Farewell China

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Farewell China
Traditional Chinese 愛在別鄉的季節
Simplified Chinese 爱在别乡的季节
Literal meaningThe Season of Love in Another Land
Hanyu Pinyin Ài Zài Biéxiāng De Jìjié
Directed by Clara Law
Written byClara Law
Produced by Teddy Robin
Starring Maggie Cheung
Tony Leung Ka-fai
Release date
  • 1990 (1990)
CountryHong Kong
LanguageMandarin

Farewell China is a 1990 Hong Kong drama adventure film written and directed by Clara Law and produced by Teddy Robin. Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung Ka-fai star as Chinese immigrants in New York City.

Contents

Plot

In 1988, [1] Li Hong travels from Shawan Village in Panyu, Guangzhou to New York City on a student visa, leaving her infant son in the care of her schoolteacher husband, Zhao Nansheng, and his elderly parents. Li writes back home to complain of homesickness, but Zhao urges her to persevere. A few months later, Li tells Zhao that she will soon be eligible for permanent residence in the United States; she also requests a divorce and ceases further communication with him. [2] A distraught Zhao decides to travel to Panama, from which he is smuggled into New York via Mexico.

Unable to speak much English, Zhao seeks assistance from a local artist friend who had coincidentally met Li (now going by "Elaine") at his gallery. However, Zhao's friend is unwilling to house an illegal alien, leaving Zhao to fend for himself. Out in the street, Zhao spots a prostitute who apparently resembles his wife. He follows her into a brothel, whereupon he is accosted by the woman's pimp. A struggle ensues and Zhao inadvertently shoots the pimp dead; Zhao and the woman he had been following both flee to a nearby club, and Zhao learns that she is in fact a fifteen-year-old runaway from Detroit named Jane. [1]

Jane agrees to help Zhao find Li. Before long, they discover that Li had diligently attended English classes and had also briefly worked at a Taiwanese restaurant in Harlem. The restaurant owners inform Zhao that Li had once been raped at work by two African Americans and that they had last seen Li with a Chinese businessman. Zhao and Jane confront him at his laundry shop; he tells them that he had agreed to a sham marriage with Li, who then absconded with his money.

Zhao begins to pursue an increasingly debauched lifestyle and eventually becomes Jane's pimp. One night, he makes out with Jane but immediately feels repulsed by his own actions. Jane decides to turn her life around by going to school again and the two part ways. Some months later, Zhao bumps into Li while working as a deliveryman. Li brings Zhao into her apartment, while insisting that she had always intended for Zhao and their son to join her in New York. Recalling their life during the Cultural Revolution, Li fears that they are being spied on. The couple embrace and spend the night together.

The next day, however, Li—now speaking in English instead of Cantonese—treats Zhao as though he were a stranger and calls him a "chink". [2] She rushes off to a park in Chinatown, where she attempts to defraud several elderly retirees. Zhao intervenes and urges her to follow him to a psychologist. While trying to escape from him, Li fatally stabs Zhao with a screwdriver, who collapses at the foot of a Statue of Liberty replica while clutching a photograph of the couple with their son. [3] Moments later, Li recognises the people in the blood-stained photograph but is oblivious to Zhao's body.

Cast

Production

The film was written and directed by Clara Law and produced by Teddy Robin. [5] Production began on the heels of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, [6] which prompted Law to make the film an "allegory of national suffering". [7] The Statue of Liberty replica in the film's denouement, for instance, evokes the Tiananmen protests' Goddess of Democracy . [3] Law herself described Farewell China as "part naturalistic and part fantasy". [8]

Release and reception

The film was originally released in 1990 under the "innocuous" Chinese title of "Ai zai bie xiang de ji jie" (愛在別鄉的季節) or The Season of Love in Another Land. [9]

The film received several nominations at the 1991 Hong Kong Film Awards, including for Best Film. [5] Sheldon Lu wrote that Farewell China "describes perhaps the lowest point in the self-esteem of the Chinese people, whether they are in China or in the diaspora", [10] while Hong Zeng called the film "a devastating depiction of the schizophrenia of expatriation". [2]

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References

Citations

  1. 1 2 Lu 2001, p. 117.
  2. 1 2 3 Zeng 2012, p. 79.
  3. 1 2 Lu 2001, p. 118.
  4. 1 2 3 Marchetti 2001, p. 74.
  5. 1 2 Sloan 2007, p. 106.
  6. ↑ Zeng 2012, p. 81.
  7. ↑ Lu 2018, p. 61.
  8. ↑ Sun 2002, p. 50.
  9. ↑ Marchetti 2001, p. 75.
  10. ↑ Lu 2018, p. 62.

Bibliography

  • Lu, Sheldon H. (2001). China, Transnational Visuality, Global Postmodernity. Stanford University Press. ISBN   9780804742047.
  • Lu, Sheldon H. (2018). "Transnational Chinese Maculinity in Film Representation". In Derek Hird; Geng Song (eds.). The Cosmopolitan Dream: Transnational Chinese Masculinities in a Global Age. Hong Kong University Press. pp. 59–72. ISBN   9789888455850.
  • Marchetti, Gina (2001). "The Gender of GenerAsian X in Clara Law's Migration Trilogy". In Murray Pomerance (ed.). Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls: Gender in Film at the End of the Twentieth Century. State University of New York Press. pp. 71–87. ISBN   9780791448854.
  • Sloan, Jane (2007). Reel Women: An International Directory of Contemporary Feature Films about Women. Scarecrow Press. ISBN   9781461670827.
  • Sun, Wanning (2002). Leaving China: Media, Migration, and Transnational Imagination. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN   9780742517974.
  • Zeng, Hong (2012). Semiotics of Exile in Contemporary Chinese Film. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN   9781137031631.
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