Academy Awards: Why is Vietnam reluctant to recognize Kwan Ki Wei who made history? – BBC News Chinese

Some emphasized the actor’s Chinese heritage more than his Vietnamese background. He was born in Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam in 1971. His family belonged to the Chinese minority who were quite successful in business operations at that time. Such people were very common in many Southeast Asian cities at that time. What no one mentioned was that he left Vietnam as a refugee, part of a group of so-called “boat people” fleeing.

Vietnam’s “Youth Daily” (Thanh Nien) only wrote that “he was born in a Chinese family in Ho Chi Minh City (the later official name of Saigon) in 1971, and then immigrated to the United States in the 1970s.”

“Vietnam Youth Daily” (Tuoi Tre) wrote: “Guan Jiwei was born in a Chinese family in Vietnam in 1971. His mother is from Hong Kong and his father is from mainland China.”

The VN Express website wrote that the actor’s “Chinese parents are in Cho Lon,” referring to a traditional Chinatown district in Saigon with a large Chinese population.

No one in the Vietnamese government has commented, though that may not be so surprising to the traditionally silent Vietnamese Communist Party. Why is there such a reluctance to open up to an actor who has openly acknowledged his Vietnamese background and is now wildly successful and globally recognized?

The mass exodus of boat people in the 1970s and 1980s was one of the darkest events in Vietnam’s modern history. More than 1.5 million people fled, most of them ethnic Chinese. They often depart across the South China Sea in rickety boats.

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the death toll in this refugee wave was between 200,000 and 400,000, some at the hands of ruthless pirates. For the Communist Party, which had just repulsed the powerful U.S. military at the time, and then achieved a magnificent economic take-off, this was a history they wanted to forget. Guan Jiwei won the Oscar, but he brought back these memories.

The tragic boat exodus also awakened Vietnam’s entangled relationship with its powerful neighbor, China. Official ties between the two communist regimes were strong in the post-World War II years when China provided substantial aid to North Vietnam, supporting the latter against France and then the United States.

But by the time of North Vietnam’s victory and Vietnam’s reunification in April 1975, tensions between the two countries had grown. The key point here is that when the Sino-Soviet split and Sino-US relations were restored, the Vietnamese Communist Party leadership sided with the Soviet Union.

Guan Jiwei’s life story began with a period of fleeing Vietnamese refugees as described in Xu Anhua’s movie “Running into the Wrathful Sea”, and his subsequent life was also ups and downs like a movie.

He fled Vietnam with his family when he was 7 years old. He and his father went to Hong Kong, while his mother and three siblings went to Malaysia. The family was not reunited until they arrived in the United States in 1979.

However, when Guan Jiwei was interviewed by The Guardian, he used “traumatic” to describe the period of time after that, because as immigrants, “no one wanted us…at school they would make fun of us, you can imagine the pair What that does to a child’s mental state.”

The turning point in his life came at the age of 12 when he went to support his younger brother in auditioning for Indiana Jones (Indiana Jones) and was selected by the director, which he said was the “most important moment” of his life. One of the happy moments.”

Director Steven Spielberg (Steven Spielberg) was the first director to add Asian actors to Hollywood blockbusters, and he later co-produced “The Goonies” (The Goonies, “Ghosts”) also used Asian actors. Kwan Ji-wai stars as a Chinese thief in this classic children’s comedy with a cast of child actors.

While the portrayal of Asians has been criticized for stereotyping, Kwan still sees Spielberg as a pioneer. However, after he became an adult, his role in a series of movies and TV series became more and more stereotyped, so he had to give up acting and work behind the scenes as an assistant director or stunt coordinator.

“The transition from child actor to adult actor is always difficult,” he told The Telegraph, “but when you’re Asian, it’s 100 times harder.”

It wasn’t until “Crazy Rich Asians” (“Crazy Rich Asians”/”My Super Rich Boyfriend”) with an Asian protagonist was a big success that Guan Jiwei, who saw hope again, decided to return to the screen.

When he landed the role in “The Multiverse of Damn,” he didn’t expect the movie to be the success it is today — a fusion of indie drama, sci-fi and superhero concepts that has an uncertain audience.

Kwan played Michelle Yeoh’s husband in the film, and in the end both the film and Kwan completely conquered Hollywood.

In the end, at the Oscars, it was “Raiders of the Lost Ark” star Harrison Ford (Harrison Ford) who awarded them the best film award, and he and Kwan Ji-wei were able to reunite on the highest stage in Hollywood.

Guan Jiwei thanked his younger brother and wife on stage, “They told me month after month, year after year, that my time will come.”

“Dreams are something you have to believe in, and I almost gave up on mine,” he said.

“To all of you, please remember to hold on to your dreams. You are very welcome to return.”

At that time, a large number of Vietnamese Chinese mainly living in the embankment area, including Guan Jiwei’s family, were involved in such a tide. They were already living under pressure as the main bourgeoisie in South Vietnam, suspected by the victorious Viet Cong of their links to the fallen regime. Many were sent to re-education camps.

Postwar Vietnam’s economy struggled for many years as a result of successive devastation, international isolation, and the new regime’s stubbornly socialist policies. The local ethnic Chinese usually had the money to buy officials and hire boats, so in September 1978 they began to flee on a large scale.

When China sent troops to Vietnam in February 1979, anti-China sentiment in Vietnam was on the rise, which intensified the exodus, which lasted for more than a decade.

The tangled relationship with China persists to this day, although the primary blame is no longer on the ethnic Chinese. Many Vietnamese who fled at that time have returned to Vietnam and achieved success.

But dissatisfaction with China’s aggressive policies on disputed islands in the South China Sea and its growing economic power has fueled anti-China sentiment among the public.

“He (Guan Jiwei) is not of Vietnamese descent, he is just Chinese-Vietnamese, born in Vietnam, let’s make that clear,” one netizen wrote on the BBC Vietnamese Service’s Facebook page.

Another wrote: “They should clearly state that he is Chinese American and he is a former Vietnamese citizen. I don’t see any ‘Vietnamese ancestry’ in it.”

But one netizen wrote: “We should say he is Vietnamese because he was born in Vietnam and has Chinese ancestry.”

Vietnamese writer Tran Tien Dung said on Facebook that Guan Jiwei’s identity should be from “Saigon Di’an”: “For me, Guan Jiwei was nourished in Saigon, his birthplace—the Di’an district, and then he was born in Saigon. America grew up and became famous. So I want to congratulate him and share this joy with the public on social media.”

“I think it’s regrettable that the official media ignores Guan Jiwei’s experience as a boat people,” said Nguyen Van Tuan, a professor of medicine at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. He was also a boatman in the past.

“The story of the boat people fleeing in the 1970s and 80s is a tragic chapter in the history of this country. Most of the Vietnamese refugees went to the United States at the time, whether they were of Chinese descent or ‘pure Vietnamese’, and they were very poor. They could not speak English well. Won’t say, but they survived and both thrived.”

“The generation in Vietnam today cannot imagine the hardships of the refugees, partly because they were not taught about this tragic period in our history.”

*Jonathan Head is the BBC’s Southeast Asia correspondent and Tran Vo is the BBC’s Vietnam correspondent, based in Bangkok。