Articulating British Chinese experiences on-screen:SoursweetandPing Pong

Abstract

The notion of the Sinophone according to Shu-mei Shih attempts takes the delineation of Chinese identities out of ethno-geographic boundaries into linguistic communities. In the case of Chinese cinemas, the emphasis on linguistic communities fails to address Chinese diasporic cinemas that do not necessarily employ any Chinese language, yet speak to the tensions inherent in articulating Chinese identities on foreign shores. This article will explore these issues through a study of the British Chinese films Ping Pong (Po-Chih Leong, 1986) and Soursweet (Mike Newell, 1988) and argue that an emphasis on Sinophone cinemas, as a stand-in for the polyvalencies of ‘Chinese’ and ‘Chineseness’, risks silencing non-Chinese-language Chinese cinemas such as British Chinese cinema. However marginalized it may be, the example of British Chinese cinema calls into question the political usefulness of a definition of Chinese identity that silences those who for artistic, cultural or economic reasons choose to work in non-Chinese languages.

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