A tale of two cities: director on her film about teen smuggling iPhones from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, The Crossing
- Raised in Shenzhen, Chinese city adjoining Hong Kong, Bai Xue uses story of a schoolgirl commuter to reflect on how the two places have changed
- She insists it is a story about human characters, not social commentary. It’s a coming-of-age tale people anywhere in the world can relate to, she says
Why this topic again? By the time the Post asked Chinese filmmaker Bai Xue the question, she had already answered it five times that day, and not surprisingly it elicited a groan and the quip: “We should do a group interview next time.”
There was, however, good reason for the curiosity.
The 34-year-old director’s feature debut, The Crossing, is about a high-school girl, Peipei (played by Huang Yao), who commutes daily between Hong Kong, where she studies, and Shenzhen in Guangdong province, southern China, where she lives, and who coincidentally takes on a side hustle smuggling iPhones across the border. The film touches on hot-button issues – parallel-goods trading, cross-border students and cross-border marriages – that have caused great controversy in Hong Kong.
The question on the lips of multiple interviewers was: why would a Beijing-born filmmaker be interested in such a challenging topic?
The answer lies in Shenzhen, a city where Bai lived for most of her childhood and to which she feels a strong connection. While she was drawn to the unique political and social circumstances that gives rise to cross-border school pupils, Bai says The Crossing is not meant as social commentary.