The quiet ‘others’
In America, conversations about race usually revolve around the black and white narrative. Crystal Kwok – who was born in the United States but worked as an actress in Hong Kong for years – was curious as to where the Chinese immigrant sat in that picture. So she made a film about it.
“The Chinese experience has always been shoved aside, reinforcing the image of Asian-Americans as the quiet ‘others’,” says Kwok via Zoom from the US.
In her new documentary, Blurring the Color
Line, Kwok asks some difficult questions about anti-black racism and the deeply rooted structure of white power and Chinese patriarchy.
And she does it through a personal lens – by digging into the history of her grandmother’s family, who owned a grocery store in the black neighbourhood of Augusta, in the US state of Georgia.
Intertwining personal family stories with memories from the Chinese and black communities, the film explores racialised attitudes from the past and how communities today can come together to heal.
In an apt metaphor for her message, Kwok rides a bus and asks fellow passengers where they thought a Chinese person would have sat during segregation across much of the American South from the late 19th century to the 1950s.
“Whites Only” and “Coloured” signs were constant reminders of the enforced racial order affecting all aspects of daily life, from public transport to schools, parks, restaurants – even drinking fountains.
Kwok, whose acting credits include Dragons Forever (1988), with Jackie Chan, Will of Iron (1990) and 1992 action film The Master, says the documentary’s original focus was her rebellious grandmother, Pearl Lum, who grew up in a black neighbourhood in the 1930s.
“She was expected to be a respectful, dutiful daughter, living under this strict Chinese patriarchal structure as well as the larger racialised system,” says Kwok. “My grandmother was expected to settle down with a nice Chinese man in an arranged marriage.”
Instead she ran away when she was 17.
But events in the US took the film down a different path.
“Black Lives Matter and anti-Asian hate crime took hold just as I was editing the film. I felt that I had a responsibility to address these issues, so the story shifted from a personal growth one to the connection between Chinese immigrant history and black history,” says Kwok, adding that one of the biggest discoveries she made during the project was learning that she had black relatives.
“It is about the complexities of race relations that Asians don’t like to talk about, especially Chinese,” she says. “We don’t like to talk about these uncomfortable issues and it was really hard to address them but I had to.
“For Asian-Americans in particular, I want us to reckon with our discriminating views towards black people and question how our attitudes were shaped.”
The film’s executive producer, actor Daniel Wu Neh-tsu, says Blurring the Color
Line is an important conversation starter.
“We’re going to universities, and we’re uniting Asian and black organisations, so we can talk about these issues. The film is a great starting point for that,” he says.
Blurring the Color Line will be screened at the Asia Society Hong Kong (9 Justice Drive, Admiralty) on December 8, 6.30pm, followed by a Q&A with Crystal Kwok.