With its lack of such “dramatic impact” and its Mandarin dialogue, The
March of Guerrilla, like other Dadi products, did poorly at the local box
office.

The emigre filmmakers also worked with local artists to make a few
Cantonese films. Among them Situ Huimin’s Baoshhan in Bloodshed {Xuejian
Baoshan cheng, 1938) and Tan Xiaodan’s Little Cantonese (Xiao Guangdong,
1940) were most well-known. Like all the Dadi’s Mandarin films, both were
set in the inland, one in Baoshan near Shanghai and another in Canton, and
both projected China-centered patriotic heroism to instill nationalist ideology
in the locals. Xiao Guangdong was particularly emblematic of the Central
Plains syndrome. The title phrase remains today a demeaning, derogatory
ethnic slur against the Cantonese by their northern neighbors, especially the
Shanghainese, making offensive fun of their physical smallness and “slick-
ness.” Both films got rave reviews in emigre publications but were medicore
in box-office returns. In 1940 when Little Cantonese got the honor of the few
Hong Kong films to be released in Chongqing, only a handful of homesick
Cantonese showed up.58

Ill

While mainland filmmakers and critics tried to project and disseminate a
hegemonic nationalist discourse in Hong Kong, the local film industry was
struggling to negotiate the changing politics of wartime cinema. Unlike what
some recent postcolonial scholars have theorized in other contexts, local
filmmakers produced no counternarratives of alternative identification and
cultural opposition with respect to the colonizer or to the core culture, but
rather an uneasy ambivalence accompanying a limited contest against the
emigre discourse of centralizing nationalism.59

Between 1937 and 1941, while Hong Kong stayed out of a war that brought
to China horrendous causalities and calamity, most local studio heads and
filmmakers seemed to be of two minds regarding the role and function of
cinema. This division was a result of the colonial history of Hong Kong. Since
the end of the Opium War in 1842, Hong Kong had been a part of the global
system of colonization. Classified as Huaren (Chinese), the colonized, who
were mainly immigrants from southern China, had been racialized and infer-
iorized in the colonialist discourse and excluded from the colony’s public
sphere. They were socially marginalized and systematically depoliticized. The
colonialist apparatus had accordingly inscribed itself on the colonized by

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214 POSHEK FU

exaggerating their conservatism and “fear of politics.” Thus the prevalence
of popular entertainment cinema in prewar Hong Kong. This apathy fed into
the “sojourner mentality” of many of the locals who, under the colonial gaze,
continued to identify with the mainland, particularly Canton, as their home-
land from which they traced their male ancestries, historic memories, and
cultural practices. Yet at the same time, with the increase of local-born from
26 percent in 1921 to 32.5 percent in 1931 among the native population, Hong
Kong became a distinct geopolitical space with its specificity of historical and
social formations. Peripheralized by the mainland, this difference marked out
a possible site for the articulation of a local identity.

The war experience presented a moment of this identity construction, and
the film industry found itself unknowingly at the center of this historical
uncertainty. Consistent with its policy of racial-political exclusion, the Hong
Kong government had made no effort to mobilize the local motion picture
industry for war preparation. Similarly, the Nationalist government and the
Communists, aside from rehashing their familiar antiimperialist rhetoric of
national resistance, offered no practical advice, guidance or funding to the
studios. This, however, did not stop the mainland intellectuals and filmmakers
from policing and censuring the Cantonese cinema in the name of a central-
izing nationalist ideology. With no experience in political cinema, the film
industry found itself alone in unfamiliar waters, caught between the conflict-
ing demands of the nation-state and the local-colonial condition.

Although some local film businessmen were interested only in a quick
return from low-budget, small-cast escapist fare, the major studios, whatever
their ideological orientation, could not afford to ignore the nationalist de-
mands. The future of Cantonese production as well as their own reputations
were at stake. There were also some filmmakers and artists, notably the
famous actors Ng Chor-fan, Bak Yin, and Lo Dun and the directors Lee Fa
(Li Hua) and Kwan Man-ching (Guan Wenqing), who were close to the
emigre community. Praised in the emigre press as “serious,” “patriotic,”
and “committed” artists, they shared the nationalist vision of a political
cinema devoted to modernization and national autonomy.

Right after the Marco Polo Bridge incident, all the major studio employees
contributed money and volunteered time to make The Critical Juncture
(Zuihou guantou). Its production crew included everybody who was anybody
in the film world and was intended to drum up support for China’s defense.
Screen celebrities also became involved in various kinds of fund-raising
activities.60 Between 1937 and 1938, the industry brought out a large number
of war-theme movies. Their titles were revealing: Forward (Qianjin qu, Dag-
uan Studio), In Defence of South China (Baowei Huanan, Da Zhonghua
Company), and Return to the Homeland (Hui zuguo qu, Nanyang Pro-
ductions), which won praise from the Central Commission of Film Censor-

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ship. After the fall of Canton in December 1938, however, the number of
resistance-related films declined notably.

Judging from available synopses and movie stills, all of these patriotic
films were suffused with commercial elements of scholar-beauty romances,
operatic interlude, and free-for-all farces. In the critical eyes of the Nationalist
government and mainland intelligentsia, they were, with few exceptions, in
the words of the Nationalist film censor Xu Hao, “racy” and “vulgar” and
by and large misrepresented the military-political situation in the mainland.61
In other words, the Cantonese productions remained “backward” amid the
rise of patriotic fervor.

What was absent in this diatribe was an emphatic recognition of the Hong
Kong film industry’s lack of experience in handling propaganda and political
themes and the geopolitical differences of the colony. Without any funding or
specific guidance from either the central or the colonial governments, studio
heads were uncertain about the audiences’ reception and unable to come up
with a coherent production strategy to deal with the tensely ambivalent situa-
tion: China was at war, but Hong Kong remained outside of the conflict. How
to prioritize production planning? How to reckon with the geopolitical speci-
ficity of Hong Kong?

The overwhelming majority of Hong Kong Chinese identified themselves
as Huaren or Guangdong ren (Cantonese) or Huaqiao (Chinese diaspora),
depending probably on the level of collective identification that demanded
their commitment at a given time and situation. They were, in effect, an
overseas Chinese community in a colonial situation. Although they supported
the territorized state of Republican China as a matter of course, they lived in
a Westernized, colonial, and highly commercialized city that was distinct from
the mainland. This became especially obvious during wartime. Most of the
mainland intelligentsia chose to deny the difference by instead marginalizing
Hong Kong culture as an unseemly hybridity of “new and old, redolent of
colonial flavor and suffused with feudal morality and obscene, degenerate
(shangfeng baishu) literature.”62 They renounced the young generation of
Hong Kong natives, many of whom were born in Hong Kong, as “slavish,”
“forgetting that they were in fact Chinese,” and “being ignorant of Chinese
history and proud of knowing no Chinese.”63 These harangues were too
moralistic and impractical for local filmmakers.

At a safe distance from the war, life in Hong Kong rapidly returned to
normal after the reopening of horse-racing in early 1938. There was indeed a
widespread illusion before 1941 that the Japanese would not attack Hong
Kong for fear of provoking the British, whose priggish complacency and
racist underestimation of Japanese prowess led the Colonial government to
claim itself as the “fortress of Asia.”64 This illusionary sense of security,
what some mainland intellectuals smeared as an “ostrich mentality,” was

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216 POSHEK FU

reinforced by the continual influx of refugees from across the border.65 Hong
Kong was a paradise in a war-torn world. On the eve of the Japanese invasion
on December 8, 1941, the race track and movie theatres were packed.66 Few
people of Hong Kong had the same moral burden or emotional urgency as the
mainland emigre about the war. Indeed, the city’s patriotic fervor began to
drain away in 1938, after the fall of Canton late that year.

Patriotic movies sold well as long as popular enthusiasm for the war
remained in force. The return to normalcy in Hong Kong corresponded to the
film audiences’ demand for entertainment fare. After 1938, many critically
acclaimed resistance-theme films turned out to be financial disasters. For
example, Ng Chor-fan closed his new film company in frustration after a very
poor opening of its first project, the political satire Two Lovers in a Silver
World (Yinhai yuanyang, 1938).67 Daguan Studio’s 1938 big-budget release
Behind the Shanghai Front (Shanghai huoxian hou) was a disappointment,
despite the drawing power of the female lead, Bak Yin. At the same time,
Bak Yin’s romantic tragedy, Madame Butterfly (Hudie furen, based on the
1922 Hollywood film Toll of the Sea), which exploited her on-screen trade-
mark of tears and feminine passivity and misery, sold well,68 as did superstar
Sit Gok-sin’s smashes Thief Prince (Zei wangzi, 1939) and Gone was the
Love (Hu bu gui), both adapted from his prewar Cantonese opera hits. Un-
doubtedly, there were several popular patriotic movies, like Lau Fong (Liu
Fang)’s Song of Exile (Liuwang zhe zhi ge, 1941), a moving tale of love and
endurance about a Cantonese refugee music troupe’s patriotic commitment.
But even these exceptions were spiced up with familiar romance and farcial
elements.

Along with the changing market was the Colonial government’s censor-
ship. Trying to maintain its neturality, it prohibited anti-Japanese expressions
in the public sphere. In 1939, for example, the Secretary of Chinese Affairs
who doubled as Chief Censor met with local movie businessmen several times
to warn them against screening “explicit anti-Japanese sentiments.”69 In
response to the Japanese consuler’s protest, the Hong Kong government in
1940 banned the Chongqing-produced victory short The Battle of Changsha
(Changsha huizhan, 1939) and Marches of Guerrilla, which was released in
1941 only after making big cuts and with the new title Zhengqi ge (Song of
Righteousness).10

At the same time pressures from the mainland officials and intelligentsia
persisted. In addition to the discursive attack on Hong Kong cinema, there
were also death threats and political assaults. Several famous film producers
and directors received letters from a group called Patriotic Youth Corps
containing “pictures of pistols and bullets” warning them to stop making
“racy and feudalistic” pictures.71 Many studio heads and filmmakers found
the pressures both unproductive and unfair. Daguan Studio producer Chiu
Shu-tai (Zhao Shutai) aptly expressed the dilemma confronting the film indus-

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BETWEEN N A T I O N A L I S M A N D C O L O N I A L I S M 2 1 7

try: “As a commercial cinema, we certainly have to be concerned with the
educational/inspirational values of filmmaking, serving the interests of our
country and people on the one hand . . . but we cannot, however, ignore
market needs, making movies that suit the audience’s entertainment taste . . .
in order to stay afloat.”72 The veteran Cantonese film director Hou Yiu (Hou
Yao), who had been bitterly attacked by the emigre press for his “senseless”
films, was even more blunt and bitter in his dissent. Meeting with Central
Censor Xu Hao and other local Guomindang leaders, Hou urged the National
government either to nationalize the Cantonese cinema as the Soviets had the
Russian film industry or to give it free rein as in the United States. In other
words, he wanted the National government to back up its rhetoric with deeds
or back out. As soon as he finished his speech, he was bitterly renounced by
the participants.73

While Chiu and Hou used the China-centered nationalist idiom to enunciate
their dissent, some young filmmakers appropriated familiar language of na-
tionalism to conjure an ambivalent, hybrid local identity. This hybridity came
out powerfully in a popular Cantonese film Two Southern Sisters (Nanguo
jiemei hua, 1940). Directed by two young, Hong Kong-born directors, Leung
Bun (Liang Bin) and Leung Sum (Liang Shen), it was produced by a small
independent company founded by the female lead Wu Dip-ying (Hu Dieying).
Originally a minor Cantonese opera singer, Wu became a major Hong Kong
star after playing the lead in the first Cantonese talkie, Genu qingcao (Ro-
mance of Opera Stars, 1932), produced by Daguan in San Francisco.74 The
company folded after making this film, which was billed as the last screen
appearance of Wu before her retirement.

Two Southern Sisters was a high-budget and carefully crafted film. Unlike
the Dadi Mandarin productions, its cast was composed entirely of local stars,
including Ng Chor-fan and buff on Lau Kuai-hong (Liu Guikang). Unlike
Mandarin films, the opening sequence of sampan, fishing boats, subtropical
landscape, and Cantonese folk songs firmly establishes the localness of the
film. In fact, like most Cantonese films, it was melodramatically didactic, and
its narrative centered around family relations. Typical of the hybridism of
local cinema, it combines within the framework of a family drama various
genric elements (e.g., romance, thriller, and social satire) and popular themes
(e.g., national defense, step-mother syndrome, and a love triangle), spiced up
with a long episode of Cantonese opera, all of which were familiar to the
local audience.

The film was centered on a romantic triangle involving a struggling artist
(Ng Chor-fan) and two twin sisters (both played by Wu Dip-ying). The sisters
do not know of each other because they have been separated since childbirth.
The elder (Chow Wen-ying) was adopted by a rich businessman, while the
younger one (Hsiu Dip) was raised by her own fisherman father and step-
mother on an outlying island. Significantly, there is no romanticization of

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218 POSHEK FU

rural Hong Kong’s idyllic purity, which is typical of mainland leftist cinema.
Instead, we see the rich sister, well-educated and assertive, devoting herself
to a wide variety of fund-raising activities (including opera singing) to support
the Chinese resistance, and leaving home when her father forces her to marry
the son of a business partner. The poor sister tearfully and helplessly suffers
the constant abuse of her step-mother (her father looks on with pain but is too
meek to intervene). Old-fashioned and passive, she has little exposure to
modern life and cares little about nationalism or the war. The artist falls in
love with Hsiu Dip when he moves to the fishing village in search of a
peaceful life. He teaches her such modern values as independence and the
struggle. One day Hsiu Dip disappears and the artist goes into the city to look
for her. Instead, in a melodramatic twist, he brings back Wen-ying whom he
has mistaken as Hsiu Dip. The well-educated sister admires the artist’s talents
and quickly develops a romantic relationship with him. The step-mother is
threatened by this newly found independent-minded daughter and tries to kill
her but ends up killing herself. At this juncture, in another melodramtic turn,
Hsiu Dip reappears. The twin sisters happily rejoin, but they also have to
make an agonizing choice: Who will marry the artist? The artist, like the
twins’ father, is an emasculated male, weak and indecisive. He is not sure
what to do with the two girls he loves. The decision thus has to be made by
the twins.

It is significant to note that Wu Dip-ying, Ng Chor-fan, and most of the
cast (including the famous character actors Ng Wui/Wu Hui and Lau Kuei-
hong) were closely associated with mainland filmmakers and had been critical
of the political apathy of local cinema. They were aware of the contestation
within wartime Hong Kong cinema. In this context, it is interesting to see that
the film ends with Wen-ying, sadly but determinedly, leaving for the mainland
to join the resistance so that her sister can stay to marry the artist and care for
their aged father. Not knowing this, in a climactic sequence, Hsiu Dip wants
to sacrifice her love so that her sister can marry the artist. She runs up a hill
yelling fanatically, ” I have to struggle! I have to struggle!” until the artist
finds her and tells her that Wen-ying has left.

The twin sisters’ choice became an allegorized site where the identity of
Hong Kong was constructed. Interestingly, unlike the strong male figure (the
guerrilla leader) who defines the heroic spectacle and serves as the object of
woman’s sacrifices in The March of Guerrilla, both the father and artist in
Two Southern Sisters are irrelevant to the choice the twin sisters are making
except that they create a difficult situation for them. The two sisters have to
make the choice by themselves, and each chooses to make a sacrifice for the
happiness of each other, not for the men. They are thus endowed with the
subject-position that was usually denied to women who were marginalized in
the patriarchal order. This valorization of the weak and marginal is, I would
argue, in effect an ideological subversion of the Central Plains syndrome and,

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BETWEEN N A T I O N A L I S M A N D C O L O N I A L I S M 2 1 9

allegorically, a construction of an identity about Hong Kong, which was
marginal within the China-centered discourse of nationalism.

Indeed, the melodramatic and dichotomous ending of Two Southern Sisters
dramatized a vision of local identity that was marked by a double marginality.
Marginalized by British colonialism and Chinese nationalism in a wartime
situation, Hong Kong was unsure and tentative in defining (and thereby
asserting) itself. Thus, unlike Hong Kong Cantonese films from the 1960s on
(like Lung Kong’s Feinu zhengzhuan, or Teddy Girls, Allen Fong’s Father
and Son, or Fuzi qing, or Ann Hui’s The Song of Exile, or Ketu qiuheng, or
Stanley Kwan’s Rouge, or Yanzhi kou),75 this film did not consciously engage
in evoking a collective memory of Hong Kong or mapping an alternative
discourse surrounding its colonial situation. Rather, just as Wen-ying returned
to the mainland and Hsiu Dip stayed on to marry her lover, the film projected
an ambivalent hybridity in the imagery of Hong Kong, highlighting the double
marginality that framed it. Unable to identify fully with either British coloni-
alism or with Chinese nationalism, both of which shunned it as inferior and
suspicious, Hong Kong appeared to be positioned uncomfortably in between
Chinese tradition and Western lifestyle, moral commitment to the “home-
land” that was China and emotional attachment to the home that was Hong
Kong. As symbolized in the two different mental worlds the two sisters lived
in, the cultural identity of Hong Kong consisted of an ambivalent mixture of
tradition and modernity, nationalism and local consciousness. This colonial
hybridity was threatened under the nationalistic pressures of Chinese diaspora
who imposed their wartime “us and them” vision on the locals: either patri-
otic or slavish, Chinese or traitorous. At the same time, the colonial govern-
ment excluded the locals from the defense of the their own city because of
their racial otherness. Doubly marginalized, the identification of Hong Kong,
as Two Southern Sisters articulated, took on an ambiguous, almost schizo-
phrenic, turn: It was torn between centralizing nationalism and local con-
sciousness. Thus Wen-ying was made to leave for the mainland while Hsiu
Dip stayed in Hong Kong. This happy ending was, however, marked by an
uneasy compromise, wishful thinking.

On Christmas Day 1941, after three weeks of brutal shelling and bombing,
Japan took over Hong Kong. The colony became a part of occupied China in
the Great East Asian Coprosperity Sphere, no longer the wartime paradise it
once was. Privation and oppression reigned. The entertainment business fell
under Japanese control. Unwilling to cooperate, many filmmakers and major
stars fled to the safety of southwest China, effectively closing the cinema until
the end of the war in August 1945.76

Thus, by the 1930s there was an incipient sense of Hong Kong identity
shaped by its hybridized culture and colonization. The sense that Hong Kong
was linked to China in race, lineage, and language and yet different in its
cultural practices and geopolitical situation was now highlighted by the war.

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220 POSHEKFU

However, in the shadow of the China-centered discourse of nationalism en-
gendered by the modern Chinese state and cultural elite, with their chauvinis-
tic undertones, wartime was also an ambivalent moment to construct a local
identity. Hong Kong’s marginalization in the Chinese national imagery gener-
eated contempt and attacks on Cantonese film culture, thereby disempowering
and suppressing all the local voices. In fact, Two Southern Sisters was railed
by the emigre press as a “frivolous, escapist” fare77 and has been excluded
from the standard historical accounts of Chinese cinema, which includes only
films made by the mainland exiles.78

Trinh Minh-ha once remarked that there is margin in the center and center
in the margin.79 China’s marginalization in twentieth-century global politics
is well known, but much less known is the Chinese marginalization of other
places and cultures inside and/or outside its territorial boundaries. Hong Kong
has been one of these Others. In fact, it has been doubly marginalized in the
official discourses of Chinese nationalism and British colonialism. As evi-
denced in the 1997 crisis, the Chinese state and cultural elites continues to
marginalize Hong Kong by seeing it as merely an “economic city” of finan-
cial prowess but cultural decadence, ” a cultural desert,” and, together with
the colonial government, by denying its people, many of whom identified
with neither discourses, their right to self-determination. Also, the Central
Plains syndrome has contributed to a widespread belief in both scholarly and
popular worlds that had they not been confronted with the “crisis of legit-
macy” of 1997, the colonized would not have had the collective desire and
discursive energy to construct a cultural identity of their own. Yet, this chapter
demonstrates that this view is wrong. The war was an important moment in
the imagination and projection of Hong Kong’s identity, tentative and hybrid
as it was, on the local screen. There must have been many comparable
moments of imagining an alternative vision of Hong Kong in its colonial
history, whether in cinema or other cultural forms. We need to bring to the
fore the cultural politics surrounding the many stereotypes about Hong Kong
and, in the process, to reconstruct the complexity of its (post) colonial history.

NOTES

1. The desert stereotype has been an underlying trope in almost every major academic
study and literary representation of Hong Kong culture. For example, see the various
essays by Chinese writers collected in Lu Weiluan, ed., Xianggang de youyu, 1925-
1941 {The Melancholy of Hong Kong), Hong Kong: Huafeng shuju, 1983; and
Frank Walsh, A History of Hong Kong (London: HarperCollins, 1993). Until most
recently, however, no writers have ever questioned the semantic origin or discursive
meaning of this cultural construct. It is now time to deconstruct it. For a pioneering
popular work on reevaluating the cultrual scene of Hong Kong, see Luo Fu, Xiang-
gang wenhua mangyou {Wandering Through Hong Kong Culture) (Hong Kong:
Zhonghua shuju, 1993).

2. Recently, as a result of the critical and immensely popular reception in film circles

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BETWEEN NATIONALISM AND COLONIALISM 221

of such innovative filmmakers as Jackie Chan, Chow Yun-fat, and Wang Ka-wei,
film scholars have begun to look seriously at the cultural-political significance of
Hong Kong cinema. But this pioneering trend has focused on the filmic representa-
tion of the heavily contested issues of identity politics of the 1980s and 1990s. No
systematic study has been devoted to earlier periods. For two fine examples, see
Rey Chow, “A Souvenir of Love,” Modern Chinese Literature 7, 2 (Fall 1993):
59-78; and Leo Ou-fan Lee, “Two Films from Hong Kong: Parody and Allegory,”
in Nick Browne et al. eds., New Chinese Cinemas: Forms, Identities, Politics (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 202-15.

3. My Shiying “Cinematique” [Original], Dianying quan (Hong Kong), 2 (February
1937).

4. For a discussion, see Law Kar, “Xianggang zaoqi de dianying guiji, 1909-1915”
{Early Impressions of the Early Hong Kong Cinema), in Early Images of Hong
Kong and China (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1995), 27.

5. Cheng Jihua, Zhongguo dianying fazhan shi (A History of Chinese Cinema) (Bei-
jing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1980).

6. See Paul Pickowicz, “The Theme of Spiritual Pollution in Chinese Films of the
1930s,” Modern China 17. 1 (January 1991), 38-75; Guan Wenqing, Zhongguo
yingtan waishi (An Unofficial History of Chinese Screen) (Hong Kong: Guangjiao-
jing chubanshe, 1976), 128-96.

7. Jean-Paul Sartre, “Preface,” Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York:
Grove Press, 1967), 26.

8. Recently an increasing amount of exciting research has been devoted to decentering
China and reconstructing a Hong Kong identity, principally through film and litera-
ture but this research has focused only on the period after the 1980s. See, for
example, Rey Chow, “Between Colonizers: Hong Kong’s Postcolonial Self-Writing
in the 1990s,” Diaspora 2. 2 (1992): 151-70; Leo Ou-fan Lee, “Tales from the
‘Floating City’,” Harvard Asia Pacific Review (Winter 1996-97) 43-9; Leung Ping-
kwan, ed., “Xianggang wenhua zhuanji” (Special Issue on Hong Kong Culture),
Today 28 (1995): 71-257; Luo Feng, Shiji mo chengshi (Fin-de-siecle City) (Hong
Kong: Oxford University Press, 1995); Daisy Ng, “Back to the Future: Imaginary
Nostalgia and the Consumer Culture of Hong Kong,” unpublished paper, 1996.

9. See G. B. Endacott, Hong Kong Eclipse (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press,
1978) 11; Frank Walsh, A History of Hong Kong, 404; Lin Youlan, Xianggang
shihua (An Informal History of Hong Kong) (Hong Kong: Bajiao shufang, 1975):
148-56.

10. Endacott, Eclipse, 23-5; Lu Yan, Xianggang zhanggu (Ancedotes of Hong Kong)
(Hong Kong: Guangjiaojin chubanshe, 1981), 4.

11. For a vivid discussion of prewar Shanghai, see Harriet Sergeant, Shanghai: Collision
Point of Cultures 1918/1939 (New York: Crown Publishers, 1990); for wartime
Shanghai, see Poshek Fu, Passivity, Resistance, and Collaboration: Intellectual
Choices under Japanese Occupation, 1937-1945 (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1993). The term colonial backwater is adapted from Walsh, A History of
Hong Kong, 390.

12. See Du Yunzhi, Zhongguo dianyin qishi nian (Seventy Years of Chinese Cinema),
Taipei: Zhonghua minguo dianyin tushuguan, 1976, 226-47; and Thomas Doherty,
Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World War II (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1993), 4-39.

13. Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized, Susan Miller trans., New York:
Beacon Press, 1991.

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222 POSHEK FU

14. See Walsh, A History of Hong Kong, 386.
15. For a discussion of the social and political conservatism of the Hong Kong elites,

see Lynn White and Li Cheng, “China Coastal Identities: Regional, National, and
Global,” in Lowell Dittmer and Samuel Kim Eds., China’s Quest for National
Identity (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993), 154-93.

16. Lau Siu-kai and Kuan Hsin-chi, The Ethos of the Hong Kong Chinese (Hong Kong:
The Chinese University Press, 1988), 1-4.

17. Endacott, Hong Kong Eclipse, 26-27′.
18. For two solid discussions of the much understudied British strategy in Hong Kong,

see G. B. Endacott, Hong Kong Eclipse, and Benjamin Proulx, Underground from
Hongkong (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1943).

19. Endacott, Hong Kong Eclipse, 2 9 ^ 5 .
20. See Xianggang nianjian (Hong Kong Annual Report), 1941, n.p.; for the founding

and business strategies of these major studios, see Guan Wenqig, Zhongguo yintan
waishi.

21. Yilin (The Arts), 43 (December 1938).
22. Yilin, 62 (November 1939).
23. See Lin Youlan, Xianggang shihua, 154-56; G. B. Endacott, Hong Kong Eclipse,

22-26; Nigel Cameron, An Illustrated History of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Oxford
University Press, 1991) 251-56.

24. Xianggang nianjian. 1941, n.p.
25. Yilin, 63 (December 1939) and 75 (June 1940); see also Bai Yan, Yige nu yanyuan

de zishu (An Actress’s Autobiography) (Hong Kong, 1955), 15.
26. See Yilin, 50 (March 1939) and 72 (April 1940).
27. See Yilin 52 (April 1939) and 53 (May 1939), Dianyin yu xiju 1, (January 1941).
28. Leo Braudy, The World in a Frame: What We See in Films (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1976), 104-114.
29. The best examples of this conservatism and ambivalence are Sir Robert Ho Tung

and Sir Lo Man-kam. An Eurasian billionaire of his time, Sir Ho had served in
various major advisory positions with the Colonial government and had made
countless financial contributions to London, but he was allowed to move into the
exclusive midlevel neighborhood only after his family went through many racist
attacks. Perhaps as a psychological reaction, he wore only Chinese gowns despite
his Caucasian look and was well known as a “patriotic businessman” for sending
his only son to serve in the Nationalist Army and was the chief financier of the
Lianhua Studio. Son-in-law of Sir Ho, Sir Lo was a prominent London-trained
attorney and sat on many government committees. Known as an outspoken member
at the Legislative Council, he often criticized the racist policy of segration (which
did not change until 1946), yet he was convinced that “Chinese did not expect to
receive the same salaries as Europeans.” See Frank Walsh, A History of Hong
Kong, 380-86. For biographical backgrounds of them as well as other elites of Hong
Kong, a total of 87, almost all of them were in business, see Wu Xingluan, Xiang-
gang (1937) Huaren mingren shilue (Who’s Who in Hong Kong), Hong Kong, n.p.,
1937.

30. For fares and location of movie theatres, see Yilin 75 (June 1940); and Wu Hao,
Xianggang dianying minzuxue (An Ethnography of Hong Kong Cinema) Hong
Kong: Ciwenhua tang chubanshe, 1993, 3-21. For two samples of films shown
throughout Hong Kong, see Huashang bao (Hong Kong), August 20 and 21, 1941.

31. See Yilin, 84 (October 1940) and 96 (April 1941). The biggest Cantonese box-office

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BETWEEN NATIONALISM AND COLONIALISM 223

smashes in the war years were Zei wangzi (Thief Prince, 1939) and Hu bu gui (Gone
Was the Love, 1940), both tragic romances based on prewar Cantonese opera hits of
the same names, starring Sit Gok-sin, who had also starred in the stage original. The
Colonial government seemed to be aware of the socioeconomic hierarchy of the
film spectator ship. Thus, in 1940, it decided to impose entertainment tax for all fares
higher than HK$0.2, which was indeed what most Catonese moviegoers were pay-
ing. Yilin, 75 (June 1940).

32. Cai Chusheng, ‘ ‘Zhanhou de Zhongguo dianying dongtai ji muqian de gaijin yun-
dong” (Chinese Cinema after the Outbreak of the War and the Present Reform
Movement), Wenxian 4 (January 1939), 12-3.

33. There was in fact a widespread anxiety in the emigre cultural community about the
decentering of new Chinese culture by the war in general. See Liao Liao (Sha
Kongliao), “Jianli xin wenhua zhongxin” (Establish a New Cultural Center), Li bao
(April 1938) in Lu Weiluan, Xianggang de youyu, Hong Kong: Huafeng shuju,
1983, 101-2.

34. See, for example, Tu Yangci, “Jihuai Shanghai” (Nostalgic of Shanghai), Yuzhou
feng, May 1939, in Lu, Xianggang de youyou, 157-60. He wrote: “Shanghai is still
very much like a place of Chinese. But in Hong Kong, although everywhere is
Chinese . . . it has no Chinese flavor, it lacks a Chinese soul.”

35. Leo Ou-fan Lee, “Xianggang wenhua de bianyuan xing chutan” (A Prelimiary
Study of the Marginality of Hong Kong Culture), Today 28 (1995): 75-80.

36. All these quotes are from Lu, Xianggang de youyu, 107, 157-9, 178, 207-9.
37. Lou Shiyi, “Xianggang de youyu,” Xingdao ribao (November 17, 1938) in Xiang-

gang de youyu, 125-26.
38. Yang Yanqi, “Xianggang bannian” (Half a Year in Hong Kong), Yuzhou feng (May

1941), collected in Xianggang de youyu, 207-12; Liao Liao, “Jianli.” p. 102
39. Yilin, 84 (October 1940).
40. For a fine study of the represented Chinese filmic tradition, see Paul Pickowicz,

“Melodramatic Representation and the May Fourth Tradition of Chinese Cinema,”
in Ellen Widemer and David Dar-wei Wang, Eds. From May Fourth to June Fourth:
Fiction and Film in Twentieth-Century China, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer-
sity Press), 1993.

41. For the National government’s suppression of the Cantonese cinema, see Zhiwei
Xiao, “Film Censorship in China, 1927-1937,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of
California, San Diego, 1994, 212-57.

42. For the Nationalist regime’s political and military relations with various provincial
authorities, see L. Eastman, “Nationalist China during the Nanking Decade, 1927-
1937,” in Lloyd Eastman et al., The Nationalist Era in China, 1912-1949 (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), particularly 32-40. For a historical
survery of Guangdong-Hong Kong relations, see also Ming Chan, ed., Precarious
Balance: Hong Kong between China and Britain, 1842-1992 (Hong Kong: Hong
Kong University Press, 1993).

43. See Prasenjit Duara, “Provincial Narratives of the Nation: Centralism and Federal-
ism in Republican China,” in Harumi Befu, ed., Cultural Nationalism in East Asia
(Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1994) 9-35. See also his Rescuing History
from Nation: Questioning Narrative of Modern China (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1995).

44. Edward Friedman sums up the political-cultural meaning of da Zhonyuan xintai
cogently: “The People’s Republic of China in the Mao era presented itself as the

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224 POSHEK FU

heir of a Han people who had come together millennia earlier in the north China
plain of the Yellow River valley, built a great civilization, fought to preserve it, and
expanded over the centuries by civilizing barbarian invaders. Mao’s anti-imperialist
revolution was the culmination of this Chinese national history.” See “Reconstruct-
ing China’s National Identity: A Southern Alternative to Mao-Era Anti-Imperialist
Natioanlism,” Journal of Asian Studies, 53. 1 (February 1994), 67-91.

45. Wu Chufan, Wu Chufan zizhuan {Autobiography of Wu Chufan) (Hong Kong:
Weiqing shudian, 1956), 74-9.

46. See Guan Wenqing, Zhongguo yingtan waishi, pp. 214-16; Wu Chufan, Wu Chufan
zizhuan, 1, 78-80.

47. Yilin, 51 (April 1939).
48. Yilin, 53 (May 1939), my italics.
49. See Paul Pickowicz, “The Theme of Spiritual Pollution in Chinese Cinema”;

Edward Friedman, “Reconstructing China’s National Identity.” For a sensitive
study of Chinese Realism, see David Der-wei Wang, Fictional Realism in Twentieth-
Century China: Mao Dun, Lao She, Shen Congwen (New York: Columbia Univerity
Press, 1992).

50. After an agreement between Zhou Enlai and Sir Archibald Clark-Kerr, the British
Ambassador to China, the office was established in the winter of 1937. Liao Cheng-
zhi, the son of former Nationalist leader and martyr Liao Zhongkai, headed the
Office until its close in December 1941. With his extensive family and political
connections with the business elites in Hong Kong and overseas, he was able
to establish an account in the Sino-Belgium Bank to which overseas Chinese could
make direct contributions to the Communist army. For the Communist activi-
ties, see the memoir of one of the activist, Liang Shangwan, Zhonggong zai Xiang-
gang (Chinese Communists in Hong Kong) (Hong Kong: Guangjiaojin chubanshe,
1989).

51. For an example of this political ritual, see Yilin, 58 (July 1939).
52. See Wenxian, 1 (October 1938).
53. Dianying shenhuo (Hong Kong) 4 (April 1940); Yilin, 67 (March 1940). For discus-

sions of popular stereotypes of Chinese and Hollywood stars, see Paul Pickowicz,
“The Theme of Spiritual Pollution,” and Thomas Doherty, Projecting the War,
180-91.

54. See Rey Chow, Woman and Chinese Modernity: The Politics of Reading between
West and East (Minneapolis: University of Minnesto Press, 1990); Lydia Liu,
‘ ‘Invention and Intervention: The Making of A Female Tradition in Modern Chinese
Literature,” in Ellen Widemer and David Der-wei Wang, eds., From May Fourth to
June Fourth, 194-220; Elizabeth Spelman, Inesssential Woman: Problem of Exclu-
sion in Feminist Thought (Boston: Beacon Press, 1988).

55. For a study of wartime literary appropriation of women for nationalist purposes, see
Poshek Fu, Passivity, Resistance, and Collaboration, chapter 2.

56. See for example, Ye Ming, ‘ ‘Zhengqi ge” (Song of Virtues), Huashang bao, June
14, 1941.

57. Quoted from Thomas Doherty, Projecting the War, 132.
58. See Yilin, 83 (October 1940).
59. The important postcolonial studies, which influence much of my thinking here, are

inspired by the Subaltern School and the works of Franz Fanon. Recently, its
argument has become more nuanced and less totalizing as more scholars and theo-
rists are contesting its relevance in different national and regional contexts and

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working to prevent it from slipping into a mere badge of academic privilege. For
some fine examples, see Iain Chambers and Lidia Curtia, eds., The Post-Colonial
Question: Common Skies and Divided Horizons, London: Routledge, 1996; Partha
Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Studies,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993; Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “Critical Fa-
nonism,” Critical Inquiry 17 (Spring 1991): 457-70.

60. See Guan Wenqing, Zhongguo yingtan waishi, 216-17; Wu Chufan, Wu Chufan
zizhuan, 1, 50-62. See also Yu Mo-wen, “Xianggang dianying de aiguo zhuyi
chuantong” (The Patriotic Tradition in Hong Kong Cinema), in Law Kar, ed., Early
Images of Hong Kong and China, 53-68.

61. Lingxing (Macao), 8. 6 (March 1938).
62. An Ping and Lin Guangtong, Gang Jiu jianying (A Sketch of Hong Kong and

Kowloon) (Hong Kong: Gangjiu wenhua chuban gongsi, 1949) 8.
63. See Xu Dishan, “Yinian lai de Xianggang jiaoyu ji qi zhanwang,” (Hong Kong

Education in One Year and Its Prospect), Wenyi, 487 (January 1939); Yang Yanqi,
“Xianggang bannian,” both collected in Lu Weilian, ed., Xianggang de youyu, 133—
42, 207-12.

64. See Endacott, Eclipse, 43-111; Jan Morris, Hong Kong (New York: Vintage Books,
1989), 265-92.

65. Tang Hai, Xianggang lunxian ji (The Fall of Hong Kong) Shanghai: Xin shenhuo
chubanshe, 1946.

66. Tang Hai, Xianggang lunxian ji, 1-6; Ye Dehui, Xianggang lunxian shi (A History
of the Occupation of Hong Kong) (Hong Kong: Guangjiaojin chubanshe, 1982),
1-18.

67. Wu Chufan, Wu Chufan zizhuan, 1, 65-73.
68. Bai Yan, Yige nu yanyuan de zhuanzhi, 26-27′.
69. Yilin, 44 (December 1939).
70. Dianying shenhuo, 10 (May 1940); Yilin, 74 (May 1940) and 75 (June 1940).
71. Yilin, 58 (July 1939).
72. Zhao Shutai, “Jianshe jinbu dianying de renwu” (The Responsibility to Create A

Progressive Cinema), Huashang bao, August 1, 1941.
73. Wenxian, 1.
74. Guan Wenqing, Zhongguo yingtan waishi, 137-9.
75. For discussions of these films and the contexts of their production, see Poshek Fu,

“The Turbulent Sixties: Modernity, Youth Culture, and Cantonese Films in Hong
Kong,” in Law Kar, ed., Fifty Years of Electric Shandows (Hong Kong: Urban
Council, 1997) 34-46; Law Kar, “H. K. Film Market and Trends in the Eighties, in
Hong Kong Cinema in the Eighties (Hong Kong: Urban Council 1991), 70-7; Leung
Ping-kwan, “Minzu dianying yu Xianggang wenhua shenfen” (National Cinema
and Hong Kong Identity), Today, 1994, Li Chuek-to, “Postscript,” in A Study of
Hong Kong Films in the Seventies (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1984), 123-31;
Luo Fung, Shiji mo chengshi, 8-75; Stephen Teo, “The Squint-eyed Gaze” in The
Chinese Factor in Hong Kong Cinema (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1990), 86-94;
Esther Yau, “Border Crossing: Mainland China’s Presence in Hong Kong Cinema,”
in Nick Browne et al., eds., New Chinese Cinemas, 180-201.

76. See Wu Chufan, Wu Chufan zizhuan, 2: 1-50; Poshek Fu, “Patriotism or Profit:
Hong Kong Cinema during the Second World War,” in Law Kar, ed., Early Images
of Hong Kong and China (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1995) 69-79.

77. See Yilin, 74 (May 1940).

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226 POSHEK FU

78. Cheng Jihua, Zhongguo dianying fazhan shi, and Du Yunzhi, Zhongguo dianying
qishi nian.

79. Trinh Minh-ha, “Who Is Speaking: Of Nation, Community, and First Person Inter-
view,” in Laura Pietropado and Ada Testaferri, eds., Feminisms in the Cinema
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995).

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