/r/Chinesediaspora

Photograph via snooOG

Sub for Chinese diaspora users: Chinese Americans, Chinese Canadians, Chinese British, Chinese Australians, Hong Kong HK Americans/Canadians/etc., Taiwanese Americans/Canadians/etc., basically people of Chinese ancestry living outside the Greater China Area.

Public Sub -> r/chineseamerican

Sub for CHINESE DIASPORA users: Chinese Americans, Chinese Canadians, Chinese British, Chinese Australians, Hong Kong HK Americans/ Canadians/etc., Taiwanese Americans/Canadians/etc., basically people of Chinese ancestry living outside the Greater China Area (China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan). Exceptions can be made for any ethnic Chinese inside the Greater China Area on an individual basis.

/r/Chinesediaspora

983 Subscribers

1

Were Ken Takakura and Komaki Kurihara also popular in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the rest of the Sinosphere?

With all the rage about Alain Delon's death in the media and how every major website in the Sino world from Hong Kong newspapers' official websites to Taiwanese blogs and even Chinese diaspora living in other non-Western countries had written stuff in other languages such as Malay under web domains for their own languages (which would happen to include a couple of people of Chinese descent who don't know any Sino language such as Indonesian Chinese)....... Delon's passing was basically given focused everywhere in among Sino netizens and diaspora who forgotten to speak any Chinese language.

So it makes me want to ask...... I just watched Manhunt and Sandakan No. 8 two movies which are the top 3 highest grossing of all time in ticket admissions from Japan......... With over 80% of the sales coming from Chinese audiences! To the point that Manhunt is still the highest grossing foreign movie ever released in China and Sandakan 8 also still remains the runner up or 3rd place depending on the source you read. How much did they profit to be precise? Manhunt made over 300 million tickets sold in China (with some sources saying total market life time is close to a billion at over 800 million admissions!) while Sandakan is the 100 million sold tickets range.

And thus it should be obvious the leads of both movies Ken Takakura and Komaki Kurihara were catapulted to the top of the AAA list giants name within China with both stars getting a lot of their famous works from Japan dubbed into Chinese theatrical releases and later on Kurihara and Takakura would star as among the leads of their own Chinese-language productions. Up until his death Takakura would continiously receive media coverage from China and visit Beijing several times near the end of his life. The same happened to Kurhara except she visited China with more frequency since the late 80s coming back every now and then an to this day she still gets honorary visits from the Chinese industry and media, even a few politicians. Takakura was so beloved in China that when he died, the Chinese foreign ministry at the time praised him in an obituary for improving the relations between China and Japan.

For Komaki Kurhara, Sandakan No. 8 sped up in how the comfort women and other touchy topics regarding sexual assault esp rape by the Japanese army within China was approached by the general populace. As Wikipedia sums up, the struggles the movie's co-protagonist goes through was something the general mainland Chinese populace identified with in light of how an entire generation of the country suffered through the horrific Comfort Woman system Esp the human trafficking issue depicted in the movie.

So I'm wondering were Ken Takakura and Komaki Kurihara also household names in Taiwan and Hong Kong and the rest of the Sinosphere like Alain Delon was? I can't seem to find much info on them in Cantonese and Hokkien nor in the languages of places the Chinese diaspora frequently moves to across Asia such as Indonesian and Malaysia. So I'm wondering how well received where they in the rests of the Chinese-speaking world?

0 Comments
2024/10/11
23:49 UTC

3

Why is Dream of the Red Chamber so obscure outside of China (even within the Confucian East Asian sphere)?

If you watch anime or read Manwha, you'd know just how much adaptations there are of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, and to a lesser extent Water Margin (and I'm not counting the tons of video game and computer games from both countries and the even more lots of references and inspired concepts from the 3 classics). Outside o immediate East Asian sphere, at least Romance of the Three Kingdoms is known across SouthEast Asia and are often required college reading if not even high school readings and Journey to the West has some fame to a lesser extent. Anyone interested in Chinese culture to a casual level will have been exposed Water Margin to some extent via Kung Fu movie adaptions and probably end up reading it if warriors legends are their thing. Even in Muslim Malaysia and Indonesia its not unusual for someone to have heard of the title of Romance of the Three Kingdoms or recognize the familiarity of the basic premise behind Journey to the West because of foreign adaptations in anime or some other thing and the only country east of Asia that seems to be completely unaware of any of the four classics outside of the Sinologist and Chinese diaspora communities in the Philippines.

But Dream of the Red Chamber absolutely seems to be quite obscure in other countries if you aren't interested in exploring Chinese culture. Just look at how there's no anime/manga retelling of the story and no Korean MMO game using the novel as a backdrop to the basic worldbuilding. Where as Three Kingdoms and Journey to the West movies and TV shows have been dubbed for foreign markets esp SouthEast Asia, none of the Red Chamber adaptations ever got officially localized in other countries. Even Water Margin gots some of its movies exported and ditto with unofficial video game translations where they literally hack the program to put in local script fronts (which is far harder than making fan subtitles of a movie or even TV show).

Dream of the Red Chamber doesn't get this amount of interest outside. Practically all Westerners I know who are even aware it exists are specifically studying some field related to Sinology and even in East Asia its either people with a sinophilia or people really into historical period romance novels who ever check it out.

Why I ask? Dream of the Red Chamber is definitely an equal in quality to the 3 others at worst and definitely deserves the same amount of fame and a thriving international fandom! I mean for Christ's sake there's an article on Redology, the study of the novel, on English Wikipedia!

1 Comment
2024/08/16
02:24 UTC

3

ABCs living in China

1 Comment
2024/08/03
11:56 UTC

1

How much does knowing one Chinese language such as Mandarin help with learning another one such as Cantonese and Qiangic and vice versa? How mutually intelligible would they be? Does the same apply to non-Chinese languages that are part of the Sino-Tibetan family?

Just decided to start learning something from the SIno-Tibetan family but I'm not sure where to start. So I'm wondering whatever I choose to specialize in would it help smoothen the transition into other languages of China and even outside the traditional Sino-Sphere like Karenic and Zeme? How mutually intelligible would languages in this family be with each other assuming a bunch of random people from across China, Burma, and India who speak them suddenly gets transported into a bar? Does ease of learning another specific family in the branch depends on proximity of the place of origins of the specific languages known and being studied? Is it similar to the Indo-European family where say someone who grew up as Dutch native would have a much much much harder time learning Farsi than learning English? And Pole would quickly transition in Russia quicker than trying to learn Gaelic and same with a New Dehli inhabitant learning Punjabi would find Romanian more time consuming? Something like that for native speakers of the Sino-TIbetan branch trying to learn other family members like Cantonese would find Mandarin far easier than Jingpho and Olekha?

1 Comment
2024/08/02
02:51 UTC

1

Are There Any Good Up To Date Book On The Chinese Diaspora?

Are there any good up to date book on the Chinese diaspora? There surely are more in the diaspora community now then at any other time in history.

1 Comment
2024/06/15
16:27 UTC

8

American fashion designer didn't want a Chinese model to wear his clothes, so he had her head photoshopped off the photos.

1 Comment
2024/06/15
15:51 UTC

9

The US is running a pogrom: Man who stabbed 94-year-old Asian woman gets probation, no prison time

1 Comment
2024/06/08
14:48 UTC

Back To Top