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Serious Sun Ho looking very good in 2025! Samsters steamed?

Screenshot 2025-11-19 at 11.33.45.png

... :o-o:
 
Pang Wen Kang, Benson
Associate Professor Geoffrey Baker
YHU3210A: Proseminar in Literary Studies
21 October 2016

“Asian Invasion Coming to Your Residence": Rethinking the Orientalised Victim Through
Sun a.k.a. Geisha's China Wine

Postcolonial theory often assumes the Orientalised subject’s victimhood, interpreting
absences of resistance to Orientalist discourse as powerlessness. Edward Said writes in
Orientalism that Orientalist art comprises “artificial [enactments] of what a non-Oriental has
made into a symbol for the whole Orient” (21), depicting Orientals as mute effigies of the
mysterious East. Yet, Said does not account for cases featuring voluntary Oriental
compliance. This paper will bridge the knowledge gap between compliance as powerlessness
and compliance as an exercise of agency. I argue that Singaporean singer Sun a.k.a. Geisha’s
(her actual name is Ho Yeow Sun) entry into the American music market, China Wine, is an
act of agency that exploits entrenched Orientalist conceptions of the East, maximising her
industry value as an Asian pop star by performing the exotic mysterious Asianness that the
West wants to see. Through this essay, I hope to provide a view of Oriental compliance as
agency that complements Said’s view of the victimised Oriental.

For clarity’s sake, I will first define some terms and concepts. China Wine is the name
of a song and music video through which Sun hoped to enter the American music market
(Feng). China Wine features Jamaican dancehall artists Wyclef Jean, Tony Matterhorn and
Elephant Man, and premises itself on reinventing the “dutty wine”—a Jamaican dance move
comprising “vigorous [head] rolls . . . and shakes of the hip, pelvis, and buttocks” (Jones 1)—
through inserting Chinese gestures to create Sun’s signature move, the “China wine”. Sun
partnered Wyclef Jean because of his track record as a successful vector into American
music, as exemplified by his introduction of Colombian singer Shakira into the pop market
with their breakout single “Hips Don’t Lie” (Chan). Hence, Wyclef Jean and his genre,
Jamaican dancehall, serve as symbolic representations of the music scene that Sun wishes to
enter; it is through entering his music that Sun’s can enter America. Hence, China Wine is a
Jamaican-Asian music fusion project aimed at the American music industry (Feng), in which
Jamaican dancehall is taken to represent Western dance music. Throughout this paper, I use
China Wine when I refer to the music video and “China wine” to indicate the dance move.

Firstly, an examination of Sun’s Geisha persona as portrayed in China Wine reveals a
constructed performance of Asianness that panders to Orientalist preferences. Geisha
incorporates salient features from various Asian cultures while erasing aspects of Asian
identities that cannot be culturally commodified by Orientalist ideology. By doing so, Sun
performs the stereotype of Asia generated by the “ensemble of relationships between works,
audiences, and some particular aspects of the Orient” (Said 20), creating a persona optimized
for Western consumption. At the beginning of China Wine, a Jamaican emcee introduces her
as “Sun a.k.a. Geisha” ushering in the “Asian invasion” (Ho, et al. 00:00:07-00:00:09)—the
allusion to a generic Asia reflects the stereotype of a culturally homogeneous continent that
Sun later exploits when she sings that “in China we love the dutty wine so much that we mix
it with the China wine” (00:00:51-00:00:56), further blurring national boundaries by singing
about being a Chinese national while taking on a Japanese stage name. Although Sun is a
Singaporean Chinese woman, she erases her nationality in favour of singing about China
while assuming a Japanese name, exploiting the stereotypical precedent (Said 20) that
positions China and Japan as major Asian cultural hubs while ignoring lesser-known
Singapore. Finally, Sun eroticises the geisha, ignoring the “sacredness of their profession”
(Bardsley 6) in favour of the hypersexualised character that occupied Orientalist thought ever
since Europeans misconstrued the tradition as an erotic service (8). Throughout the music
video, Sun writhes amidst a gang of Asian ladies who caress her sensually (Ho, et al.
00:01:28-00:01:34; 00:01:49-00:01:51; 00:02:58-00:02:59), evoking erotic sentiments that
play into the Occidental misunderstanding of geisha as sex workers. As such, Sun’s Geisha is
a pastiche of stereotypes that draw upon Orientalist misconceptions of Asia, opening a path
into the music industry by portraying the Oriental that the West wants to encounter.

While one might see this wanton borrowing as a distinctively Orientalist manoeuvre,
we must remember that Sun exoticises herself; her Geisha persona reveals an awareness of
the Orientalist desire for “dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient”
(Said 3) and her exploitation of the Western compulsion for categorising unknowns into easy
stereotypes (26). As Said points out, Orientalist ideology is buttressed by material investment
in the form of financial and physical infrastructures (6). In this case, these material
investments coalesce into the entity that is the American music industry. Therefore, one can
interpret Sun’s performance of Asianness as an insertion into the industrial-ideological
scaffold. By embodying the Occidental fantasy of the exotic, promiscuous and generically
Asian woman, Sun’s Geisha persona is engineered to maximise her viability in the American
music market by locating herself as a new entry into discourses of Asian identity.

After physically inserting herself into the American music scene, Sun wishes to make herself its
focal point of discourse. In fact, China Wine allegorises Sun’s musical journey as an ambition
of cultural conquest through insertion and domination. Firstly, Sun’s entrance into Western
music is a threat to its status quo. Sun’s initial dance sequence showcases mastery of the
dutty wine (Ho, et al. 00:00:55-00:01:12), provoking Jamaican women into challenging her to
a dance battle in which she finally synthesises a Buddhist prayer gesture into the dutty wine
to produce her signature China wine (00:02:28-00:02:31). She does not merely stop at a
perfect enactment of local culture but proves her superiority by innovating upon it to produce
her winning dance move. Sun’s performance of Asianness is not a desperate measure but a
coolly deployed strategy: unfazed by the Jamaican attack, Sun steps up with calm confidence
before performing the China wine, brazenly breaching the spatial boundary separating her
from the Jamaican crew (00:02:29-00:02:37). This display of Asian aggression is a conscious
performance that penetrates the barrier sealing off the Western world from the realm outside.
Therefore, Sun’s choreographic evolution is metonymic of her desire to conquer the society
that she attempts to infiltrate. Even though Sun’s entrance depended on a performance of
compliance to Orientalist norms, her attempt to thrive is marked by violence as she advances
into Western dance territory in order to expand her “Asian invasion” (00:00:07-00:00:09).

One can read Sun’s journey into American music as an attempt at reverse colonisation
in which an Oriental enters the Western world and presents herself as a new model of
excellence. Towards the narrative’s conclusion, Sun’s China wine becomes an emblem of
exotic Oriental excellence that unites the dance nation, just like a coloniser’s flag. After out-
dancing the Jamaicans, Sun incorporates them into her dance crew, and all dancers—Asian
and Caribbean alike—accept her as their leader. Just before the final dance sequence, the
multiracial dance crew parts in a sign of deference as Sun saunters in (Ho, et al. 00:03:14-
00:03:16) and marks their allegiance by performing the China wine together (00:03:16-
00:03:18). By this point, the China wine has transcended its functional role as a dance move
and is now a symbolic marker of Asian superiority. Similarly, Sun does not envision herself
as a passive subject of the Orientalist gaze but wishes to break the boundaries that it has
erected around her by inverting its power structure to put her at its top. Furthermore, Sun’s
triumph over Western dance culture is acknowledged by Western musical authority: veteran
Jamaican emcee Elephant Man articulates his recognition of Sun outplaying the West at their
own specialty when he raps: “every wine weh we do she cyaa outshine [Sun cannot be
outshone in every “wining” dance style], Jamaican Asian” (Ho, et al. 00:02:09-00:02:13),
highlighting Sun’s entrance into the dance scene as an intrusion that overhauls its power
structure in her favour. Interestingly, Sun’s domination of Western music subverts the typical
Orientalist move of ventriloquising the Oriental and “making the Orient speak” (Said 20);
here, Sun compels the Occident to speak about her.

Finally, the derivative nature of the China wine reveals Sun’s intention to colonialise
Western dance: by adding Asian embellishments to the Jamaican dutty wine and calling the
product her own, Sun performs the distinctively colonialist move of conquest and
incorporation, absorbing Jamaican dance into the Geisha’s musical engine. Hence, Sun’s
entire China Wine project begins by allowing herself to be Orientalised before exploiting the
Orientalist ideological scaffold to reverse the power dynamic in her favour, becoming the
“Jamaican Asian” (00:02:09-00:02:13) who controls her Jamaican subjects by incorporating
them into her Asian choreography.

In light of these points, we see that Sun’s conformance to the Orientalist gaze was a
minor concession that provided an opportunity to gain power as a breakthrough diva. Sun
gives herself the dual advantage of novelty and familiarity that in turn lets her reverse the
typical Orientalist-Oriental relationship. Hence, China Wine provides an understanding of
Orientalism that complements Said’s idea of the Orient as victim. By “[mixing] the China
wine with the dutty wine”
(Ho, et al. 00:02:35-00:02:37), Sun inserts herself into the
American music scene in order to remake the West in her image.

Works Cited

Bardsley, Jan. “The New Woman Meets the Geisha: The Politics of Pleasure in 1910s Japan.”
Intersections: Gender & Sexuality in Asia & the Pacific, May 2012, pp. 1-24.

Chan, Lyn. “City Harvest Trial: 5 Things About Controversial China Wine Song.” The Straits
Times, Singapore Press Holdings, 18 Aug. 2014, shar.es/1Ex2p3.

Feng, Zengkun. “Sun Ho Sounded 'Too White' So Wyclef Jean Suggested an Asian-Reggae
Fusion: Kong.” The Straits Times, Singapore Press Holdings, 12 Aug. 2014,
str.sg/zLp.

Ho, Yeow Sun, et al. “China Wine.” YouTube, uploaded by WyclefVEVO, 17 Mar. 2011,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-E5SywuDWQ&list=RDy-E5SywuDWQ.

Jones, Adanna. Take a Wine and Roll “IT”!: Breaking Through the Circumscriptive Politics
of the Trini/Caribbean Dancing Body. University of California Riverside, 2016.

Said, Edward. Orientalism. Random House, 2003.
 
I've always wondered why the prosperity megachurches here do not do collaborations. For example, one weekend your celebrity pastor come to my church, and another weekend my celebrity pastor come to your church.

Perhaps the $ rivalry $ is very intense. :biggrin:
 
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