Obey Fu Manchu Or Every Living Thing Will Die!

The Face of Fu Manchu (1965)
Director: Don Sharp

A film like this, made in the 21st century, would be wrong by all accounts. Words like cultural appropriation and stereotyping would be hurled to shoot this film into oblivion. Many of its dialogue can be construed as offensive or downright racist. But then, in the 60s, when this film was released, it was pretty okay. In fact, it was such a hit that it earned four subsequent sequels.

The character Fu-Manchu is the brainchild of an English novelist, Sax Rohmer (Arthur Henry "Sarfield' Ward 1883-1959). His first short story in 1912 with the character took such a liking on either side of the Atlantic that it spurred follow-up novels, plays and even a movie in 1923 titled The Mystery of Fu-Manchu.

The average Englishman in the early 20th century UK had probably no contact with an Oriental person. They had probably read about the industrious Japanese and their effort towards modernisation via the Meiji Dynasty. This was perhaps not the case in the USA or continental Europe, especially Russia. Chinese and Japanese immigrants have been working on the Pacific coast and were subjected to the same mistreatment as the blacks. The Russians had been perpetually fighting with the Japanese for imperial ambitions over Manchuria and Korea. The British were sympathetic towards the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese wars.

Sax Rohmer

For the imperialists and expansionists amongst the British, the Far East was a lucrative avenue for business and wealth. Their entry into China was resisted by the Chinese dynasty's closed-door policy. The colonialists justify their involvement in the Opium Wars by vilifying the Chinese as a mystic race with evil exuding from their every orifice. The anti-foreigners and anti-Christian stance of the Boxer Rebellion further cemented the idea the Chinese were terrible. Maybe the Europeans had not forgotten the cruelties Genghiz Khan and Atilla of the Oriental race. The sentiments to paint the Chinese as bad was skyrocketing by the late 19th and early 20th century. Hence, characters like Fu-Manchu and the looming fabled Yellow Peril seem justified. The 1905 Japanese win over the Russians seems to defend their claim that that anti-White yellow race was out to rule the world. Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II was honoured to have coined the term 'Yellow Peril' (Gelbe Gefahr) to encourage Imperial German interests and justify European colonialism in China.

A racist cartoon of The Yellow Terror in all His Glory
(1899) depicts an anti-colonial Qing DynastyChinese
man standing over a fallen white woman who
represents the Western world. (Wiki)

The xenophobic outlook towards the Chinese and other Orientals never went away. The central involvement of the Japanese in the Second World War and the embrace of Communist by China made the Great White powers somewhat sceptical of them. I guess now with China's threat to the US hegemony of world affairs puts them back in the wrong light. Even the Australians who had overt anti-Chinese clauses in their White Australia have resorted to labelling China and CCP as the Southern Continent's number one enemy of the State.

The yellow peril has had many faces, but Fu Manchu epitomised them for mass culture. A hugely popular icon, he even has a full facial hair is named after him - Fu-Manchu moustache, a wiry well-oiled moustache that almost touches the chin.

'The Face of Fu Manchu' is a predictable offering that mimics many supervillains often seen on the silver screen with megalomaniacal ambitions of world domination. Like the baddies of James Bond, Fu Manchu is an evil genius with tonnes of knowledge into the mystical world of hypnotism and herbalism, escapes execution in China only to appear around River Thames. With his convoluted plan to weaponise Tibetian poppyseed to poison all lifeforms around London, he kidnaps a chemistry Professor to extract the toxic concoction.

In come Dr Fu Manchu's nemeses, Dr Petrie and Nayland Smith of the Scotland Yard, to thwart his plan.

Fu Manchu

Two points piqued my interest here. Firstly, it is the catchy 'Younghusband' documents. Such a document actually existed. As in most British expeditions where surveyance is used as a guise to the British imperial ambitions, it compiled British exploration of Tibet, probably an economic assessment of conquest of that land.

Secondly, it is Fu Manchu's daughter, Lin Tang. She is Fu Manchu's faithful sidekick. Shang-Chi only appears in 1973's edition of Marvel's comics. He is said to be Fu Manchu's son, but due to the non-renewal of rights and probably portrayal of a Chinese character in a bad light, Shang-Chi's father is depicted as Xu Wenwu. Shang-Chi's sister is Xu Xialing (not Lin Tang!). It would just go contrary to the producer's idea of including minority groups as superheroes to tap the lucrative Chinese market, would it not?

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One man's meat is another's venom.

Axone (Akhuni, Hindi/English; 2019)
Netflix

It is a question of one man's meat being another's poison, just like the King of Fruits, Durian, being compared to putrefying and decaying cheese by visiting Europeans. Closer to home, a regular feature of Wednesday nights around the vicinity of the Taman Connaught Pasar Malam (night market) used to be, before the Covid-19 lockdown, the pungent and fermented, almost nausea-inducing stench of stinky tofu. At least that was what I was told, and there is always a long queue at the stall. The secret of the dish, it seems, was that the smellier it smelled, the tastier it tasted!

In the early days of the night market, it was a common sight to see passersby discreetly covering their noses as they passed it by. Over the years, however, the odour has become a trademark of Wednesday nights giving a sort of a nostalgic feel to it.

Many Malaysian students have had similar experiences with cooking belacan (shrimp paste), frying anchovies or preparing bak kut teh soup overseas. One flatmate thought somebody had released a stink bomb when I was heating up Malaysian anchovy sauce (sambal ikan bilis).

Back during childhood days in RRF, living in multi-storeyed low-cost flats, we were exposed to a potpourri of flavours and scents, both pleasant and offensive. The close proximity of occupants enabled us to understand and respect each other's culture.

Using the idea of a group of friends preparing a traditional dish, the story writers decide to highlight the discrimination of people from the North-East regions of India by the rest of India. 

A group of 20-something friends, all from the North-East of India (and one from Nepal) try to surprise one of their friends who was getting married by preparing a unique cuisine of Nagaland, akhuni. The problem is that the smell emitted by the brewing soup gives such a strong smell that leaves such an impression on the neighbourhood. They must have had some previous bad experience before; hence they devised an elaborate plan to trick the strict landlady and hoodwink the other tenants. With the help of the landlady's son, who is on their side (he just wants a part-time North-Eastern lover), they have to dodge embarrassing questions and frequent change of plans. 

The first problem was getting pork meat. 'Decent' people from the Indian sub-continent look at pigs with disdain. Hence, they have to go underground to obtain their merchandise. The running around and looking for a spot to cook provided a hilarious display of comedy and the bigoted views of the majority against the 'others'.

So much for the solidarity in the name of Brotherhood.

We are all guilty of making preset judgments on people just based on their external appearances. It is not necessarily a wrong thing. Over the generations, living in communities, we have developed a defence mechanism to safeguard what is ours for a rainy day against others. We learnt to sniff out our enemies. Anyone not practising our same culture was probably up to no good. Dominance over the 'other' is one sure way to keep them under check. The leaders also decided to emphasise that the 'other's lifestyle was wayward. 

The second wave of the Covid-19 transmission just re-inforced this belief. If initially, the affluent were guilty of bringing in the virus via their high flying habits, now people look at foreign workers in this country has harbingers of all diseases. Of course, they will be involved in clusters of spread. The deplorable housing facilities that you set up (or did not) make social distancing impossible. In some houses, a single bed in share by two - one who finished his morning duty, and later by the one after night duty. Doing lockdown, with no work, all of them had to be cooped together, putting them at high risk of acquiring the virus.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.