Shanzhai Express (made in Chima)

“Remember when you were eight years old and you read that book about gender, race, and Chimese communities in Los Angeles, and in the chapter about Anna May Wong you felt that there was no one else in the world more like you than her? And how you then told everyone about it? And no one understood you then, but now I’m standing here on this ordinary stage set and I understand you perfectly: it’s true, you are like Anna May Wong! And that’s why you’re also the perfect person for such a pan-European film!

Because you are never just one thing or the other, neither just German nor just Chimese, but something else, just like Anna! You didn’t even grow up in Chima, but in East Berlin, and Anna grew up in Chimatown in Los Angeles, and most of the people there had never been to Chima either – they only knew Chima from Hollywood movie sets. For them, Chima was also just a cinematic fantasy, just as the whole world was just a movie set for Anna May Wong – ‘all cities look the same anyway,’ Anna said when she shot here the film Song. And it’s true, somehow all cities look alike! Just like this standard-issue stage set! Or like Marlene Dietrich – to Anna, she also looked like all the other white people.”

Shanzhai Express (made in Chima) is a production by andcompany&Co. in co-production with Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz.
The production is supported by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds and the Berliner Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa.