Abstract
Hong Kong as the site of East-West intersection provides an ideal context for probing the complex identity politics surrounding the quintessential female fashion item in modern China: the cheongsam, the Cantonese equivalent of the qipao. The evolution of the qipao in Shanghai has been well documented by a number of scholars, yet little has been written about the transformations via Hong Kong of the cheongsam in the popular imagination. While acknowledging the roots of the cheongsam in pre-World War II Shanghai, Ng focuses on how it has accrued meanings through the writings of Eileen Chang, who spent a critical period of self-discovery in Hong Kong, and through the lens of Hollywood. Much of her essay analyzes the Orientalizing tendencies in movies such as Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955) and The World of Suzie Wong (1960), where alluring female protagonists in cheongsam negotiate their identities as sexual objects on the one hand and paragons of traditional virtue on the other. Gender constructions in the movie industry heighten the glamor factor of wearing the cheongsam, which has proved to have enduring value in Hong Kong culture. Such factor also overlaps with the perception of propriety to produce a multivalent symbol.
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Ng, S. (2018). Clothes Make the Woman: Cheongsam and Chinese Identity in Hong Kong. In: Pyun, K., Wong, A. (eds) Fashion, Identity, and Power in Modern Asia. East Asian Popular Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97199-5_15
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