Director's Statement

All of us in Hong Kong have grown tired of questions about the "1997 issue" in recent years. All the expectations, all the fears and paranoias have been voiced; all the speculations have been made. Now that the hand-over has happened, all we can do is wait and see what happens next.

I made this documentary during the final months of British rule, and chose to look back at the Hong Kong I grew up in rather than forward to the future under China's sovereignty. In some ways, this film carries on what I began in my previous documentary Yang and Ying: Gender in Chinese Cinema; it also has a close relationship with the short play I created for Danny Yung's "Journey to the East 1997" theatre project. All of these projects are rooted in my own memories from childhood: my experience of growing up in a poor family, my feelings towards my parents, my discovery of my own sexual orientation. The touchstone is my deep identification with the local tradition of Cantonese opera, and particularly with the opera Princess Chang Ping, in which the climactic line "I deny, I deny, but in the end I can not deny" has resonances not only for me personally but also for all Hong Kong people.