I watched The World of Suzie Wong when I was 12, and it left a profound impression on me. Although just a child, I already felt the pathos of Suzie as a prostitute, selling her body to strangers and losing her baby in the mud slide in Hong Kong. It was a romantic drama released in 1960, and a film seen from a male and western perspective. Many years later, returning to Hong Kong from America, I decided to tell the story from a female and a Hongkonger’s angle, to try to delve deeper into the psyche of a prostitute working the sailors in the 1950s and 1960s. You can say it was my reaction to The World of Suzie Wong, hence the title My Name Ain’t Suzie. The film crystallised through research and imagination in 1984. The screenwriter Chan Koon-Chung and I spent time with real Wan Chai bargirls who eventually were cast as bit players, and we incorporated historical facts into the film. There really was a kooky woman dressed in yellow wandering the streets of Wan Chai. And indeed many bargirls were recruited from small, rural villages in Hong Kong in the 1950s. Many of the bars at the time were run and staffed by Chinese immigrants from Shantung, a northern province in China. Coincidentally they also constituted a significant part of the police force, presumably due to their tall physique. The film subsequently portrayed the life of a prostitute from the 1950s to the 1980s, and offered a less rosy picture than the Hollywood version. It was about struggle, hardship, love and abandonment. It was a story about women.

Angie Chen, Udine Far East Film Festival, 2019