commentary 2

BESIDES FISTS AND BLOOD: MICHAEL HUI AND CANTONESE COMEDY

Jenny Kwok Wah Lau

THE IMAGE OF HONG KONG CINEMA IN THE UNITED STATES

Hong Kong cinema began to gain popularity in the United States in the 1970s primarily through the English dubbed-versions of kung fu films. Before that time, kung fu films appealed only to a relatively small audience of martial arts fans and Chinatown immigrants, who managed to provide a stable market for these inexpensive films. Even though by 1979 the genres of kung fu (and wuxia)1 had been largely replaced by comedy in Hong Kong, they continued to be the Hong Kong cinema best known to the general audience of the United States up to this date.

During the early 1980s, several film festivals in the West, including the Edinburgh Film Festival and the New York Film Festival, discovered a few interesting films from Hong Kong. In 1982, Boat People (directed by Ann Hui), which was already a box-office hit in Hong Kong, was screened at the New York Film Festival and elicited unusual attention from critics for its (perceived) political content and its production quality.2 The film is the story of a Japanese journalist's unsuccessful attempt to rescue a South Vietnamese Chinese woman on the eve of the Communist takeover of South Vietnam. By taking on a wartime melodrama, the film exhibited a non-kung fu version of Hong Kong cinema that was unfamiliar to Western spectators.

Subsequent to the "discovery" of director Ann Hui (and director Allen Fong in Edinburgh through his work Father and Son), critics suddenly rec- ognized a Hong Kong cinema quite distinct from their earlier impression, one which its local critics have named the Hong Kong New Wave since 1979. In the years that followed, early New Wave films, characterized by modern techniques and social realism, such as The Secret (Ann Hui, 1979), The Story of Woo Viet (Ann Hui, 1981), Father and Son (Allen Fong, 1981), Ah Ying (Allen Fong, 1982), Nomad (Patrick Tarn, 1982), Last Affair (Tony Au, 1983), and Home Coming (Yim Ho, 1984), became fixtures of the festival/center circuits in the United States.

158

, 6 C6 B 7 DB6 2 2: 23 6 2C 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 C6 B 9CC B : 8 , / 2 6 7 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 1,0 1 : 6 B:C 7 ,2 :7 :2 02 :68 .2 2C BD3 6 C C C96 ,2 3 : 86

MICHAEL HUI AND CANTONESE COMEDY 159

Almost all of the New Wave directors learned their basic craft in the West. Their ease with modern production equipment and their interest in modern special effects (versus traditional special effects) created such innovative films as Butterfly Murders (Tsui Hark, 1979), The Sword (Patrick Tarn, 1980), and Zu: Warriors of the Magic Mountain (Tsui Hark, 1981). On the whole, the works of New Wave directors were more sophisticated with mise-en-scene and visual effects. The result can be seen in areas as simple as lighting, color, the use of visual motifs, composition, and editing, or as complex as "high- tech" postproduction manipulation, of which Zu is the best example. In fact, art direction, a position that organizes the overall visual impact of a film, gained importance in the New Wave. (This position, which sometimes enjoys a full screen credit, had been practiced in the West for a number of years by then.)

Another significant aspect of the New Wave films is their realignment of the Hong Kong cinema with its older tradition of social realism - that cinema is not about glamorized fictions made up of stereotypical characters but the concrete retelling of real-life experiences and a reinterpretation of the meaning of such experiences. A few examples of some of the earliest New Wave films best illustrate the point. The Secret, a. film that was more appreciated than Boat People by both its director, Ann Hui, and the local critics of the time, is a social drama based in part on a local news story. It deals with the taboo issue of premarital pregnancy and how society forces a pregnant woman into insanity; she then ends up brutally killing the father of her child. Up until that point, with the exception of director Michael Hui, such candid social realism was rare in the cinema of Hong Kong.

Another New Wave film, Man on the Brink (1981), by Alex Cheung Kwok Ming, was an unusually honest portrayal of the life of an undercover cop. Unlike most cop movies, the film neither entertains by cliche chase scenes nor glorifies male chauvinism. The drama of having to live two lives, which results in serious misunderstanding even by one's family, was later taken up by Jackie Chan in his much glamorized Police Story (1985).

The quintessential New Wave film, Father and Son, is a nostalgic bio- graphical reflection on growing up in the 1960s in one of the government- built, low-income residential areas of Hong Kong. The highly congested buildings, each consisting of seven to eight stories, provide only basic accom- modation, with no elevators to aid the elderly or the disabled. The film begins with a slow crane up from the outside of one of these buildings and cuts to the protagonist's father gasping for air as he climbs the stairs. At the end of the film, the father dies of a heart attack while climbing the same set of stairs. This social space of poverty, which was rarely shown on the screen during the 1970s became a key motif of the film, which succinctly portrays the hardship suffered by a working-class family and the conflict between a father and son. The father's dream is to send his son to study abroad. This works

, 6 C6 B 7 DB6 2 2: 23 6 2C 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 C6 B 9CC B : 8 , / 2 6 7 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 1,0 1 : 6 B:C 7 ,2 :7 :2 02 :68 .2 2C BD3 6 C C C96 ,2 3 : 86

160 JENNY LAU

against the son's wish to be a local filmmaker, a career not appreciated in a traditional family. Unlike earlier cinema, which romanticized intergenerational conflicts, Father and Son reflects on the reality of the pain caused by tradi- tional filial piety and affirms the rebellious nature of the younger generations.

Indeed, the greatest achievement of the Hong Kong New Wave lay in its resurrecting realism on a screen that had been dominated by fantasy images of rich mansions, parties, beautiful women, and handsome men. It was also a cinema that did not build on the star and genre system that had permeated the industry for decades.3 Although the New Wave created works such as Butter- fly and Zu, which belong to the kung fu/wuxia genre, it also showed the West, at least for a while, that there was more to Hong Kong cinema than action dramas.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how one perceives it), after the mid-1980s the Hong Kong New Wave was basically absorbed into the commercial studio system. Soon a so-called Second Wave appeared. During the 1980s and early 1990s directors such as Mabel Cheung (An Illegal Immi- grant, 1985; An Autumn's Tale, 1987; Eight Tales of Gold, 1989), Clara Law (The Reincarnation of the Golden Lotus, 1989; Autumn Moon, 1991; Tempta- tion of a Monk, 1993), Stanley Kwan (Love unto Waste, 1986; Rouge, 1988, The Actress, or Center Stage, 1991; Red Rose White Rose, 1994), Lawrence Ah Mon (Gangs, 1988; Queen of Temple Street, 1990), and Wong Kar-wai (As Tears Go By, 1988; Days of Being Wild, 1990; Ashes of Time, 1994; Chungking Express, 1994) were part of a slightly younger group that inherited the New Wave's technological competence as well as some of its social sensitivity. Most of these directors (together with some First Wave directors) were quite successful working within the commercial confines of the studio/ star system while still being able to impart some creative personal elements into their films. Although their works are, by comparison, neither as daring nor as idiosyncratic as the New Wave films (with the notable exception of Wong Kar-wai), they constituted a significant aspect of the non-action- oriented contemporary Hong Kong cinema. Some of their films succeeded in reaching a broader U.S. audience beyond museums and festivals, generating critical interest.4

Yet the burgeoning new U.S. perception of Hong Kong cinema was quickly eclipsed by the publicity needs of both the festival circuits and the commercial distributors. As might be expected, kung fu superstars (actors and/or directors) provided an easier selling point in the West. Examples are Jackie Chan (Police Story), Tsui Hark (Once Upon a Time in China and its sequels), and John Woo (A Better Tomorrow, 1986, and its sequels). Most of these artists were introduced to the United States during the late 1980s by film magazines and by appearing as guests in film festivals and at centers as part of the Hong Kong New Wave. Some of their films were soon taken up by major commer- cial distributors.5 The "New Wave" label served publicity needs but with the

, 6 C6 B 7 DB6 2 2: 23 6 2C 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 C6 B 9CC B : 8 , / 2 6 7 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 1,0 1 : 6 B:C 7 ,2 :7 :2 02 :68 .2 2C BD3 6 C C C96 ,2 3 : 86

MICHAEL HUI AND CANTONESE COMEDY 161

exception of Tsui Hark, few of these artists, including Jackie Chan and John Woo, could be considered as part of the New Wave per se. Being established showmen in the business even before the New Wave, their clever incorpora- tion of the young production talents in the 1980s benefited both sides, by providing more modern visuals for the former and production opportunities for the latter. By the time the Second Wave arrived (roughly in 1984 with Mabel Cheung's Illegal Immigrants) John Woo, who was an assistant director for the old-time famous kung fu director Chang Che and who had directed a few comedies on his own, was considered a veteran director of the old cinema. But in 1985 he regained recognition through his now-renowned work A Better Tomorrow, which was more a product of the studio and star system, albeit a good one, than of the New Wave.

Although some of the Second Wave non-kung fu directors such as Wong Kar-wai and Stanley Kwan were also taken up by commercial distributors, the majority of the U.S. releases of Hong Kong films were more of the Jackie Chan or John Woo type.6 Obviously, the strategy of these distributors was to capitalize on the preexisting kung fu image of Hong Kong cinema and further expand the market to include the art film audience, which previously gener- ated by the Hong Kong New Wave. The publicity for these films usually took on a more "artsy" tone compared to the low-profile, "cheap" image of the 1970s kung fu movies.

Soon the reports on Hong Kong cinema were loaded with descriptions of "its hyper energy," "its poetics of violence," and "its vengeance."7 Big- budget publicity campaigns for such films as The Killer and Bullet in the Head drew attention away from the Second Wave non-action-oriented films, although the latter are still shown in film festivals and centers to this day. In exaggerating the blood and violence from Hong Kong, U.S. commercial distributors have managed to pigeonhole the cinema of Hong Kong back into its preconceived kung fu corner, only this time it was further mystified by some "high taste" rhetoric.8

To fixate on the violence of kung fu or its modern weaponized mutation yields a far from complete picture of the very creative and the most dramatic era of the cinema of Hong Kong - that of the 1980s. In fact, the excessive violence found in some films that the West now so savors9 is not always the most attractive element for the local audience. Even the film A Better Tomor- row (a more accurate translation would be Essence of a Hero), which sold extremely well in both Hong Kong and the United States and launched Woo's career in Hollywood, was complimented by local critics not so much for its blood and fists but for its revival of the spirit of wuxia, its transformation (or "weaponization," a term used by local critics) of wuxia action into gun- fights,10 and its modernization of the romantic wuxia hero. The film fits well with Woo's experience in making wuxia films. Among the subsequent large number of films that imitated the action of the "brother-hero" genre (of

, 6 C6 B 7 DB6 2 2: 23 6 2C 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 C6 B 9CC B : 8 , / 2 6 7 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 1,0 1 : 6 B:C 7 ,2 :7 :2 02 :68 .2 2C BD3 6 C C C96 ,2 3 : 86

162 JENNY LAU

which A Better Tomorrow is the prototype) only a few were box-office successes. In fact, the genre died a quick death. By the time A Better Tomor- row III (1989) appeared in the local market, the attraction of action movies had slipped considerably. Only Jackie Chan's Miracle was among the top five best sellers of the year. Both A Better Tomorrow III and The Killer were considered box-office flops.11 The local cinema of Hong Kong had been recaptured by comedy, a genre that has dominated Hong Kong cinema for most of the 1980s and the 1990s.

The U.S. translation of Essence of a Hero into A Better Tomorrow draws audience attention to the Hong Kong 1997 issue, which is an obviously good selling point in the West. Unfortunately, to some critics the merits of the film were then largely attributed to its metaphorical interpretation of the 1997 Hong Kong annexation to China.12 This "1997 reading" for every contem- porary film coming from Hong Kong ran the risk of reducing the understand- ing of Hong Kong culture in general, and film in particular, to the narrow spheres of economics and politics. Unquestionably, the 1997 issue is one of the strongest factors shaping the current life of Hong Kong. Yet the cultural tradition of Hong Kong extends well beyond the Sino-British Joint Declara- tion (1984) and the Western recognition of the imminence of the 1997 project. Reductionistic reading of the cinema neglects the tradition of the local (Can- tonese) cinema, which has always been vibrant and dynamic in addressing multifaceted interests and concerns of daily life.

Worse still, some critics, somewhat condescendingly and without looking deeply into the history of local popular cinema, simplistically linked 1997 with the success of Hong Kong cinema (of the 1980s) and claimed that because of the former the latter had "awakened" and finally found itself (Hong Kong) as a "subject" (and hence was making itself more interesting). Such a generalization of the 1997 effects on Hong Kong cinema tends to erase the concrete details of cultural experiences and covers up the complex social and psychological realities of life in Hong Kong in the early 1980s, a life which, though overshadowed by the two-headed monster of colonialism and "China-ism," was still capable, in certain instances, of reconnecting itself. As mentioned earlier, the contribution of the New Wave was indeed to reestablish (the temporarily Mandarin-dominated) local Hong Kong as its subject within the cinematic discourse through its portrayal of poverty, social prejudice, modernization, and other issues. Because this happened in 1979, it was at least three years before 1997 became an issue.13 It is only fair to say that after 1982, 1997 became one (but not the only) issue in some (but not all) of the best films coming out of Hong Kong.

In the past, it may have been true that Hong Kong was marginalized by some China-centered and/or Eurocentric cultural scholars who were engaged in literature, fine arts, or other "high-art" circles. To them, Hong Kong was a cultural desert, which implied that Hong Kong had no culture of its own.

, 6 C6 B 7 DB6 2 2: 23 6 2C 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 C6 B 9CC B : 8 , / 2 6 7 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 1,0 1 : 6 B:C 7 ,2 :7 :2 02 :68 .2 2C BD3 6 C C C96 ,2 3 : 86

MICHAEL HUI AND CANTONESE COMEDY 163

The high or proper culture of Hong Kong was but a weak extension of mainland China culture and/or Britain, and the indigenous culture, if there was any, was of low level and even base. These scholars tended to link such a "lack of culture" to Hong Kong's detachment from its root (i.e., mainland China) and related its baseness to its commercialism.14 It was not uncommon, then, that many cultural elites hardly watched or wrote about local films. In fact, some of them attended only European films screened in Studio One, a "high taste" film club in Hong Kong. But in the popular art of movie- making itself, for which the audience was mostly made up of the middle and lower classes, elitist arrogance was not prevalent. Many of the popular films of the 1950s and 1960s, including those that featured the Cantonese super- stars Cheung Ying (Zhang Ying) and Ng Chor-fan (Wu Chufan), were quite Hong Kong conscious, although some of them did not fail to be escapist.15 Another prime example is Chor Yuen's The House of 72 Tenants (1973), a definitive work of Cantonese social satire. Obviously, this part of popular culture history is easily left out of elitist historiography because it is the domain in which, using Ranajit Guha's terms, "the principal actors are the subaltern classes."16

In hindsight, it is not surprising that the New Wave directors (First or Second) were Hong Kong-centered even though their technical training was mostly Western. Most of the directors of the New Wave were born and raised in Hong Kong in contrast to their parents' midlife immigration from mainland China. By the time they began their careers in local TV in the 1970s the industry had turned completely to Hong Kong for its programming. Major prime-time programs included variety shows such as Happiness Tonight and serial dramas such as Family Change, Tears of a Crocodile, and Heavenly Silkworm. All of these programs were focused on issues directly related to Hong Kong. It is therefore not accidental that these directors, after switching to film production, also identified Hong Kong as the center of their subject.

Whether there is a 1997 issue or not, China has always been a factor in Hong Kong cinema for obvious historical and geographical reasons.17 Never- theless, the 1997 consciousness did further sensitize China-related issues in a large number of films made between 1982 and 1986. Furthermore, ever since mainland China opened itself up in 1979, the commercial and cultural exchange between the PRC and Hong Kong made a more open discourse possible. Films that were considered politically sensitive and were censored by the colonial government in the past, such as The Last Winter in Beijing and China Behind, were rereleased. Even icons that were prohibited, such as the flags of communist and nationalist China, were permitted to be shown on the big screen. The reopening of China to the rest of the world, including Britain, prompted certain regulatory changes that facilitated the curiosity of the younger generation, most of whom had long been fascinated by their parents' China stories, real or imaginary.

, 6 C6 B 7 DB6 2 2: 23 6 2C 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 C6 B 9CC B : 8 , / 2 6 7 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 1,0 1 : 6 B:C 7 ,2 :7 :2 02 :68 .2 2C BD3 6 C C C96 ,2 3 : 86

164 JENNY LAU

Some frequently cited " 1 9 9 7 " films such as Stanley Kwan's Rouge and Center Stage are good examples of works that mix history and imagination into the relationship between China, Hong Kong, the past, and the present. According to the director himself, the inspiration for these films came from his own childhood experience with his Shanghai family. He had always wanted to seek out the relationship between the two places, one of which is real and concrete, whereas the other seems fascinating but elusive. By not reducing the films to a simplistic 1997 political metaphor, one can better comprehend how they portray the contradictions involved in having to live through a history of dislocation and relocation, rejection and identification, and other particular aspects of an exile/colonial culture.

Despite the many social and political changes of the 1980s, three clear lines of development can still be delineated: comedy, kung fu or martial arts, and social drama. While none ever disappeared completely, each had its own period of prominence. Comedy was most popular from 1980 to 1984 and again from 1988 to 1993. Even during its decline between 1985 and 1987, the comic element never totally disappeared. Thus vampire comedies, kung fu comedies, detective comedies, and others rampaged the markets of both Hong Kong and Taiwan. Along with comedy were the ever-present genres of mod- ern martial arts films (climaxing in 1985 with A Better Tomorrow) and the social dramas of the New Wave. Currently, the martial arts and the art films are popular in the United States, with the former leading the commercial front, leaving behind the most dominant genre of comedy, a genre which generated nine out of the top ten best sellers of the past two decades.18

It is not difficult to understand why the West has ignored comedy in the cinema of Hong Kong. First, as discussed in Comedy/Cinema/Theory, the genre of comedy has traditionally not received much attention or respect in the cultural history of the West (or in that of the East for that matter).19 Second, the analysis of comedy is exceptionally difficult because the recog- nition of humor depends heavily upon the understanding of the complex dynamics involved in the interaction of the symbolics, such as gestures, icons, linguistics, and so on, which are defined by their own social and cultural traditions. The difficulty is especially pronounced in the scrutiny of social or political comedy, which depends on a fairly specific contextual relationship between the text and the viewer and whose unfinalizing game-like form calls for what deconstructionists describe as " a state of conspiratorial irony." That is, a comic moment is appreciated when the audience recognizes that it could or should be "read against the grain."

Finally, the reading of Hong Kong comedy is further complicated by its heavy dependence on Cantonese dialogical gags. Although comedies of the 1980s tended to stage the chase scenes, fights, sex, and slapstick action common in Western films, whimsical slang and even nonsense verse and puns

, 6 C6 B 7 DB6 2 2: 23 6 2C 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 C6 B 9CC B : 8 , / 2 6 7 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 1,0 1 : 6 B:C 7 ,2 :7 :2 02 :68 .2 2C BD3 6 C C C96 ,2 3 : 86

MICHAEL HUI AND CANTONESE COMEDY 165

still remained major ingredients of the humor. At times they tended to be bizarre or even ridiculous. Popular examples included Wrong Kind of Love (1983) by Cheung Kin Ting, Aces Go Places (1984) by Tsui Hark, and My Lucky Stars (1985) by Samo Hung. Yet if one agrees with Jameson that any general theory of the modern - assuming one to be possible in the first place - would have to register the informing presence of, among others, sign systems and mass culture, of which popular cinema is a major point of convergence,20 then comedy, as an extremely contextualized text and the most popular form of cinematic entertainment, provides a significant entry point for the consid- eration of the culture of modern Hong Kong.

SOME HISTORY

To appreciate the central role of comedy in Hong Kong cinema one should trace its history back to its initial phase of industrialization. This major step, which established Hong Kong as an important film producing city, did not begin until 1949-50, when the refugee waves coming from mainland China brought an influx of artists and film entrepreneurs to the island. These immi- grants, who fled the Chinese communist government, were from northern China and for the most part spoke Mandarin. Soon a fierce competition broke out between Mandarin films produced by the newcomers and Cantonese films made by the locals.

While melodrama and detective fictions were popular genres for both groups, the dream factory of the Mandarin camp excelled in producing Hol- lywood imitations of historical epics and musicals, while the Cantonese camp specialized in martial arts films, which featured popular folk heroes such as Wong Fei-hung's well-known series (modernized in Tsui Hark's Once Upon a Time in China) and social satire, which depicted the suffering of the lower classes.21

From 1950 to 1970, three thousand Cantonese films were made and shown in Hong Kong. Out of this corpus, about 750 films (about 25 percent) were comedy, indicating a steady local preference for jokes and laughter.22 How- ever, when the big-budget Mandarin films carrying extravagant Hollywood glitziness began to gain the upper hand in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the smaller local (Cantonese) cinema deteriorated until it literally ceased produc- tion in 1972. Mandarin films were dominant for much of the 1970s.

But miracles do happen sometimes. In 1974, Games Gamblers Play, a Cantonese comedy scripted, acted, and directed by the now well-known "master of modern Cantonese Comedy," Michael Hui, who then was a popular TV talent, drew a huge audience. The film was the top box office hit of the year, grossing three times as much as its runner-up. Hui's next four films, The Last Message (1975), The Private Eyes (1976), The Contract

, 6 C6 B 7 DB6 2 2: 23 6 2C 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 C6 B 9CC B : 8 , / 2 6 7 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 1,0 1 : 6 B:C 7 ,2 :7 :2 02 :68 .2 2C BD3 6 C C C96 ,2 3 : 86

166 JENNY LAU

(1978), and Modern Security Guard {Modern Bo-Biu, 1981), continued to top the box office. Cantonese/local films had finally made their way back via one of their best traditions - social comedy.

MICHAEL HUI - MASTER OF CANTONESE COMEDY

Michael Hui grew up in one of the government-built, low-income residential areas of Hong Kong. As a graduate of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, he had an unusually outstanding educational background in the world of show business before the 1970s. His major in sociology would soon be reflected in his social satirical films. Hui started his career in local television as a cohost with his brother in a highly successful game/talk show. Between 1972 and 1974 he starred in four films directed by the then major director Li Han Hsiang (Li Hanxiang). In 1974 he made his writer-director debut with Games Gamblers Play. The rest is history.

As Hong Kong film critic Law Kar has pointed out, "Michael Hui is to Comedy what Bruce Lee is to the Martial Arts: they both reign supreme."23 Yet the latter was a catch name in the West, and the former is still almost unknown. Between 1974 and 1992, Michael Hui scripted and acted in fourteen films, half of which he also directed. It is clear that by occupying key positions in production Hui had the luxury of almost total control of his films. He was one of the few auteurs who not only survived but prospered even in the cutthroat commercial setting of Hong Kong cinema. Unlike many directors of his generation who turned cinema into an unsuccessful dream factory, Hui managed to be consistent in enriching his films with social messages. Some of these films have been quite successful, such as The Private Eyes, the story of a private detective; The Contract, the struggle of a minor TV talent to advance his career; Modern Security Guards, which satirizes an egotistical security worker; Teppanyaki (1984), a food-fixated sex comedy; Chicken and Duck Talk (1988), which details a competition between a traditional roast duck restaurant and a Western fast-food store; Mr. Coconut (1989), which is about a mainland Chinese rural bumpkin's visit to his metropolitan Hong Kong city relatives; Front Page (1990), a satire on yellow journalism; and Magic Touch (1992), a critique on superstition. Others have not been as successful, such as Happy Ding Dong (1985), a Hong Kong version of Some Like It Hot.

Hui's success in combining entertainment with local social concern was also a factor that indirectly ushered in the Hong Kong New Wave (1979-84). Between 1978 and 1979, the Hong Kong film industry suffered from both an internal creative block and the popularization of television. It seemed that the cinema could no longer attract an audience even with sex or violence. While the studios were desperate to find some kind of solution, Hui's outstanding success in tackling social issues obviously challenged the dream factory's

, 6 C6 B 7 DB6 2 2: 23 6 2C 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 C6 B 9CC B : 8 , / 2 6 7 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 1,0 1 : 6 B:C 7 ,2 :7 :2 02 :68 .2 2C BD3 6 C C C96 ,2 3 : 86

MICHAEL HUI AND CANTONESE COMEDY 167

escapism. It seemed that, at least for once, investors and theater exhibitors were convinced by Hui's films that social realism and money making could sometimes go together. With the financial boom of the late 1970s and early 1980s, some investors began to take advantage of the crisis in the movie industry. Instead of depending on established directors to grind out new films, which had proven to be of little success, money was given to a group of young directors whose films would be different from those of the past. Be- tween 1979 and 1980 about thirty to forty directors made their debuts. A New Wave was born.

The old Cantonese cinema had died out partly because it lacked a new perspective on the changing society of Hong Kong, but Hui succeeded exactly where the old approach failed. His sensitivity in capturing the unique transi- tions that Hong Kong was experiencing during the 1970s provided him with plenty of fresh material for dramas. At the same time, as local critics soon realized, Hui was capable of retaining the strength of the Cantonese comic cinema of the 1950s and 1960s - the comedy of the everyday man versus the Mandarin cinema of the upper class fairyland from Shanghai. Although Hui's characters are strongly based on traditional Chinese social and moral norms, his concern is with how his protagonist uses these values in interacting with the modern environment of Hong Kong. It is Hui's genius to be among the first in local cinema to capture the nuances of this encounter and to comment on it in a comic forms.24

Hui's classic story is of the everyday person who is caught in the reality of a fast-paced society, moving more and more toward Westernization and me- tropolitanization. In some films his characters are unaware of the change and hence get caught in impossible situations. In others, they try to fight against the encroaching reality of progress, while others try to compromise without actually grasping what is taking place around them. The variations are numer- ous, but Hui's sometimes humorous, sometimes sarcastic, but usually sympa- thetic treatment of the major character, which he himself performs very well, elicits both laughter and tears from his audience.

Although even up until his last film (Magic Touch, 1992) Hui's productions continue to be among the best sellers in Hong Kong, I choose to introduce one of his earlier works, Modern Security Guards (Modern Bo Biu), which was considered by both the director himself and his critics to be an unusually significant film. According to Hui, Modern Security Guards represented the beginning of a new phase of Hui's filmmaking in which effort was shifted from creating the purely comic, which he had mastered in previous films, to a sophisticated integration of his humor with a more refined story that carried a deeper social message. Critics saw the film as a forerunner of the ' 'high-tech comedies," especially those from Cinema City (the major comedy studio for the first half of the eighties) that were to follow. In retrospect, one can see that as an early-1980s film Modern Security Guards was the first to fully

, 6 C6 B 7 DB6 2 2: 23 6 2C 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 C6 B 9CC B : 8 , / 2 6 7 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 1,0 1 : 6 B:C 7 ,2 :7 :2 02 :68 .2 2C BD3 6 C C C96 ,2 3 : 86

168 JENNY LAU

capture and explore the unique moment of the transformation of modern Hong Kong, a transformation that involved not only industrial technology and eco- nomic growth but the official political reconsideration of the relationship between Hong Kong and China. In the reading of the film I delineate two major structuring themes, old/new and China/Hong Kong. These pairs of antinomies, which continued to play the most significant role in many impor- tant films to come, first appeared in Modern Security Guards.25

MODERN SECURITY GUARDS Modern Security Guards satirizes technology's penetration into contemporary Hong Kong daily life and the increasingly inseparable relationship between Hong Kong and China. In the film, Hui renegotiates traditional values and at the same time mediates a dialogue of social transition with an audience that would soon be in search of a cultural and political repositioning.

The story is about an arrogant captain Chow (played by Hui) who works in a security company. Despite his exploitative attitude, his subordinates, Sam and Ying, work hard and cooperate with him. Consequently, they end up doing the hard work while Chow gets the credit. This works out to Chow's advantage until the son of the owner of the company returns from his studies in the United States. He soon takes over his ailing father's business. The young boss discovers Chow's incompetence and demotes him while raising the assistant Sam to the position of captain.

Although Sam is now Chow's superior, he exercises no retribution for past injustices. He is considerate and well-liked by his colleagues. Three major crimes occur after Sam becomes the captain, which he and his team success- fully solve. After undergoing a lot of difficulties, Chow finally learns to be a responsible, helpful, and generous teammate.

THE OLD AND THE MODERN/WEST The Chinese title of the film, Bo-Biu, is an old term for security guard. It is also strongly associated with the wuxia (martial arts) film/fiction genre of which it is one of the major generic characters. Putting Modern and Bo-Biu together already indicates an attempt to heighten the contrast of the old (as connoted by wuxia) and the new, the cross-cutting between the two eras during which rapid changes are taking place.

In Modern Security Guards the new, which is also Western, is represented by the metropolitan outlook of the city with its skyscrapers, shopping malls, banks, automobiles, and high-tech environment. In Hui's film, this new form of living is in the process of integrating itself with tradition while the old way of life is also trying to adjust and adapt to the input of the new. The weaving

, 6 C6 B 7 DB6 2 2: 23 6 2C 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 C6 B 9CC B : 8 , / 2 6 7 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 1,0 1 : 6 B:C 7 ,2 :7 :2 02 :68 .2 2C BD3 6 C C C96 ,2 3 : 86

MICHAEL HUI AND CANTONESE COMEDY 169

together of these two trends creates numerous comic moments. For instance, in one scene electronic sensors are put under a doormat to illustrate a modern theft prevention mechanism. But the old "Chinese" problem with punctuality generates conflicts with the new device. While Chow is boasting about his "theft prevention doormat," Ying, one of his crew members, rushes in late to class. The latter, not knowing that Chow is demonstrating the new gadget, steps on it and accidentally discharges an electric current. Chow, who is at the other end of the circuit, is jolted by the strong electric shock as his class roars in laughter. In another scene, the technology of parachuting to escape a high-rise fire does not seem to work without the aid of human intuition as to when to open the parachute during the fall. Thus when Chow's crew test-flies a mannequin it falls to the ground and breaks on impact, creating fear as well as laughter. Even a sophisticated computer-controlled door lock, used in an antique exhibition, depends on the human (Hui's) voice to be activated. Thus, the superiority of the New and the Western is not always apparent. The new both challenges and relies on the old.

Alternately, neither can new wine be kept in an old bottle. In one scene, Chow attempts to conduct a driver's class. In the late 1970s the automobile, another sign of "foreignness," began to gain popularity in Hong Kong, and driving became a common, necessary skill. But Chow's teaching technique of forcing his class to memorize a driving rhythm (composed by him) while practicing on models made of domestic cleaning tools such as toilet brushes and so forth is absurd. Such a ludicrous pedagogy parodied a learning experi- ence common among Hui's audience, namely, that of forced memorization and coerced acceptance of outdated teaching. Chow's way of driving does not work. Not only does his student Ying fail the driving test, but Chow himself is bumped into the harbor by Ying's car. At the very end of the film Ying still cannot drive his car and finishes off his wedding by crashing his bridal carriage into a little yellow Porsche.

A new environment requires a new approach. The old boss of the security company has to retire due to illness, and the company is taken over by his son. The young man's new knowledge, acquired from the United States (the West), helps him approach the management of his company differently. An interesting scene occurs when the young man's parents receive their son at the airport. Instead of the typical Cantonese drama of a son's homecoming, with its involved oversentimentalism, we witness the Hong Kong spirit of no- nonsense, business-like mannerisms between the parents and the son.

The relation of the old and the new is also one of conflict. Chow is demoted after fifteen years of service in the company because he is found to be inefficient and his techniques outdated. Here, Hui captures the common prob- lem of a generation of Hong Kong workers who suddenly find themselves losing competitiveness due to modernization.26 Chow angrily stomps out of the office after hearing of his demotion. He stands right in front of a new

, 6 C6 B 7 DB6 2 2: 23 6 2C 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 C6 B 9CC B : 8 , / 2 6 7 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 1,0 1 : 6 B:C 7 ,2 :7 :2 02 :68 .2 2C BD3 6 C C C96 ,2 3 : 86

170 JENNY LAU

yellow Porsche, which happens to be parked in that spot and has two gamblers hiding inside. To let off steam, Chow yells and pounds on the car. The Porsche is automated to respond to push and touch. Thus each time Chow pounds the car it opens its doors, windows, sky roof, and so forth. By the end of the scene, the boiling Chow leaves the Porsche flapping and swinging every one of its parts with the two gamblers inside wondering what is going on. The scene depicts not only the sometimes violent war between the old (boss and Chow) and the new (young boss) but also contrasts the rich (boss and Porsche's owner) and the poor (Chow).

Hui's questioning of modernization and his comic evaluation of the much- celebrated economic accomplishments of Hong Kong were not totally new subjects on the screen. Yet, here one discovers a new sense of ambivalence that did not exist in the Cantonese social satires of the 1950s and the 1960s. In the previous era, theater audiences, many members of whom were refugees from China, were generally China-centered. That is, they identified more with the (romanticized) China than with Hong Kong and were quite willing to position Hong Kong as the "other." Some of the older films, although they exposed problems such as greed and exploitation as Hong Kong's capitalistic faults, also implied that social virtues were to be found in China. The criti- cisms made in Modern Security Guards, however, do not favor the Chinese. This cinematic role shift between Hong Kong and China reflects a major change in the perception of identity of the Hong Kong people as they experi- enced important social changes in the 1970s and early 1980s.

CHINA AND HONG KONG

Monetary transactions between banks, bank robberies, ma-jong, and gambling were the daily routine of the booming business city of Hong Kong in the 1970s. But looming in the background of this effervescent society was the "China Shadow," which became increasingly prominent after China re- opened itself to the Western world. The reconsideration of the relationship between China and Hong Kong is carried out in Modern Security Guards by the drama of the terra cotta soldiers exhibition and the subplot of the gamblers.

Ever since Deng Xiao Ping uttered his promise that in Hong Kong after 1997 "horses will keep racing, and dancers will keep dancing," horse racing, which has traditionally been a symbol of bustling Hong Kong, has inevitably carried unmistakable political overtones. The two gamblers who hide in their yellow Porsche conniving to win big money, epitomize the Hong Kong money-making mentality. The fact that they are always hiding and squeezing inside tiny spaces is another metaphor for the physical environment of Hong Kong, a city that has the highest population density in the world. Space or, rather, lack of space, is virtually symbolic of the place. On the level of its sociopolitical environment, the lack of space is symbolic of the city. The fact

, 6 C6 B 7 DB6 2 2: 23 6 2C 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 C6 B 9CC B : 8 , / 2 6 7 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 1,0 1 : 6 B:C 7 ,2 :7 :2 02 :68 .2 2C BD3 6 C C C96 ,2 3 : 86

MICHAEL HUI AND CANTONESE COMEDY 171

is that Hong Kong has little space in which to maneuver in world politics, and its existence is totally dependent on the outside world. In the film, the yellow car always gets caught in the crossfire of the outside world just as Hong Kong gets caught in the struggle between world powers, especially those between China and Britain.

The scene of the exhibition of the golden jade suit from the terra cotta soldiers' tomb in China refers to a real exhibition of this Chinese wonder, which took place in Hong Kong earlier on. Here, the China-Hong Kong- Western complex worked well into the humor. First, the gangsters who at- tempt to steal this masterpiece do not look like Hong Kong criminal stereo- types. From their crude outlook, manner, and weapons, they are more like robbers from mainland China (as perceived by Hong Kong). That they are ignorant, backward bumblers during their robbery attempt is sarcastically highlighted in a few comic incidents. For example, while the gangsters try to activate the computer-controlled door lock of the exhibition hall, one of the members, following Chow's method, sings a tune. But he gets a quick retort from his leader, who says, "You don't know how to sing. How can you be a thief?" Then, after they finally break into the exhibition hall and take a close look at the golden jade suits, the leader discovers that there is a "made in Hong Kong" label on the bottom of one shoe. (This is due to the fact that Chow and his colleague who are fleeing the gangsters are now cornered and forced into hiding in the golden jade suits. Unfortunately, one of their shoes becomes exposed.) When a gangster suggests that maybe the ancient Chinese had come to Hong Kong to purchase shoes, he is slapped by the leader, who angrily scolds him, saying, "Not knowing history, how can you be a thief."

Although the Chinese thieves are bumpkins, the Hong Kong protection offered for the China display is both modern and Western. The computer sensors, which are the major component of the security system for the exhi- bition, represent the sophistication of the arrangement. These sensors work in coordination with two coded tunes, that of the happy birthday song, which makes the Western link to the instrument, and the horse neighing, which again is a reminder of Hong Kong.

The two Hong Kong security guards, wearing shoes that are made in Hong Kong, are protecting China and its treasure from loss. In the final episode of the chase between the guards and the thieves, Chow and Sam are wearing the golden jade suits with parachutes on their backs. The contradiction between China and the West, the old and the new, cannot be more extreme or ludicrous by the juxtaposition of the thousand-year-old golden jade suits and the modern parachute. With the gangsters right at their backs, Chow and Sam are forced to parachute from the top of a high-rise building. Interestingly enough, they are blown off course to the horse-racing tracks and land on the back of a racing jockey, ruining a race. Although the horse race, which is also Hong Kong, saves China, which is represented by the golden jade suits, the Hong

, 6 C6 B 7 DB6 2 2: 23 6 2C 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 C6 B 9CC B : 8 , / 2 6 7 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 1,0 1 : 6 B:C 7 ,2 :7 :2 02 :68 .2 2C BD3 6 C C C96 ,2 3 : 86

172 JENNY LAU

Kong people, as represented by the two gamblers and the crowd, have lost their game. The gamblers have worked hard to finally design a way to win the game only to be destroyed by the parachutists, who accidentally sabotage the Hong Kong money dream.

Although in the last ten minutes of the film the audience is exhausted with laughter, the message conveyed is particularly serious. To fully appreciate the issue one has to return to the context again. The economic boom of the 1970s in Hong Kong had created an expanding, well-educated middle class who became interested in political participation in the colonial government. This desire was further facilitated by a government-sponsored "localization pro- ject," which sought (limited) transferral of political power (from the British) to the local elites.27 These ecopolitical changes had a decentering effect on the Chinese identity of the Hong Kong community.

The decentering of (the cultural/romantic/mythical) China did not necessar- ily imply an automatic identification with the colonial. As Seamus Deane pointed out in the introduction of Nationalism, Colonialism, and Literature (a seminal collection of three essays by Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson, and Edward Said), "at the extreme, colonialism is dispossession."28 In the colo- nial history of Hong Kong the most radical dispossessions have been lan- guage, history, and political autonomy. Although 99 percent of the population is Chinese, English was regarded as the colony's official language. The mate- rial and psychological deprivation resulting from such a silencing policy has yet to be exposed.29 Likewise, because contemporary Chinese and Hong Kong history are not included in basic discourse channels such as school curricula, there is a loss or dispossession of collective memory, a fundamental criterion for building identity. It is no surprise that the denial of political autonomy is but the ultimate dispossession of self-determination. My observation is that these dispossessions have created splits in all major spheres of self- identification, namely, in the political, the traditional/cultural, and the eco- nomic. The consequence is an almost schizophrenic triple split of the subject into (1) a political nonidentity with neither China nor Britain nor Hong Kong, (2) a "confused" cultural identity mix of Hong Kong and China, which provides only precarious references insufficient for serious self-reflection, and (3) an economic identification with capitalism, which has proven to be "suc- cessful" but unsatisfying. This period of the pre-1997 debate (the 1970s and the very early 1980s), which is often criticized by many local scholar elites as a period of "money-making, mindless merry seeking," is in fact the period of the traumatic triple split of the center.

Although the parachutists smash the money-making dream of the people of Hong Kong and thus end the "merry seeking" epoch of the 1970s, because it is China that shatters such a dream, the trauma of identity crisis continues. That is, the reawakening of the colonial state of Hong Kong has not ushered in a post-colonial condition. Neither nationalism nor colonial imperialism has

, 6 C6 B 7 DB6 2 2: 23 6 2C 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 C6 B 9CC B : 8 , / 2 6 7 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 1,0 1 : 6 B:C 7 ,2 :7 :2 02 :68 .2 2C BD3 6 C C C96 ,2 3 : 86

MICHAEL HUI AND CANTONESE COMEDY 1 73

gained much trust from the populace.30 Instead, by the mid-1980s, the 1997 anxiety had finally wiped out the "new Hong Kong center," which the society had been trying to build over the past decade. It was replaced by a strong sense of ambivalence or even cynicism. As cinema participates in the articu- lation of the new experience, Modern Security Guards is among the first films to forecast and express the trauma of an ambivalent identity. The Hong Kong/ China-Old/New theme remained prominent through the 1980s creating such interesting films as Hong Kong Hong Kong (1982), Home At Hong Kong (1983), Home Coming, Long Arm of the Law (1984), Rouge, The Reincarna- tion of the Golden Lotus, and Mr. Coconut. These works continued to repre- sent an evolving society unique in its cultural condition.

NOTES

1. Kung fu is the term used mostly in the West. The Chinese called the genre wudar, which means unarmed martial arts or wuxia, which means armed (mostly with swords) martial arts.

2. See reviews in Sight and Sound 51 (Autumn, 1982): 227, New York Times reviews by Janet Maslin September 27, 1983, III, 17: 5, and November 13, 1983, I, 78: 1. Also, Ann Hui did not see her films as being political. See the interview in Film Biweekly 96 (October 7, 1982): 19-23.

3. Such an achievement was sometimes more a result of circumstances than a con- scious redefinition of what the new cinema should be.

4. The first Hong Kong film festival held in the United States in 1988, which became an annual event and was instrumental in reintroducing Hong Kong cinema into the United States, was "The Cinema Explodes," organized by the Film Center of The Art Institute of Chicago. A few years later, Hong Kong film festivals began touring major U.S. cities and were sometimes sponsored by the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office and the Hong Kong Picture Industry Association. One example is "Hong Kong Forever" (1994), which toured ten cities in the United States, includ- ing Chicago, Washington, D.C., New York, and San Francisco.

5. In 1993 Golden Harvest and AMC arranged a two-week release of Hong Kong films in Southern California outside of Chinatown. Soon, similar commercial releases of subtitled Hong Kong films followed in different cities.

6. Based on research reported by Linda Lai during the Sixteenth Ohio University Film Conference (1994) in her paper "The Hong Kong Cinema 1990 As (Post-) Colonial Resistance: Identity Politics and Subversive History Via 'Enigmatization,' " the current U.S. version of Hong Kong cinema is comprised of about thirty, mostly action-oriented, films.

7. There are numerous examples of such writings ranging from the publicity release of Kino International Corp. on The Killer to the LA. Weekly and LA. Times reports on the opening of The Killer in the United States. An early writing, which is indicative of the trend of portraying Hong Kong cinema, is found in "Made In Hong Kong," (Film Comment 24. 3 (May-June 1988): 33-56, in which the four major films introduced are: Zu, A Better Tomorrow, Peking Opera Blues, and Police Story. Major stars featured in these articles are Jackie Chan, Samo Hung, Tsui Hark, and Chow Yun-fat. In short, this lengthy report is rather action-movie oriented.

, 6 C6 B 7 DB6 2 2: 23 6 2C 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 C6 B 9CC B : 8 , / 2 6 7 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 1,0 1 : 6 B:C 7 ,2 :7 :2 02 :68 .2 2C BD3 6 C C C96 ,2 3 : 86

174 JENNY LAU

8. Jackie Chan's Rumble in the Bronx and John Woo's Broken Arrow were the U.S. national top box-office hits during their first weekend release in February 1996. After the success of Rumble in the Bronx, Miramax announced it would release five more Jackie Chan films. This chapter, which was initially written before the release of Rumble in the Bronx, already predicted such a popular trend.

9. The fact that Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs was inspired by the Hong Kong film City On Fire (directed by Ringo Lam) and that Tarantino acknowledged his debt to John Woo in creating cinematic violence was repeatedly reported in a number of film magazines. One recent example would be Cineaste 3. xxi (1995): 58.

10. The transformation of wuxia into modernized gun fights can be traced back to Ann Hui's Story of Woo Viet (1981, also starring Chow Yun-fat), a fact that was hardly recognized by western writers. For comments of local critics see Film Biweekly, 231 (January 21, 1988): 28.

11. Each sold about HK$18 million, half of the top-seller record of the year. 12. In the 1990s (five years after the first release of A Better Tomorrow) a popular

discussion on the issues of masculinity and homoeroticism in John Woo's films began in the United States. The latest example includes "Reinventing Masculinity: The Spectacle of Male Intimacy in the Films of John Woo" by Jillian Sandell in Film Quarterly 49. 4 (Summer 1996): 23-34.

13. Hong Kong residents were not actively conscious of the 1997 problem until after Margaret Thatcher visited Beijing in 1982.

14. A detailed scholarly discussion of this thought was presented by professor Yau Si- man of Hong Kong Baptist University in the "Conference on Hong Kong Culture" jointly organized by the University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Baptist Univer- sity in June 1995. In his presentation, professor Yau traced literary sources back to the 1800s written by prominent Chinese scholars such as Lun Shun. But since the 1990s, this China-centered cultural hierarchy has been strongly criticized by contem- porary scholars such as Rey Chow, and some scholars began to replace the notion of desert with the idea of marginality, a term that resonates with contemporary multicultural discourse.

15. For further analysis of the subject position of Hong Kong cinema, see "The Chang- ing Power Relationship Between China and Hong Kong: An Examination of the Concept of 'home' and its function in Hong Kong movies in the '40s and '50s," by Leung Noong-kong in The Twelfth Hong Kong International Film Festival. Changes in Hong Kong Society Through Cinema. Hong Kong Urban Council, 1988, 21-28.

16. Ranajit Guha, "Historiography of Colonial India," in Subaltern Studies I. (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982): 3-4.

17. See The Sixteenth Hong Kong International Film Festival. The China Factor in Hong Kong Cinema. Hong Kong Urban Council. 1992.

18. For the record of the ten top sellers of the past two decades see Film Biweekly, 256 (January 12, 1989): 8-9. In the United States, the only organized introduction of comedy occurred at the Film Center of the Chicago Art Institute in 1989, which featured Michael Hui's works along with a personal appearance.

19. Andrew Horton, Comedy/Cinema/Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).

20. Fredric Jameson, Signatures of the Visible (New York: Routledge, 1990). 21. Note that in recent years a number of these old films were remade by the Second

Wave directors. This is seen by some critics as a sign of postmodern nostalgia and an attempt to rethink the history of Hong Kong. Wong Fei-Hung is recorded as

, 6 C6 B 7 DB6 2 2: 23 6 2C 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 C6 B 9CC B : 8 , / 2 6 7 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 1,0 1 : 6 B:C 7 ,2 :7 :2 02 :68 .2 2C BD3 6 C C C96 ,2 3 : 86

MICHAEL HUI AND CANTONESE COMEDY 1 75

being the most repeated character played by a single actor (Kwan Tak-Hing) in the history of world cinema. He is the protagonist in seventy-seven films. See Patrick Robertson, Guinness Film Facts and Feats (Britain: Guinness Superlatives Limited, 1985): 103.

22. The Ninth Hong Kong International Film Festival. Tradition of Hong Kong Comedy. Hong Kong Urban Council, 1985, 36.

23. The Eighth Hong Kong International Film Festival. A Study of Hong Kong Cinema in the Seventies. Hong Kong Urban Council. 1984, 6, and "More Michael Hui Than Michael Hui: An Interview with the Comedy Master of the Generation," Film Biweekly 298 (August 30, 1990): 10-14.

24. Other comedy directors such as Chan Yau and Cheung Kin Ting are virtually unknown to the West.

25. This author has written another analysis of Modern Security Guards in her disserta- tion from a very different point of interest, that of Hong Kong-China cultural tradition. The two writings are complementary to each other.

26. In Father and Son this problem is enacted in great detail. 27. The localization project was initiated after the 1968 anti-British riot as the govern-

ment realized a new strategy for the colonial rule. For more information, read J. Cooper, Colony in Conflict: The Hong Kong Disturbances, May 1967-January 1968 (Hong Kong: Swindon Book Company, 1970); I. C. Jarvie, "A Postscript on Riots and the Future of Hong Kong." In Hong Kong: A Society in Transition, ed. I. C. Jarvie and Joseph Agassi, eds. (London: Frederick Praeger, 1969); and Yuan Bang- jian Xianggang shilue (A Brief History of Hong Kong) (Hong Kong: Zhongliu Publishers, 1987).

28. Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson, and Edward Said. Nationalism, Colonialism, and Literature. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990).

29. The film Father and Son has pointed at some of these problems. 30. For more details, read Decolonization without Independence. Lau Siu Kai (Hong

Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1990); and John Walden, "Toward the Democratization of Hong Kong: The Grand Illusion," in Excellency, Your Gap is Growing: Six Talks on a Chinese Takeaway, John Walden, ed. (Hong Kong: All Noble, 1987).

, 6 C6 B 7 DB6 2 2: 23 6 2C 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 C6 B 9CC B : 8 , / 2 6 7 9CC B 2 3 : 86 8 6 1,0 1 : 6 B:C 7 ,2 :7 :2 02 :68 .2 2C BD3 6 C C C96 ,2 3 : 86