A Study Of Marginality In Ann Hui's Films

A Study of Marginality in Ann HtiPs films

A Dissertation

Submitted to The Faculty of Arts In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts at

The University of Hong Kong

by

Leung Nun-riling 2000

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THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG LIBRARY

Thesis Collection Deposited by the Author

Contents Abstract

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Introduction

Western Discourse on Otherness and Marginality

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Ann Hui's Film Work: A Concern over the Marginalized * Hong Kong's Other 5 • The Marginalized in Hui's Films 6

Conditions of the "Displaced" Characters

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Dialectics on Home, Homeland and Nationalism

Common Patterns of the Displaced Experience * Nostalgia for Homeland 17 * Construction of Home 20 * Longing for Affiliation 21 * Homecoming and Disillusionment 24

Dialectics on Displacement

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The Ideology of Displacement in Ann Hui's Four Films • Historical and Political Forces on Personal Destiny 29 • Perplexity on Roots and Belonging 30 '• The China Factor 33 * Nomadic Existence: A Distant Dream? 37 * Women in Displacement 39 Conclusion

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Notes Bibliography Ann Hui's Filrnography

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Abstract This paper examines Ann Hui's four films on displaced experiences. They are The Story* of Woo Viet (1981), Song of the Exile (1990), Zodiac Killers (1991) and Ah Kam: The Story of a Stuntwoman (1996). The displaced persons are always at the margin of their adopted society. They are treated as the Other. Western discourse provides bountiful discussion on marginality and displacement. Issues like dialectics on home, homeland and nationalism are also raised. Being consistent with the humanistic approach in most of her work, Ann Hui's films on displacement emphasize the predicament of the characters. Instances are drawn mainly from The Story of Woo Viet and Song of the Exile. However, there is a tendency to view the displaced experience as positive in recent intellectual discourse, such as Kristeva's ideal of "cosmopolitan" and Deleuze's celebration of the "nomad". Under the influence of postmodern mentality, qualities of instability, marginality and "outsiderness" are regarded as virtues. The characters in Zodiac Killers and Ah Kam exhibit some of the "nomadic" qualities. This paper argues that the idealistic state of displacement suggested by the theorists is difficult to achieve under political oppression and burdens of history. The influence, of the "China factor" provides a somber backdrop for most of Hui's films featuring displacement. On investigating the ideology of displacement in Hui's films, women in displacement are also discussed as females are often marginalized in the patriarchy.

Introduction Ann Hui On-wah, one of the most notable figures of the New-Wave Movement in the Hong Kong film industry, has made over twenty movies and TV documentaries in her many years as director. She has been keen to experiment with new forms of film language in a variety of genres, including action, literary adaptations , melodramas, and even martial arts. While working with such a variety of genres, her ultimate concern is on people, especially those in a marginalized position. Owing to its quality of instability and ambivalence, the marginalized condition has always lured the attention of scholars from different disciplines. The marginalized person is always treated as the Other in every situation. It is interesting to examine the Western discourse on marginality and otherness, and see if there is any mapping to Hui's notion, as a Hong Kong filmmaker. As proposed by Julia Kristeva, the image of the Other is best exemplified by that of a foreigner. A foreigner is cut off from homeland and is a stranger in the country she or he dwells. A foreigner is always at the margin of the adopted society. Four films of Ann Hui are chosen for study. They are The Story of Woo Viet (1981), Song of the Exile (1990), Zodiac Killers (1991) and Ah Kam: The Story of a 'Stuntwoman (1996). All the protagonists in the above films share a common situation—they are in displaced positions, either voluntarily or under duress, having to leave their homeland.

Western Discourse on Otherness and Marginality Marginality and Otherness are notions which convey a sense of negativity and sometimes inferiority in common people's eyes. The Other refers to anyone who is not I. In Lacanian terms, the Other is the ultimate signifier of everyone that the subject is not, as well as everything the subject does not have. But the relationships between self and other is not strictly opposite to each other. It is dialectical as well, according to Hegel and Lacan, the self always encounters itself first as a fantastic other. Thus discovery of the Other equals to the acquisition of one's identity, and constructing Others will always be part of constructing the self. l There is always an Other being constructed in every situation. The dominant ideology produces its otherness for its own benefit and exploitation. Viewing the traditional history of Western culture and philosophy, phallogocentrism and Eurocentrism has often defined "women" or "non-white" races as the Other . Thus the Other is also what is estranged and feared, what exists to be conquered. This is what Simone de Beauvoir expresses in The Second Sex, "She [woman] is defined and differentiated with reference to man...; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute— she is the Other" (16). Edward Said coined the term Orientalism to describe the representation of the non-Western world by the West as its Other, whose selfhood is denied in the interest of Western subj activity. As stated before, the Other is primal in relation to the formation of subjectivity; likewise, the relationship between center and margin is not in absolute opposition either. In the West, there is a growing interest in studies on the marginal

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classes, including the poor, the criminal, the subaltern, women, gay people and so on. This trend is often politically initiated in the belief that the lives of those marginal people should not be excluded from mainstream history. Besides, one can detect the contradictions and weakness in the dominant power structure from the perspective of the margin. This also explains the contribution of poststructuralist theories to the study of marginality. Derrida, in rendering his logic of the supplement, argues that all metaphysical systems have the need of a supplementary system, which compensates for the absence of the source. 2 In this way the investigation of marginalization is also central to deconstructionist criticism, which seeks to decenter the totalizing foundation. Culturally marginalized people in the West are not simply denied subjectivity, they are given a specific subjectivity that makes them useful to the dominant culture.3 So in order to reject this "given" subjectivity, attempts are made to affirm the advantage of marginality—utilizing the "impure" position to subvert the normalizing practice of disciplinary society, bell hooks shares the same stance of viewing marginality as site of resistance— "To be in the margin is to be part of the whole but outside the main body" (341). Marginality is then not a status to give up but to sustain due to its vantage point for "it offers the possibility of radical perspectives from which to see and create, to imagine, alternatives and new worlds" (341).

Ann Hui's Film Work: A Concern Over the Marginalized Before she entered the film industry in the late seventies, Ann Hui had shot

a number of documentary series for television. Some were really good works and had won awards from the media. The subject matter of her work was mostly on the powerless and minority groups—the marginalized in society.

Hong Kong's Other Post-colonial critics often pose the dichotomy between the West and the East. As a discursive formation constructed by the West, Orientalism demonstrates the relationship between Europe and the Orient, in particular, the way "the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality and experience" (Orientalism 1-2). In colonial discourse, the East is often looked upon as ahistorical, timeless, faceless, and impenetrable. However, the dichotomy of colonizer and the colonized also exists between Asians themselves, as in the case of the invasion of Japanese imperialism in South East Asia during the Second World War. Chinese communism is also a kind of hegemony imposed on its own people and neighboring territories. Under these circumstances, the Western post-colonial criticism is obviously inadequate to represent the complicated relationship among Asian people. In a Chinese context, the internal and external political upheavals have left unforgettable marks on the people. It also brings about the Chinese diaspora around different parts of the world. The representation of the Other in Hong Kong changes in the course of history. In the post Sino-Japanese war era, the Japanese were generally a'target.of hatred and defiance. Though it was the militarism of the Japanese ruling class that

provoked the war, those who suffered under Japan's ruthless aggression often treated the general Japanese population as the enemy. Nowadays as the trauma brought by history fades out, the image of the Japanese is no longer that of the Other. During the late seventies and eighties, Hong Kong has been harassed by the Vietnamese refugee problem. Under British colonial rule, Hong Kong was assigned the role of port of first asylum for the Vietnamese "boat people". This "benevolent" agreement was made between the colonial government and the international community without the consent of the Hong Kong people. Hong Kong was burdened by the huge expenditure; disorder and violence in the refugee camps aggravated the situation. Most Hong Kong people regarded the Vietnamese as the Other.

The Marginalized in Hui's Films The plight of the Vietnamese was Ann Hui's favorite topic in the eighties. The film The Story of Woo Viet that I will discuss in this paper belongs to Hui's second work in her Vietnamese trilogy. The first one is a short television drama entitled "Boy from Vietnam" in The Lion Rock series produced by RTHK. The third is Boat People, a film which aroused the sensation of communism-phobia in the public and was a big box office hit. Song of the Exile also involves the otherness of Japanese in the post-Sino-Japanese War era. In the subsequent films by Ann Hui, though her protagonists do not necessarily originate from the lower strata of society, what remains constant in her

concern is the marginal position that people face. A marginal person is neither an insider nor an outsider; thus is neither friendly nor aloof. This is an extremely ambivalent situation. In a sense the marginal person is even more painful than an outsider since she or he very often suffers from the uncertainty of identity. The characters in the four films chosen belong to a specific category: they are displaced persons across different cultural spaces. In Strangers to Ourselves, Julia Kristeva suggests the image of hatred and of the Other is best represented by that of a foreigner—"Not belonging to any place, any time, any love. A lost origin, the impossibility to take root, a rummaging memory, the present in abeyance" (7). It should be noted that the concept of "foreigner" in Kristeva's proposition stresses on the intrinsic nature of "alienation" and "unfamiliarity" of the category; in this case, a tourist, though also a foreigner, is not relevant in this aspect. Her theory is built on Freud's premise that the stranger is within us. Thus we cannot escape the stranger (the unconscious) that live within us for we are bound to it. 4 As we can see, the image of a foreigner denotes an obvious marginalized condition. A foreigner is one who always wavers between memories of one' past country and the present situation of the place one now dwells. The term foreigner can be manifest in many word-forms: emigres, emigrant, expatriate, refugee and other words, connote with the reason of leaving one's original country as well as one's legal status. In this paper, more neutral terms like "people-in displaced position", "displacement" are used as they describe a general condition of the people who are away from their homeland.

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Conditions of the "Displaced" Characters As Hamid Naficy remarks, "exile must not be thought of as a generalized condition of alienation and difference. All displaced people do not experience exile equally or uniformly. Exile discourse thrives on detail, specificity, and locality" (4). The characters in "displaced" positions in Hui's four films are analyzed in detail More emphasis will be put on characters in The Story of Woo Viet and Song of the Exile, since they can best exemplify the status of marginality. Zodiac Killers has some reverberations of the thematic elements in the above two films, but the mentality of some characters manifests some difference. As for Ah Kam: The Story of a Stuntwoman, the protagonist is marginal in the aspect of her profession, and the presentation of her "displaced" condition is completely different from the other films.

Woo Viet The name of Woo Viet already reflects a marginalized national identity. "Woo" in Chinese refers to those ethnic groups who live outside the central territory—an antithesis of "Han". The Han people who always place themselves in the legitimate central part of the nation regard them as barbarians. "Viet" of course refers to Vietnam. In this way Woo Viet is a Chinese with a Vietnamese nationality, who exists in a subordinate ethnic group of the Vietnamese society. Woo Viet is in a state of marginalization in Vietnam, as ethnic Chinese often suffer discrimination in their adopted homelands.

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This marginal status of Vietnamese-Chinese is most certainly not an asset for him. When Woo comes to Hong Kong by boat for political shelter, he is placed in a Vietnamese refugee camp. Though he possesses a Chinese ethnicity, he is treated as a Vietnamese refugee, sharing the same status as the Vietnamese boat people who flocked into Hong Kong at that time. When threatened by the North Vietnamese spy in the refugee camp, Woo cannot count on the police to protect him since "every Vietnamese looks the same in the eyes of the police." He is treated as the Other in Hong Kong—one of the faceless Vietnamese. Soon he has to leave Hong Kong because his life is in danger after he killed a North Vietnamese spy in an act of. self-defense. Woo then attempts to escape to America in the guise of a Japanese tourist. Circumstances trap him in Chinatown in the Philippines, where he becomes a killer serving a Chinese Big Brother. The Big Brother flatters him that it is his luck being Chinese so that he can stay in Chinatown (to work as a killer for him). But on another occasion he threatens Woo that if he is murdered, it would be hard to investigate the killing because of Woo's lack of identity. Woo Viet is not only marginal in his nationality, the places he stays also display a status of in-betweenness. Refugee camps are of course not a permanent lodging. It is a place of waiting—for the benevolence of a future host country. Though many early Hong Kongers are immigrants from China, there is no place for the Vietnamese-Chinese Woo Viet The Story of Woo Viet ends with Woo drifting in the sea with .his dead beloved, with no where to go; Woo Viet is marginal in status in every cultural space

and human situation. He flees from place to place yet belongs to nowhere. He seems to live his existence as a permanent refugee.

San

Woo's partner San, also a killer working under the Big Brother, has wandered from one Chinatown to another in his past life. Though he is not an illegal immigrant, he confines himself in the area and has no more desire to go elsewhere. Even sexual desire, San tells Woo, is lost when one is stuck in the place for a long time. His drinking habit, Chinese rice wine, becomes his only attachment in life. The character of San shows the plight of a deep-seated emigrant personality: indifference and hopelessness. The film's undertones have Woo Viet following in the footsteps of San. When Woo speaks of going to America, he also mentions his target location is Chinatown.

Aiko The film Song of the Exile centers around the relationship of a mother and daughter—Aiko and Hueyin. Aiko left her home country Japan for the sake of love and arrived in an alien country, which became her home for the rest of her life. She suffered the plight of estrangement especially in the initial years when she lived in the house of her parents-in-law in Macau. Even her own daughter Hueyin, spoiled by the grandparents, is distanced from her. The displaced protagonists in'Hui's films are always alone. Living in an estranged environment with no close relatives or friends, they are forced to be :

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loners. This condition of estrangement is aggravated when the displaced person cannot speak the language of the adopted country. In Aiko's earlier days in Macau, the reminiscence of Hueyin on her mother's character is that she was always veryquiet. The daughter never realized that her mother's silence was due to her inadequacy in language. Apart from the usual predicament an immigrant faces, like language and cultural barriers, her nationality as Japanese is unwelcome in that post-war era. Therefore, far away from the familiarity of homeland, Aiko has to dwell among family members that are strangers to her and in a country that is hostile to her nation. After dwelling in the Chinese community for over twenty years, Aiko has become accustomed to the Chinese way of living. Nevertheless, she could not forget her homeland. Her mentality is caught between her host and home culture. She pays a visit to her home country when she is middle-aged. Before her old pals, she expresses her happiness as a woman married abroad—how good her husband has been, and her dwelling place being situated in a modern city. More, she "exhibits" her daughter Hueyin—who is young, beautiful and well-educated— proudly to her friends and relatives. It seems that her entire achievement is built on her daughter. This becomes her new identity that replaces her previous split cultural identities.

Hueyin The song of exile is not for the mother only. This is a personal experience

for Hueyin as well. She is also a stranger in various cultural spaces and familial settings. Going to live with her parents when she was a teenager, Hueyin is alienated by misunderstandings and unhappy past years with her mother. Her home is "strange" to her just as she is a "weird" daughter in her mother's eyes. She fails to understand her father's need to atone for the exile forced upon her mother that he pampers her in every way. She would rather live in the dormitory of her school Yet she is also marginalized in a school full of spoiled children from rich families. Though not a foreigner, Hong Kong is such a foreign place to her without anyaffectionate attachment. As an overseas Chinese student in the London film school, while she seems to be enjoying her life abroad, she cannot escape the fate of being discriminated against outside the BBC interview as it is rare (at that time) to have Asian people being recruited. Though she can get along well with her Caucasian schoolmates, her identity as a Chinese stands out explicitly. Those "impenetrable" and "mysterious" qualities of Orientalism accompany her as well. On one occasion, a roommate would like to wear Hueyin's orient-style necklace in order to bring her good luck in the interview. We can envisage there are numerous occasions that Hueyin is treated as the Other. The trip on which Hueyin accompanies her mother to Japan is a deliberate parallel to Aiko's alienation in a foreign country. The daughter tastes the same frustration and estrangement brought by a strange language and cultural setting. The journey provides a reconciliation of their tense relationship as the dyad is drawn closer through a common experience.

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The Grandfather Another figure worth examining in Song of the Exile is the grandfather. He embodies the older Chinese generation who attach great importance to family system and place of origin in China, as well as a glorious Chinese past. As Stephen Teo notes, "The grandfather is the very essence of a Chinese gentleman" (93). We see him writing Chinese calligraphy; reciting poetry to his grandchild in order to instill patriotic sentiment to the later generation. The grandfather regards China as his ultimate homeland. Therefore, his days living in Macau are only a temporary period and he manages to return to China finally before the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution.

Benr Chang-chih and Tieh-lan The main characters in the film Zodiac Killers are three Chinese who go to Japan as overseas students. Though their voyage is voluntary, the feeling of estrangement and uprootedness is never-the-less generated, Afterall they are foreigners in a strange land. The mentality of each of the three Chinese who lead their temporary life overseas is quite different from the other. Ben is from Hong Kong and appears buoyant and free from any burdens. Chang-chih comes from China yet always wears a nostalgic mood with him as he often chants the country folk song Far Far Away, Tieh-lan's identity is quite mysterious and her identity is revealed only after her tragic death in the end. She was from the Kiangsu province of China and had dwelled in Japan for one year.

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Ah Kam

The stuntwoman Ah Kam came from China. She is among the influx of Chinese mainlanders who came to Hong Kong to seek better economic prospects. The film does not reveal her plight as an outsider in the territory; after all, she arrived five years ago. It may also possible that her feelings towards her homeland are indifferent. She has gone back to Mainland China to run a karaoke bar for her boyfriend. She works hard but does not feel that she belongs. Perhaps, Ah Kam's marginality lies mainly on her sex—her career as a stuntwoman in the masculine film industry and her relationship with the three males surround her.

Dialectics on Home, Homeland and Nationalism All displaced characters yearn for a home of their own, though such a homeland may not necessarily be their idealized home. "The word 'home' evokes an aura of safety and stability, familiarity, incarnation of past, it provokes pride of ownership and creation ..."(22). This is what Rosemary Marangoly George proposes in The Politics of Home. She uses a term "topophilia" to denote the affection that people generate towards a familiar place.or land. However, when one is away from one's homeland for a long time, the image of home is often distorted, becomes uncertain in one's mind. In his article "Imaginary Homelands", Salman Rushdie describes his experience of being an Indian in exile, he can only "create fictions, not actual cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelands, India, of the mind" (10). Most probably, we

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recollect only fragmentary visions of the idealized homeland in our mind. Thus home is not a fixed notion even in our personal projections.

Rosemary Marangoly George examines contemporary literary theory, colonial and postcolonial narratives on belonging, exile and immigration, to argue that literary allegiances are always more complicated than expected and yet obviously present in ideas of "home". She suggests that the notion of home be built on a pattern of select inclusions and exclusions. It is a way of establishing differences — " 'Homeland 'non-home' are the basic divisions of geographic space, just as "self and the "non-self or 'Other' represents the basic divisions of psychic space" (21). "Homes" are places built on select inclusions. The inclusions axe usually based on a taught sense of a kinship extending to those who share something in common like blood, race and religion. Likewise, under dominant ideologies like nationalism, "home" and "home-country" can be just some attractive terms expressing many different political viewpoints. "Home" or "feeling at home" is just in fact a given under all regimes.D Edward Said contends the interplay between exile and nationalism is dialectic in nature. He describes the early stages of nationalism as sprung from marginal national groups, thus nationalism originates

"from a stage of

estrangement" (Out There 359). As times goes by, the affirmation of this collective sentiment shuts out all outsiders. Thus nationalism now means "an assertion of belonging in and to a place, a people, a heritage" (Out There 359). Borders and barriers are established so as to safeguard familiar territory and foreigners are under heel Ironically the excessive passion for adhering to one's nation might become

one's prison, militarism can be regarded as a most extreme manifestation of nationalism. All these suggest that home and nation are not neutral places. Establishing either could be an expression of manipulation.6 Concerning "feeling at home" or otherwise "feeling estranged", there is an in-between state suggested by Freud on the basis of a semantic study. He elaborates the notion of "uncanny", which is a common experience of the displaced persons when they return to their homeland. According to Freud, "uncanny" is that class of the frightening which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar. "Uncanny" is the English translation of the German word unheimlich^ literally "unhomely". Heimlich (the opposite of unheimlich) means "familiar", "intimate", "homelike". Heimlich can also be used to describe animals, meaning tame, companionable to man. On the other hand, it can also mean concealed, kept from sight and withheld from others. Unheimlich also has a meaning of something hidden and secret and has become visible.7 Thus we can see, heimlich has a meaning which is identical with its opposite, unheimlich. The word heimlich is ambiguous with two sets of conflicting ideas: on one hand, it means that which is familiar and agreeable, and on the other, that which is concealed and kept out of sight.

Com-mon Patterns of the Displaced Experience. . From the four films of Ann Hui, we can pick up some shared elements of the displaced experience. In many ways, they echo the concepts of home, homeland and nationalism in Western discourse.

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Nostalgia for Home1^rir| Nostalgia is a wistful yearning for something past. Photos of family members, home cooked food can arouse memories of the homeland when one is away from home. Besides, it is the vision of the idealized homeland, like the good old days, that linger mostly in one's mind.

Family photos Though he never speaks of his household in Vietnam, Woo Viet's nostalgia is meticulously shown in the scene in the Philippines when he intends to burn his fake passport. In the inner cover of Woo Viet's fake passport, we catch a glimpse of an old photo showing a boy and a man. The audience can deduce that this should be Woo Viet as a child and the man beside him would most probably be his father. He takes out the photo and puts it aside with the cover, then he burns the fake passport together with the air ticket that is kept inside. This sequence of actions shows: Woo Viet is determined to live as a person of no identity when he bums all his fake documents, but he retains the old family photo which is his ultimate treasure. This reminds us of the little boy in the refugee camp whose sole possessions are some clothes, a few paper pads, and a photo of him and his mother. Family photos are a really effective medium for conveying nostalgia. It can still arouse homesickness even if the photos are of other families. In ZodiacKiller-s, the chief protagonists Ben and Tieh-lan seldom talk about their families. However, during their runaway journey, they lodge in a Chinese smuggler's house one night

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and catch glimpses of some photos of Chinese families. The background music of Far Far Away (the song that recurs throughout the film) played by erhu comes up simultaneously. Though the characters do not speak, the melancholic music conveys an intense nostalgic aura of one's homeland.

Home food Food is another important aspect for the displaced. Lap Jun, Woo Viefs Hong Kong pen pal, brings Vietnamese sausage to Woo Viet when they first meet. And she also chooses a Vietnamese style teahouse when she invites Woo to have drinks. Sum Ching tells Woo that her dream is to have her own house and to cook Vietnamese dishes for Woo. It is a common experience that when one is away from home, one especially misses the home dishes. The ethnic identity of Woo and Sum is Chinese, but they do not miss Chinese food because Chinese is only an abstract identity for them. This is what Wang Gungwu suggests that many Chinese in Southeast Asia have double identities—"they identify with their country of adoption while remaining conscious of being Chinese" (198). Woo Viefs buddy, Ah San, will drink only the Chinese rice vrinejiujiang shuangjing, unless it is out of stock. From this we can infer San comes from a place where traditional Chinese culture is still preserved. Food provides an enriching metaphor in Song of the Exile. Aiko is estranged from her household members when she eats her "cold" Japanese cuisine.. Even her little daughter Hueyin is drawn by the delicious Chinese hot pot prepared by her grandparents. Food is a medium to establish affinity. People sitting around a table

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enjoying the same kind of food can build rapport among each other. Food is also used as a thermometer to measure the closeness of relationship in the film. The first thing that thrills Aiko during her homecoming is Japanese food. She orders a full table of home cuisine and tells Hueyin that one can never taste the real flavor in Hong Kong. The homecoming journey also proves to be a trip of reconciliation between mother and daughter. This is expressed through the metaphor of food. The grown up Hueyin now finds the Japanese cuisine very delicious as she savors a Japanese raw early meal in her uncle's house. In the latter part of their stay in Japan, Aiko tells Hueyin of how she yearns for a bowl of hot soup and the delicious Cantonese cuisine. Hueyin can't help laughing secretly as she also takes the positive message of her mother's inclination to her as shown by Alko's fond acknowledgement of the Chinese culture.

Reminiscences of the glorious past There is a saying that: Absence makes the heart grow fonder. When one is away from one's homeland, it is always the good old days that linger in one's mind. When Aiko is in Hong Kong, she often boasts to her second daughter the prosperity of her Japanese family—how her house has a big garden with cherry blossoms and hot springs. During her home visit to Japan, she leads Hueyin to the graveyard of her parents and displays the grandeur of her ancestors to her daughter. She recalls, in a contemptuous attitude, how her father-in-law often mentioned his own ancestry.

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The grandfather shares the typical sentiments of the exiled Chinese intellectuals—a somber regret of the fading of the old golden days. The poem that he teaches little Hueyin during his days in Macau echos such feeling. It was written by Liu Yii-hsi of the Tang Dynasty entitled "Raven Gown Alley": By Vermilion Bird Bridge the wild grass flowers; Down Raven Gown Alley the setting sun lingers. Of old, swallows nested in the halls of the Wangs and Hsiehs; Now they fly into the homes of commoners.8 Through contrastive images of the grandeur and the commonplace, the poem reveals a deep nostalgic mood of the glorious past. The Wangs and Hsiehs were nobility of the Eastern Jin Dynasty while Raven Gown Alley was once a prosperous commercial district where the nobility dwelled. Everything withers in the present and the swallows which once dwelled in the noble house now fly to ordinary peoples' houses. It is most likely that the grandfather draws an analogy between himself and the swallow. Uprooted from the luxuriant foliage of his motherland, he regards his days in Macau as exile and always hopes to going back.

Construction of Home Displaced people are often obsessed by their ideas.of home. This is particularly true for Aiko, the Japanese mother. Her motto "being one family" echoes through the initial part of the film. She insists her daughters should wear dresses.of the same sparkling red color and trim the same hairstyle during her second daughter's wedding banquet. In this way people will know they are of the

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same family. Though deep in her heart she knows that her elder daughter has been estranged from her since she was a small child. Aiko's traumatic past experience of alienation is revealed through various flashbacks. Uprooted from her homeland and made, by her husband, to live with the hostile parents-in-law, Aiko yearns to have her own home—a nuclear family. However little Hueyin refused to live with her parents in Hong Kong and she chose her grandparents instead. This refusal to live under the same roof causes difficulties in subsequent mother and daughter relationship. "Home(s) are also about exclusions; they are about places carved out of closed doors, close borders and screening apparatuses"(George 9). When the grandmother lost her valuables, she complained to her friends that Aiko wore a stony face when being asked about the incident. Her remark was: "How can we belong to one family?" Aiko has always been treated as the outsider. Without a fixed home, Woo Viet enjoys a temporary blissful period in Philippines when he can live with Sum Ching together. But for a refugee, home is dreamland in the far far away. "Homelessness" becomes a permanent state.

Longing for Affiliation As Madan Sarup claims, "people with roots take for granted, while those with no.roots are vividly aware of them" (96). A displaced person is especially anxious to forge support systems. There are three kinds of affiliation, that Hui's displaced characters attempt to gravitate to. What Woo Viet, Sum Ching, Aiko and Ah Kam yearn for is to find a

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partner and get married. The intimate relationship between heterosexual couples is especially precious for illegal immigrants like Woo and Sum. Homeland is no longer their home as they are fully aware of their tragic destiny as refugees all their life. They can only seek for some Chinatown as their transit home and of the utmost importance, is the close relationship with their lover. When Aiko recalls her husband's pleading to her "stay with me forever", she cannot refrain from expressing her emotion of sweet ecstasy. Having lost her supportive community in her homeland, Japan, Aiko seeks to build her nuclear family in Hong Kong. Therefore she wishes to go back to Japan when she discovers she cannot get along with her only remained daughter in Hong Kong. It is the intimate relationship between household members that she treasures the most. For a strong and independent woman like Ah Kam, it seems much to demeaning for her to work for her boyfriend Sam day and night in his Shengzhen karaoke. She is also bound by the feminine mystique that a woman should find a "pier" afterall. In her soliloquy towards the end of the film, we learn that she had intended to follow her boss, Master Tung, had he not died. Thus no matter how tough she is when facing life's hardship, she appears submissive in the matter of marriage. She believes that this is a woman's ultimate "home". Thus home does not denote a fixed place for the above characters. Home is built upon the satisfying relationships among family members. Home is where the loved ones dwell There is a second kind of affiliation that one may wish to adhere to. In Zodiac Killers, Tieh-lan's boyfriend Asano is so grateful for the "care11, of a big

22

brother that he risks his life to kill his big brother's enemy—another gang leader. Without parents and home of his own, he builds his trust on the criminal gang and wishes to establish brotherhood in it. Ben's cousin Ming joins a prestigious triad and wants to be somebody. He makes efforts to earn the gang leader's trust by, for example, marrying the leader's sister. He considers the triad brotherhood as something reliable in this drifting world. In The Story of Woo Viet, there is a beautiful scene shot from a low angle showing the silhouette of Woo Viet and San with the sky ahead. They have just "successfully" killed a targeted Philippine and San joyously throws his bottle of beloved rice wine to Woo. In another scene, the two are seen roaming on the street. San, thoroughly drunk, picks two flowers from a funeral wreath and puts them on Woo's and his own clothes respectively. Though being numb and indifferent as a Chinatown killer for years, San shows a fellow feeling for his compatriot. People who share the same destiny have tighter bonds to each other. Obviously, this is why Woo Viet would treat Lap Jun, his Hong Kong pen pal, as a friend but not a lover. He is grateful to her, but Lap Jun is an outsider in the world of the dispersed. The people who linger in his mind, as he reveals in his letter to Lap Jun, are the parentless child in the Vietnamese camp, some compatriots, and of course, Sum Ching. They are literally people in the same boat (from Vietnam) and share the same homeless experience. This also matches with John Durham Peters' definition of diaspora that it is always a collective experience, as will be discussed later. The last kind of affiliation relates to one's loyalty to one's own country. The

23

grandfather in Song of the Exile was keen to instill patriotic sentiments in his granddaughter even when she was a small child. He is pleased when the girl can recite a Chinese poem fluently. He keeps on telling her not to forget China as her origin.

Homecoming and Disillusionment Homecoming here does not mean the everyday return. In the literature of exile, it usually refers to a noteworthy return after a long absence. "If 'roots' are a conservative myth, then all homesickness is fiction" (George 199). The long-expected return to her homeland turns out to be a disillusionment for Aiko. After their trip to Japan, Hueyin informs us in a voiceover that her mother has become more introspective and even grown much older. It is out of disappointment with the relationship with her daughter in Hong Kong that Aiko yearns for homecoming. As she claims, "the soil is more affectionate than people". But her homeland has become estranged to her after years of absence: her former lover is married; her household members will "relentlessly" sell her house which she treasures so much; her right-wing patriotic brother (whom she was most fond of) rebukes her as an infidel for marrying a Chinese man. She feels alienated in her own homeland. When she and her daughter are on good terms again, she begins to miss her former home in Hong Kong. She makes remarks to this effect to her daughter when they are by the seaside; "the remotest becomes the closest; the closest becomes the remotest". Aiko is also a victim under the glorious banner of nationalism. She suffers

24

in the host country as a member of the national enemy during war time, and going back to her homeland, she is again rejected by a radical patriotic brother. The director further conveys her distrust of nationalism through the grandparents' return to China. Out of patriotism, the grandfather has always hoped to return to China—his home country. Ironically, he was persecuted by Red Guards because he sent a book of Song poetry to his granddaughter. Hui's film ends with Hueyin in Guangzhou, visiting her dying grandfather. He persists in imparting one final word to her: "China still has hope". But the word sounds sarcastically amidst the madness of the Cultural Revolution. The director also uses an unpleasant metaphor of a child with Mongolism biting his grandmother, to symbolize the alienation of the home country. The child is presented as a little monster that will attack even the closest kin. It is a manifestation of the "uncanniness"—being the grandson of the old couples, yet on the other hand untamed like a mad dog. (Unheimlich is the opposite ofheimlich. Heimlich can be used to describe animals, meaning tame, companionable to man.) Homeland has become estranged and uncanny to the grandparents, regardless of their loyalty. Many critics have commented on the explicit relentlessness of the director in conveying the message through this dreadful image.9 The happiest days for the grandparents turn out to be their "exilic" period in Macau. Little Hueyin is much more lovely and agreeable than the grandson in China. For Asano, homecoming is also an uncanny experience.'He. discovers everything has changed; the beach disappears, Big Brother has formed his own team and they shun Asano, the enemy gang wishes to kill him and the police are

25

after him. Life to him is like drifting from one orphanage to another. He is finally betrayed by his beloved Big Brother and killed by his gangsters. Ben's cousin Ming shares the same destiny of being murdered, brutally, by the opposing gangsters. Both Asano and Ming fail to realize that the former enemy has been united with their affiliated triad society for mutual benefit. Triad brotherhood is an illusion only. For illegal immigrants, homecoming often means involuntary repatriation. Hence there is no homecoming for Woo Viet. In his third and last letter to Lap Jun, Woo expresses his longing for a place to settle down, a home perhaps, to end his life of exile. We hear Woo Viet's voice-over in every single letter, but there is a split between the content of the letter and the image of the last scene. The last scene is filled with shocking pathos: Woo Viet is seen rowing a boat carrying the corpse of Sum Ching with him. He then "buries" his lover in the sea, an image reminiscent of the opening scenes of the film—a woman on the refugee boat dumps the body of her dead son in the water. In his first letter to Lap Jun, he talks about his life in the Philippines and his tone still conveys hope. But in that last letter in the film, he chooses to conceal the tragic fact of the death of his compatriot and Sum Ching. The ending has an existential touch—a lonely man drifting in the sea. This is the destiny of the refugee: either death or forlornness. Compared to the other films, Ah Kam seems not to reveal much on the subject of displacement or homeland. Though Ah Kam comes from China, she has no inclination to return to her "homeland". Her going to Shenzhen is prompted by working in her boyfriend's karaoke. And when we have a glimpse of the home

26

country—the place has changed, or deteriorated. People use Mao's revolutionary songs as an item of karaoke entertainment. But Kam is indifferent to all these. She is a representative of the new generation—practical and materialistic, without the burden of nostalgic feelings or patriotism for the homeland. Perhaps this is a state that matches the celebrated realm of rootless liberty.

Dialectics on Displacement As John Durham Peters proposes, concepts of mobility—exile, diaspora, and nomadism—lie at the heart of the Western canon. The meaning of exile comes from the Hebrew Bible, ancient Greece and Christianity. It refers to the first human's painful banishment from one's homeland, the Garden of Eden. Of the three notions: exile, diaspora, and nomadism, exile most explicitly causes yearning for

a home or homeland.

As Hamid Naficy

also agrees—"Exile is

rigidly/relentlessly tied to homeland and to the possibility of return" (3). The term "diaspora" originally refers to the scattering of the Jews from their homeland Palestine. Like exile, diaspora suggests displacement from a center and it may be voluntary or imposed. However, diaspora's emphasis lies on the decentered relationships among the dispersed while exile often associates with a deep sense of agony. Diaspora is always collective while exile may be solitary. Quite-in contrast to both exile and diaspora, nomadism discards the idea of a fixed home or center. For nomads, home is always mobile: being at home everywhere, yet lacking any fixed ground; Peters argues that nomadise

a celebration of rootless liberty as

home is always already there, without any dream of a homeland.10

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The "nomadic" qualities are also praised by the French poststructuralist philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the French psychiatrist Felix Guattari, notably in their collaborative work: A Thousand Plateaus. In their writings, they adapted the word rhizome, which becomes a complex metaphor that contrasts with the "rootedness" of traditional metaphysical systems. Deleuze and Guattari see the rhizome as an alternative to the repressive notions of territoriality concealed in the metaphor of "roots". Consistent with their dismantling of totalizing thought, they welcome the "nomadic" qualities of the schizophrenic, celebrate the free-floating, fragmented subject as a strategy for survival under capitalism. Kristeva also looks upon "cosmopolitanism" as an ideal. She advocates the "puzzle" states, and works towards the disappearance of the notion of foreigners. In an interview, Kristeva said she considered psychoanalysis to be a means of approaching the Other. And instead of searching for a scapegoat in the foreigner, she must try to tame the demons that are in her.11 Hence, the foreignness is the Other of ourselves that is silenced and repressed by consciousness and the fake single identity. Therefore, if we can achieve that kind of mixing up or getting along with foreigners, it is possible that we can jump outside the single national identity. That is the basis on which Kristeva proposes the multi-nationality of people in Stranger to Ourselves. Trinh Minh-ha shares a similar perspective with Kristeva. She believes the marginal status of being can remind oneself of the changeability of life. This will dispel what has become familiar and enables one to look at the world with a passion of wonder. In her article "The World as Foreign Land", she praises the condition of

28

walking on nasterless and owierless land, and demystifies totally the myth of roots.

The Ideology of Displacem eat in Ann Hui's Four Films Historical and Political Forces on Personal Destiny Idward Said 'warns tie tendency of romanticizing the exilic experience that obscures whtat is truly horrible— "that exile is irremediably secular and unbearably historical; that it is produced by human beings for other human beings...and it has torn millions of people from the nourishment of tradition, family and geography?" (Out There 358) Ike ending scene of The Story of Woo Viet is a reiteration of Said's plight of the displaced. The political backdrop provides an Important element for the film. The predicament of the characters links closely with the history at the time. Woo Viet and Sum Cking left Vietnam because the country is at war, and their identities become reftigeses seeking help from other nations. Their displaced condition is pathetic and involuntary. Aiko suffers as a foreigner In an unfamiliar country. The factor of history and politic s also accounts for her suffering. The nationality of Aiko as a Japanese— the national enemy ia the late forties as a result of Sirio-Japanese war—makes her life npuclrnQre difficult Though Ajna. Hui-claims in an interview that she is not interested in politics and her iilnis aje not political,12 the destiny of her protagonists are closely tied to the political arem. Just.like her own life cannot efface the marks of political history.

Song of the Exile is notable for its autobiographical reflection of the director's life. The character Hueyin to a great extent is based on Hui's own story.I3 At the start of the film, we hear the narrative voice of the 25-year-old Hueyin describing her carefree youthful days. She does not bother all those wars fought in Vietnam or Middle East. These are but television news, which are at a distance from her. But the Cultural Revolution occurred in China strikes a string of her heart, not the least that she is Chinese, but her beloved grandparents are in Guangzhou at that time. Her trip to visit her grandparents unveils the turmoil of her national country to her. The estrangement with her Japanese mother also casts shadow on her teen days in Hong Kong. The marriage of her parents was a historical coincidence contributed by the Sino-Japanese War. Ongoing history and politics thus inevitably affect the personal life.

Perplexity on Roots and Belonging The subject matter of Hui's films often mirrors the political climate of the time, and many films reveal, consciously or unconsciously, the director's own search for identity and her perplexity on the political circumstances. In Song of the Exile y Hui has demystified the idealized notion of "home" and "homeland" completely. Series of paradoxes are juxtaposed: closeness and remoteness; homeland and home; feeling at., home and alienation; hope and disillusion. The disillusionment of Aiko and Grandfather on their return home renders the clinging to one's original roots as ironic as well as pathetic. Concepts like "national identity" and "cultural Identity" are political and psychological

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constructs after all Aiko lives like the typical Hong Kong person even though she bears the Japanese nationality. She loves Cantonese food and would like the whole family wearing red during her daughter's wedding banquet. On the other hand, Hueyin does not attach much importance to the Chinese habits and customs though she is a Chinese national. She regards her mother's fuss over the wedding banquet as outdated. When she is in London, she will recommend Chinese cuisine for her Caucasian classmates while she herself enjoys a sandwich lunch.

Recurrent motifs Common motifs appear in the films, showing the director's perspective and sentiment on conditions of displacement. The home country is often known as motherland or fatherland. In a direct analogy, the loss of one's parents is similar to the phenomenon of losing one's home country. There are many "parentless" characters in Hui's films on displacement. The little boy who would like to hang on to Woo Viet has lost his mother. Though the film has not mentioned the death of Woo Viet and Sum Ching's parents, they may possibly have died during the war. Asano is an orphan and Kam's parents are both dead. After Master Tung was murdered, his son Ah Long also became an orphan. Aiko's parents are dead. Though little Hueyin has father and mother, they are estranged from her due to historical and human circumstances as discussed before. In my View, the absence'of the characters' parents is not merely coincidence, it is a connotation of the loss of origin. Concerning the fact that Tieh-lan ancTKam seldom talk of their home

31

country, Lo Wai-luk suggests that motherland to Kam and Tieh-lan has been so disappointing that they are reluctant to talk about it. Just as when Kam returns to Shenzhen only to discover the city stinks with moneymaking as the priority. Lo claims they are under a state of "psychological aphasia". In his analogy of motherland as one's mother, he asserts, "When psychologically we have lost our mother, how can we tell of her existence?" (70) Besides, Sea imagery is used recurrently in the four films. Very often we see the image of people on a boat or ship. Both the opening and ending scenes of The Story of Woo Viet and Zodiac Killers show the characters sitting on a boat. Hueyin and her parents go to Hong Kong by ship. Kam and Ah Long walk by the seashore towards the end of the filmu The metaphor conveys the somber atmosphere of uncertainty of prospect and rootlessness. People long for anchoring when they have been floating on the sea for a long period. It seems most tragic for those preoccupied with notions of roots then, when people cannot have their lives terminated in their own homeland. Chang-chih, the Chinese overseas student in Japan, is desperate to find his girlfriend with whom he has lost contact. He makes a sad remark: even if the woman was dead, at least he could carry her ashes back to their homeland. There is a Chinese idiom: ke si yi xiang, literally means dying in a foreign land, which denotes such pathos. In Huf s films, many displaced characters such as Sum Ching, San, Tieh-lan, Mei-mei and Ming, die in strange lands. Hui uses flower imagery to foreshadow the death of San and Tieh-lan. The flowers that San wear on Woo's and his own clothes are from a funeral wreath. Similarly, the white roses that Tieh-lan holds as a token to meet the

.32

gangsters are gathered from a graveyard. All in all, the metaphors and recurrent motifs in most of the films depict a gloomy and helpless picture of the displaced. The perspective is pessimistic, as it conveys the force of uncertain destiny which befalls human beings.

The China Factor In expressing their own identity, the New-Wave directors had to tackle the specific history of Hong Kong. Tradition and culture provided Hong Kong with the link with China and its history. "The China Factor", as claimed by Li Cheuk-to? is always present in the Hong Kong cinema.

The Chinese Diaspora The Chinese diaspora strikes its overtones in these films of Hui. The Story of Woo Viet exemplifies the predicament of the Chinese people's diasporic state. It is not the story of Woo Viet alone, it is also the story of other Chinese who have to flee their homeland to other places of the world. There is a scene when Woo Viet and Sum Ching roaming on a street in Kowloon at night encounter a pair of Chinese illegal immigrants who are escaping from the police. This small anecdote is a foretelling of their future—they have to run for their life too, without a fixed home. Apart from the illegal aspect of the Chinese migrants (as in many cases the illegal migrants might become permanent nationals after years of settlement), Chinese migration, broadly, refers to "the departure from Chinese soil for the purpose of living and working abroad'9 (Wang 3). There are also times when people

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have to flee from war, famine and oppression. Wang Gungwu further notes, there is an issue of intent (though not within his realm of study): whether the migrants meant to settle permanently abroad or whether eventually they intended to return to their homeland. Lynn Pan concludes a common pattern of the Chinese diaspora, in Sons of the Yellow Emperor, on the complex of homecoming of overseas Chinese. Why must they return to this cruel, tormented, corrupt, hopeless place as though they still needed it? ... And yet had China meant nothing to them, any other place thereafter would have meant less, and they would carry no pole within themselves, and they would not even guess what they had missed ... Deep in their hearts they know that they love China best when they live well away from the place. ( 379) The grandfather in Song of the Exile experiences great torments when he returns to his home country, but he still urges his descendants not to lose hope. This steadfast belief in one's roots regardless of conditions is common among the older Chinese intellectuals. Yet for the young people in Zodiac Killers who go to Japan for study or to earn a living, they are reluctant to go back even though they miss the homeland. Perhaps this mentality echoes Pan's saying: Deep in their hearts they know that they love China best when they live well away from the place.

Chinatown The mention of Chinatown in The Story of Woo Viet also touches one aspect of the Chinese diaspora. The origin of Chinatowns was a result of the segregation

34:

policy of the white Americans towards the Chinese coolies working for them. The early Chinese immigrants in the foreign country suffered severe discrimination and exploitation. They had to gather together to build their own ethnic cultural space for survival sake, both physically and psychologically.u Thus Chinatown signifies the tragic history of the overseas Chinese. As a matter of fact, Chinatown is also a marginalized community attached to the host country. Chinatown shares the same metaphor of transience and indeterminacy with the refugee camp in The Story of Woo Viet. To an illegal immigrant like Woo Viet, the two bear an even closer proximity. The Big Brother warns Woo that his life will be endangered once he leaves Chinatown. Therefore he is stuck in that small area, just like he is confined in the Vitnamese refugee camp with restricted freedom in Hong Kong. So it is true when Woo Viet writes in a letter, that his situation is the same in every Chinatown. But even San, who is not an illegal immigrant, he expresses every Chinatown to him is also the same. He "trapped**5 himself, deliberately, in the small area. But he is not happy with his life, from the fact that he often gets drunk. He is also one of those overseas Chinese who is reluctant to return home. Thus Chinatown becomes a hiding place for those who want to escape their original homeland yet simultaneously wish to retain a certain degree of "Chineseness", Chinatown is their home away from home.

The in-betweenness of Hong Kong There is a close-up shot of the resume of Hueyin in the film. Like many Hong Kong people, the item on place of birth—Hong Kong, is not the same, as the

35

nationality—British. After 1997, many of the locally bom have their nationality shifted from British to Chinese. As Rey Chow claims, Hong Kong has been caught between two dominant cultures—British colonial and Chinese Communist. This marginalized position is not self-chosen but is "constructed by history" (21). Lynn Pan also describes Hong Kong as a "classic immigrant city" and "junction between diaspora and homeland" (Sons 363, 373). There is a character in The Story of Woo Viet who signifies this in-between position. The Hong Kong social worker Lap Jun has affection for Woo Viet. She provides him with material needs and monetary support but is hesitant to express her love since she is well aware that Woo and she belong to different world. Just as Hong Kong is a transit place for Woo, whose target domicile is America; Woo would choose his exilic partner Sum Ching rather than the Hong Kong woman Lap Jun. The economic prosperity of Hong Kong enables her to provide material support for the mainland in times of need. Being in the role of overseas Chinese before the handover, however, Hong Kong is also accused of having an "impure" position, by not being "Chinese" enough. Talking about a "persistent and pernicious form of centrism", (26) Rey Chow reflects that many contemporaries on the Chinese mainland have viewed Hong Kong people as "cultural bastards" and not "authentically" Chinese. It is those people who are farther away from the roots who feel less the pain of uprootedriess. In Zodiac Killers, among the Chinese characters who dwell.in. Japan, Ben, the Hong Kong Chinese,, appears to be the most carefree. In contrast Ms buddy Chang-dub cannot free himself from nostalgic thoughts of homeland. Even

36.

though Tieh-lan seldom reveals her past history, she has expressed to Ben that she misses her mother and how she envied the nagging of Ben's mother. If we take "mother" as a metaphor of motherland, it may imply that Tieh-lan longs for her home country too.

Nomadic Existence: A Distant Dream? It seems that the mentality of Ben, Tieh-lan and Kam differs somewhat from the other displaced characters like Aiko or Woo Viet, who are always burdened with their tragic history and a sense of loss. The three youngsters appear to be accustomed or even indifferent to the condition of staying away from homeland and family. Zodiac Killers begins and ends in scenes showing the vastness of the sea. The chief protagonist Ben is seen on a boat, looking perplexed and agitated. But his sorrow is not that of displaced people, he is heartbroken mostly due to the tragic death of Tieh-lan. His homecoming at the end is in fact involuntary because the gangsters chase him. He enjoys his "nomadic" state in Japan as an overseas student. The only thing that bothers him is his unrequited first love. Ben's life is not burdened with any history or political turmoil, he can live as freely as he likes. This may manifest the original "rootless" status of Hong Kong people as well. Compared to the mainlanders, they are more easily accustomed to a "displaced" condition due to being less bound by the myth of roots. The two young Chinese women Tieh-lan-and Kam have never mentioned their native country explicitly. Only on one occasion did Tieh-lan tell Asanb, when

37

they are by the shore, that her homeland is beyond the ocean. Tieh-ian's yearning for homeland is expressed in an ambiguous manner. But for Kam, we could not detect a trace of her longing for homeland. Even when she displays her childhood photos to Sam, she states everything in a matter-of-fact attitude: she was sent to the martial arts school because she was from a poor family, and her parents wrere both dead. That is all we know about her "origin". Apart from Lo Wai-luk's reading that the two women are under a state of psychological aphasia, is this also similar to the "nomadic" condition so celebrated by Deleuze and the deconstructionlsts? Actually, the film Ah Kam does not reveal much about the elements of displacement. One possible factor is that Hong Kong Is afterall a predominantly Chinese society, Kam can adapt to the environment without much difficulty; unlike Aiko, who has to face a completely estranged society, culture and language. Sea imagery is used recurrently in the films, but it carries the somber atmosphere of perplexity of prospect, rather than a state of free-floatingness as suggested by Deleuze and Guattari. Can the protagonists transcend their tragic experience to achieve the "free-floating" state of nomadic existence? Why can't a person be contented with being at home everywhere without any fixed ground? Perhaps, nomadism is only an idealistic philosophical visualization. For genuinely homeless people, the trauma of pain and loss is too deep to recover. Therefore one thing is certain, the nomadic status is only possible for those who are not oppressed by political turmoil and those who are free from obsession of homeland.

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Women in Displacement As women are often regarded as the Other under the patriarchal system, it is possible that womankind in a displaced position is suffering a double marginalization. Though a female filmmaker with a number of her films casting women as the main characters, Ann Hui always claims that she is not a feminist. As we investigate the displaced female characters in Hui's films, wre actually discover that most of them are still marginalized under the patriarchy, and they seldom raise a question, not to mention any gesture, of defiance or resistance. They submit silently to the patriarchal oppression imposed on them. Sum Ching, Woo Viet's partner in exile, is a beautiful and simple-minded woman. Powerless and rootless, the value of a woman like Sum Ching in the eyes of the gangsters lies solely in her body and she is sold as a prostitute in the Philippines Chinatown. In Zodiac Killers, young women overseas share a similar destiny to Sum Ching if they want to make a living. Tieh-lan works as a bargirl in a night club and she has to entertain troublesome male guests. The girl friend with whom Changchih has lost contact when they are in Japan becomes a degraded actress in pornographic films. Tieh-lan*s friend Mei-mei has to form an attachment with a Japanese guy even though he is a philanderer. These are the only ways out for young women in displaced positions in Hui's films. Besides, the portrayal of the female characters is rather passive, one-dimensional and homogeneous compared to the male protagonists. Sum Ching is one of the examples, her role in the film is Woo Viet's woman. Her tragic death does not evoke much pity for her own sake,

39

rather, the audience will tend to sympathize with Woo Viet's loss of his companion. Does the director intend to show the harsh reality for women in a maledominant society? Perhaps Hui just follows the mainstream in delineation of the female characters in genre films. The Story of Woo Viet and Zodiac Killers pertains to crime films—a genre which usually centers on the heroic action of males. As a woman director, Ann proves her capability to shoot presumably male-dominated films, yet she has to "sacrifice" the heterogeneous development of the female characters when following the rules. In this way, women are placed in subordinate roles in most of Hui's action films. As for Aiko, her sense of well-being builds on the satisfaction of marital love and a blissful family. Traditional marriage is still subsumed under patriarchy, for it is always the woman who has to leave her maiden home to join the husband's family. Aiko's husband is a translator during wartime. If it were he who went to Japan with Aiko, at least he would not have to suffer from the alienation of an unfamiliar language. But it is the rule of the patriarchal marriage system, Aiko suffers from her position of dual marginality. She takes a submissive role under the patriarchal family in her adopted homeland. She has to cater for trivial domestic chores in the house, but often encounters ceaseless rumors and criticism because of her otherness. When the mother-in-law loses her valuables, she is the first suspect of the theft. The doting grandparents also account for the growing distance between Aiko and her daughter. In his •'article "The Squint-eyed Gaze'V Stephen Teo argues that the grandfather is "a patriarch who submits to the greater patriarchy of the Stale" (92),

40

Since tradition also means compliance to the father, it is thus another name for the patriarchy. 'The patriarchy assumes many disguises. One is history7. Another is the State" (92). In this way Aiko is a victim of the patriarchy, manifests in the traditional family and patriotism for the state. Ah Kam emerges as an independent new woman in various aspects. She goes to Hong Kong alone to follow a profession as stunt actress. She can earn her own living in the masculine film industry without selling her own femininity. But conversely, she has to act tough, show her endurance of physical pain, and never yield under harsh requirement, so that she is approved of, and accepted by the crew of stuntmen. The film Ah Kam is divided into three parts, each emphasizing the three males—Master Tung, Sam and Ah Long—who influence or deveope the stuntwoman's life. The second man Sam is Kam's wooer. Kam accepts his offer hastily because she believes that a woman should ultimately find a "pier", and should grasp the nettle because time flies. It is not honorable to be an "iron virgin", ("iron" is a metaphor of her job as stuntwoman). Eventually the marriage with Sam ends in disillusionment. The arrangement of the film makes one feel that the three males are Ah Kam's "significant others". They are the archetypes of father, husband and son respectively in a patriarchal world. This is also Ah Kam's world, though she is tough and independent to make her way in life, she is still trapped in the patriarchal ideology. In this respect, I have a different reading to the film critic Lo Wai Luk. He regards the film as a revelation of humaiiitarianism--~ctThe film portrays a woman who becomes cmothef of a child not related to her by blood". He also considers

41

"Ah Kam is a new woman who goes too far ahead of her times"(7G). I do not deny the humanistic touch that is so consistent in most of Ann Hui's films, but in this context, I find the patriarchal overtone is somewhat obvious. Song of the Exile is notable for its autobiographical reflection of the director's own life. The character Hueyin, to a great extent, is based on Hui's own story. Compared to other female characters in the three films chosen, Hueyin is the only one that can be free from the bondage of patriarchal control Though growing up under the nurture of her grandparents, who stand as an obstacle to her intimacy with her mother, she still has the chance to reconcile, to understand. The freedom to travel in different cultural spaces becomes her asset, which enriches her scope of life and understanding of people and their obsession. She is the real enlightened woman who does not have to look upon the males as pillars of her life. It seems that her intellectual background enables her to have more choices than only being housewife and/or prostitute. Compared with her mother, Hueyin can recover from her experience of estrangement more successfully. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the fact that Aiko's trauma is influenced by history and politics. After all she is no longer a youngster and the imprint of agony is deeper in her life.

Conclusion Human history is constructed on-the basis of numerous binarisms and concepts of inclusion and exclusion; there is no place for the in-betweens: one can't be an insider and outsider at the same time. The person at a marginal position is the Other in every situation. This is -also. the.plight of the displaced.

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The ideological transcendence as suggested by bell hooks, Kristeva, Deleuze and others requires the casting away of past burdens, as well as a selfconscious deconstruction of myths like home, homeland and nationalism. This ability to transcend one's obsession is not obvious in Ann Hui's characters. Moreover, it is almost impossible for those whose destiny is determined by the wheels of history. In spite of that, the celebration of rootless liberty tends to overgeneralize the specific circumstance of the displacment experiences. Diaspora, likewise, has evolved into a postmodern fashionable term that represents multiculture, hybridity and the like, and these now become positive attributes. Still, in Hui's films, the ghost of the China factor stands against the buoyant, weightless postmodern spirit. As a director of films probing human situations in different political and cultural space, Hui's merits lie in her concern for the marginalized and their predicament. Her question concerns about the legitimacy of dominant ideology are also thought provoking. However, this consciousness is not manifest on the gender issue. Most of her female characters, except for the intellectual, are still submissive under patriarchy with no defiance against oppression. Perhaps, as she commented during an interview: "my stories are about survival'7, b this marks her dimension of concern over the human arena as more on the practical position than on the idealistic projection.

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43

* '

* . .

Notes 1

Jacques Lacan, "The Subject and the Other: Alienation," The Four Fundamental

Concepts of Psycho-analysis, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1978)206. 2

John Champagne, The Ethics of Marginality: A New Approach to Gay Studies,

(Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1995) xxvi. 3

Champagne xxv.

4

Anna Smith, Julia Kristeva: Readings of Exile and Estrangement, (New York: St.

Martin P, 1996)24. 5

For these concepts, see Rosemary Marangoly George, The Politics of Home:

Postcolonial Relocations and Twentieth-Century Fiction, 9. 6

George 6

7

For details, see Sigmund Freud, "The 'Uncanny'." On Creativity and The

Unconscious., 122-161. 8

Chinese original of Lu Yii-hsi's (8HHII) poem:



English Translated by Pa Hsien-yung and Patia Yasin, Taipei People (Chinese-English Bilingual Edition). 9

See, for example, Lo Wai Luk's comments in Ann Hui, Hid on Hui, 144.

10

The concepts of exile, diaspora and nomadism in this section are mostly drawn

from John Durham Peters, "Exile, Nomadism, and Diaspora: The Stakes of Mobility in the Western Canon," Home, Exile, Homeland: Film, Media, and the Politics of Place, 17-

41.

'. " . •' ..; •'- ' . • ' . : . . - - . ' • : • • . • 11

:

; •

' ' . . •" - .

. '

. .'. • "

Julia Kristeva, Mia Kristeva, Interviews, ed. Ross Mitchell Guberman, (New

York: Columbia UP, 1996) 35,

12

Li Cheuk-to, "Survival is the most important: Interview with Ann Hui." Film

Weekly, 23 (Sept. 1982): 22. b

See As Time Goes By (1997), a short film directed by Ann Hui (co-directed with

Vincent Chui) that provides valuable information on her early life. 14

Marie-Paule Ha, "Cultural Identities in The Chinese Diaspora." Mots Pluriels 1

(1998): 13pp. 15 July 200 . 15

Li Cheuk-to, "Survival is the most important: Interview with Ann Hui," Film

Weekly, 23 (Sept. 1982): 22.

Bibliography Aciman, Andre, ed. Letters of Transit: Reflections on Exile, Identity, Language and Loss. New York Public Library, 1999. Bhabha, Homi K. "Preface: Arrivals and Departures." Home, Exile, Homeland: Film, Media, and the Politics of Place. Ed. Hamid Naficy. New York: Routledge, 1999. Champagne, John. The Ethics ofMarginality: A New Approach to Gay Studies. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1995. Childers, Joseph and Gary Hentzi, eds. The Columbia Dictionary of Modem Literary and Cultural Criticism. New York: Columbia UP, 1995. Chow, Key. Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP5 1993. de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1993. Deleuze, Gilles. "Nomad Thought." The New Nietzsche: Contemporary Styles of Interpretation. Ed. David B. Allison. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1977. 142-

149. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: U of Minnisota Press, 1987. Erens, Patricia Brett. The Film Work of Ann Hui. Unpublished Manuscript, 2000. Ferguson, Russell, et al. eds..Out There: Marginal ization and Contemporary Cultures. New York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art and MIT Press, 1990. Freud, Sigmund. "The 'Uncanny'." On Creativity and The Unconscious. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1958,122-161. George, Rosemary Marangoly, The Politics &fHome:Postcolonial Relocations and Twentieth-Century:Ffc//o». New Yoflc; Cambridge UP, 1996,

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Ha, Marie-Paule. "Cultural Identities In The Chinese Diaspora." Mots Pturielsl (1998): 13 pp. 15 Inly 7000
hooks, bell. "Marginality as Site of Resistence." Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures. Ed. Russell Ferguson, et al. New York: The NewMuseum of Contemporary Art and MIT Press, 1990. 341-343. Hui, Ann. Hui on Hui. Ed. Kwong Po Wai. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Arts Development Council, 1998. (In Chinese) Kristeva, Julia. Julia Kristeva, Interviews. Ed. Ross Mitchell Guberman. New York: Columbia UP, 1996. . Nations without Nationalism. Trans, Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia UP,

1993. . Strangers to Ourselves. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia UP, 1991. Lacan, Jacques. "The Subject and the Other: Alienation. " The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1978.203-215. Li, Cheuk-to. "Introduction." The China Factor in Hong Kong Cinema (The 14th Hong Kong International Film Festival). Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1990. . "Survival is the most important: Interview with Ann Hui." Film Weekly, 23 (Sept. 1982): 19-23. (In Chinese) Lo, Wai-luk. "A Child without a Mother, An Adult without a Motherland: A Study of Ann Hui's Films." Hong Kong New Wave: Twenty Years After (The 23rd Hong Kong International Film Festival). Hong Kong: Provisional Urban Council, 1999. 65-71.'" Ma, Ming-yuen S. "Between The Nomad & The Exile: Some Thoughts on To Liv(e).'3 Evans Chan's To Liv(e): Screenplay and Essays. Ed. Wong Tai-wai. Hong Kong: U of Hong Kong, Dept of Comparative Literature, 1996. 117-126. Naficy, Hamid, ed. Home, Exile, Homeland; Film, mdia, and the Politics of Placemen York: Routledge, 1999.

Pa Hsien-yung. Taipei People (Chinese-English Bilingual Edition). Ed. George Kao. Hong Kong: The Chinese UP, 2000. Pan, Lynn. "Home Truths." Far Eastern Economic Review (5 April 1990): 32. . Sons of the Yellow Empire. New York: Kodansha International, 1994. Peters, John Durham. "Exile, Nomadism, and Diaspora: The Stakes of Mobility in the Western Canon." Home, Exile, Homeland: Film, Media, and the Politics of Place. Ed. HamidNaficy. New York: Routledge, 1999. 17-41 Pilardi, Jo-Ann. Simone de Beatwoir Writing the Self. London: Greenwood Press, 1999. Robertson, George. "As the World Turns: Introduction." Travellers' Tales: Narratives of Home and Displacement. Ed. George Robertson. London: Routledge, 1994. Rushdie, Salmon. Imaginary Homelands. London: Granta Books, 1991. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1978. . "Reflections on Exile." Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures. Ed. Russell Ferguson, et al. New York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art and MIT Press, 1990. 357-366. Sarup, Madan. "Home and Identity." Travellers' Tales: Narratives of Home and Displacement. Ed. George Robertson. London: Routledge, 1994. 93-104. Smith, Anna. Julia Kristeva: Readings of Exile and Estrangement. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. Teo, Stephen. "The Squint-eyed Gaze" The China Factor in Hong Kong Cinema (The 14th Hong Kong International Film Festival). Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1990. 8694

Trinh, T. Minh-ha. "The World as Foreign Land." When the Moon mixes Red: Representation, Gender and Cultural Politics, New York: Routledge, 1991. 185'--.":

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Wang, Gungwu. China and the Chinese Overseas. Singapore: Times Academic Press.

1991.

Ann Hui's Filmography

(191'9) The Secret (1980) The Spooky Bunch (1981) The Story of Woo Viet (1982) Boat People ##•& ;$ (1984) Love in a Fallen City -ffiJ&^S (1987) TTze Romance of Book and Sword (1987) Princess Fragrance (19W) Starry is the Night (1990) Song o/f/ze £x//e (1991) My American Grandson (1991) Zodiac Killers (1995) Summer Snow (1996) ^4/z Kam: The Story of a Stuntwoman P° (1997) Eighteen Springs $-$.& (1997) As Time Goes By -^3^(1999) Ordinary Heroes -ff g,t