Faye Leung stars as "Suzie Wong" during a play in Hong Kong
© AFP/FileHONG KONG (AFP) - Australian writer Richard Mason's 1957 "The World of Suzie Wong", a tale of a listless English expatriate's love for a Chinese bar girl, has been adapted for the big screen and theatre and has been the reference point for a multitude of literary, film and musical explorations of Asia's thriving sex industry.
Now an adaptation by the Hong Kong Ballet, which has just finished its debut run here before going on the road to the United States, brings the story within the realm of high culture.
"It really has endured well," said Stephen Jeffries, outgoing artistic director with the Hong Kong Ballet. "I think its simple story of love against all odds and East meets West is a very powerful one."
In Mason's book, Suzie Wong is the demure and beautiful girl who, despite her well-to-do upbringing, is a prostitute to sailors and servicemen in the then British colony's once notorious Wan Chai red-light district.
For the ballet, Jeffries toned down some of the more gritty aspects of the original, as did the makers of the 1960 movie, which made actress Nancy Kwan -- and the Hong Kong skyline -- a major hit in Hollywood.
However, he has been careful to retain the mystical essence of a book, which when it was published, captured the world's imagination with its images of incense-filled temples, bustling Chinese streets and enigmatic street girls.
At a time when Hong Kong's identity is being pulled one way by Western-style global economics and the other by its ever-deepening relationship with the Chinese motherland to which it returned in 1997, Suzie Wong's re-emergence serves as a timely reminder of the city's unique appeal.
"People love nostalgia and this reminds them of how Hong Kong used to be; a simpler time, when the city still had a sense of mystery, before it became an international powerhouse," Jeffries says.
Nancy Kwan who starred in the 1960 movie "The World of Suzie Wong"
© AFP/File Samantha SinAmong the story's many themes, one continues to resonate in modern Hong Kong and the rest of Asia.
"Suzie Wong is much bigger than the original book -- Suzie Wong has become an archetype for the Asian bar girl," says novelist Nury Vittachi, who has written widely about the subject.
"You see nightspots called Suzie Wong Club all over Asia," Vittachi explains.
"The name alone conjures up the image of the isolated Western business traveller encountering a young Asian temptress; that precise relationship is rekindled every single night in a thousand bars across Asia."
Nowadays Suzie's old stomping ground Wan Chai is a busy entertainment and office district, but retains a sprinkling of girlie bars staffed mostly by prostitutes from the Philippines and Thailand.
Arguably, Suzie's appeal in the book is her refusal to see what she does as wrong, a component of her make-up that was excised from the film, which had Kwan instead play Wong as a knowing innocent; the frail victim of circumstance.
Cho Man-wai, whose book "Hong Kong Erotica" charts the history of the sex trade in the city argues that the adaptation, made to suit sniffy Western morals, was an inaccurate portrayal of Chinese prostitution at that time.
"Until recently there was no shame to being a bar girl among the Chinese," says Cho, who explained that as in traditional Japanese culture, Chinese clients expected their escorts to be well-bred and educated.
"Suzie Wong would have been among a group of girls who were university educated, could speak English and therefore could make themselves available to foreigners. This ensured they earned more money than most, further adding to their status," he says.
On a lighter note, Jeffries' production also reminds us that Suzie Wong made a huge contribution to Western fashion.
"It is worth remembering that the movie popularised the tight, split-skirted cheongsam dress in the West, where it was called The Suzie Wong dress for years," says Vittachi.
© 2006 AFP. All rights of reproduction and distribution reserved. All information displayed on this section (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.