1959 Hong Kong
曾七妹 (Zheng Qi Mei)
Year born: 1942
City/town where movie was seen: Macau
Interviewed on: January 24th 2019
Interviewed by: Tiffany Ng
The first time I saw a film… now that’s a very difficult question to answer.
When I was younger, I would always go see Chinese Opera films. Not the costume dramas that were popular during that period, but the extravagantly filmed theatre productions with painted faces and colorful costumes. I can’t exactly remember the name of it, but one of the first Operas I recall seeing starred Yam Kim Fai and Bak Sheut Sin. I think it’s name went along the lines of ‘Di Nü Hua.’
The year was, if I’m not mistaken, 1959, and I was 18 years old. The film had just become a local sensation then. My aunt was a very big Cantonese Opera fan, so it was a massive deal when this film came out. To be fair, there were regular releases of new operas, and every new release was a big deal to her. Since the movie theatre was roughly a five minute walk from my house, our trips to the theatres became a sort of bonding activity. Macau is very small! It’s nothing like Hong Kong, I don’t recall taking public transport anywhere when I was younger.
It was a very dramatic movie, a lot of the narrative was centered around the power struggle between the husband, his wife, and his mistresses. I distinctly remember a scene where, upon marrying into the family, one of the mistresses – now stepmother – verbally abused the husband’s only child. Mind you, during this period polyamorous relationships and gender hierarchies were the norm.
Jealousy, greed, and tragedy were also very common themes in these operas. I recall, at some point in the film there was this woman on the street who was too poor to bury her recently deceased father. A man comes up to her, sympathetic of her tragic state, and takes her home to his many wives. The first wife was welcoming and nice, giving her husband and this homeless woman her blessing for marriage. The second wife, however, had an evil heart. She gave her husband a task that sent him out of the country, and during his absence, split the family fortune, giving herself the largest share. Funnily enough, the kind of drama that goes on in these operas reminds me a lot of the family drama we have, especially during Chinese New Year. To a lesser extent, obviously, but I could still see your aunt bickering with your father over some small misunderstanding neither of us could fathom.
You don’t really see films like these anymore. There’s just something about it that really sets it apart from the movies you and your dad take me to nowadays. I think it’s the music. It’s loud and festive like the music we play during the Lunar New Year. The costumes, too, were spectacular. The massive feathered headdresses, beaded crowns, bright silk gowns, were all part of this fantasy I dreamed of years ago. When I was younger, less exposed to this type of entertainment, I couldn’t exactly tell what the actors were saying in their solos but I would always re-watch the films until I finally understood the narrative.
I saw this film in a very old theatre, but the name escapes me. It’s a famous theatre in Macau, I think it still exists today. The ushers in the theatre would see us to our seats, using their tiny flashlights to lead us to the theatre’s signature creaky metal fold out seats with severely damaged leather seats. It was almost ritualistic, how I would sneak in my pack of caramelised pork jerky while my aunt settled into the tiny theatre seat getting ready to see a film we’ve seen dozens of times over.
