Popular Culture Review Vol. 11, No. 1, February 2000 | Page 32

24

Popular Culture Review
Dixon Street as if it were the Champs Elysees, to look and to be seen.
The Lean Sun Lo was gone and the building had become an arcade of
expensive clothes shops, an art gallery, and a flash Chinese herbalist.
Upstairs where they used to gamble were offices. Though they probably
still gambled up there. (Day, 88)

The preference for authentic “orientalism” ties into the mystery story itself, which
uses Chinese mythology as the “key” to the mystery, the “Chinese box” of the
many different versions of events that Valentine must unravel. Chinatown may
have changed its facade, but they “still gambled up there” — and it continues to
function as a site of narrative blockage. For Valentine, “everyone I talked to about
Chinatown had a different story to tell” and until the right story is discovered the
mystery will remain unresolved. It turns out that the “gold key with a dragon on it”
that Valentine has been hired to find, is an ancient symbol of power that Mrs Chen,
finally revealed as the Dragonhead of the Chinatown Triad, simply cannot function
without. Its absence renders the Chen’s an impotent force in Chinatown, and Mrs
Chen’s decline from super-matriarch to nervous wreck is also partially attributable
to the absence of her ancient symbol of power.
Anderson has traced the development of Sydney’s Chinatown, with particular
reference to the design objective that equates ancient with authentic. In order to
give Chinatown a “distinct Chinese character”, Anderson observes, civic leaders
felt it necessary to display architectural motifs and symbols of ancient China:
“(S)uch civic officials seemed to believe that Chinese culture was a self-contained
‘entity’ that had been transported as hermetically sealed baggage to Australia. Select
symbols of this timeless ‘Chineseness’ could be transplanted to Dixon Street, it
was presumed, as if they told of some essence that resided in people of Chinese
origin in Australia” (Anderson, 1990, p i 50). Marele Day’s narrative, assumes a
similar universal applicability of ancient Chinese symbols upon people of Chinese
origin. As in the other two narratives, the fear is that the activity of “Chinatown”
(or in this case between two rival “Chinatowns” — Dixon street and Cabramatta)
will involve the entire landscape. Polanski’s Chinatown becomes a metaphorical
scapegoat for the evils of LA and “Hell Money” unravels a bizarre form of gambling
found in Chinatowns across the country. The Case o f the Chinese Boxes uses
“Chinese” symbols and spaces to dramatize a city becoming enveloped in Triad
wars. The front cover of the 1990 Allen & Unwin edition by Caz Rodwell goes
even father. It depicts an oriental dragon coming out of a cliff face, looking over
and dominating the distinctive Sydney-scape of the harbor (including the bridge
and the Opera House). In place of fire, the dragon spews a stream of (polluting?)
water into the blue sea, as Valentine, a diminutive figure with streaming red hair,
looks on.