After a string of historical action dramas, including The Warlords (投名狀) and Dragon (武俠), Hong Kong director Peter Chan Ho-sun (陳可辛) returns to his favorite theme, love and friendship, with American Dreams in China (海闊天空), an entertaining comedy-drama about three college friends who build a business empire over two decades. The connection of personal stories with society at large recalls Comrades, Almost a Love Story (甜蜜蜜), arguably Chan’s best work, which follows two Chinese whose search for a better life bring them first to Hong Kong and then the US.
However, while the 1996 work tastefully captures the life of the Chinese diaspora and the mood of Hong Kong on the eve of its handover to China, Chan’s latest dramatic offering is more of a cinematic testimony to the growing power of China, a nation now capable of running its own Hollywood and spreading its dogma, non-American style.
In 1980s China, amid sweeping economic reforms, country boy Cheng Dongqing (Huang Xiaoming, 黃曉明), carefree bohemian Wang Yang (Tong Dawei, 佟大為) and the ambitious Meng Xiaojun (Deng Chao, 鄧超) meet and become friends at a university in Beijing. Like their fellow students, who believe that America is their only hope for a better future, the trio prepare for visa interviews to pursue further studies in the US. But only Meng, whose grandfather and father had earned doctoral degrees in America, is able to take off for New York. He tells his friends that he has no intention of returning.
Photo courtesy of Applause Entertainment
Dismissed from his college teaching job and with his girlfriend Mei (supermodel Du Juan, 杜鵑) having left for the US, the disheartened Cheng, together with Wang, sets up New Dream, an English-language school, in an abandoned state-owned factory. Their lessons prove to be a huge hit among Chinese youth thirsting for anything that can help them pass the SAT and GRE exams.
Across the Pacific, Meng waits on tables to make ends meet. Dejected, he returns to China and joins in his old friends’ business venture. As the academy becomes a lucrative national franchise, the trio symbolizes a new generation of entrepreneurs that came of age in 1980s and 1990s China.
However, with success comes friction and dissent. Business divisions increase and alienate the three friends, eventually shattering their friendship. The film reaches its denouement as the three businessmen travel to the US to fight a lawsuit accusing them of intellectual property theft.
Photo courtesy of Applause Entertainment
Narratively speaking, the film tells an engaging, feel-good story about three buddies making it in the big city and embracing each other’s shortcomings in the face of power, money and fame. It plays well with the distinct character types, enjoyably fleshed out by the three Chinese leading thespians, who share sparkling on-screen chemistry. Tong’s romantic disposition makes him the most likeable, while Deng delivers a focused performance as an idealist with a defeated ego. As for Chinese heartthrob Huang, despite his brave move to play against his good looks, he fails to convince as the simple country boy morphing into a sharp businessman.
Iconic pop songs, including Taiwanese pioneering female rocker Julie Su’s (蘇芮) The Same Moonlight (一樣的月光), Greenhouse Girl (花房姑娘) by Chinese rock legend Cui Jian (崔健) and Hong Kong rockers Beyond’s Boundless Oceans Vast Skies (海闊天空), add atmospheric tone to the narration. The character’s lives and their rising fortunes are juxtaposed with important moments in Chinese contemporary history such as the 1999 bombing of the Chinese embassy and Beijing’s failed 2000 Olympic bid. Naturally, the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre isn’t mentioned — a calculated commercial omission that will ensure, Chan seems to think, success on the big screen.
In essence, American Dreams in China derives its stamina from a contemporary Zeitgeist: as China has grown to be an important player in world politics and the global economy, people are demanding that their erstwhile American dreams be redefined in Chinese terms. The China-US theme reaches a didactic height when Huang’ character gives a winning speech in front of their American plaintiffs, who are depicted as prejudiced and arrogant. At that moment it becomes blatantly clear that the success of the trio is never the result of American-style individualism, but a collective ideology that finds its roots in the grudges of China’s colonial past.
Photo courtesy of Applause Entertainment
Evidently, the message has been well received by its audience. The film reportedly raked in more than RMB500 million (NT$2.5 billion) in China in less than one month after it opened on May 17.
Photo courtesy of Applause Entertainment
May 11 to May 17 Traversing the southern slopes of the Yushan Range in 1931, Japanese naturalist Tadao Kano knew he was approaching the last swath of Taiwan still beyond colonial control. The “vast, unknown territory,” protected by the “fierce” Bunun headman Dahu Ali, was “filled with an utterly endless jungle that choked the mountains and valleys,” Kano wrote. He noted how the group had “refused to submit to the measures of our authorities and entrenched themselves deep in these mountains … living a free existence spent chasing deer in the morning and seeking serow in the evening,” even describing them as
Yesterday, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) nominated legislator Puma Shen (沈伯洋) as their Taipei mayoral candidate, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) put their stamp of approval on Wei Ping-cheng (魏平政) as their candidate for Changhua County commissioner and former legislator Tsai Pi-ru (蔡壁如) of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) has begun the process to also run in Changhua, though she has not yet been formally nominated. All three news items are bizarre. The DPP has struggled with settling on a Taipei nominee. The only candidate who declared interest was Enoch Wu (吳怡農), but the party seemed determined to nominate anyone
What government project has expropriated the most land in Taiwan? According to local media reports, it is the Taoyuan Aerotropolis, eating 2,500 hectares of land in its first phase, with more to come. Forty thousand people are expected to be displaced by the project. Naturally that enormous land grab is generating powerful pushback. Last week Chen Chien-ho (陳健和), a local resident of Jhuwei Borough (竹圍) in Taoyuan City’s Dayuan District (大園) filed a petition for constitutional review of the project after losing his case at the Taipei Administrative Court. The Administrative Court found in favor of nine other local landowners, but
In a sudden move last week, opposition lawmakers of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) passed a NT$780 billion special defense budget as a preemptive measure to stop either Chinese leader Xi Jinping (習近平) or US President Donald Trump from blocking US arms sales to Taiwan at their summit in Beijing, said KMT heavyweight Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康), speaking to the Taipei Foreign Correspondents Club on Wednesday night in Taipei. The 76-year-old Jaw, a political talk show host who ran as the KMT’s vice presidential candidate in 2024, says that he personally brokered the deal to resolve
RSS