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In Eichberg’s The Flame of Love , Anna May’s character, Hai Tang, finds romance with a European. Since miscegenation was frowned upon in the British Empire, the embrace and kiss between an Englishman andan Asian woman were sacrilegious.
    This film was shot in three different language versions: English, German, and French, with three different male leads. When she starred in German films, critics remarked that “her German is too perfect. She must have had a double.” But when they found out that she learned German “studying six hours [a day] for many weeks,” the critics later revised their criticisms.
    From 1928 to 1930, Wong was the toast of Europe. In England, Wong starred in the stage production of The Circle of Chalk with a young Laurence Olivier and in Piccadilly with Gilda Gray and Charles Laughton. In Berlin, she partied with the likes of Marlene Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl. With [Wong’s] stunning beauty, statuesque figure, and ability to wear the latest fashions with sophistication, grace, and panache, she represented to Europe a new Chinese woman hitherto unseen and unimagined.
    European audiences were enchanted with her. Wong entered a stage of success that she had never experienced in America. But more importantly, this time gave her a clarity of purpose and agency that would empower her as she returned to the US to face the continuing burden of race in Hollywood.
    Anna Takes on Hollywood
    Wong’s journey to Europe made her an international star, and Hollywood producers who had previously relegated her to supporting roles began to take notice. Wong returned to the States to her first starring role, in Paramount Picture’s arguably racist film, Daughter of the Dragon . She played Ling Moy, daughter of the notorious villain Fu Manchu (played by the white actor Warner Oland in “yellowface” makeup, a theatrical device designed to exclude Asian-American performers from playing Asian or Asian-American roles).
    The next year Wong was cast in another Paramount feature entitled Shanghai Express , a big-budget production directed by the legendary Josef von Sternberg. Many believe that Wong’s perfectly nuanced performance as the cool, detached, and heroic former prostitute Hui Fei was her finest role.
    But in the minds of Chinese censors, Shanghai Express brought disfavour upon China. Its focus on prostitutes in the heart of China angered Chinese nationalists. The film was eventually banned by the Guomindang censors, who ordered that all prints of the film be destroyed.
    In 1935, Wong campaigned fiercely for the coveted role of O-lan in Pearl S. Buck’s novel set in China, The Good Earth . She lost the role to a German actress, Luise Rainer, who would later win an Academy Award for her performance. After seventeen years of acting in films and stage plays, Wong no doubt figured that she could command lead roles that reflected positively on the Chinese people. But yellowface was so ingrained in the Hollywood studio system that Wong had little chance to capture one of the most sought after Asian roles for an Asian-American actress.
    A Girl Peers through the Looking Glass
    After disappointment over The Good Earth , Wong decided to explore her Chinese roots. She had always felt that she was “suspended between two worlds.”
    In an interview, she reports that during her visit to China, she would “study the customs and languages of China since they are so strange to me. I shall study the Chinese theatre that I know as casually as you. Then I shall be able to tell whether I am really Anna May Wong or Liu Tsong Wong.”
    Before her trip, Wong admitted that her preconceived ideasabout China resembled “a place where the people always sipped tea and philosophized about life.” But once there, she exclaimed that “so many of (my) preconceived ideas have been upset that I feel like a Chinese Alice who has wandered through a very strange looking