Adrianna Tan
Michelle Yeoh plays several characters in this short film set in Penang.
The codeswitching (language and body language) based on status / environment / character is nuanced and reflects a broad range of the Malaysian Chinese city life experience that I have been a part of.
I also love that most of it is filmed in food places, and now I am terribly homesick.
Adrianna Tan
@irfan haha yeah same I only clicked on it coz I heard someone talk about it
Mika
@skinnylatte@hachyderm.io oh lol, I saw this on my YT feed and thought the thumbnail looks like Michelle Yeoh - but seeing the title in Malay and some Malaysian looking setting (on the thumbnail) made me thought I was either mistaken, or this may be AI slop 💀
Adrianna Tan
I think sometimes when I say I’m homesick, it’s partly that I miss family, friends, food, home; even the weather
But it’s also, in watching this short film
I miss being in an environment where I 100% get. All of the characters in the film are composites of people I probably know. I know how all of the food in the background tastes. I know how it sounds.
I don’t think it’s easy to convey how good the food is. And how that’s central to life over there. Think of the best Chinese food you’d ever had and then 10x it. And that’s just every street corner in Penang and Ipoh. And you’re in a community that centers all of this celebration of joy and food and that speaks in multiple languages in the same sentence.
I miss all of it.
Adrianna Tan
If all of my life experiences were on a scale of 100, the person that I am in America, even in a part of it that is very Asian, where I don’t really feel like an outsider at all, feels like just 20.
Living away from *that* environment (Singapore / Malaysia / India, my homes feels like the missing 80.
Adrianna Tan
I miss being surrounded by people who understand that every single meal ought to be the most delicious thing you will ever eat. Who understand that we don’t have to accept anything less
Adrianna Tan
I never lived in Penang but I spent a lot of time there. I lived many years in KL but Penang feels more like a place that I ‘know’. Perhaps linguistic: the language of the streets of Penang is Hokkien and Malay and English, not Cantonese and Malay and English.
Hokkien is a language I speak quite well, understand extremely well, and more importantly it is the only language my mother seems to emote in, so it feels much closer for me than the Cantonese of KL.
Adrianna Tan
@morachbeag going from that food culture to most others has been deeply disappointing
morachbeag
@skinnylatte omg I remember eating in Singapore and Malaysia and it's like how can everything be this delicious
Adrianna Tan
@morachbeag I have had the opposite reaction in some countries, and I remember feeling immensely confused
morachbeag
@skinnylatte It must be! I found myself sitting there going "I'm sure it'll be tasty" (5 seconds later) "this is the greatest thing I have ever eaten ever"
keeps vis.social running
@skinnylatte I think she may be one of the greatest actors in a century, regardless of when that century starts or stops. she is that century.
Adrianna Tan
@Madagascar_Sky malaysian Chinese from Ipoh near Penang, from a very prominent local family there. But she made her fame in HK
Madagascar_Sky
She's Malaysian? Wow, I thought she was from Hong Kong.
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