Ria Brodell

At the time of her death at age fifty-five in New York City Esther Eng was most notable for several successful restaurants she owned in Chinatown, including Esther Eng’s on Pell Street. All but forgotten was the fact that she was also one of the most important filmmakers in Chinese cinema.

Known as Brother Ha to her friends, Esther was born Ng Kam-ha in 1914. Like her parents, she was raised in San Francisco. Her grandparents had emigrated from Toi Shan County in China’s Guangdong Province. She grew up with nine siblings at 1010 Washington Street.

At an early age Esther took an interest in theatre, specifically the Cantonese opera that was popular at the time. The Mandarin Theatre, which was a short walk from Esther’s home, brought in stars from southern China and Hong Kong to perform. Esther worked in the box office in her teens and many of the performers became family friends of the Ngs.

In 1935, at the age of nineteen, Esther convinced her father and his business associates to finance the film Sun Hun (Heartaches), and they created their own production company, Cathay Pictures Ltd. It was headquartered at their home, and Esther opened an office in Hollywood. At around the same time Esther chose the professional name ‘Eng’ adding an ‘E’ to ‘Ng’ to make it easier for people to pronounce, and to avoid any confusion. “Miss N. G.” could suggest “No Good” in film parlance.

Sun Hun was released in the U.S. and Hong Kong and stared Wai Kim-Fong, a famous Chinese opera star and a close friend of Esther’s from the Mandarin Theatre. The film, co-produced by Esther, became known as the “first Cantonese singing-talking picture made in Hollywood.” In 1936, Esther traveled with Wai Kim-Fong to Hong Kong for the film’s premiere. The film’s themes of national defense, patriotism, self-sacrifice, and gender equality were pertinent to audiences on the verge of the second Sino-Japanese war. Despite the brewing conflict with Japan, Esther remained in Hong Kong. In 1937, she opened a new production company, Gwong Ngai (Glorious Art), and at the age of twenty-two, with no prior experience, directed her first feature film National Heroine. Also staring Wai, the film centered around a woman who joins the Chinese military, becomes a fighter pilot, and defends the motherland. The film was a huge success, earning Esther a "Certificate of Merit" from the Kwangtung Federation of Women's Rights and garnering praise for “honoring Chinese Womanhood.” The publicity around Sun Hun and National Heroine meant Esther was frequently in the press. She was portrayed as a pioneer of Chinese film, “China’s first woman director,” a national patriot and even a fashion icon for her “boyish bob” and sporty looks. Esther Always wore tailored suits.

Following the success of National Heroine, Esther was in high demand. She was asked to make 10,000 Lovers (1938) and agreed, but on the condition that Wai Kim-Fong was cast as the star. Soon after came Jealousy (1938), Husband and Wife for One Night (A Night of Romance, A Lifetime of Regret) (1938) and It’s a Woman’s World (The Thirty-Six Amazons) (1939). It’s a Woman’s World was the first film to feature an all-female cast and stared women from varying social positions. Throughout all this production Esther’s health deteriorated, and her relationship with Wai became estranged. Esther never hid her romantic relationships. The press often referred to her female partners as her “bosom friends.” However, an entertainment reporter for the Sing Tao Daily wrote in 1938 that “We used to call Fong Esther’s “bosom friend,” but this is not quite right. Lover? Have you ever heard anything stranger? But I’m not lying. Wai and Esther were living proof that “same-sex love” exists in this world.”

By October 1939, the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong and the onset of WWII led Esther to follow her family’s wishes and move back to San Francisco. She had several projects in development but had to leave them all behind.

Upon her return, Esther planned to focus on film distribution through her father’s company but found herself directing again, this time Golden Gate Girl released in 1941 with Grandview Pictures. The film was well received, but much of the acclaim went to the male screenwriter and lead actor Moon Kwan. With one exception in a Variety article from May 28, 1941, in which Esther is correctly credited as the director (and Moon Kwan as the screenwriter), Esther’s name was absent in press coverage of the film. In a San Francisco Chronicle article from June 8, 1941, the “producer, director and star of the film” are interviewed, and Esther is never mentioned. Kwan even claimed full credit for the film in his memoirs.

After Esther’s father died, she took over the film import and distribution business, frequently traveling between the US, China, Cuba, and Peru. In 1947, she was asked to direct The Blue Jade (Lady from the Blue Lagoon) staring the opera singer Sie Fei Fei also known as Fe Fe Lee. Fe Fe would go on to star in two more of Esther’s films, and the two formed an enduring relationship. In 1948, Esther set up her own company, Silver Light, and produced Back Street (1948) and Mad Fire, Mad Love (1949) in quick succession. Esther wrote to her friend, Cheung Jok-hong, a publisher in Hong Kong, about how busy she was traveling for the business and shooting films. With the end of the Chinese Civil War many of the Cantonese opera and film actors returned to China and Hong Kong, which left a major talent shortage in the U.S. It was at this point that Esther and Fe Fe moved to New York City. Though Esther stopped making films at this time, she brought many to New York, opened the Central Theater and continued her distribution business.

Together with Fe Fe and a few business partners, Esther opened Bo Bo, the first of her restaurants, in New York’s Chinatown. Bo Bo was small and served mainly Chinese dishes. At first it was a gathering place for visitors and Chinese performers who could not or did not want to return to newly communist China. It provided a welcome and safe space for them to learn English, get help with documentation and find employment. People came to Bo Bo to meet Esther, and she took care of them, performers, elders, new immigrants, she made sure they had food, money, and a place to stay. Her friends described her as warm-hearted, charismatic, charming, and always smiling. Bo Bo’s popularity grew, frequented by Chinese film stars and staffed by beautiful actresses, it was the place to be. Craig Claiborne, the New York Times restaurant critic, wrote, "The only trouble with Bo Bo's is its extreme popularity…at times it is next to impossible to obtain a table. However, the fare is worth waiting for."

With the success of Bo Bo Esther, Fe Fe and their business partners soon opened four more restaurants, all in New York’s Chinatown. Though she was now in the restaurant business, Esther was never far from the entertainment world. She was still distributing films, and her theater screened Cantonese language films and occasionally hosted Cantonese opera troupes. Her restaurants were staffed and frequented by performers. In 1962, she directed exterior scenes for what would be her final film, Murder in New York Chinatown. Sadly, of the ten films Esther directed, all were lost, with the exception of a few exterior scenes from Murder in New York Chinatown and partial footage from Golden Gate Girl on VHS tape.

An article in the New York Times once described her as a “five-foot-tall dynamo.” Film critic and historian Law Kar noted, “If Eng had worked in the film industry today, she could have easily been seen as a champion of transnational filmmaking, feminist filmmaking, or antiwar filmmaking.” In January 1970, Esther died of cancer at Lennox Hill Hospital. Her friends kept her restaurants going for many years after her death. Her obituaries in the New York Times and Variety highlight her as a filmmaker, restaurateur, and proponent of Chinese culture.


Sources:


Bren, Frank. “Electric Phantom- The Indomitable Esther Eng.” China Daily. Jan. 23, 2010.

“Esther Eng Owned Restaurants Here.” New York Times. Jan. 27, 1970. 43.

Gadd, Christianne A. “Esther Eng: Filmmaker, Restaurateur, Gender Rebel.” Outhistory. Oct. 22, 2016.

Golden Gate Girls/Golden Gate Silver Light. Dir./sc./prod: S. Louisa Wei (Hong Kong Art Development Council & Blue Queen Cultural Communication Ltd., 2013). HDV, 90 minutes.

Law, Kar and Frank Bren. “The Esther Eng Story” in Hong Kong Cinema: A Cross Cultural View. Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press, 2004. 91-103.

Law, Kar. “In Search of Esther Eng: Border-crossing Pioneer in Chinese-language Filmmaking.” In Chinese Women’s Cinema: Transnational Contexts. Ed. Lingzhen Wang. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. 313-329.

McLaughlin, Kathleen. "Industry Is Up as Tourism Falls Off: Clothes and Food Spur Chinatown Economy." New York Times, June 29, 1967.

Osman, Meg. “The Elegant Life of Esther Eng.” FOREVER A PLEASURE. May 26, 2021.

Wei, S Louisa. "Esther Eng." In Jane Gaines, Radha Vatsal, and Monica Dall’Asta, eds. Women Film Pioneers Project. New York, NY: Columbia University Libraries, 2014.

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