Asian exclusion act
In this clip, a Sikh sepoy in brownface experiences Bruce Lee’s Jing Wu Men (Fist of Fury) outside Shanghai Park under Japanese occupation (thanks, khoofia). Lust, Caution also showed desi traffic cops under a later Japanese occupation.
A … standing ovation occurred when Chen shattered the “No Dogs and Chinese Allowed” sign, with elderly audiences who have actually lived in Shanghai during [the Japanese occupation] crying and embracing each other in joy… This film… is one of the main reasons behind the shift in Hong Kong cinema from swordplay to empty-handed fighting… [Link]
The sign itself might have been apocryphal, though the exclusion was real:
“People swear until they are blue in the face that they saw [the sign] on the Gardens… But it was never there…” The park was closed to Chinese (not to Japanese) from 1890 till 1928… [Link]


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Interesting! So here we have three Asian ‘nationalities’ resenting each other and fighting it out every which way - while it was the Europeans and Americans in Shanghai that set the rules, established extraterritorial rights, and lorded it over everyone else.
I see in this clip a dystopian allegory of how the future of Asia could play out - Japan + India trying to ‘contain’ China under American overlordship!