Laughing at identity woes

Since the handover, Hong Kong has faced an identity crisis like never before. We struggle to find our place in the 'one country, two systems' policy. We have a distinct dialect, culture and customs, but our voices are often drowned out by our guardians of the north.

We're not alone: overseas Chinese often face similar issues.

'As Asian-Americans, we have understood the dangers of being tied too closely to China and other root Asian cultures, so we have tried to define an identity and culture uniquely our own,' says playwright David Henry Hwang, who won a Tony award for his play, M Butterfly. 'It seems to me Hongkongers may be asking some similar questions right now, as you too seek to articulate an identity separate from mainland China.'

In 1989, Hwang, like many Asian-Americans, was outraged by the casting of white Welsh actor Jonathan Pryce to play the Engineer, a French-Vietnamese character, in first the London, and then Broadway, productions of Miss Saigon.

'I thought that could happen in socially-backward England, but would never be allowed in America,' Hwang says. 'Once it became clear Pryce was, indeed, coming ... to Broadway, that just seemed so obviously offensive, that I naively assumed we just needed to point out the problem to have it fixed.'

Hwang chose to voice his opposition in the best way he knew - by writing about it. He used the incident as a springboard to develop a play. The result was Yellow Face, the farcical, semi-autobiographical stage mockumentary that premiered in 2007.

The title is a twist on the practice of blackface, the act of applying black paint (ash or makeup) to the face when portraying a black character. Not only does the overly black face look clownish, there was an underlying racial prejudice associated with the practice.