RESI(G)NIFYING THE CHINESE AND FILIPINO IN CINEMATIC NARRATIVES

CAROLINE S. HAU

Since 2002, six major, award-winning, and commercially successful films that prominently feature the ethnic Chinese have been released in the . The critical and commercial success of Regal Entertainment’s Mano Po spawned four unrelated sequels. In all, the five films bagged a total of thirty-six local awards.1 (2003) garnered a total of eleven local and international awards and took in P65 million at the local box office, roughly the same amount as the first Mano Po’s domestic gross.2 Regal Entertainment producer “Mother” described Mano Po as a “dream project”, born out of her desire to pay tribute to her parents by recasting their romance into an exemplary Chinese-Filipino family saga. Spanning some forty years, this “rags to riches” epic focuses on the three daughters of a Chinese immigrant who married a Filipina, settled down in the Philippines, and founded a copra empire that eventually expanded into a conglomerate. 3 The bonds of family and sisterhood are tested and strengthened following the kidnapping and rescue of two of the daughters. More than a simple case of translating a Chinese-Filipino producer’s life experiences and observations into movies about the Chinese in the Philippines, the Mano Po series have been credited with “cement[ing the Filipinos’] love affair with Asia”.4 Mano Po heralded the “Asian renaissance in Philippine pop culture”: a mere five months after its release, the Taiwanese TV drama Liu Xing Hua

1 Joel C. Lamangan, Mano Po, California: Regal Entertainment, 2002. 2 Mark Meily, Crying Ladies, Makati City: Unitel Pictures, 2003. 3 Juaniyo Y. Arcellana, “We Have to Know Everything”, Starweek, 22 December 2002, 10. 4 Vincent Cabreza, “Filipino moviegoers ‘Asianized’, notes screenwriter”, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 21 Dec 2004, 1. 128 Caroline S. Hau

Yuan (Meteor Garden), based on the Japanese comic (manga) by Kamio Yoko (1992-2003), sparked a “chinovela” (“Chinese telenovela”) craze centering on the drama’s male stars, all members of the Taiwanese pop band F4 (Flower Four).5 While the advent of the heavily promoted chinovelas is said to have contributed to Asianizing Filipino moviegoers, this Asianization is largely mediated by the global success of Asian culture industries. 6 Philippine cinema has traditionally taken its cues from industrial behemoth Hollywood’s nod of recognition and approval. But the astounding popularity of F4 and, subsequently, Korean dramas in China, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia also throws light on the gathering weight and force of the regional circulation and consumption of Asian cultural products, and the regional cultural connections thus forged. This phenomenon underscores the confluence of national, regional, and global forces and circuits of cultural commodity production, marketing, and circulation in contributing to the success of films like Mano Po and Crying Ladies. More crucially, the fact that cultural products encode meaning demands serious contemplation. What kinds of realities, but also what kinds of dreams, wishes, and fantasies do films like Mano Po and Crying Ladies speak to or speak of? What forms of association and identification do they invite and orchestrate? How much are these meanings bound up with being Chinese, and in specific representations of the Chinese who figure as principal subjects in and of these films? What are the conditions of visibility (and perhaps invisibility) that have enabled the Chinese to emerge as cinematic subjects of representation? Who are these “Chinese”? What is “Chinese”?

Integrating the “New Chinese” Mano Po is not the first mainstream Filipino movie to paint a nuanced portrait of the Chinese. ’s masterpiece Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon? (“This Is How We Were Then: What about You Now?”) made a place for the Chinese in Philippine history.7 Its portrayal of the heroic Intsik Liu marks a departure from

5 Yuen Hsun Tsai, Liu Xing Hua Yuan, Taiwan: Chinese Television System, 2001. 6 Cabreza, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 1. 7 Eddie Romero, Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon?, Philippines: Hemisphere, 1976.