The World of Suzie Wong...

Such, is the myth spun from the yarn of what is Oriental beauty about... found a form in Suzy Wong, termed as 'a wonderful Asian girl.. & a virgin of the heart.' The way the story goes is that by day, Suzie (pretends to be `something important' like the virtuous daughter of a rich man..) looks like any other young girl with her hair pulled into a high pony-tail.. But by night, her shining black hair fell loose.. & she looks sensuous in her tight-fitting red silk cheung-sam.. (The cheung-sam came to represent in the Occidental mind a two-stereotypical view of Asian women-subservient, obedient, tradition on the one hand, and exotic, sexual, even menacing on the other.) to entertain a bunch of sailors.

"The World of Suzie Wong" is based on a best-selling novel by Richard Mason. Acted by Nancy Kwan and William Holden in the 1960s, this interesting tale portrays a bitter-sweet love affair between two very different cultures in the most 'biased' settings ( am American painter & a beautiful Oriental prostitute) which enraged a generation of American Asians and also other Asians aroud the world, who grew up in it's shadows. The setting is Hong Kong in the late fifties-- a time when the fragrant harbor was the gateway to the East & the Cheung-sam capital of the world. William Holden plays the sincere American artist who becomes caught with the sordid underworld of prostitution in Hong Kong, and the beautiful Eurasian actress Nancy Kwan (in her screen debut) plays the marvelous & irresistible Suzie Wong, the "most popular girl in Hong Kong." Read more about Nancy here.

The movie has completely fled my mind till Dr. Nafsiah started calling me 'Suzie Wong' when I first arrived at work with my new hairstyle lol - all straight and black-silk like in comparison to my frizzy, uncontrollable-lion-mane in the past. Well, Dr. Nafsiah did say that she's not relating me to the 'lifestyle and behaviour of the character' but to the new hair style and some features that screams "Suzie Wong". Then I said, "yes, resemblance in terms of the new hair and maybe the cheekbones." Anyway, I was not insulted at all even if Dr. Nafsiah didn't explain - why? I later told Dr. Nafsiah of how I am related to Nancy Kwan - She's the grand daughter of my 2nd eldest grand aunt (Grandma's 2nd eldest sister, from Dad's side). This makes Nancy my 2nd cousin. Genes from my Granny's side are very dominant, and it doesn't seem to be able to be diluted - especially the cheekbones and lips! Thank God I did not inherit the meaty, mushroom nose lol (almost all my cousins and aunts and uncles from Dad's side have it!)... errr.. thanks Mommy, for being in Daddy's life lol

Nancy, with her eurasian features, are the best of Uncle Kwan his French wife's features as I was told by an aunt when we were discussing about the movie (ages ago!). Aunt said that Uncle Kwan is very modern and very smarmy - he even greet his female cousins by kissing them on the lips! lol Aunt says that she used to be really angry at Uncle Kwan for doing that. You can imagine how eyebrows were raised then at such a behaviour in Sabah back in the 1950s - 1960s! Those were the days where Mom and Dad only held hands in public after they were publicly announced as 'Engaged' lol.

I've never seen Nancy's biological mother nor father as they've passed on when I was a really young child. Nancy was not close to her biological mother at all, she didn't want to have anything to do with 'Asians' when the marriage failed. Nancy's stepmother became the "mother" to Nancy. I've only seen Nancy's stepmother, who has come to our house in Sabah several times. They'd come to visit during the times whenever the family's back from London, just to see my grandmother who was living with us then.

"The World of Susie Wong" was aired as a Monday night movie when I was probably about 12-13 years old, in the 1980s and I remember Dad telling us for the first time that we are going to watch our cousin 'act'. Needless to say that we were all excited and wanted Dad to tell us more about 'our cousin in Hollywood'. The story went this way... when the movie came to Sabah in the 1960s, everyone in the family were excited about it and wanted to watch it - the news of the movie's release was informed by Nancy's stepmother to everyone in the family then, who travels to and fro Hong Kong - Malaysia. However, almost all family members reacted angrily at the movie when they watched it ... as then, the family members are really used to watching Chinese movies of the olden days. According to Dad, everyone felt that the movie was nothing but an embarassment as Nancy acted as a prostitute! Poor Uncle Kwan and Aunt were criticised for allowing their daughter, Nancy, to be shamed. Uncle Kwan is not bothered, he's a really liberal person who's more anglocised than what the Chinese world would like to mould him into ... according to Dad. So, back to the re-airing of the movie in the 1980s, we watched it as a family, Dad, Mom, Sis, bro and I. When the movie was over, Dad said to Mom, "It's a good movie, huh?" and turned to us kids, "You like the movie?".... all the three of us nodded unanimously. Hmm... looking back retrospectively, I never quite saw it as a 'change of times' over the 20 years, but looking at it again, and where we are all at today, I'm glad for the changes that had taken place - a more liberal viewpoint that a movie is to be taken as a movie, and not to be too personal about it. Nancy did her part really well - bravo!