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Rethinking Transnational Chinese Cinemas: the Amoy-Dialect Film

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Rethinking Transnational Chinese Cinemas: the Amoy-Dialect Film Rethinking Transnational Chinese Cinemas The Amoy-dialect film industry emerged in the 1950s, producing cheap, b-grade films in Hong Kong for direct export to the theatres of Manila, southern Taiwan and Singapore. Films made in Amoy dialect – a dialect of Chinese – reflected a particular period in the history of the Chinese diaspora, and have been little studied due to their ambiguous place within the wider realm of Chinese and Asian film history. This book represents the first full length, critical study of the origin, significant rise and rapid decline of the Amoy-dialect film industry. Rather than examining the industry for its own sake, however, this book focuses on its broader cultural, political and economic significance in the region. It questions many of the assumptions currently made about the ‘recentness’ of transnationalism in Chinese cultural production, particularly when addressing Chinese cinema in the Cold War years, as well as the prominence given to ‘the nation’ and ‘transnationalism’ in studies of Chinese cinemas and of the Chinese diaspora. By examining a cinema that did not fit many of the scholarly models of ‘transnationalism’, that was not grounded in any particular national tradition of film-making and that was largely unconcerned with ‘nation- building’ in post-war South East Asia, this book challenges the ways in which the history of Chinese cinemas has been studied in the recent past. Jeremy E. Taylor is a lecturer in Chinese Studies at the School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield, UK. Media, culture and social change in Asia Series editor: Stephanie Hemelryk Donald RMIT University, Melbourne Editorial Board: Devleena Ghosh, University of Technology, Sydney Yingjie Guo, University of Technology, Sydney K.P. Jayasankar, Unit for Media and Communications, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Bombay Vera Mackie, University of Melbourne Anjali Monteiro, Unit for Media and Communications, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Bombay Laikwan Pang, Chinese University of Hong Kong Gary Rawnsley, University of Leeds Ming-yeh Rawnsley, University of Leeds Adrian Vickers, University of Sydney Jing Wang, MIT The aim of this series is to publish original, high-quality work by both new and established scholars in the West and the East, on all aspects of media, culture and social change in Asia. 1 Television Across Asia 5 Media and the Chinese Television industries, Diaspora programme formats and Community, communications globalisation and commerce Edited by Albert Moran and Edited by Wanning Sun Michael Keane 6 Hong Kong Film, Hollywood 2 Journalism and Democracy in and the New Global Cinema Asia No film is an island Edited by Angela Romano and Edited by Gina Marchetti and Michael Bromley Tan See Kam 3 Cultural Control and 7 Media in Hong Kong Globalization in Asia Press freedom and political Copyright, piracy and cinema change 1967–2005 Laikwan Pang Carol P. Lai 4 Conflict, Terrorism and the 8 Chinese Documentaries Media in Asia From dogma to polyphony Edited by Benjamin Cole Yingchi Chu 9 Japanese Popular Music 19 Youth, Society and Mobile Culture, authenticity and power Media in Asia Carolyn S. Stevens Edited by Stephanie Hemelryk 10 The Origins of the Modern Donald, Theresa Dirndorfer Chinese Press Anderson and Damien Spry The influence of the Protestant 20 The Media, Cultural Control missionary press in late Qing and Government in Singapore China Terence Lee Xiantao Zhang 21 Politics and the Media in 11 Created in China Twenty-First Century The great new leap forward Indonesia Michael Keane Decade of democracy 12 Political Regimes and the Edited by Krishna Sen and Media in Asia David T. Hill Edited by Krishna Sen and 22 Media, Social Mobilization Terence Lee and Mass Protests in 13 Television in Post-reform Post-colonial Hong Kong China The power of a critical event Serial dramas, Confucian Francis L.F. Lee and leadership and the global Joseph M. Chan television market 23 HIV/AIDS, Health and the Ying Zhu Media in China 14 Tamil Cinema Imagined immunity through The cultural politics of India’s racialized disease other film industry Johanna Hood Edited by Selvaraj Velayutham 24 Islam and Popular Culture in 15 Popular Culture in Indonesia Indonesia and Malaysia Fluid identities in post- Edited by Andrew N. Weintraub authoritarian politics Edited by Ariel Heryanto 25 Online Society in China Creating, celebrating and 16 Television in India instrumentalising the online Satellites, politics and cultural carnival change Edited by David Kurt Herold Edited by Nalin Mehta and Peter Marolt 17 Media and Cultural 26 Rethinking Transnational Transformation in China Chinese Cinemas Haiqing Yu The Amoy-dialect film industry 18 Global Chinese Cinema in Cold War Asia The culture and politics of Hero Jeremy E. Taylor Edited by Gary D. Rawnsley and Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley Rethinking Transnational Chinese Cinemas The Amoy-dialect film industry in Cold War Asia Jeremy E. Taylor This edition published 2011 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2011 Jeremy E. Taylor The right of the Author to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Taylor, Jeremy E., 1973– Rethinking transnational Chinese cinemas: the Amoy-dialect film industry in cold war Asia/Jeremy E. Taylor. p. cm. – (Media, culture and social change in Asia) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Motion pictures, Chinese – China – Hong Kong. 2. Motion pictures, Chinese – Southeast Asia. 3. Motion picture industry – China – Hong Kong – History – 20th century. 4. Motion picture industry – Southeast Asia – History – 20th century. I. Title. PN1993.5.C4T395 2011 384′.8095125 – dc22 2010047760 ISBN: 978–0–415–49355–0 (hbk) ISBN: 978–1–003–06120–5 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon For Sylvia Contents List of figures xi Note on romanisation, names and languages xii Preface xiv Acknowledgements xvii List of abbreviations xix 1 Rethinking transnationalism 1 2 Defining Amoy-dialect cinema 18 3 Origins and development 32 4 The shaping of a cinema 50 5 The ‘new Amoy-dialect films’ 68 6 A Cold War industry 94 7 The end of Amoy-dialect cinema 110 8 Conclusion 122 Glossary 127 Notes 135 Bibliography 147 Index 165 Figures 1.1 The former Confucius Theater in Manila – now the site of a restaurant 16 2.1 Singapore-based cabaret singer Chong Sit Fong prior to her entry into the world of Amoy-dialect cinema (c. mid-1950s) 29 3.1 Ongpin Street in Manila Chinatown, 1949 36 3.2 Screen logo for the company Hua Xia 37 3.3 Members of ‘the Amoy-dialect film family’, including Oh Tong, Seow Kuen, Huang Ying and Li Ming 41 3.4 Republican Xiamen – the ‘spiritual home’ of the industry – in the 1930s 45 4.1 Seow Kuen performing Nanyin in Cailou pei (Match of the Decorated Tower) (n.d.) 53 4.2 Handbill for the film Honglou meng (Hong Lui Mong)63 4.3 Lim Eng Eng – one half of the Lim Sisters – in 1955 65 5.1 Siu Yim Chao and Wong Ching-ho in Fanke shen haiwai xun fu (A Woman Searches for her Husband) (1958) 70 5.2 Ting Lan in an undated advert 73 5.3 King’s Theatre, Singapore in 1957 76 5.4 Still from Qian, qian, qian (Money, Money, Money) (1959) featuring Bai Lan, Kwan Sing Ngee and Wong Ching-ho 77 5.5 The Shaw production Luan feng he ming (Bill and Koo), starring Chang Hsiao-fung 78 5.6 The Hong Kong streetscape as featured in Qian, qian, qian (Money, Money, Money) (1959) 84 6.1 The 1955 zhushou laojun delegation: to the right of Chiang Kai-shek stands Jiang Fan; Huang Ying stands fourth from left 98 6.2 Chong Sit Fong arriving at Taipei airport, 1960 107 Note on romanisation, names and languages It is perhaps fitting, at the start of a book about a film industry that took its name from the dialect in which its films were made, that I define what is meant by the term ‘Amoy dialect’. ‘Amoy’ is an archaic English name for the Chinese city of Xiamen, located on the coast of southern Fujian. Up until the 1960s, however, the English term ‘Amoy-dialect’ was used widely through- out Asia to refer to the dialect which was spoken not only in that city, but throughout most of southern Fujian and by Chinese emigrants from this region (and their descendants) in other parts of Asia. This dialect is now more commonly referred to in Anglophone South East Asia as ‘Hokkien’, and in China as ‘southern Min’ (or ‘Minnanyu’). At the time of the Amoy-dialect film industry’s existence, the dialect was spoken by almost four million people in South East Asia and about six million people in Taiwan. In this book, although I occasionally employ the word ‘Hokkien’, I have retained the phrase ‘Amoy-dialect’ (‘Xiayu’ in Mandarin), for this is precisely how this industry defined itself in the 1950s, in both Chinese and English.
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