Michelle Yeoh won the Oscar for Best Actress, and the Asian actress lifted the statuette for the first time. Presumably, there will be many public accounts today to take stock of Michelle Yeoh's wonderful decades of acting career, I will not repeat it.
Michelle Yeoh has to start with a hundred years ago, starting with a woman named Anna May Wong.
Anna May Wong's Chinese name is Huang Liushuang, a third-generation Chinese immigrant whose ancestral home is Taishan, Guangdong.
Taishan in Guangdong is the famous hometown of overseas Chinese, and according to incomplete statistics, there are 1.6 million overseas Chinese from Taishan scattered around the world.
Guo Jingjing's mother-in-law, Zhu Lingling, was born in Myanmar and moved to Hong Kong with her family in her early years, and her ancestral home is Taishan, Guangdong. Donnie Yen, who is the guest of honor at the Oscars today, is also from Taishan, Guangdong.
Huang Liushuang's father opened a laundry in Chinatown, and the family lived on this storefront, which was basically the common living situation of overseas Chinese in the early days. Until the sixties, Liu Yuling's parents immigrated abroad as Kochi, but they still could not get a high-paying job, and the family of several people huddled in a cramped apartment to worry about making a living.
This is also the reason why many overseas Chinese are very crisis-conscious, Liu Yuling's famous remark is "Fvck you money", you must save enough money to have the courage to advocate for justice for yourself.
Liu Yuling is saving Fvck you money while seeking acting opportunities, fifty years old Huang Liushuang does not have such a strong idea, she accidentally bumped into the road of acting, the reason is simply that "the crew needs an eastern face".
14-year-old Huang Liushuang fell in love with acting because of this "mistake and mistake", coupled with the fact that it was the initial stage of Hollywood at that time, various movies quickly entered the shooting stage, many movies need eastern faces, Huang Liushuang is an alternative actor for many crews.
14-23 years old, Huang Liushuang acted in Hollywood for a total of nine years, it is reasonable to say that the status should be higher and higher, but because the status of Chinese people was not high at that time, there were even regulations that Asians were not allowed to have kissing scenes in movies, so that Huang Liushuang acted in movies for nine years and did not get a super high reputation.
I think it's a process of a woman's self-awareness slowly growing.
At first, Huang Liu Shuang just thought that it was fresh and fun to make movies, but the nine years of making movies happened to be an important stage in the establishment of her values, and she would feel uncomfortable reviewing the roles she had played, or Asian women who waited hard for their husbands and did not hesitate to sacrifice their lives; Or beautiful but vicious Asian women.
Huang Liushuang left almost no interviews, but boldly speculated that she should be sad about the roles she has played, the difference between her and other foreign actors is too obvious, others can play various roles that are great or artistic, but she can only play Asian women who are suffering; Others can receive A-grade movies, and looking for her to act in movies will always be B-grade.
So Huang Liushuang chose to leave Hollywood and go to Europe at the age of 23 to continue his film career in Europe.
In those years in Europe, Huang Liu Shuang did usher in the peak of her career, even if there were still such and such regulations that tied her. In 1931, Huang Liushuang returned to Hollywood to film, which means that she withdrew after three years in the European film industry, why, it is said that Huang Liushuang made several female best friends in Europe, so the outside world began to rumor that her sexual orientation was problematic.
Five years after returning to Hollywood, Pearl Buck's "Earth" was preparing to shoot a movie, and the heroine was Huang Liu Shuang. This is undoubtedly a good opportunity for Huang Liushuang, firstly, she got the movie role of playing the heroine; Second, the heroine in "The Earth" is a diligent and simple Asian female character, which is different from the roles she played in the past, which is what she has always wanted.
But the result was that Huang Liu Shuang failed to star because of various systems at that time, and the final heroine was a German actress, Louis Reiner.
Later, Huang Liushuang's tablets decreased year by year, and she was said to have dabbled in the beauty industry in order to support herself.
What did Huang Liu Shuang get through the movie? To be honest, what she got was the most practical material security.
In her early years, the family lived on a laundromat, and after Huang Liu Shuang started acting in movies, she paid the family $150 a week for living expenses. Huang Liushuang bought an apartment in California in his later years, and lived by collecting rent in the years when there was no contract. "Collecting rent to live" is the dream of many young people today.
But Huang Liu Shuang seemed to have received nothing.
She loved acting in movies, but in the film industry at the time, Huang Liu Shuang was just an option when she "needed Asian faces". She can't show more of her charm through film, just a tool to express how miserable or completely vicious Asian women are.
Huang Liu Shuang seemed to be alone from beginning to end.
Wander around Hollywood alone, go to Europe alone, return to Hollywood alone, and spend your old age alone.
Now female stars are sought after by people from all walks of life, and many people express their love to them, just like Michelle Yeoh, FIA President Jean Todd has launched a fierce pursuit of Michelle Yeoh, and from the daily life of the two, the choice of whether to get married lies with Michelle Yeoh, Michelle Yeoh does not want to get married, and the other party can only express his heart repeatedly.
But decades ago, Huang Liushuang had no way to be with her white boyfriend, and various systems stipulated that colored/ethnic people could not marry Americans/nationals, and the other party proposed to Huang Liushuang to break up on this condition.
After quitting the film industry, Huang Liu Shuang was extremely dependent on alcohol and eventually died at the age of 56. She was buried in Los America's Rose Valley Cemetery, with her mother, without a word written on the tombstone, and people passing by did not know that the first Chinese-American female film actress was buried here. This is Huang Liu Shuang's life of suffocating, not talking about wonderful, and without a great ending.
Chinese actresses want to gain a foothold in Hollywood is not something that can be changed in a few years or decades, Michelle Yeoh played "Crazy Rich Asians" before "Instant Universe", in which she played the mother of the male protagonist, a mother-in-law who is not angry and self-threatening, with two big words written on her face: difficult!
It is said that Michelle Yeoh rejected this script for the first time, why are foreign mothers-in-law so gentle and amiable, and Asian mothers-in-law are daughters-in-law's natural enemies?
The director's explanation is that this role is actually a mother who is strict with her son, because the control of her son will involve marriage-related issues, which makes people mistakenly think that she is a difficult mother-in-law.
That is to say, before Michelle Yeoh won the Oscar, like thousands of 50+ Asian actresses, she was invited to play the role of an unlikable mother.
And now everyone knows that a small episode is that the protagonist of "Instantaneous Universe" was Jackie Chan at the beginning, Michelle Yeoh is just a supporting role in the movie, it is the screenwriter who writes that he can't write, and he wants to start with women in a different way, so that he has the role of Michelle Yeoh now.
In fact, Michelle Yeoh's road to winning the Oscar is not stable, and she will not usher in this brilliant 60 years old.
From Huang Liu Shuang to Michelle Yeoh, in fact, what I want to say is that Asian actresses want to really gain a voice internationally, it is difficult to do it by talent and hard work, but by relying on very metaphysical "coincidences".
If it weren't for the headache moment that the screenwriter couldn't write, there wouldn't be this role that sent Michelle Yeoh to the Oscar for Best Actress. and Tang Wei, who rose to prominence in the world last year, also brushed his face in the international film industry with metaphysics, to be honest, Tang Wei's acting skills in "Determination to Break Up" are not amazing, it was the right time and place and sent her to a mountain.
It would be sad to talk about a person in a field based entirely on coincidence and luck, but we have to admit that this is the case.
Fortunately, the situation now looks smoother and clearer than a hundred years ago, and although there are still difficulties, the trend is gratifying.
In 1961, Huang Liu Shuang died; In 1962, Michelle Yeoh was born. 61 years later, Michelle Yeoh lifted the film's highest honor, the Little Golden Man.
As if in relay, generations of Asian female filmmakers are on the road, wading a path without metaphysics and without luck to be seen in their own light.