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Matt Glasby

This is the latest instalment in a feature series reflecting on instances of East meets West in world cinema, including China-US co-productions.
While there are plenty of Hong Kong films about the city’s 1997 handover to China after British rule, there are precious few told from a Western perspective.
Perhaps the closest is Chinese Box (1997), an American indie film directed by Wayne Wang (The Joy Luck Club).
Wang was born in Hong Kong but is best known for his work in the United States, his adopted home. Being “one side Chinese and one side American”, as he considers himself, put him in a unique position.


Inspired by Paul Theroux’s 1997 novel Kowloon Tong, Chinese Box stars Jeremy Irons as John, an English writer who has lived in Hong Kong for 15 years and is dying of leukaemia.
In the months leading up to the handover, we see him romancing bartender Vivian (Gong Li in her first non-Chinese movie), in the process realising he hardly understands her world at all.
“Sometimes you just fall in love with a place, without really knowing why, without really fully understanding it – the way I fell in love with Vivian,” he admits in voice-over.
When he is not mooning over Vivian, John takes to the streets with his camcorder, trying to get to know the real Hong Kong before it is too late. This is how he meets Jean (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk), a hustler with a scarred face and stories to tell about the city’s underworld.
“She’s caught between two worlds with a certain amount of denial of her own identity, and yet she’s a great survivor, which is what Hong Kong is,” Wang told entertainment news outlet The AV Club.

John is more prosaic. As the author of a book about making money in Asia, he has the slightly unsavoury air of a Western man in love with an exotic idea of the East.
Irons is great at playing this type of character, as shown in David Cronenberg’s M. Butterfly (1993), where he plays a French diplomat obsessed with John Lone’s Chinese opera singer.
The women get a predictably rougher ride.
Vivian is in love with Chang (Michael Hui Koon-man), a businessman who refuses to marry her because of her past working as a prostitute.
Throughout the film, Vivian mostly appears beautifully unobtainable behind a bar, but in an unguarded moment she vamps along to Marlene Dietrich’s “Black Market”.

Jean, meanwhile, describes harrowing memories of familial sexual assault for one of John’s interview tapes. And when John helps her reunite with her high school love, William (Jared Harris), she is shocked that he does not remember her.
If Vivian and Jean function more as metaphors for how the West has historically idealised, abused and ignored the East, at least Wang captures the clashing energies of the city itself.
From the clattering food stalls to the upscale bars, and the fish markets to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, we see it all, often through the lens of a roving handheld camera.
For extra verisimilitude, Wang also splices in news footage, clips of fireworks over Victoria Harbour and even a cheeky shot of the South China Morning Post.

And the director does not shy away from politics.
The film opens with the staged suicide of a Chinese protester terrified of the forthcoming regime change.
We then see drunk expats playing down such worries, calling Hong Kong “a bloody casino”. As the film continues, there are bomb threats, protests and civil unrest as John and Vivian’s slightly underwhelming love story plays out.
“Every day, I would look at the headlines, cut a news clipping out and have Jeremy Irons read it on his desktop,” Wang said.
“At other times, it would be something more subtle, where maybe the Chinese officials are being non-committal about certain things, and I would try to use that as a subconscious, contextual thing for a scene.
“Let’s say I was shooting a scene between Gong Li and her boyfriend, and the boyfriend is non-committal about his relationship to her. There are many different levels of trying to capture the mood, the uncertainty and the changes that were going on in the city.”

To begin with, John is blasé about the handover. “This great big department store is just having a change of management, that’s all,” he says.
But by the film’s close, once he has loved, lost and come to understand Hong Kong better, he sees things more philosophically.
“Everything in this city has always been changing,” he tells us, and the handover is just another stage in its life cycle.
There is a lot to unpack – perhaps too much for a 99-minute movie. What Wang shows so beautifully is that Hong Kong is a city of many sides – no matter who it belongs to.
Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook


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American cinema

How Wayne Wang’s Chinese Box presented the 1997 Hong Kong handover from a unique viewpoint

Jeremy Irons and Gong Li in a still from Chinese Box, Wayne Wang’s drama that offered a Westerner’s perspective on the 1997 Hong Kong handover from Britain to China.

Jeremy Irons and Maggie Cheung in a still from Chinese Box.

Michael Hui and Gong Li in a still from Chinese Box.

Michael Hui, Gong Li and Jeremy Irons in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong, in 1997. Photo: Dickson Lee

Michael Hui, Jeremy Irons and Gong Li in a still from Chinese Box.

Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan films to get AI reboots in China. But not all think its a good idea

Bruce Lee in a still from Fist of Fury. The film is one of 100 classic kung fu films that the Chinese movie industry plans to revitalise using AI. Photo: Golden Harvest

Jet Li in a still from Once Upon a Time in China. Photo: Golden Harvest

Jackie Chan in a still from Police Story. Photo: Golden Harvest

Jackie Chan in a still from Police Story. Photo: Golden Way Films/ZUMA Press/TNS

Members of SAG-AFTRA on strike in Los Angeles in October 2023. Photo: Getty Images

Different sides of Hong Kong shown in Tran Anh Hung’s critical flop I Come with the Rain

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Takuya Kimura and Tran Nu Yen Khe in a still from I Come with the Rain.

Josh Hartnett in a still from I Come with the Rain.

Takuya Kimura (left) and director Tran Anh Hung on the set of I Come with the Rain.

Shawn Yue (left) and Josh Hartnett in a still from I Come with the Rain.

How disaster struck for Air Strike, a Chinese movie starring Bruce Willis and Adrien Brody

Bruce Willis (front) and co-stars in a still from Air Strike. Photo: Online

Huang Shengyi and Adrien Brody in a still from Air Strike. Xiao Feng’s 2018 film is a chaotic mix of genres and underwhelming action. Photo: Online

(Front row from left) Song Seung-heon, Liu Ye, Bruce Willis, Nicholas Tse and William Chan in a still from Air Strike.

Fan Wei in a still from Air Strike.

A still from Air Strike.

Ning Chang in a still from Air Strike.

Takeshi Kaneshiro, one of the ‘most good-looking’ actors in Hong Kong cinema and star of some of Wong Kar-wai and Peter Chan’s best movies, is a man of mystery

Takeshi Kaneshiro at an interview with the Post in July 2004. Kaneshiro, who debuted as a singer in Taiwan in 1992, has not been seen on the big screen since 2017 – but remains as popular as ever. Photo: SCMP

Takeshi Kaneshiro and Zhou Dongyu in a still from “This Is Not What I Expected” (2017).

Takeshi Kaneshiro and Brigitte Lin in a still from “Chungking Express” (1994). 

Takeshi Kaneshiro and Kyoko Fukada in a still from the drama series “God, Please Give Me More Time” (1998).

(From left) Xu Jinglei, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Andy Lau, Jet Li, Jacky Heung and director Peter Chan promote “The Warlords” at an event in December 2007. Photo: SCMP

Takeshi Kaneshiro in a still from “Perhaps Love” (2005).

Takeshi Kaneshiro and Michele Reis in “Fallen Angels” (1995). Photo: Block 2 Pictures and Jet Tone Contents

Takeshi Kaneshiro in an interview with the Post in December 2006. Photo: SCMP

Lifestyle

Entertainment

Culture

Film & TV

In Wayne Wang’s 1997 drama, the many sides of a city on the brink of change were shown through the camcorder of Jeremy Irons’ English writer


In Wayne Wang’s 1997 drama, the many sides of a city on the brink of change were shown through the camcorder of Jeremy Irons’ English writer.
