Pushing Hands film screening with discussion

Movie Series: What is Taiwan to Me?

The Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, the Program in Film and Media Studies, and the WUSTL China Forum present a movie series showcasing works of acclaimed Taiwanese directors and their unique perspectives on Taiwanese culture and identity. The first event in the series is the screening of Pushing Hands, a 1991 film by Ang Lee, director of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Life of Pi. Pushing Hands is a comedy-drama starring Sihung Lung as a Chinese Tai Chi master living in New York, who struggles to find his place in the world. The film shows the contrast between traditional Chinese ideas of Confucian relationships within a family and the much more informal Western emphasis on the individual. The seminar that follows the screening invites Professor Letty Chen and Ki Chow from the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures to comment on the Taiwanese diaspora, traditional values and culture, and how they have evolved to adapt to life abroad.

Speakers:

Ki “Cora” Chow is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Washington University in St. Louis. She is the winner of the Stanley Spector Memorial Award and the 40th Hong Kong Youth Literary Award in Translation. She has translated and authored several books, including One Man One Story: A Journalistic Anthology (2010) and Caring for the Young Buds: Memoirs of Chan-Chen Shu-an (2013). Her current research focuses on the relations between trauma, affects, and melodrama in contemporary China and Hong Kong.

Lingchei Letty Chen is professor of modern Chinese language and literature at Washington University in St. Louis. She is also the Chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Modern Chinese Literature, from Columbia University. Published works include Writing Chinese: Reshaping Chinese Cultural Identity, The Great Leap Backward: Forgetting and Representing the Mao Years, and Sights and Sounds of the Cold War in Socialist China.

Supported by a grant from the Ministry of Education, Taiwan.

Registration is only required for online participation in either the screening or the seminar.

Free and open to the public.