The World of Suzie Wong 蘇西黃的世界 スージイーウオンの世界

Nancy Kwan on the cover of 'Life' Magazine, 1960
This 1960 Hollywood classic box office hit introduced the Chinese dress, cheongsam, to the Western world and inspired a short 'China Dress craze' in the West where the Chinese dress 旗袍 became known as the 'Suzie Wong dress' for awhile. It was the equivalent of what u can say 'In the Mood for Love' in HK and 'Memoirs of a Geisha' in present-day Hollywood did in terms of creating a fashion buzz for traditional costumes.

The story is set in 1960s colonial Hong Kong, where an English artist goes to HK to do some paintings for an english resident there. He rents a room at a seedy hotel/bar in Wanchai and it so happens that the bar downstairs is a popular watering hole for sailors who dock at HK and plenty of Chinese prostitutes engage in their business there. He meets Suzie Wong, a fiesty Chinese prostitute who, on the first occasion, pretends to be a high-class girl from a rich family. He finds out her real identity at the bar and thus starts their romance against all obstacles including class status and racism which was extremely prevalent back then.

The film deals with alot of issues and was very progressive for its time, including delving into the psychological aspect of Suzie Wong and how she pretended to be a rich girl as a means to escape from the harsh reality that she was a prostitute, the poverty in HK at the time which forced many girls into prostitution,the treatment of chinese prostitutes by caucasian sailors, and, not least, racism. The film of course is credited for introducing the sexy Chinese dress to the Western audience and, indeed, the array of Chinese dresses worn by Suzie Wong in the film is numerous and all of them display the dress in its finest form.

The Chinese dresses in the film are an accurate portrayal of how Chinese dresses were like back in the 1960s, to the extent of showing those worn by prostitutes as it was indeed the 'uniform of their profession' up until the late 1980s. It is interesting to note that the HK stewardesses on the former BOAC airlines also wore cheongsams which drew the complain of other air stewardesses for 'unfair competition' and drawing attention away from the other girls due to the sexy nature of the dress, no doubt in part to the high revealing side slits...

The official website of Nancy Kwan, the actress who portrayed 'Suzie Wong' in the film is at: http://www.nancy-kwan.com/index so do go check it out for more information about the actress as well as plenty of pics from the movie...