But its focus will be the 2,300 or so who were secretly kicked out of Britain, from late 1945, after they had done dangerous duty with the merchant navy.
“The actor David Yip introduced me to the story – I thought it was incredible. A lot of people have never heard of it,” she says on Zoom from Merseyside.
Oscars 2024: predictions for Oppenheimer, best actor and screenplay and more
Oscars 2024: predictions for Oppenheimer, best actor and screenplay and more
“I did some research and met some of the seamen’s elderly descendants. They didn’t hear about what happened to their fathers until about 2012, when British records became public.
“Slowly, the information started to get out and it was tragic: many of the seamen’s children just thought their fathers had deserted them and they had been very angry.
“Most of the women married to the Chinese sailors were working class and didn’t know their rights or how to find out what had happened to their husbands, although some suspected,” she says.
“When the children learned what had actually happened they were angry again, at the state.”
What the post-war government called the “compulsory repatriation of undesirable Chinese seamen” was partly prompted, Fong believes, by the injustice the sailors felt during the war.
Apparently, big cargo ships were modified, like slave ships. When [the ships were] full, the men were shipped back to China
“According to the records, the men were mainly Shanghainese, because they were very good engineers,” she says. “They were also highly unionised and knew their rights.
“On the Atlantic run they weren’t given the war bonus like the local guys, so they went on strike. They got the bonus and went back on the ships, but their cards were marked as troublemakers.”
As Britain rebuilt, the men to be deported, many of whom had lived in the country pre-war, were denied the right to work and their legal right to remain.
Some were abducted from Liverpool docks or snatched from homes or boarding houses in police raids: reverse press-ganged, or in some cases literally shanghaied.
“Anecdotal evidence says sailors were seen being bundled into police vans. There was a concerted effort to round them up,” says Fong. “Apparently, big cargo ships were modified, like slave ships. When [the ships were] full, the men were shipped back to China.”
Some landed in Hong Kong or Singapore, but few ever made their way back to Liverpool and their families.
Fong has never shrunk from controversial topics. Nor is her work a stranger to Hong Kong. The 2016 documentary Deconstructing Zoe was shown (shortened from its feature-length format) at the 2017 Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, and the Q! Film Festival, in Jakarta, Indonesia.
A portrait of a transgender Chinese actor, it examines perceptions of gender and race and how they are characterised on screen, often stereotypically.
I always wanted to make films featuring Chinese stories, Chinese people, people who looked like me who I never saw in the media
Fong’s 1996 documentary China’s New Art, shot in Yunnan and Guangdong provinces in southern China, presents contemporary artists interviewed when their art was still considered problematic by the Chinese government.
And her short, 2019 work BEAST comprises three six-minute clips in which actors speak dialogue taken verbatim from interviews conducted by Dr Diana Yeh at City, University of London, with British East Asians working in television and cinema.
“I was committed to the representation, or non-representation, of Chinese or British East Asians on British screens,” says Fong, “so I always wanted to make films featuring Chinese stories, Chinese people, people who looked like me who I never saw in the media.”
Like many filmmakers, Fong has several projects on the boil. This means some are intermittently parked on the back burner – including Queen of Wok.
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“It was developed as a feature film in 2009 but never found the finance,” she says. “It’s about a group of retired women wondering what their role in life is now that their children have grown up.
“They decide to enter a cooking competition – but so do their kids when they get wind of it. So it’s a comedy about generational relationships and how they work in a British-Chinese context.
“It was considered ‘too niche’ and ‘not commercial enough’, but maybe I’ll resuscitate it, because I think I peaked too early. I was told, ‘Nobody wants to see Chinese faces.’ But now people would want to make that film.”
