Culture seen as bridge between China and US

Janet Yang has spent a career proving that stories can cross borders that politics cannot. Now, as the new chairwoman of the Committee of 100, she is bringing that conviction to one of the most prominent Chinese American organizations in the United States.

Yang, the Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winning film producer who served three terms as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, was appointed to lead the committee's board, succeeding Gary Locke, the former governor of Washington state and US ambassador to China, who led the organization for the past five years.

Founded in 1990 by architect I. M. Pei, cellist Yo-Yo Ma and other distinguished Chinese Americans, the Committee of 100 aims to strengthen US-China relations and ensure that Chinese Americans have a full and rightful place in US society. Yang, a committee member since 1998, sees her new role as an extension of everything she has built across more than three decades in film.

"C100 has a dual mission: to ensure that Chinese Americans truly belong in the US, and to bridge the US and China," she said, adding that Pei and Ma "represent excellence that transcends national boundaries, while embracing their Chinese heritage and sharing their work across borders".

The roots of that mission run deep in Yang's own biography. Born in Queens, New York, to parents from Shanghai and Hunan province who came to the US as students, she grew up on Long Island carrying the quiet burden of being visibly different.

She experienced the classic "try-to-fit-in, wish-my-eyes-were-rounder" self-consciousness, she said. That feeling might have shaped her differently had she not embarked on a trip to China at 16.

Thanks to her mother's work at the United Nations, Yang was part of one of the first Chinese American families to visit China in 1972. She recalled being fascinated by everything she saw, saying the experience left her eager to know more about China.

She followed that curiosity to Brown University, where she majored in Chinese studies and became fluent in Chinese, then accepted a post at China's Foreign Languages Press, the publisher of books and magazines for export.

During that year-and-a-half assignment, she presided over impromptu salons and befriended Chinese filmmakers, artists and creatives. She said meeting those artists and seeing films being made was something she had never encountered in the US, and that experience changed the course of her life.

After earning her MBA from Columbia University, Yang was hired to run World Entertainment, distributing Chinese films to Western audiences. She introduced directors such as Chen Kaige to screens in the US, then turned around and represented US studios and films in China, a two-way bridge she has been building ever since.

Along the way, she became involved with some culturally significant Asian and Asian American films in Hollywood, including Empire of the Sun, The Joy Luck Club and Over the Moon. Long before it became fashionable, Yang treated Asian themes as the cornerstone of mainstream storytelling.

It was that early encounter with Chinese cinema that enhanced her sense of purpose.

"When I was first exposed to Chinese films, seeing people who looked like me on screen in three-dimensional roles gave me such a sense of belonging and comfort," she said. "I realized then that the same feeling could be replicated the world over."

For non-Chinese audiences, she said, those same films offered a window into a country that had long been closed off. "From the start, it was always important to me to uplift these stories and push the boundaries of what people in Hollywood thought was possible."

Known in the entertainment community as the "godmother of Asian Americans in Hollywood", Yang completed three terms as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the first Asian American to hold the role. The Academy Museum has since established the Janet Yang Endowment to support programming centered on historically underrepresented filmmakers, with special emphasis on Asian American and Pacific Islander artists.

Directly relevant

Yang sees the cultural work she has championed throughout her career as directly relevant to the diplomatic challenges of the present moment.

"Since then, countless other projects have paved the way for Asian and Asian American representation on screen," she said.

"There's a reason for that: these stories resonate with all kinds of audiences who see themselves in the universal human condition. Even when governments are at odds, individual citizens can find deep resonance with characters from other countries. Culture does what diplomacy can't always do," she said.

That belief was reinforced for her by a recent example. Oscar Tang, a founding member of the Committee of 100, served as executive producer for singer Laufey's Madwoman music video, an all-Asian and Asian American production set in Los Angeles. When the music video drew 17 million views in its first month, Yang saw the same kind of energy she hopes the Committee of 100 can channel.

"I thought, C100 is a great place to do what I have always loved. Young people, especially, are just reveling in their idols — they aren't necessarily thinking about representation. They're thinking it's a great video," she said. "That's the point."

At a moment when US-China relations are shaped more by headlines and algorithms than by human encounter, Yang believes storytelling remains the most powerful counterforce available, and that the Committee of 100 is uniquely positioned to deploy it.

"I believe C100 is just one vehicle for achieving more vital connections between two great and powerful nations, and in the world," she said.

"Today, when I look at the global landscape, I again see so much opportunity for such exchanges to give rise to brilliant things. I see possibility everywhere."

liazhu@chinadailyusa.com