Anna May Wong: La Malinche

Currently up for auction on eBay is this fabulous portrait by Armando Drechsler of Anna May Wong as the controversial "Mother of Modern Mexico", La Malinche. It's not as odd as first seems. During her early career, Anna May played a variety of "exotic" ethnicities besides her own: for example, the Arab girl Zira in The 40th Door (1924) and the Inuit girl Keok in The Alaskan (1924). Such ethnic transformations were commonplace in Hollywood at the time, not to mention the institutionalized practice of yellowface.

Drechsler's choice of Anna May Wong as his model for La Malinche is especially provocative because many of the charges leveled against La Malinche — even still today — were also leveled against Anna May: harlot, race traitor, miscegenist.

But it seems plausible to me that Drechsler, who was originally from Germany and likely familiar with Anna May's European sojourns, instead regarded both women as boundary-crossing pioneers.

Whatever the inspiration, with this painting he created a stunning testament to Anna May Wong's global appeal and world-class beauty.

* For more examples of Armando Drechsler's work, see Mexican Calendar Girls by Angela Villalba.

The Art of the Qipao

During my recent trip to Malaysia I stopped for a few days in Hong Kong, where I was lucky to catch an extraordinary exhibit at the Museum of History: The Evergreen Classic – Transformation of the Qipao. Tracing the evolution of the qipao (or cheongsam, as it's known in Cantonese) from its origins as the gown worn by Manchu women during the Qing dynasty to its golden age in 1930s Shanghai and subsequent efflorescence in post-war Hong Kong, the show features an astonishing 280 qipao as well as more than 400 photographs.

As you can see from my photos below, it's a sight to behold, whether you're a dedicated lover or just a casual fan. I was so overwhelmed by the sheer number and variety on display that I planned to return for a second visit but didn't have the time. Unfortunately, no catalog was published for this exhibit (a colossal missed opportunity that I'm still scratching my head about), so get yourself to Hong Kong by September 13 if you can't bear to miss this rare and precious spectacle.

A PDF of the exhibition pamphlet is available here.

KL Aerosol Addicts

Although Malaysia is plagued by religious reactionaries (just like my own country) — who, if they had their way, would ban such wonderful things as tomboys and horror movies — the capital city, Kuala Lumpur, is home to a strong and vibrant secular culture, as shown by the lively street art I saw during my wanderings.

According to former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, graffiti is an "alien culture [that] will negate all the efforts of beautifying our cities and towns" (ref). But for me at least, KL's street art was a bright spot in a city more sorely in need of litter cleanup and sidewalk repair than graffiti removal.



















BTW, the stencil piece above refers to the Defence Services Asia exhibition, one of the world's top military supermarkets, held in Kuala Lumpur every two years.

Finally, let me leave you with this news story about KL street art that I found on YouTube:

Chen Man: Better than Andy on Adam

A big thanks to dleedlee for turning me on to photographer Chen Man. I'd already seen, and dug, a lot of her fashion photography — especially her recent shoot for Esquire featuring actress Fan Bingbing as Che Guevara, Bruce Lee, Superman, and Elvis Presley — but never knew who it was behind the camera. After googling some of her other work, I'm really blown away by her trippy avant-pop sensibility.

Chen Man just had a show in Hong Kong, which I'm bummed about missing. But the good news is that a book of her photographs, Chen Man: Works 2003-2010, was recently published. I ordered a copy yesterday, and it's already on its way — hurray! I'll report back as soon as it arrives.

* The photos above were taken from Chen Man's blog. She also has a website.

Movie Stars in the Cartoonist's Eye

Check out these delightful caricatures by cartoonist P. L. Chang from the May 1934 issue of the Shanghai pictorial magazine Young Companion. For those of you who read Chinese, here are the captions. For those who can't (and that includes myself), I'll attempt to conjecture about some of the situations depicted.


Chen Yumei
Remember Chen Yumei, who battled Hu Die for the title of China's movie queen? Supposedly when rising star Hu Die left the Tianyi Film Company in 1928 and signed on with rival Mingxing, Tianyi boss Runje Shaw (the eldest of the Shaw Brothers) decided to take Chen Yumei — one of his actresses — as his second wife and make her the studio's new top star. In this way, it was rumored, the notoriously stingy Shaw wouldn't have to pay a high salary to his leading lady. Poor Chen Yumei... all she could do was dream of getting that crown, while sleeping with rats on a patched mattress.


Wang Renmei
"Wildcat" Wang Renmei had married Korean hunk (and Shanghai's "Emperor of Film") Jin Yan at the beginning of 1934. Jin Yan was an avid hunter and outdoorsman, and if this cartoon is accurate, then "Wildcat" Wang also shared his love of rifles and campfires.


Ai Xia
This cartoon shows Death coming to claim the rebellious modern girl Ai Xia, who committed suicide during the Lunar New Year of 1934. She was China's second female scriptwriter and had written and starred in the film A Woman of Today (1933) before her death. In a traqic turn of events, director Cai Chusheng — who was rumored to have had an affair with Ai and who blamed the Shanghai paparazzi for her death — made a film about her life called New Woman (1935), starring Ruan Lingyu as her fictional stand-in. The press responded to Cai's attack by hounding Ruan Lingyu, who ended up taking her own life shortly thereafter on March 15, International Women's Day. It clearly wasn't easy being a "modern woman" in modern Shanghai.


Li Minghui
A singer turned movie star, Li Minghui was the daughter of "Father of Mandopop" Li Jinhui. In 1934 she married one of China's most famous athletes, football star Lu Zhongen. To read more about Li Minghui, check out The Chinese Mirror, your one-stop shop for information (in English!) about early Chinese cinema.


Hu Die
Here's Queen Hu Die looking a little uptight. I don't know what's going on in the cartoon, but I wonder if it's a reference to Hu Die's suit against her fiance for the annulment of their long-standing engagement. She also demanded monetary compensation for being taken out of the marriage market for such a long time (I believe they were engaged for three years). According to one American newspaper account, Hu Die was "never loath to use her affairs of the heart as stepping stones for her career" (Salt Lake Tribune, March 1, 1936).


Hu Ping
All I can tell you about Hu Ping is that she played the mad woman in Song at Midnight (1937), an adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera that was later remade in Hong Kong during the 90s as The Phantom Lover, starring Leslie Cheung. I'm curious to know more about her, so please leave a comment if you have any information.


Xu Lai
My buddy Oldflames helped me identify this one and was kind enough to translate the caption, in which Xu Lai says, "I couldn't live another day if I can't dance." I guess she was known for her terpsichorean passion. And to think, I only knew her as the first Chinese actress to do a bathtub scene.


Ruan Lingyu
And last but not least is our beloved Ruan Lingyu, whose winning smile and lanky beauty is perfectly captured by cartoonist P. L. Chang.

I hope you've enjoyed these as much as I have!

Scenes from Shanghai's Night Life

Check out these wonderful postcards that went for auction on eBay recently. I'm not absolutely certain, but I think they're the work of cartoonist Friedrich Schiff, an Austrian Jew who lived in Shanghai during the 1930s and 40s.

Born in 1908 into an artistic family (his father was a painter, his mother an actress), Schiff studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

In 1930, at the invitation of his cousin, Schiff visited Shanghai and fell in love with the city and its people. He ended up living there for 14 years, until 1947 when he moved to Buenos Aires.

Schiff had worked as a newspaper cartoonist in Vienna and continued this line of work in Shanghai. Soon he became famous for his amusing caricatures of the city's inhabitants, from beggars and expats to sailors and sing-song girls.

In 1934, he began a fruitful collaboration with photojournalist Ellen Thorbecke (who was the wife of the Dutch ambassador to China). Like Schiff, Thorbecke was also a Sinophile. Together they created a series of illustrated travel books about China's major cities: Peking Studies (1934), Shanghai (1938), and Hong Kong (1938). From what I've read (see the link below), the books are quite charming. Unfortunately, I don't know if I'll ever get a chance to peruse them, since they apparently fetch a pretty steep price in the rare book marketplace.

However, there is a compilation of Schiff's Shanghai sketches called Vicissitude of Old Shanghai (老上海浮世绘), which I am dying to get my hands on. I found it for sale at a Chinese online bookseller only to discover, after I had successfully managed (with the help of Google Translate) to set up an account, that the book is currently out of stock. Boo-hoo for me... but I'll track it down. I don't give up easily once I'm on the hunt!

Further Reading

• Images from Maskee: A Shanghai Sketchbook by Schiff (ca. 1938)
• "Records of Hong Kong: Arthur Hacker profiles two out-of-the-box 1930s Hong Kong artists"

The Mysteries of Ruan Lingyu

Ruan Lingyu's Puzzling Interlude at Owl Hollow

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled — like a proverbial Alice — across an astonishing series of paintings devoted to silent film star Ruan Lingyu. I was completely surprised and enchanted by these strange tableaux which featured an actress so familiar and beloved to me.

Compelled by Ruan's tragic life and sad beauty, artist Kamala Dolphin-Kingsley created this trinity of works that became the centerpiece of her 2005 exhibit Somnium at Seattle's Bluebottle Art Gallery. In her artist statement she wrote that the paintings are "a tribute of imagined dreams, of a different world free from the torments of humanity, to inhabit Ruan Lingyu's self-imposed sleep."


Ruan Lingyu's Tangible Delectation

Through the alchemy of Dolphin-Kingsley's art, Ruan's suicide becomes a shamanic passage into the underworld. Accompanied by a retinue of animal guides — the wise owl, all-seeing peacock, lucky goldfish, and mercurial octopus and salamander — she travels through the hollow of death to emerge as the eternal Goddess.


Ruan Lingyu and Octopus

To see more of Kamala Dolphin-Kingsley's amazing work, visit her website and Flickr page.

Don't Look Back

The People's Art of Hong Kong

One of the things I love to photograph when I'm wandering around Hong Kong is its down and dirty street art. Here are some examples I've found in Causeway Bay and Central over the past couple of years. I really love how the pieces — some by premeditation and some by chance — engage with their surroundings. Like unruly urchins, Hong Kong's street art offers a sly and subversive counterpoint to the oversize consumerist canvases that dominate the cityscape.