Amy Tan's long novel The Bonesetter's Daughter transcends the interpretive framework of the debate between Frank Chin and Maxine Hong Kingston. The intervention of this work is to expose the hidden phenomenon of discrimination against the Chinese community in American society in the mid-to-late twentieth century, in which the dominant discourse places them in an inferior position in the civilization system by highlighting the differentiated characteristics of the Chinese American habitus. The native-born Chinese American community, represented by Ruth Young, is thus caught in an identity dilemma, and needs to further recognize the contributions and sacrifices of their forefathers by redeeming their ethnic memories and incorporating themselves into the genealogy of glorious traditions. As a result, the Chinese American community further acquires the ability to reconstruct historical narratives and to speak out on issues of modern civilization from multiple perspectives, questioning and critiquing dependent discriminatory relationships and their mechanisms of functioning, and thus, within a dialectical perspective between universality and ethnicity, seeking to achieve inter-subjective recognition for justice and equality in the social interaction.

This paper studies Li Kotomi’s 2022 fantasy novel, An Island Where Red Spider Lilies Bloom (彼岸花盛開之島), and investigates how the trope of translation illustrates a utopia of inclusion and transformation. Considering Walter Benjamin’s concept of “pure language,” an amalgam of fragmented languages that does not communicate the meaning of the original and is something “exiled among alien tongues,” I read the island in Li’s novel as a cultural imagination that challenges state sovereignty and a future-oriented vision. I argue that the fictive island designated as “the other side” (仁良伊加奈伊) symbolizes the intertwined relationship between the colonizer and the colonized, giving rise to a linguistic practice that resists constancy and lineage.

Jessica Tsui-yan Li will present a paper on “Eileen Chang’s The Greatest Wedding on Earth (1962).” This paper focuses on the screenplay, The Greatest Wedding on Earth (Nanbei yijiaqing 1962), written by Eileen Chang (Zhang Ailing 1920-1995). Together with the Hong Kong based production team, Chang integrated the Shanghai elements into the Mandarin-speaking film scenes in postwar Hong Kong. The Greatest Wedding on Earth was marketed towards the Mandarin speaking middle-class Chinese diasporas in Hong Kong and other Asian countries. The younger generation of Chinese with various linguistic and cultural backgrounds resolve the conflicts through compassion and love. In this paper, I will analyze how various Cantonese, Mandarin, and Shanghainese cultural issues have been perceived, negotiated, or flattened out in depicting Chinese cultural diversities. I will also examine the Hollywood cinematic techniques of plot conventions and comic effects in portraying the images of new women of the time.

In my presentation, I discuss the preservation and transformation of cultural identity demonstrated in literary representation of Cantonese opera in a global and diasporic context, particularly in North America. In surveying the motif of Chinese opera in Chinese American literature and real-life performances in North America, I argue that the depiction of Chinese opera illustrates the struggles and dynamics of Chinese Americans remembering and negotiating their cultural identities between their hometowns and North America.

Chinese opera has been a popular cultural entertainment in Chinese American communities. It is a hometown entertainment for most Chinese in North America. Familiar themes and atmosphere in Chinese opera bring forth both individual and collective memory of Chinese Americans, reminding them of not only where they came from but also who they were prior to their arrival in Canada. Chinese opera performances and their related activities illustrate the manifestation of transcultural identity of Chinese American communities. The introduction and adaptation of these cultural activities in North America symbolize the transcendence of borders, linguistics boundaries, and geographic distance.

Cultural meanings and convention encoded in Chinese opera reinforced the early Chinese settlers’ cultural heritage, which was passed down to later generations of Chinese Americans. The impact of cultural imagination, identity and social memory transmitted by Cantonese opera was most vividly illustrated by the writings of Chinese American writers, such as Maxine Hong Kingston, Wayson Choy and Denise Chong, who remade and reinterpreted the stories and cultural space of Cantonese opera in their Chinatown stories and memoirs.

What is a good death? I explore Ann Hui’s response to this question in A Simple Life (2011) in this paper. A Hong Kong New Wave pioneer, Ann Hui (b. 1947), describes the end-of-life choices of a maid—Ah Tao—who decides to retire to a nursing home after a stroke. Her clairvoyant preparation for what lies ahead as death looms draws attention to two pivotal approaches to ming: “accepting fate” (认命rènmìng) and “knowing the divine will” (知天命 zhītiānìing). Whereas the verb ren is often construed as a passive, feminine act of acquiescence to fated suffering, the verb zhi harnesses active, male-dominated Confucian learning to follow a path charted by Providence. Despite these gendered interpretations of ming, I argue that Ann Hui gives Ah Tao the agency to integrate acceptance (rèn) with acknowledgment (zhī) to illustrate the art of dying well in simple living.