The Chinese Lady

Inspired by the true story of America’s first female Chinese immigrant, The Chinese Lady is a dark, poetic, yet whimsical portrait of America through the eyes of a young Chinese woman. Afong Moy (Amy Shu) is 14 years old when she’s brought to the United States from Canton in 1834. Allegedly the first Chinese woman to set foot on US soil, she has been bought and put on display for the American public as The Chinese Lady. For the next half a century, she performs for curious museumgoers, showing them how she eats, what she wears, and the highlight of the event: how she walks with bound feet. As the decades wear on, her celebrated sideshow comes to define and challenge her very sense of identity. The Chinese Lady blurs the line between the observed and the observer, and gives us new eyes on the history of American entitlement and immigration.