The Visitor from California = Jia Zhou Lai Ke

Synopsis:
Annie comes from California and is in China for her PhD research on Chinese women. A Chinese-American, Annie went to his father’s hometown in Guangdong and became interested in the experience of a local factory director, Ms Mei. Annie found that although Ms Mei was so capable and successful as the director of a large factory, her love life was not happy. Her husband went overseas to seek fortune shortly after their marriage and Ms Mei had heard nothing from her husband for more than 30 years. Although Ms Mei was not even sure whether her husband was alive or dead, she treated her disabled mother-in-law as her own mother and kindly adopted an abandoned child. Ms Mei struggled between love and traditional values for women when a local school teacher fell in love with her. Ms Mei eventually did not take the step for love and firmly opposed to her daughter’s divorce when the young couple’s relation had problem. Annie’s parents were on way to China to see Annie, and the fact that Annie’s father had the same name as Ms Mei’s ex husband disturbed Mei a lot. It turned out that Ms Mei’s ex husband died on boat on his voyage to the US, and he gave his valuable passport (not everybody had one) to Anne’s father, who was the few survived and had used Ms Mei’s husband’s name after arriving in the US. Annie and her parents went back to the America and Ms Mei decided to start a new life.

Cultural History of the Film:
Nanhai Film Corporation is a film company based in Beijing. It produces both films and TV series.
China adopted the “open-door” policy in the late 1970s, and since then, overseas Chinese were able to (re)-visit China, where they sometimes experienced a “cultural shock”. Guangdong and Fujian (aka. Canton and Hokian) are the two provinces which had the largest number of emigrants living overseas.

Researcher’s Comments:
This film adopts a westerner’s perspective to examine the changes taking place both in Chinese people’s mind and society in the early 1980s. It deals with the conflicts of traditional and new values from a foreigner’s point of view, which is not uncommon in Chinese cinema.

(3 stars - Yuxing Zhou; May 21, 2010)