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9 Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon: (Re)packaging Chinas and Selling the Hybridized Culture in an Age of Transnationalism Jennifer W. Jay In 2001, numerous international awards garnered by Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, together with its resounding box office success, marked an age oftransnationalism and globalization in Chinese film culture and identity.! When observed as the flow of culture and the dynamics of the world economy, the concept of globalization embraces the inclusionist ideals of cross-culturalism and boundary crossing.2 The dominance ofWestern culture inevitably makes Westernization a part of the transnationalizing process, as seen in the making and reception ofthe film, variously described as a Chinese fairytale, a tragic love story, and the auteur's boyhood fantasy world ofwuxia (martial chivalry). In order to examine the question of cross-culturalism, border crossing, and Westernization, we first need to have a handle on what Chinese configurations of identity and culture are portrayed in the film. In this chapter, I look at how Ang Lee rounded up the talent among the Chinese diaspora and China to construct a transnational China ofindividual turmoil, family tensions, social conflict, and a Confucian patriarchal ideology - all present in his Pushing Hands (1992), Wedding Banquet (1993), and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994P I argue that this transnational China of hybridized Western feminism and dialogue is marketed as the conglomerate Chinese culture that derived from the wuxia genre of popular culture, fantasies of gravityless martial capabilities, and a landscape ofvaried geography and blurred ethnicities. 132 Jennifer W. Jay Creating (Transnational) China: Rounding up the Diaspora Talents The US$1S million budget for Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon amounts to the biggest budget for Chinese film (Schaefer 2001), but it is modest by Hollywood standards and certainly by itselfwould not have been adequate to recruit the film's large pool oftalent from the Chinese diaspora and China. These individuals, of Chinese ethnicity but most living outside China, welcomed the opportunity to work.with the Taiwan-born auteur, who made no secret of his commitment to win an Oscar®. When Sense and Sensibility did not get nominated for an award for directing in 1996, Ang Lee apologized to Taiwan, promising that his next Chinese film would win international awards (Shih 2000, 94 citing Chinese Daily News). Indeed, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon brought home the Golden Globe's Best Director and Best Foreign Picture awards. Although the film was the official entry from Taiwan, Ang Lee shared the honor with the Chinese film industry from Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong with his public statement: "I think the achievement is an accumulation ofall the endeavors that all Chinese filmmakers have put in over the years. I think it is a great thing that such a cross-cultural event can happen ... and I'mjust very happy I'm participating in that" (CNN.com 2001). With the exception ofthe scriptwriter, James Schamus, the production team and actors who created Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon hail from the Chinese cultural zone that includes the overseas Chinese diaspora. Tim Yip (Oscar® for art direction), Peter Pau (Oscar® for cinematography), and Yuen Wo Ping (Oscar® for martial arts direction) are from Hong Kong; together the three designed a continuous landscape with the aesthetics of traditional Chinese paintings. Pulsating from the landscape is the rhythm and music composed by Tan Dun (Oscar® for original musical score), who was born in China, worked in Hong Kong, and now makes his home in the United States.4 Taiwanese American Yo-Yo Ma's cello and Hong Kong/American CoCo Lee's title song enhanced the beauty ofthe landscape and heightened the poignancy of the plot. Film critics on location in China commented on local technicians communicating in Mandarin Chinese while the art direction and martial arts teams shouted their instructions in Cantonese. At the Oscars® ceremony, Peter Pau and Tim Yip acknowledged some names in Cantonese. Mandarin is the language of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, but the presence ofthe different accents of the principal actors, rather than seen as a weakness of the film, is actually quite appropriate, given the fact that the characters they play, Jen, [18.217.6.114] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 19:51 GMT) Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon 133 Lo, Shu Lian, and Mu Bai came from various parts of China. The popular Hong Kong star Chow Yun Fat (Li Mu Bai) lives and works in Hong Kong but has already ventured into Hollywood in Anna and the King (1999). Born in Malaysia...

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