Shang Francisco

Since 2018, Yang Yuanyuan has been researching the Chinese female on the overseas Cantonese Opera stage, in movie studios and nightclubs, hence embarking on the journey of film shooting. In the process, she went to San Francisco, Hawaii, New York and Havana, etc. for the material and conducted a lot of historical investigations on overseas Chinese communities. The video ""Shang Francisco"" is part of this project.

"Shang Francisco" tells two stories about the Chinese in San Francisco. In “The Lady from Shanghai”, Ceecee, who was born in Shanghai in the 1940s and moved to San Francisco in the 50s, welcomes her long-separated mother in her house, with her mom mumbling,” Where am I? Am I in Shanghai?”. After her well-told family history, Ceecee speaks about how she met her Shanghai ex-husband in spite of language difference and physical distance on a dating website in 2000. Anecdotes of Chinatown started with a walking tour in Chinatown, San Francisco. In the 40s, as Orson Wales’ movie The Lady from Shanghai was shown in the last subsistent cinema in the Chinatown, San Francisco, then from the “Shanghai House” to “the Nightclub of the Forbidden City”, the camera followed the ethnic Chinese dancer Cythina’s steps upon the journey of overlapping space-time.