The Dumpling Queen
水饺皇后
China, 2025, colour, 2.35:1, 119 mins.
Director: Liu Weiqiang 刘伟强 [Andrew Lau].
Rating: 5/10.
Lightly entertaining, totally predictable, and very filmy biopic of the woman who created Wanchai Ferry Dumplings, with a fine performance by actress Ma Li.
STORY
Qingdao city, Shandong province, northeast China, spring 1977. Following several earlier invitations to meet her husband, Huang Hanzhou (Huang Debin), in other locations, Zang Jianhe (Ma Li), a woman in her mid-30s, finally sets off with her two young daughters, Beibei (Liang Boying) and Pengpeng (Su Yinke), to meet him in Shenzhen, on the border with Hong Kong. He’s been abroad for various business reasons. At Luohu [Lo Wu] railway station, on the Hong Kong side of the border, they finally meet for the first time in four years. With him is his snooty mother (Bao Qijing), who immediately informs Zang Jianhe that Huang Hanzhou, in order to extend his Chaozhou bloodline, has also married a woman in Thailand who bore him a son a year-and-a-half ago. Huang Hanzhou asks her to come with him and live as a threesome in Thailand, but she refuses. Forced to survive in Hong Kong with her two daughters, Zang Jianhe does some piece work in Changzhou [Cheung Chau]; but when her visa expires she smuggles herself and her children into Hong Kong proper, joining many other illegal immigrants then flooding in from the Mainland after the end of the Cultural Revolution. On arrival she’s helped by a family friend, Yang Jing (Feng Wenjuan), whose name was given to her in Qingdao. Yang Jing introduces her to Sister Hong (Hui Yinghong), who gives her one of the tiny subdivided flats she runs, as well as three months’ grace on the rent. The flats are full of characters, some freindly, some seedy, including an aggressive young gambler, Jin (Wang Zulan), who beats his wife (Zhang Yamei). Zang Jianhe qualified as a nurse at the age of 19 but her certificate isn’t recognised in Hong Kong. Desperate for work, she takes a job washing up in a restaurant for HK$600 a month, and even manages to send some money back to her mother (Yang Qing) in Qingdao. By the time of the Mid-Autumn Festival, Zang Jianhe has been in Hong Kong for six months, and in letters to her mother she still spins the fiction that she has a job as a nurse and is living happily with Huang Hanzhou. She’s become popular with her fellow tenants for her shuijiao 水饺 (Shandong boiled dumplings) and, after an accident at work that puts her in hospital and loses her her various jobs, a tenant on the roof of the building, known as Uncle Dessert (Yuan Danghua), gives her an idea. He sells sweet desserts and soups on the street and tells her that Wanzai [Wan Chai] pier, where the ferry leaves Hong Kong Island for Kowloon, is a prime spot to do business. Zang Jianhe sets up a Shandong shuijiao stall there, but sells nothing on her first day, as that style of dumpling is little known in Hong Kong. However, things gradually improve, she alters the skin to suit southerners’ tastes, and even negotiates a special rate of protection money with a gangster, Zhixiong (Wu Zhixiong). She’s then befriended by a policeman, Hua (Zhu Yawen), who’s always arresting stallholders; he turns out also to be from Shandong province. By 1981, Zang Jianhe’s daughters are growing up fast – Beibei (Zhang Yixin) is 13 and Pengpeng (Wang Motong) is 9 – and her business, now run from home, has expanded. By 1985, thanks to a Japanese investor (Shimizu Tomonori), she is able to open a licensed factory making her Wanchai Ferry Dumplings, aka Beijing shuijiao (as Hong Kongers aren’t so familiar with the term Shandong shuijiao).
REVIEW
Four years after his last feature, Wuhan-set COVID drama Chinese Doctors 中国医生 (2021), Hong Kong veteran director/d.p. Liu Weiqiang 刘伟强 [Andrew Lau] returns to the big screen with The Dumpling Queen 水饺皇后, a biopic of Zang Jianhe 藏健和 (1945-2019), the woman who invented the famous Wanchai Ferry Dumplings in Hong Kong. After the mixed success of Doctors, with its convincing first half but slacker, over-doctrinaire second, it would be nice to report that Dumpling Queen sees Liu back on top form. But despite a fine, convinced performance by Mainland comedienne Ma Li 马丽 in the title role – with not a hint of her usual irony – and a strong supporting cast, the film doesn’t take its never-give-up story to the next level and free itself from movie stereotypes and familiar melodrama. Box office this spring was a very solid but not runaway RMB419 million.
Despite the four-year gap between Chinese Doctors and Dumpling Queen appearing, Liu has hardly been idle, having directed the 24-part Korean War TVD, Battle of Shangganling 上甘岭, shown on CCTV-1 in Oct 2024 and also streamed on Mainland video platform Youku. Amazingly, Dumpling Queen is Liu’s first feature in almost 20 years – since the disappointing crime drama Confession of Pain 伤城 (2006) – that is set in and deals with Hong Kong life . Except that it isn’t, really. Though Dumpling Queen is mostly set in Hong Kong of the 1970s and 1980s, the Mainland-financed production was actually shot in a Mainland studio – National Arts Studios, in Foshan, Guangdong province. And its central character is actually a Mainlander from Qingdao, northern China, who tries at first to survive in and then to profit from immigrant-flooded Hong Kong of the time by selling Shandong-style shuijiao 水饺 (boiled dumplings). But she forever remains emotionally apart from her new home – a Mainlander in a British colony dominated by Cantonese.
For a film-maker who was born and grew up in Hong Kong, and spent the early part of his career making movies that expressed its very fibre and soul, Liu has spent the better part of the time since the Infernal Affairs 无间道 trilogy (2002-03) trying to get away from his birthplace, with films set in either Macau or the Mainland or elsewhere. In recent years, since the Mainland blockbuster The Founding of an Army 建军大业 (2017), he’s fully embraced the industry across the border – and thus the concept of a Greater China film industry – in a way that, alas, hardly any other Hong Kong film-maker has done. One very fine film, airline thriller The Captain 中国机长 (2019), has so far come out of it.
The faults in Dumpling Queen – as so often in Liu’s weaker productions – stem mostly from the script, by Chengdu-born writer-producer Han Jia’nv 韩家女 (daughter of former China Film head Han Sanping 韩三平), Zhang Mengchu 张梦楚 and Deng Jieming 邓洁明. Han was the lead writer on the fine black comedy Dying to Survive 我不是药神 (2018) and both she and Zhang were among the writers on Be My Family 无价之宝 (2023), a comedy-drama starring Zhang Yi 张译 and Pan Binlong 潘斌龙. Neither woman had previously worked with Liu, unlike Hong Kong’s Deng, who co-wrote Liu’s romances Look for a Star 游龙戏凤 (2009) and A Beautiful Life 不再让你孤单 (2011). Her third-place credit suggests she was perhaps brought in by Liu to help fix the script.
The main problem with the screenplay is that it’s too filmy by half. After a brief intro with Zang Jianhe and her family in Qingdao, 1977, the action moves to the border with Hong Kong, where she’s meant to meet up with her husband who’s been working overseas for four years. He arrives at the train station with his snooty mother (Hong Kong veteran Bao Qijing 鲍起静 [Paw Hee-ching], over-acting) who – right then and there in the station’s waiting room – breaks some surprising news that results in Zang Jianhe deciding to make a go of it in Hong Kong with her two young daughters, despite not speaking a word of Cantonese. With the Cultural Revolution just ended, the territory was then flooded with illegal immigrants from the Mainland, and Zang Jianhe becomes just one more to be exploited by the locals. Thanks to a personal connection, she finds a room in a subdivided flat run by no-nonsense Sister Hong (Hui Yinghong 惠英红 [Kara Hui], classily entertaining) that’s full of colourful characters. Welcome, in other words, to Hong Kong – a noisy, crowded place that’s full of aggressive, hostile but also friendly people, with every stereotype in the book.
It’s thanks to a couple of the friendly people that Zang Jianhe hits on the idea of selling boiled dumplings from her native province – though she has to rename them Beijing Dumplings as no one in Hong Kong has heard of Shandong. En route, she stands up to a local gangster who takes a liking to her, and attracts the attention of a friendly policeman (Mainland actor Zhu Yawen 朱亚文, okay in a kindly role) who – surprise! – also turns out to be originally from Shandong. It’s all lightly entertaining and totally predictable, with a soupy score by Hong Kong regular Chen Guangrong 陈光荣 [Comfort Chan], a large number of cameos by Hong Kong actors, and Ma all pluck, optimism and maternal love.
Art direction and styling both create a reasonably convincing period feel and, with Liu credited as both d.p. and creative producer 监制 as well as director, it’s very much his movie. Even though, at two hours, it’s way too long, Liu’s typically pragmatic style, with little downtime, ensures that it never noticeably drags even when it repeats itself. Shooting took place during Oct-Nov 2023.
CREDITS
Presented by Shanghai CMC Pictures Beijing Branch Office (CN), Shanghai CMC Pictures (CN), Tianjin Maoyan Weiying Cultural Media (CN), GoldenRich (Guangzhou) Entertainment (CN), Shanghai Taopiaopiao Movie & TV Culture (CN).
Script: Han Jia’nv, Zhang Mengchu, Deng Jieming. Photography: Liu Weiqiang [Andrew Lau], Wang Hao. Editing: Lin Zhuangyu, Chen Yuxuan. Music: Chen Guangrong [Comfort Chan], Li Minglang. Production design: Zhao Chongbang. Art direction: Liu Linghui. Costumes: Chen Yongshi, Luo Ting. Styling supervision: Xi Zhongwen [Yee Chung-man]. Styling: Ji Lei. Sound: Nopawat Likitwong. Visual effects: Huang Hongda, Xie Yiwen, He Zhongning (vfxNova).
Cast: Ma Li (Zang Jianhe), Hui Yinghong [Kara Hui] (Sister Hong), Zhu Yawen (Hua, policeman), Wang Jiayi (adult Pengpeng/Jessica), Lin Kailing (adult Beibei/Joanne), Huang Debin [Kenny Wong] (Huang Hanzhou, Zang Jianhe’s husband), Yang Qing (Zang Yushu, Zang Jianhe’s mother), Jiang Dawei [David Chiang] (John), Tai Bao [Zhang Jianian] (Shuangxi), Zhang Yamei (Mrs Jin), Fang Ping [Henry Fong] (Chen, restaurateur), Liang Boying (young Beibei), Huang Chutong (Zang Jianping, Zang Jianhe’s younger sister), Bao Qijing [Paw Hee-ching] (Huang Hanzhou’s mother), Qin Huang (Xia), Jiang Meiyi (Zhen), Zhang Daming (La Da), Liang Zuwei (Jin Jintai), Yuan Danghua (Tangshui Bo/Uncle Dessert), Su Yinke (young Pengpeng), Huang Lu (Yuying), Bao Peiru (John’s wife), Feng Wenjuan (Yang Jing), Xue Kaiqi [Fiona Sit] (Lousi/Rose), Wang Zulan (Jin), Lv Zefeng (Jin Duotai), Yu An’an [Candice Yu] (Mrs Su), Jiang Mou Yuanjian (Miss Huang), Yi Tianxiong (beef-offal seller), Zhang Dalun (Dasheng), Gu Dezhao [Vincent Kok] (food critic), Wu Zhixiong (Zhixiong, gangster), Shimizu Tomonori (Kishida, Japanese businessman), Wang Minyi (Miss Fang), Chen Mianren (Nanyang), Che Wanwan (potato-cake seller), Zhao Runnan (Laba/Trumpet), Gong Ci’en (Youji boss lady), Zhang Yixin (teenage Beibei), Luo Yichun (Anna), Lin Xiaofeng (supermarket supervisor), Xie Tianhua [Michael Tse] (Stanley), Yuan Deqiang (Fat Xiong), Pan Binlong (ice-cream seller), Jiang Linyan (Cui), Lu Huiguang [Ken Lo] (Youji boss), Wang Motong (teenage Pengpeng), Liang Poyu (Annie), Lin Shanshan [Sandy Lamb] (supermarket manager), A.J. Donnelly (Closwood).
Release: China, 30 Apr 2025.