Chen Kuan-hsing's “Asia as method” is “a critical proposition to transform the existing knowledge structure and at the same time to transform ourselves” (212). The prerequisite here is to first identify and excavate the “base-entity” of a culture, which has to be overcome for transcendence. However, the temptation to indulge in enunciating such base-entity is enormous. The rise of China seems to signify an insidious regression into essentializing her own base- entity and thereby muting the multitude. In view of this, this article aims to reveal that Wong Kar-wai’s career is a struggle to transcend such regression, which is “the myth of consanguinity” against which Rey Chow asks us to battle (24). Wong’s status as an era-defining auteur resides in how he uses his jianghu(江湖)as method to reimagine the identity of the people in Hong Kong and beyond. Before The Grandmaster (2013), Wong’s jianghu had always been an allegory of the nativization of a fetishized identity. A lost love and a usually primordial, archetypal and absent femme fatale represent a perfect, imaginary past that the protagonists want to repeat but in vain. In The Grandmaster, however, Wong moved on from the obsession with base-entity and realized that the wushu jianghu, the martial art universe in Ip Man’s time, could be a method to reimagine Hong Kong beyond Chen’s call for ethnic essentialization. In the inheritance of different martial art traditions during troubled times, Wong sees Hong Kong＇s vitality in cultural hybridization. After long years of representing the femme fatale in his films, Wong enunciates an identity of essence-transcending family resemblance.
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Filmography
2046. Dir Wong-Kar-wai. Mei Ah Entertainment [美亞娛樂], 2004. DVD.
As Tears Go By [旺角卡門]. Dir Wong-Kar-wai. Mega Star Video Distribution(HK) Limited [鉅星錄像發行(香港)有限公司], 1988. DVD.
Ashes of Time [東邪西毒]. Dir Wong-Kar-wai. Hong Kong: Sony Music Entertainment Hong Kong Ltd. , 2009 (1994). DVD.
Chungking Express [重慶森林]. Dir Wong-Kar-wai. Ocean Shores Video Limited [海岸錄影有限公司], 1994. DVD.
Days of Being Wild [阿飛正傳]. Dir Wong-Kar-wai. Mega Star Video Distribution (HK)Limited [鉅星錄像發行(香港)有限公司], 2008 (1990). DVD.
The Grandmaster [一代宗師]. Dir Wong-Kar-wai. Mei Ah Entertainment, 2013. DVD.
In the Mood for Love [花樣年華]. Dir Wong-Kar-wai. Mei Ah Entertainment, 2000. DVD.
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