Chan Is Missing

A raunchy, sprawling and completely unpredictable panorama of the Chinese-American experience, which opens with Hong Kong pop star Sam Hui's Cantonese version of 'Rock Around the Clock' on the sound-track (he has turned it into a kind of inflation blues, lamenting the rising cost of rice). The plot, such as it is, kicks off with the disappearance of one Chan Hung; the problem is that he had $4,000 in his pocket, belonging to Jo and Steve, two Chinese cab-drivers. Their search for Chan takes them to the heart of the fortune cookie: the tensions between Chinese and American identity (especially when there's a generation gap, as there is between Jo and Steve), the chasm between ABCs (American-Born Chinese) and FOBs (Fresh Off the Boats), the clashes between PRC patriots and renegade Taiwan loyalists... It is sometimes wildly comic, sometimes melancholy, sometimes suspenseful and often strangely touching. The missing Chan - almost certainly a descendant of Charlie Chan, but also a cypher for 'CHinese-americAN' - never turns up, although the missing money does. But the search is the thing, and it goes round all the Chinatown corners you never dared explore for yourself.