Chan Is Missing - Where is Chan?
Then … A hood-mounted camera opens the movie with footage of a cab driver slowly driving north along Grant Avenue in Chinatown. In the background Sam Hui, the so-called “Elvis Presley of Hong Kong” sings a lively rock song in Cantonese to the tune of Bill Haley’s 1956 hit ‘Rock Around The Clock”. Sidewalk storefronts slide by horizontally while concurrently the top floor of the buildings, reflected, reversed and flipped 90 degrees by the steeply raked windshield, overlaps and slides by vertically. Very cool.
… and Now, this is the building seen in the Then image above. The curvilinear doorway belongs to the Buddha Lounge dive bar at 901 Grant at Washington. The brick moldings along the top of the building and the central drain pipe are also part of the Then image. Comparing Then and Now the eagle-eyed would notice that the 3rd floor balcony was not there when the movie was filmed.
Then … The music plays on while the cab pauses at a junction; in contrast to the upbeat American music the Chinese lyrics lament the inflationary food costs that make it hard for low salaried workers to survive. (Wait a minute, could that be director Wayne Wang doing a Hitchcock cameo on the right?)
… and Now, we’ve stepped back a block here, still heading north on Grant but this is the junction at Clay Street. It’s interesting to see store signs still there forty years on; example - the vertical Gifts-Arts blade above the awning. Check out too the ornate lampposts with their red lantern and intertwined dragons that line Grant Avenue; they have been there since 1938, installed in anticipation of the 1939 Panama-Pacific International Exposition.
… on location … The cab company name, Wing On, was fictional; here’s a photo of director Wang customizing an early 1970s Dodge Dart sedan by applying decals to the doors (low budget indie directors wear many hats).
… and here he’s added the taxi sign on the top to complete the transformation. For the location curious, like CitySleuth, the car is parked in front of 1851 20th Avenue in the Sunset district.
Returning to the movie, the opening song ends and the cab pulls over; the driver, Jo (Wood Moy), acknowledges a customer and beckons him in.
Then … As he drives off he muses in voiceover how all of his tourist customers ask the same question within seconds: “Hey, what’s a good place to eat in Chinatown?”. There you have it, this is what Chinatown means to the rest of the city.
… and Now, Pacific Avenue crosses ahead. There’s another surviving sign at far left: Kaye’s Footwear at 1043 Grant, but the Florsheim sign next to it is gone.
Up until 2019 the Kaye’s sign, most unusual for Chinatown, was Miami Art Nouveau in style and colors, as seen in this 2017 photo. Now painted over in mono-colored green, it is still there, minus its original charm.
Then … As he continues on, here approaching Pacific Avenue, he relates in voiceover how he and his young nephew Steve had entrusted Jo’s friend Chan Hung with $4000 in cash to arrange a sublease on a cab license so they could be their own boss. But Jo is getting worried - he hasn’t seen Chan for two days. Where is he?
… and Now, little has changed other than the store’s tenants.
Jo drops in on his nephew Steve (Marc Hayashi) and his niece Amy (Laureen Chew). Steve is a funny guy, wisecracking continuously but at the same time touching on cultural confusion and issues within the Chinese-American community seeking identity in their host country. Here he mimics, in an exaggerated accent, being asked where he’s from and what his political allegiance is:
“… Eh, what kind of ‘Chinese’ Chinese are you? PRC? Huh? Taiwan, pro Taiwan? Richmond district? Oakland hill, wa? Ho Chi Minh, yeah, yeah”.
Interestingly, this was filmed in the kitchen of Laureen Chew’s home at that time, at 416 20th Avenue in the Richmond district. The same kitchen (check out the tile patterns) was also featured, below, in Wayne Wang’s follow-on 1985 movie Dim Sum: A Little Bit Of Heart. More scenes in the same house appear later in Chan Is Missing.