Fairy Tale and Film

Dumplings
(Fruit 
Chan, 2004) reworks the cannibalism motif to ask some interesting 
questions about female vanity and its cause. A feature-length extension 
of a short film initially included in the compendium 
Three ... Extremes
(2004), the result is a potent mix of shock and satire. 
‘Aunt’ Mei (Bai Ling) makes dumplings from aborted foetuses which 
she claims to have rejuvenating properties (corroborated by the youth-
ful appearance of the 64-year-old), yet she is not presented simply as 
monstrous. Instead, she offers a service based on demand, enhancing 
the qualities patriarchy deems most important to women. Middle-aged 
actress Ching Li (Miriam Yeung) goes to Mei when her husband loses 
interest. Aware of what her fabled dumplings contain, she overcomes 
her repulsion to please the man in her life (her career additionally 
affirming the importance of youth and beauty). Mei’s background is 
equally notable; a former gynaecologist who started conducting abor-
tions in her native China due to the state’s ‘one child’ policy, she has 
since diversified her trade by selling the ‘profits’ to wealthy Hong Kong 
residents. The fact that Mei makes a business out of the unwanted 

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Fairy Tale and Film
unborn could be read as a satirical stab at China’s economic drive 
and its celebrated spirit of entrepreneurship. Presented as an ogress 
in terms of killing unborn children and cooking them, Mei might be 
accused of prospering from women’s plight, yet is by no means the 
most reprehensible character in the film. The point is driven home by 
another user of her services: a mother who brings her heavily pregnant 
young daughter, and explains that the girl’s own father is responsible. 
Although Mei warns that it is dangerously late for the procedure, she is 
urged by the mother to spare her daughter’s shame. The girl does not 
survive the
termination, yet although her grieving mother responds 
by informing the police about Mei, she also plunges a knife into her 
husband – undoubtedly the main villain in her daughter’s fate. The 
tragedy forces Mei to withdraw her services, setting up the film’s horrific 
denouement. Forced to become resourceful in maintaining her beauty 
regime, Mrs Li finds a way of additionally taking revenge against her 
husband when she learns his mistress is pregnant. Persuading the young 
woman to abort the child, she uses the ‘ingredients’ for her own recipe. 
The short film version of 
Dumplings
presents a still more horrifying 
finale. Mrs Li discovers an unexpected side effect of the dumplings is 
that she herself becomes pregnant. After some consideration she opts to 
consume her own child to reap the benefits. The willingness to sacrifice 
what might be her only chance at becoming a mother is as horrific as it 
is deeply subversive. Mrs Li puts herself before any other consideration, 
transforming from the submissive figure seen at the outset into a vir-
tual double of the scheming Aunt Mei. There are numerous references 
to female ogres in folklore, whether it be the Russian Baba Yaga with 
her taste for human flesh, an ogress who almost feeds the hero to her 
children in a tale from the 
Arabian Nights
or, most unnervingly of all, 
the Grimm tale ‘The Starving Children’, where a mother threatens to 
eat her own children (although she fails to do so). Interpretations vary, 
but the idea of subverting our usual equation of women as life-givers 
and nurturers seems key to the horror. Rejecting any maternal instinct 
to nurture the child she is carrying, Mrs Li takes female monstrosity to 
its extreme, even surpassing Mei in her actions. In their analysis of the 
film, Emilie Yueh-yu yeh and Neda Hei-tung Ng affirm Mei’s satirical 
overtones, stating that ‘she ingeniously makes use of the “waste” of 
the Communist Party’s population control policy’ yet also functions 
as a ‘demon in a globalized culture worshipping excessive insatiable 
consumption’ (2009: 153). Cannibalism may be equated with capitalist 
consumption (only those who can afford Mei’s dumplings will profit 
from the elixir, after all), yet the gender politics at work are still more 

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