We were lucky to catch up with Shuyao Chen recently and have shared our conversation below.

Shuyao, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

During my time at NYU graduate film program, I wrote and directed two short films. The most recent film, “Manting”, recently premiere at Hamburg International Queer Film Festival, which is the largest and oldest film festival in Germany.

The story of “Manting” follows a married Chinese woman in her 60s, Manting, who reconnects with her past lesbian lover, Jianhua, at a high school reunion event. With so much in their past that they aren’t able to speak of, they spend a night roaming in the city.

When I first started writing this story, I thought it came from a true story that I encountered when I was reporting as a student photojournalist in Syracuse a couple years ago. I met a 72-year-old man who shared his story with me — his wife divorced him at the age of 70 because she wanted to stop being a closeted lesbian. However, the more I explore the characters, the more I realize that what I’m writing was not inspired by my brief encounter with that man but by the a deep-running fear I have for myself. I’m writing a version of my future – the future of me being a queer in China.

When I was in high school, I imagine myself growing old with a woman. After many years of trying to communicate with my parents about my sexual orientation and inflicting pains in them in such process, I became much more reserved when it comes to “what I want for my life”.

That’s why I deeply empathize with the main character, Manting. She made a choice that changed her life when she didn’t fully understand what it meant at the time. I wanted Manting to run away with Jianhua in the end. I really did. But at the same time I know, she can’t. If I were her, I wouldn’t either. Love is love all right but that’s not the reality I’ve experienced or witnessed growing up in China.

We’re living in a time when people always tell you, “Be yourself.” I felt empowered when I first heard it. Yeah. Why not? I told my mother the same thing because I wanted her to feel the same way that I did. She reminded me, in an almost cruel way, that our time of “being ourselves” is earned and it didn’t come easily. The time for her generation and many generations before hers were not like it and there was nothing I could do to change that.

That moment made me I realize how self-righteous I was. If I were to tell “be yourself” to my late grandmother, she would probably come back to life and smack me in the head and tell me how ignorant I am.

My grandmother, among many many others, are just like Manting despite of their sexual orientations. They have lived so many years not being themselves or not knowing what they want for their lives or simply left with no choice but to compromise what they want that they’ve gotten so used to it.

It’s certainly not my place to tell them, “It’s wrong.” It’s also not my place to make Manting run away with Jianhua in the end simply because they should, theoretically, embrace the idea of “be yourself”.

The story I’ve written is not about love equality but a human being confronted with a life they’ve not lived. That is a life, I’m hoping, that I will get to live. By making Manting and Jianhua’s story come to life and putting it on screen in front of an audience, I’m also hoping, that is a life that many more of us in the generations to come in China will get to live.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I think some of my fellow filmmaker friends would share this experience; I wanted to become a filmmaker when I was 16. I binge-watched “The Lord of the Rings” and thought it was the coolest thing ever. I told my mom, who played those Oscar-winning films for me as a way to improve my English, and she immediately thought I was joking.

During my high school time, I almost forgot about that dream because I was so occupied by school work preparing for College Entrance Examination in China like everybody else at school. For College Entrance Examination, I had pretty good scores but it was much lower than I expected and I ended up in a university in Beijing and a major in German (one of the two liberal arts majors available in that school). It was that moment I realized I couldn’t reconcile with the fact that I was going to spend the next four years in college studying something I’m not passionate about. My “LOTR” dream was rekindled.

I came to the U.S. for college when I was 19. With very little preparation because the US college application deadlines are only a couple months away after I made the decision to study abroad, I went to Penn State for photojournalism but thinking I was going to become a filmmaker. However, I can’t be more grateful for the the time I spent at Penn State because I met one of the most important mentors in my life at Penn State while my journalism experience fueled my creative work later on.

Now, with a MFA degree from NYU grad film, I’m a freelancing filmmaker based in New York, developing my feature debut while juggling multiple roles to sustain my income.

Can’t say I’m super proud of the unstable lifestyle I currently lead, but I am proud of myself for being able to recognize what I’m passionate about and being persistent in working towards my goals — to tell a story on the big screen that hopefully most of my audiences would relate to.

Being a Chinese queer filmmaker here in the U.S., I’m working towards creating East-Asian background stories that would interest the U.S. audiences, evoking emotions that we all share as a human family despite the enormous cultural differences between these two countries.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

Even though it comes by not as often as I wish because it takes a while to put your filmmaking work out there, it’s really rewarding when you show your film to the audience and they respond with strong feelings and sometimes even their own personal stories.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

It might sound really silly but it’s true. One of the biggest thing that drives me to continue down this super challenging career path is that I could bring my parents to see my film in a theater in the U.S. one day and they would be wearing something really nice that I bought them with the paycheck I got being a writer/director.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.shuyaochen.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/whatsupseal

Image Credits
Feature photo by Shaohan Fang