Toronto producer and director Jeanette Kong specializes in short-form videos and documentaries about Chinese-Jamaican identity. One of those films examined her Hakka father’s journey halfway across the globe.
“My dad was born in Jamaica but returned to China when he was very young and grew up there—and then went back to Jamaica in his early 20s,” Kong tells the Toronto Spark over Zoom. “My mom was born in China and then joined my dad.”
In addition to A Brief Record of My Father’s Time at Sea, Kong also explored the Chinese-Jamaican diaspora in other films such as The Chiney Shop, Half: The Story of a Chinese-Jamaican Son, and Finding Samuel Lowe: From Harlem to China. According to Kong, nearly all Chinese residents of Jamaica are Hakka, a subgroup of Han Chinese who speak their own Hakka dialects.
Her new 30-minute documentary, Peter Chin: The Blood Remembers, offers yet another perspective on the Hakka Chinese–Jamaican experience. It tells the story of Chin, a highly regarded choreographer, dancer, filmmaker, composer, and musician of Hakka Chinese, Irish, and African ancestry who was born in Kingston, Jamaica. At the age of two, he immigrated to Toronto, where he later won a bucket full of honours, including five Dora Mavor Moore Awards and a Gemini Award.
Toronto TAIWANfest will present the Canadian premiere of Peter Chin: The Blood Remembers at 2 p.m. on Saturday (August 23). The free screening will be at the Studio Theatre at Harbourfront Centre.
“It’s very fitting because Peter has done work at Harbourfront before,” Kong says.
Chin links arts with spirituality
Kong describes her film as a “celebration of Peter’s devotion to the arts and dance as a healing modality”. It covers several of Chin’s dance works—including Tell Everyone and Here I Stand in Time Phnom Penh—to demonstrate how he imbues his work with such deep meaning. Moreover, Chin himself draws a strong connection in the documentary between arts and spirituality.
“There’s no time to kind of waste on things that might be too fluffy,” Chin says at one point. “I want to get down to the nitty-gritty, the core of how we connect as spiritual beings.”
He also emphasizes in the film that his choreography and dance movements are very instinctive. And he makes it clear that this is linked to his Hakka heritage.
One of the more memorable scenes features Chin performing the 60th Birthday Dance Prayer at the corner of Parliament and Dundas streets in downtown Toronto. Kong says that passersby are very curious about what Chin does.
“He exudes a certain amount of peacefulness and calmness,” she says. “So I think that would allay people’s fears that he was doing something kind of untoward or anything like that.”
Kong first became aware of Chin in the 1990s. He was famous as a dance artist even back then in the Jamaican Chinese community. But it wasn’t until around 2012 that Kong met the charismatic Chin for the first time at a Chinese-Jamaican event in Toronto. Around the same time, she started making films highlighting the links between Hakka people and Jamaica.
Watch the trailer (above) for Peter Chin: The Blood Remembers.
Kong’s films find an audience in Taiwan
Taiwan has a large Hakka population, a Hakka-language satellite cable channel, and a cabinet-level Hakka Affairs Council. Not surprisingly, Kong’s films found an audience in Taiwan. And last year, the curator of a Hakka cultural organization in Taiwan—the New Narratives Film Festival—asked Kong if she could produce a film about a Hakka performing artist,
“I instantly thought of Peter Chin,” Kong says. “We met a few times to discuss things and then pitched the idea in Taiwan. It was approved.”
Chin provided Asian-infused music—which he dances to in perfect timing in the documentary. He also gave Kong access to remarkable film footage from his previous performances in Toronto, Indonesia, and Cambodia. These days, he spends a great deal of time in Cambodia, helping people rebuild their artistic culture after Pol Pot’s murderous rampage of the 1970s.
Peter Chin: The Blood Remembers had its world premiere last November at the Hakka festival in Taipei.
The Hakka people were originally from northern China. During the Song dynasty (960 to 1279 CE), they migrated in large numbers to what are now the southern provinces such as Fujian, Jiangxi, and Guangdong. Hakka people often created sustainable agricultural communities in hilly regions, with this pattern continuing as they moved to Taiwan and other parts of Asia during the Ming and Qing dynasties to in search of a better life.
“The word Hakka means ‘guest’,” Kong says. “You will find Hakka people all over the world.”
The Hakka-like quest for adventure is certainly baked into Chin’s being. Hence, the director’s decision to include the phrase “The Blood Remembers” in the film’s title.
“If there is something that he carries in his blood, it is that wanderlust,” Kong says.
Event details
Toronto TAIWANfest will present a free screening of Peter Chin: The Blood Remembers at 2 p.m. on Saturday (August 23) at the Studio Theatre at Harbourfront Centre. The film is in English with Traditional Chinese subtitles. Jeanette Kong will be in the studio for a post-show Q&A. Peter Chin will join the conversation via Zoom from Cambodia.
For more information about this Canadian premiere, visit the Toronto TAIWANfest website. Learn more about diverse communities from the Toronto Spark website. Follow the Toronto Spark on X @TOSparkOfficial and Bluesky @torontospark.bsky.social.
