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[CN] Chapter 13

[CT] Cinema of Reindividuation and Cultural Extraterritoriality: “Chinese”

Dialect Cinemas and Regional Politics

[CA] Victor Fan

“Chinese” cinemas, since the advent of sound, have been multilingual. Yet, we often

use this term uncritically to describe our object of study, despite the fact that, as Rey

Chow argues, it defines an epistemological space that has been historically configured

by colonialism, Orientalism, and nationalism. “Chinese cinemas” thus erases

contesting linguistic, cultural, ethnic, racial, geopolitical, and social values that

circulate under the umbrella of “China,” “Chinese,” or “Chineseness.”1 Alternative

terms such as “Chinese language cinema” and “Sinophone cinema” have been

proposed and debated.2 However, most models assume a priori that the various

topolects and languages used in Chinese cinemas are variations of a shared linguistic

root. They have yet to fully examine how the relationship between a “dialect” and its

Chineseness has been constructed historically in the cinema, understood as a public

sphere––a space where contesting private opinions are shared, disseminated,

exchanged, and negotiated.3

In my research in the history and contemporary conditions of the Hong Kong

Cantonese cinema, I am especially fascinated with how a dialect cinema (a

contestable term) actively reimagines the relationship between the self and the other,

the regional and the national.4 In this chapter, I argue that dialect cinemas, as a form

of cultural extraterritoriality, insist within Chinese cinemas as a potential force that

resists the historical tendency to incorporate regional cinematic practices into a larger

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national imaginary. Rather, they engage themselves in a process of reindividuation by

performing the failure of any state or institutional attempts to contain these linguistic

practices within a national model. In the following pages, I will first introduce the

history of the Hong Kong Cantonese cinema and the critical debates around it. I will

then examine the theories that have been applied to this topic. Finally, I will explicate

my conceptual framework of extraterritoriality and use the film Duzhan (Dukzin/

Drug War, Johnnie To, 2013) as a case study of how contemporary Hong Kong

multilingual films function as a cinema of reindividuation.

[A] Dialect cCinemas before the 1960s

The term “national cinema” emerged in China in the 1920s.5 Between 1926 and

1928, the Kuomintang (KMT, aka Guomindang or Nationalist Party) under the

leadership of Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) was engaged in the Northern Expedition,

in an attempt to unify the eastern seaboard. The ideologues of the KMT adopted the

idea of political thinker Ch’en Kung-po (Chen Gongbo), who believed that in order to

fight against colonial capitalism in the urban areas, and feudalism in the rural regions,

the nation should be reconceived as a production machine, and each biological life

should be physically trained, educated, and disciplined as a national (guomin), a

mechanical component integral to the national apparatus.6

This idea was espoused by Ch’en Li-fu (Chen Lifu), head of the Central

Department of Propaganda (Zhongyang xuanchuan bu, established 1924), who

propounded that the state should mobilize national cinema to instill a national

consciousness into individual lives.7 Between 1930 and 1937, KMT’s Nanking

(Nanjing) government (1927–37) set up a system of committees, departments, and

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offices to regulate and manage film production, distribution, and censorship.8

Meanwhile, Peking (Beijing)-based theater-chain owner Lo Ming-yau (Luo Mingyou)

put together a merger between the China Sun (Minxin) Motion Picture Company, the

China Lilium (Da Zhonghua Baihe) Film Company, the Lo Hwa (Lehua) Film

Company, and his own Hwa Peh (Huabei) Film Company into the United Photoplay

Service or UPS (Lianhua Film Company), as a first step towards unifying the

Shanghai film industry.9

Nevertheless, the news that Cantonese-language films were being produced in

the Canton (Guangzhou)-Hong Kong region reached Shanghai in 1930.10 The

emergence of the Cantonese film was regarded as a business challenge to the

Shanghai film industry. Before the KMT promoted Mandarin as national language

(guoyu) in 1932, Mandarin films could only be understood in Shanghai, Peking, and

other northern cities. Meanwhile, Cantonese films could be marketed in the densely

populated and economically prosperous areas of Kwangtung (Guangdong), Kwangsi

(Guangxi), Fukien (Fujian), Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, and the diasporic

communities in North America and Europe.11 As a result, the Shanghai film industry

allied with the KMT cadres to try banning the production of Cantonese films, with the

excuse that dialect cinemas were detrimental to nation building. In spite of such an

accusation, studio executive Runje Shaw (Shao Zuiweng) moved his Shanghai

company Unique (Tianyi) to Hong Kong, renamed it the South Sea (Nanyang) Film

Company, and produced the Cantonese feature Bai Jinlong (Baak Gamlung or White

Golden Dragon, 1934). In response, Lo Ming-yau, Star’s executive Zhou Jianyun,

and other Shanghai filmmakers started a series of media tirades against the Cantonese

films, accusing them of being coarsely made and excessively produced (cuzhi lanzao).

Nonetheless, the Kwangtung-Kwangsi region was a semi-autonomous republic under

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the leadership of Hu Hanmin, whereas Hong Kong was a British Crown colony. The

KMT and the Shanghai film industry could do very little to control the situation.12

The death of Hu Hanmin in May 1936 finally allowed KMT’s Central

Department of Propaganda to send representatives to Canton to prepare for the ban. In

response, Cantonese filmmakers, led by Runje Shaw and director Lee Fa (Li Hua),

established the Association of Rescuing the Cantonese Film (Huanjiu Yuepian lianhe

xiehui or Waangau Jyutpin lyunhap hipwui). Shaw, Lee, and other filmmakers went

to Shanghai and Nanking to meet Lo Ming-yau, Zhou Jianyun, Ch’en Li-fu, and other

KMT ideologues in order to convince the government to postpone the ban. Shaw and

Lee argued that before Mandarin could be widely understood and spoken in the

Kwangtung-Kwangsi region and the diasporic communities, Cantonese cinema was a

much more effective tool to promulgate national consciousness.13 For the Shanghai

filmmakers and the KMT cadres, a nation is a centralized production machine

managed by the state. Meanwhile, for the Cantonese filmmakers, a nation is a

conglomeration of communities that speaks different languages and embraces

different sociopolitical beliefs,; and the cinema is a public sphere where contesting

notions of communal belonging are negotiated.

Such disagreement on how a nation should be defined has since then become a

determining factor in the way Cantonese cinema is positioned vis-à-vis the larger

national imagination. During the Sino-Japanese War (1937–45), the Central Studio

(Zhongyang zhipianchang) in Chungking (Chongqing) sent filmmakers Tsai Chu-sang

(Cai Chusheng) and Situ Huimin to Hong Kong to advocate the South China national

defense cinema (Huanan guofang dianying). Yet, despite the effort, period drama,

folktale films, gods and demons films, horror films, and erotic films dominated the

Cantonese market.14 After 1945, leftwing filmmakers who either worked under the

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sponsorship of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or had socialist tendencies still

considered the Cantonese film an inferior cultural practice. However, around 1950

and 1951, the CCP decided not to take the sovereign authority over Hong Kong and

advocated the use of the Cantonese film as an educational tool to promote “soft”

socialist thoughts. The establishment of the Union Film Enterprise (Zhonglian

dianying gongsi or Zunglyun dinjing gungsi) in 1953, a cooperative operated by

Cantonese filmmakers and actors, helped shape leftwing Cantonese cinema into a

social-realist art form, until the production of Cantonese film was halted by a

recession in the 1960s.15

[A] Theorizing mMultilingualism in “Chinese” cCinemas

The gradual recession of the Cantonese film industry in the 1960s inspired film critics

to problematize the term “Chinese” cinemas. On October 6, 1967, Kam Ping-hing’s

(Jin Bingxing) article “Zhongguo xindianying de qiwang” (“Zunggwok sandinjing dik

keimong” or “My eExpectations for the nNew Chinese cCinema”) was published in

the Zhongguo xuesheng zhoubao (Zunggwok hoksaang zaubou or Chinese sStudents

wWeekly), a newspaper that features debates on politics, art, cinema, and literature.

Kam argues that Chinese cinema lacked any innovation not because of its “national

character”— – that is, cultural conservatism— – but because of the limitation of

industrial filmmaking and narrational codes, a problem common both in Hong Kong

and Hollywood.16

Kam’s criticism implicitly rejects the idea that a national cinema should be

defined by its “national character.” This inspired Lam Nin-tung (Lin Niantong) to

rethink Chinese cinema as an epistemological space. Lam points out that there were

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three terms used in the critical discourse at the time: national-language cinema,

Chinese cinema, and Chinese-language cinema. For him, the term national-language

cinema, used frequently to indicate Mandarin films, denotes only one kind of film

made by Chinese directors and effectively excludes Cantonese cinema as part of the

national discourse. Meanwhile, the term Chinese cinema fails to address the linguistic

differences among various regions and cultural spheres; it also ignores the political

contention between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China

(ROC).17

Lam argues that the term Chinese-language cinema carries a conceptual

space derived from the English word “Chinese,” with its ambiguous reference to

language, culture, or nationality. Nonetheless, for Lam, while the concept of “Chinese

language” aptly describes the spoken and written language system (yuwen or jyuman)

used in these films, it fails to account for the actual dialogue (duibai or deoibaak)

spoken in them. Lam reminds his readers that the idea of the “Chinese language” is in

fact a constructed linguistic system based on Mandarin, but that in lived experience,

everybody speaks a regional language. Even someone from Beijing, who is supposed

to be a native Mandarin speaker, would still speak the local Beijing language. The

very idea of a Sinitic linguistic system that is internally coherent and unified is, for

Lam, a scholastic construction.18

In 1978, Lam raised this question again in “Wushi niandai yueyu pian yanjiu

zhong de jige wenti” (“Ngsap nindoi Jyutjyu pin jingau zung dik geigo mantai” or

“Several qQuestions on the sStudy of Cantonese cCinema in the 1950s”), published in

the film magazine Da texie (Daai dakse or Close-up). Lam argues that similar to

Mandarin cinema, Cantonese cinema should be considered a direct descendent of the

New literary movement (Xin wenxue yundong, 1919–21). As a result of the call for

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vernacularizing Chinese literature, intellectuals and writers employed regional

languages in their writings, before Mandarin was recognized as the standard in 1932.19

Lam considers Cantonese cinema in the 1950s as a public sphere that

negotiates the unique social and political conditions of the Hong Kong working class

by using its vernacular language:

[EXT] Most of the Cantonese films produced in the 1950s employed the

Cantonese language of the masses (Huanan dazhong yu or Waanaam

daaizung jyu), a vernacular Cantonese commonly used by the working class.

[We must acknowledge the Cantonese filmmakers’ focus] on not only the art

and culture of the masses, but also on the vernacular dialect culture and art of

the working class. It was a remarkable line of development out of the New

literary movement. From such a perspective, the renaissance of Cantonese

cinema [in the 1950s] should be studied with our attention to its [mass

vernacularism].20

Lam’s theorization of the Cantonese cinema presaged the debate on Chinese

cinemas that has taken hold in Euro-American film studies since the 1990s. A major

contention against the national cinema model is that the very concept of the nation

state has been historically a Euro-American construction. Its applicability in the

studies of Chinese cinema is often questionable, as notions such as nationality,

ethnicity, linguistic formation, and cultural discourse have been in various processes

of contestation under Euro-American colonialism, on the one hand, and, on the other,

under Chinese nationalism as a discourse and sociopolitical force constantly

responding to colonialism and postcolonialism.21 Chris Berry argues that the term

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national cinema is often taken as a preconceived notion that assumes a collective

agency, which then performs its constitutive power upon a cinematic practice:

[EXT] Drawing on theories of the performative, I will argue that the making

of “China” as national agency is an ongoing, dynamic, and contested project.

In a paradoxical fashion … the complex significations of the cinema

participate in the constitution of “China” as national agency by signifying the

existence of this collective entity prior to the very statements that constitute

them. However, the variety of such significations itself belies their frequent

significations of “China” as singular, essential, and naturalized, revealing

instead not that “China” is a nonexistent fiction but that it is a discursively

produced and socially and historically contingent collective entity. In this

sense, it is not so much China that makes movies, but movies that help to

make China.22

In the same volume, Rey Chow argues that Chineseness is constructed by

Sinologists as a fantasy of difference, first as the Other, as posited under the

Eurocentric gaze and epistemological system, then as the exceptional, as asserted by

Chinese scholastic and popular nationalistic discourses. Drawing from an observation

by Haun Saussy, Chow argues that such a myth of exceptionalism has been taken for

granted as an epistemological space in which fantasies are described, analyzed, and

understood as realities.23

The terms Chinese cinema, Chinese national cinema, and Chinese language

cinema therefore implicitly accept the constitutive power of the term “China” (or

“Chinese”) as a historically and sociopolitically naturalized entity, and its otherness

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with respect to Hollywood or even European cinemas. When these terms are pitted

against the term dialect cinema, the idea of the Chinese language as a scholastic

construction vested with the political power of constituting subjectivity is effectively

“put under erasure.”24 In this sense, Shu-mei Shih argues that the construction of

Chineseness is not only a nationalistic reaction against Euro-American colonialism,

but also a legacy of the Qing Empire’s (1644–1911) colonial conquests in its

“frontier” states (such as Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia), its settler colonialism

in Southeast Asia, and the construction of a belief that migrants who have been en

route to North America, South America and Europe are ultimately rooted in China as

a social, cultural and linguistic homeland.25

Shih suggests a replacement of the term “Chinese” in Chinese studies by

“Sinophone,” derived from the linguistic term Sinitic-Tibetan language and

modified by European colonial and postcolonial concepts of Francophone and

Anglophone spheres. It indicates our object of study as a construction, made out of a

history of Chinese and Euro-American colonialism, an active discourse of migration,

settlement and self-redefinition, and processes of resistance in some cases, and

integration in others. It “takes as its objects of study the Sinitic-language communities

and cultures outside China as well as ethnic minority communities and cultures

within China where Mandarin is adopted or imposed.”26 Sinophone studies can

therefore be understood as a scrutiny of the very process of negotiation between a

Mandarin hegemony and the constitutive and constituting forces that configure both

the communities under pressure and the hegemonic power itself.

Shih’s notion of the Sinophone takes the idea of the Sinitic language system as

a given, but also demands that we remind ourselves of the historical and sociopolitical

constructedness of such a concept. In literary studies, such conceptual tension is well

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instantiated since Shih’s initial object of study is the spoken and written language

(yuwen). The difference between the written script and its enunciation in literature is

precisely the locus along which such tension is negotiated. Yet, as Lam Nin-tung

argues, in the cinema, language is always already enunciated as dialogue. Throughout

its history, Cantonese cinema has put into question the very sense of belonging of

Cantonese to the Sinitic linguistic system by reminding its viewers of the failure of

any attempt to reduce it to a Sinitic script.27

[A] From tTheory to pPractice

I have recently used the term “cultural extraterritoriality” to theorize Hong Kong

cinema’s relationship with the larger national configuration.28 The term

“extraterritoriality” has its historical roots in a juridical mistranslation between the

Qing Empire (1644–1911) and the Euro-American nation- states. According to the

Qing codes, individuals had the right to be judged in court in accordance with the law

of the ethnic or geopolitical communities to which they belonged. When two

individuals from different communities were judged, a mixed court (huishen) would

be set up. Meanwhile, from the seventeenth century onward, European juridical

theorists believed that “Oriental” empires practiced legal systems that were

fundamentally incompatible with European law. Hence, they demanded that European

citizens have the right to be judged by the laws of their respective nation states. When

the United States demanded this in the Treaty of Wanghia (Wangxia), the Qing court

defined it as the right to be judged in a mixed court (huishen quan), whereas the

European nation states considered such rights a colonial privilege.29

Legal historians Pär Cassel and Teemu Ruskola argue that European

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colonialism in coastal China took the form of a complex and disorganized system of

extraterritorialities, which effectively eroded Chinese sovereignty.30 Mutually

conflicting extraterritorial rights were, in fact, the basis of what Shih would call

China’s semicolonialism: tTrading ports in late Qing and Republican China (1911–

49) were characterized by competing and fragmented legal systems, administrations,

linguistic formations, cultural discourses, and economic privileges.31 I argue that the

result is the configuration of an extraterritorial consciousness: a social, cultural, and

economic consciousness doubly or multiply occupied by conflicting notions of

identities and senses of belonging, each putting the other “under erasure.” The “extra”

in extraterritoriality does not indicate outsideness; rather, it refers to the contesting

and mutually incompatible notions that one is posited both outside the larger national

entity––or even, because of those colonial privileges and pleasures one enjoys or used

to enjoy, “above” the national community––and inside the sovereign authority which

one finds alienating.32

Cultural extraterritoriality, I propose, can help us rethink, rehearse, and

reconfigure the conflicting political affects, the senses of belonging and alienation,

that have shaped not only the postwar generations of Hong Kongers, but also the post-

1997 tension between Mainland China and Hong Kong. Extraterritorial cinema

performs the failure of the national imagination as a constitutive force when used

upon subjects that maintain this inside-outside relationship with the sovereign state.

However, as Thomas Elsaesser suggests, failure should not be understood negatively;

rather, as cinema instills sensorial stimulations into the sentient bodies of the

spectators, it offers an opportunity for conflicting political affects to be grafted onto

these bodies as lived experiences, thus encouraging spectators from sociopolitically

conflicting communities to rehearse these failed experiences and work towards mutual

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understanding.33

Hong Kong cinema has been legally defined by the PRC as “foreign films,”

which are subject to importation quota for theatrical release. In 2003, the Beijing

government signed the Closer Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with the

special administrative region governments of Hong Kong and Macau, thus allowing

coproductions between Mainland and Hong Kong companies to be considered

domestic. While CEPA allows Hong Hong-based productions to receive Hollywood-

standard studio funding and resources, they are also subject to the market demands

and censorship of the PRC. Hong Kong film scholars and critics often complain that

post-CEPA coproductions led to the “Mainlandization” of Hong Kong cinema in its

aesthetics, political message, narrational style, and social values, while Mainland

scholar Yang Yuanying also believes that the challenge for post-CEPA productions is

the need to find a kind of narrative that could negotiate the conflicting sociopolitical

beliefs within the Mainland and Hong Kong communities, respectively.34

Linguistically, many Hong Kong filmmakers toy with multilingualism as a

tool to open up a discursive space. For example, Drug War, which appeared in a

Mandarin version in the Mainland, was released in Hong Kong in a bilingual version

in which Hong Kong actors spoke Cantonese. The result is an uncanny sense of

narrative incongruence, with Cantonese-speaking characters speaking Cantonese to

Mandarin speakers as though they could understand each other without any

interlocutor. This practice is highly unusual in mainstream Chinese-language cinemas,

and was first attempted by Ang Lee in E’hu canglong (Crouching Tiger, Hidden

Dragon, 2000), where actors from different Sinophone communities around the world

spoke Mandarin in their respective accents. It was used again in Peter Chan’s Wuxia

(Dragon, 2011, in Sichuanese and Mandarin) and Wong Kar-wai’s Yidai zongshi

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(Jatdoi zungsi/The Grandmaster, 2013, in Cantonese and Mandarin). Both of them

are Mainland-Hong Kong coproductions directed by Hong Kong filmmakers, in

which the linguistic incongruence among characters highlights the cultural plurality

and the regional conflicts within “China” as a national space.

However, these individual dialect-speaking characters do have an interlocutor:

the dialect-speaking spectator. In fact, the process of interlocution is built into the

narrative itself. In Drug War, Timmy Choi (Louis Koo) is a drug dealer from Hong

Kong, who is arrested by Mainland officer Zhang Lei (Zhang Honglei) after an

explosion in Timmy’s meth factory. In order to avoid getting the death sentence,

Timmy agrees to cooperate with the Mainland police. As I argue elsewhere, Drug

War dramatizes and negotiates the conflict between two homines sacri––bare lives

that stand outside the law, and can therefore kill or be killed as animal lives without

breaking the law. In this sense, Timmy, as a drug dealer, stands outside the law of the

PRC by breaking it, but also outside the protection of the law of Hong Kong (based

on the British colonial law). He can therefore be managed, controlled, used, and

eventually, executed as an animal life. Meanwhile, Zhang Lei also occupies a position

outside the law in order to enforce it; a position from which he can manage, control,

use, and eventually, execute Timmy by means that would otherwise be considered

illegal. In the film, state power is made sensible by a constant threat that Timmy could

at any time be executed by the law of the PRC, and that Zhang Lei would exercise the

authority bestowed upon him by the sovereignty to rein this Hong Konger into the law

of the land.35

Linguistically, before he meets his Hong Kong cohorts towards the end of the

film, Timmy is the only character that speaks Cantonese, and he delivers his lines to

his Mandarin-speaking counterparts as though there were no linguistic barrier. The

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unbelievability of such a situation effectively disconnects the addresser (Timmy) and

the addressee (his Mandarin-speaking counterparts) in the diegesis. This narrative

incongruence becomes especially remarkable when the dialogues are conveyed in the

classical shot-reverse-shot structure (see Figures 13.1– and 13.2). In visual terms, the

action shots in which Timmy delivers his Cantonese lines are disconnected from

Zhang Lei’s reaction shots. Such linguistic and visual discontinuity requires an

interlocutor who can understand both languages in order to reconnect and suture them

into an imaginary whole.3 6

[Figure 13.1]

[FIG] Figure 13.1: Timmy speaks to someone off-screen (supposedly Zhang Lei)

in Cantonese.

Duzhan (Dukzin/ Drug War, Johnnie To, 2013). Production by Beijing Hairun

Pictures and Milkyway Film Productions. Distributed by Media Asia

Distributions (Hong Kong) and Variance Films (North America).

[Figure 13.2]

[FIG] Figure 13.2: Zhang Lei speaks to someone off-screen (supposedly Timmy)

in Mandarin.

Duzhan (Dukzin/ Drug War, Johnnie To, 2013). Production by Beijing Hairun

Pictures and Milkyway Film Productions. Distributed by Media Asia

Distributions (Hong Kong) and Variance Films (North America).

As a consequence, in one register, the Cantonese-speaking spectator would

reconnect these fragmented conversations into a believable reality, but in another

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register, they become hyperaware of their in-between-ness in a linguistic environment

that mirrors their lived experience—as a speaker of a minoritized language who

insists as a symptom within a pressurizing linguistic, and by extension, social, cultural

and political hegemony.

[A] From eExtraterritoriality to iIndividuation

If the individuality and subjectival autonomy of a Hong Konger has again and again

been compromised in a top-down process of sociopolitical integration, economic

partnership, and linguistic erosion, what these extraterritorial films do is engage the

spectators in a process of reindividuation. This is not a process in which one becomes

an individual again like one used to be before the boundary between the self and the

other was eroded or even effaced. Rather, as Gilbert Simondon suggests, the process

of reindividuation is more like putting a rock candy back into a saturated solution in

order to allow it to recrystallize. It acknowledges the ontogenetic connection between

the candy and the solution, yet with such acknowledgment, the new crystal form (the

reindividuated rock candy) acquires different critical points, shapes, forms, sense of

space, as well as material density.37 In Drug War, and in fact throughout the history of

the Cantonese film, the spectator is at once absorbed into a negotiating process with a

Mandarin-speaking hegemony (the saturated solution), and engaged into an active

process of verbal and visual interlocution through the Cantonese soliloquies and

monologues. This gives rise to a process in which the spectator begins to take a new

shape and form with a renewed awareness as an individual thatwho constantly

instantiates and performs the failure of any kind of sociopolitical imaginary unity. In

this sense, the Cantonese cinema, as one of the many dialect cinemas that practice

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multilingualism under the hegemonic national and Mandarin discourse, is both a form

of cultural extraterritoriality and a process of cinematic reindividuation.

[N] Notes

1. Rey Chow, “On Chineseness as a Theoretical Problem” (1998), in Sinophone

Studies: A Critical Reader, ed. Brian Bernards, Shu-mei Shih, and Chien-hsin Tsai

(New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 43.

2. Sheldon H. Lu and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh, “Introduction: Mapping the Field of

Chinese-Language Cinema,” in Chinese Language Film: Historiography, Poetics,

Politics, ed. Sheldon H. Lu and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh (Honolulu: University of

Hawai’i Press, 2005), 1–5; Chien-hsin Tsai, “Issues and Controversies,” in Bernards,

Shih, and Tsai, eds., Sinophone Studies, 17–18.

3. Jurgen Habermas, “The Public Sphere. An Encyclopedia Article” (1964), trans.

Sara and Frank Lennox, New German Critique, no. 3 (Autumn 1974): 49; Miriam

Hansen, “The Mass Production of the Senses: Classical Cinema as Vernacular

Modernism,” Modernism/Modernity 6, no. 2 (April 1999): 59–-77.

4. See, for example, Victor Fan, “CEPA qianhou Xianggang dianying duiyu Gangren

yuwai yishi de jiaoshe” (Negotiating Extraterritorial Consciousness in Hong Kong

Cinema Before and After CEPA), Dianying yishu (Film Art), no. 356 (2014): 24–31;

Cinema Approaching Reality: Locating Chinese Film Theory (Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 153–94.

5. Fan, Cinema Approaching Reality, 156–57; Zhiwei Xiao, “Constructing a New

National Culture: Film Censorship and the Issues of Cantonese Dialect, Superstition,

and Sex in the Nanjing Decade,” in Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai, 1922–

1943, ed. Yingjing Zhang (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 184.

336

6. Ch’en Kung-po (Chen Gongbo), “Muqian zenyang jianshe guojia ziben” (How do

we build up our national capital now?), in Chen Gongbo xiansheng wenji (Anthology

of essays written by Master Ch’en Kung-po) (Hong Kong: Yuandong tushu gongsi or

Jyundung tousyu gungsi, 1967), 38–66; Fan, Cinema Approaching Reality, 46, 81–82;

Fan, “The Cinema of Sun Yu: Ice Cream for the Eye … But with a Homo Sacer,”

Journal of Chinese Cinemas 5, no. 3 (2011): 222–23; Margherita Zanasi, “Chen

Gongbo and the Construction of a Modern Nation in 1930s China,” in Nation Work:

Asian Elites and National Identities, ed. Timothy Brook and André Schmid (Ann

Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 125–58.

7. Fan, Cinema Approaching Reality, 46; Fang Zhi, “Zhongyang dianying shiye

gaikuang” (An oOverview of Central’s fFilm bBusiness), in Zhongguo dianying

nianjian: 1934 (China film year book: 1934), ed. Zhongguo jiaoyu dianying xiehui

(National Educational Cinematographic Society of China or NECSC) (Beijing: China

Radio and Television Publishing House, 2008), 555–56; Matthew Johnson,

“International and Wartime Origins of the Propaganda State: The Motion Picture in

China, 1897–1955” (PhD diss., University of San Diego, 2008), 83–156.

8. Fan, Cinema Approaching Reality, 44–45; Fan, “The Cinema of Sun Yu,” 228;

Johnson, “International and Wartime Origins of the Propaganda State,” 83–156.

9. Fan, Cinema Approaching Reality, 45; Fan, “The Cinema of Sun Yu,” 220; Anon.,

“Lianhua dashi ji” (“U.P.S. Events”) in Lianhua nianjian: Minguo 22–24 nian

(U.P.S. Year Book: 1933–34) (Shanghai: United Photoplay Service, 1935), 12–18.

10. Fan, Cinema Approaching Reality, 156–57; Zhiwei Xiao, “Constructing a New

National Culture,” 184.

11. Fan, Cinema Approaching Reality, 158; Yao Dehuai, “‘Guifan Putonghua’ yu

“Dazhong Putonghua’” (“Regulated Putonghua” and “Mass Putonghua”) Yuwen

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jianshe tongxun (Language Construction News), no. 57 (October 1998).

12. Anon., “Xue yu Nanyue Gongsi hezuo guocheng baogao” (“Sit jyu Naamjyut

Gungsi hapzok gwocing bougou” or Report on the cCollaboration between Sit Kok-

sin and South China), Youyou (Jaujau), no. 2 (August 18, 1935), n.p.; Fan, Cinema

Approaching Reality, 159–61; Xiao, “Constructing a New National Culture,” 185.

13. Anon., “Qiao Gang shenshang jiaoyu xinwen gejie hezu Huanzhu Yueyupian

lianhe hui” (“Kiu Gong sansoeng gaaujuk sanman gokgaai hapzou Wunzo Jyutpin

lyunhap wui” or Gentry, bBusinessmen, eEducators, and jJournalists in Hong Kong

pPut tTogether the United Association for Rescuing Cantonese Cinema), Ling xing

(Ling Sing) 7, no. 15 (June 26, 1937): 8; Fan, Cinema Approaching Reality, 160–61;

Lee Fa (Li Hua), “Shang Jing qiangjiu Yueyu pian lizhan Hu yingshang jingguo”

(“Seong Ging cinggau Jyutjyu pin likzin Wu jingseong gingguo” or The Nanking

vVisit: hHow wWe fFought against the Shanghai sStudio eExecutives in oOrder to

sSave the Cantonese fFilm), Ling Sing, no. 203 (1937): 2–4; Sung Kim-chiu (Song

Jianchao), “Yuepian you sannian huanjin shuo” (“Jyutpin yau saamnin wungam syut”

or The bBan against the Cantonese fFilm mMay bBe pPostponed for aAnother tThree

yYears), Yilin (Art Lane), no. 9 (July 1937), n.p.; Xiao, “Constructing a New

National Culture,” 187–90.

14. Anon., “Dianying qingjie yundong” (“Dinjing cinggit wandung” or Film

cCleansing mMovement), Diansheng zhoukan (Dinsing zouhon or Movietone) 4, no.

41 (October 11, 1935): 1015; Anon., “Pumie shenguaipian! Pumie Hanjian!”

(“Pokmit sangwaaipin! Pokmit Hongaan!” or Eliminate the gGods and dDemons

fFilm! Eliminate the tTraitors!), Ling Sing 8, no. 14 (August 15, 1938): 1; Anon.,

“Wuhu! Shenguaipian” (“Wufu! Sangwaaipin” or Alas! Gods and dDemons fFilms!),

Ling Sing 8, no. 14 (August 15, 1938): 2–3; Anon., “Yueyu pian zhengming

338

yundong” (“Jyutjyu pin zingming wandung” or Rectification of the Cantonese fFilm

mMovement), Ling Sing 7, no. 15 (June 27, 1937): 2; Fan, Cinema Approaching

Reality, 161–62; Maautou (Maotu), “Suowei yingpian qingjie yundong” (“Sowai

jingpin cinggit wandung” or So-called fFilm cCleansing mMovement), Youyou

(Jaujau), no. 10 (November 15, 1935): 9.

15. Anon., “Wu Chufan tan Yuepian” (“Ng Chofaan taam Jyutpin” or “A Talk on

Cantonese Cinema by Ng Cho-fan”), Zhonglian huabao (Zunglyun waabou or Union

Film Pictorial), no. 8 (April, 1956): 8–9.

16. Kam Ping-hing (Jin Bingxing), “Zhongguo xindianying de qiwang” (“Zunggwok

sandinjing dik keimong” or My eExpectations for the nNew Chinese cCinema),

Zhongguo xuesheng zhoubao (Zunggwok hoksaang zaubou or Chinese students

weekly), no. 794 (October 6, 1967): 11.

17. Lam Nin-tung (Lin Niantong), “You guoqing xiangqi de Hanyu dianying, fangyan

dianying” (“Jau gwokhing soenghei dik Honjyu dinjing, fongjin dingjing” or From

National dDay to Chinese-language cCinema, dDialect cCinema), Zhongguo

xuesheng zhoubao (Zunggwok hoksaang zaubou or Chinese sStudents wWeekly), no.

794 (October 10, 1969): 10.

18. Ibid.

19. Lam, “Wushi niandai yueyu pian yanjiu zhong de jige wenti” (“Ngsap nindoi

jyutjyu pin jingau zung dik geigo mantai” or Several qQuestions on the sStudy of

Cantonese Cinema in the 1950s), Da texie (Daai dakse or Close-up), no. 59 (1978): 2.

20. Ibid., 3.

21. Chow, “On Chineseness,” 45–46.

22. Chris Berry, “If China Can Say No, Can China Make Movies? Or, Do Movies

Make China? Rethinking National Cinema and National Agency,” bBoundary 2 25,

339

no. 3 (Autumn, 1998): 131.

23. Chow, “On Chineseness,” 45–46; Haun Saussy, The Problem of a Chinese

Aesthetic (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 27, 31.

24. Jacques Derrida, De la grammatologie (1967; repr. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit,

1997).

25. Shu-mei Shih, “Introduction: What Is Sinophone Studies?,” in Bernards, Shih, and

Tsai, eds., Sinophone Studies, 11–14.

26. Shih, “Introduction,” 11, Shih’s emphasis.

27. Lam, “From National Day to Chinese-Language Cinema,” 10.

28. Fan, “Extraterritorial Cinema: Shanghai Jazz and Post-War Hong Kong Mandarin

Musicals,” The Soundtrack 6, nos. 1–-2 (2013): 38.

29. Pär Kristoffer Cassel, Grounds of Judgment: Extraterritoriality and Imperial

Power in Nineteenth-Century China and Japan (New York: Oxford University Press,

2012), 39–62, 85–114; Fan, “CEPA qianhou Xianggang dianying duiyu Gangren

yuwai yishi de jiaoshe,” 24; Fan, “Extraterritorial Cinema,” 38; Teemu Ruskola,

Legal Orientalism: China, the United States, and Modern Law (Cambridge, MA:

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31. Shih, The Lure of the Modern: Writing Modernism in Semicolonial China, 1917–

1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 34–35.

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25; “Extraterritorial Cinema,” 38–39; Thomas Elsaesser, “Real Location, Fantasy

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340

2009), 47–61.

33. See Fan, “The Unanswered Question of Forrest Gump,” Screen 49, no. 4 (Winter

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34. Chen Yun-chung and Mirana M. Szeto, “Mainlandization and Neoliberalism with

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