Mabel Cheung Yuen-Ting's An Autumn's Tale

1. Introduction: Mabel Cheung Yuen-ting and the Women of Hong Kong's Second Wave

Introduction Mabel Cheung Yuen-ting and the Women of Hong Kong's Second Wave Despite the fact that Mabel Cheung Yuen-ting is the first woman director to be recognized in this series, she and her peers have had a significant impact on the Hong Kong film industry. Scholars who have noted that the 1980s was a golden decade for Hong Kong film, also remind us that women's cultural production in Hong Kong accelerated in the last two decades of the 20th century. Directors such as Cheung rode a wave of increased profile and popularity.l One of three women to achieve acclaim in the New Wave/Second Wave cohort - along with Ann Hui and Clara Law - Mabel Chueng Yuen-ting's work speaks to multiple preoccupations in diaspora, while making a woman's sto月T - through the character of Jenny (played by Cherie Chung) 一 the central focus. AnAutumn 台 Taleis a piece of women's history (in terms of both its content and its production) and it is also an important example of how the Hong Kong film industry (particularly in the 1980s and 1990s) chronicled the diversity of women's experiences, changes in ideas about gender identities, class cleavages, and transpacific migration at centu叮's MABEL CHEUNG YUEN-TING'S AN AUTUMN'S TALE end. The film complements and is in conversation with other Hong Kong films about women in diaspora made during the same period such as Allen Fong's JustLike Weather(1986), Stanley Kwan's Full Moon in λTew York (1987), Ann Hui's Song of 的eExz告 (198n Clara Law's Farewell 仿ina (1990) andA Floating L妒 (1996)， and Evans Chan's Crossings (1994). Cheung, Hui, and Law do more than tell women's stories. They all make films that address multiple issues and historical shifts in gender, ethnic, and cultural identities. In some respects, several of their films could be considered a transnational extension of an Asian American cultural studies tradition; a late-20th century accompaniment to the 19th century “bachelor society" narratives of men who left Hong Kong and China to work and live in the United States during the Gold Rush period. Hong Kong's 1980s and 1990s cinematic migration melodramas likeAnAutumns Tale also merit closer analysis for the counter narrative their representations offer in a particular historical moment. Recently, increased interest in Chinese women's autobiographical texts (particularly stories of women from the Chinese mainland during and after the Cultural Revolution) has extended a long-standing western proclivity to view Chinese women everγwhere as tragic victims. Films like An Autumn 台 Tale offer a different perspective on the story of women coming of age. They are, arguably, cultural history texts that show women exercising a signi日cant amount of agency through mobili妙， education, and acculturation to various environments. Gender and cultural identity are important, but by no means the defining factors in shaping women's lives. Because this is the first study of a female director in the Hong Kong New Wave Cinema series, it is important to take a brief step back in order to assess the status of women in the Hong Kong film industry. How di伍cult is it for women to succeed? Cheung declares she feels “lucky to be a female director in Hong Kong" because,“m all of Asia, Hong Kong is the place which has the least prejudice INTRODUCTION against women." All that really matters, she notes, is whether a director can bring a film in on time and under budget. 2 Actor and director Tsui Hark proudly declares that the presence of strong women behind and in front of the camera is one thing that makes Hong Kongdi旺'erent from Hollywood. “In Hong Kong,we are never ‘threatened' by the females in our films and there is no bias i 旭 n choosing which gender is doing the interesting things in the storηy 入口 Yet while she stands fir 口 rmly behind the declaration t 由 ha 仗 tbeing a woman is not a liability for a director, Cheung is pleased that several recent changes have taken place, particularly in terms of women in front of the camera. She is, she says, happy that “the depiction of women in Hong Kong movies has evolved from mere decoration for the set to characters with independent thinking.叫 Keep in mind, however, that despite the confident declarations of an increasingly level playing field, women are still significantly outnumbered in the...