Reading the Hong Kong Trauma in Wayne Wang’s Chinese Box

Wayne Wang’s Chinese Box (1997) is a film about trauma, amnesia andfantasy. Just as trauma is a symptom of history and fantasy is asymptom of amnesia, this paper is an attempt to engage in asymptomatic reading of the film. As a coded, ciphered form, a symptom calls for interpretation since “there is no symptom without an addressee,” as Slavoj Zizek puts it.

Written by Esther M.K. Cheung
Published in Before and After Suzie, eds. Thomas Y.T. Luk and James Rice, Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2002, pp.85-99.

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