East Asian Island Migration and Macau’s Declining Underworld through the Lens of a Female Director

Abstract

Through a female director’s lens, the postcolonial film Madalena foregrounds the rapidly formed yet deeply felt bond between two generations of migrants, while its background reveals a Macau underworld approaching the end of its historical course. The film’s characters and stories reflect the life-and-death struggles that individuals inevitably undergo amid social transformation; at the same time, they allegorize the intricate geopolitical entanglements between island and mainland. Released at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the film’s dismal box-office performance was itself symptomatic of that historical moment. Under Portuguese rule, Macau was an important East Asian trading port. Merchants, gamblers, and adventurers poured onto the island, introducing endless volatility into local life. Human trafficking, narcotics, prostitution, smuggling, and gambling became major pillars of the local economy, inevitably accompanied by the penetration of underworld forces. Following the handover and the reconstruction of public order in a new era, Macau’s underworld gradually entered decline. Within this relatively compressed history, women headed by the celebrated pirate leader Zheng Yi Sao, or “Zheng’s Widow,” overturned traditional East Asian prescriptions of gender, rose rapidly, and contended with men on equal terms. Their emergence therefore carries substantial scholarly and philosophical significance. The rise of these women in the history of Macau’s underworld attests not only to individual capability but also to a forceful rebellion against conventional gender roles, revealing to the world women’s intelligence and strategies for survival under extreme conditions.