Abstract: Anna May Wong was an early sample in the context of globalization. She began her modern self-fashioning and imagination in the context of new, complicated and multidimensional cultures. Her beauty and gift in performance ensured that she could be a Hollywood star while her role-playing was rigidly confined because she was a Chinese descendant. Anna May Wong chose to identify with Chinese culture after numerous exclusions from playing lead roles in films. Her legendary life exemplified the possibility and impossibility of identification in the early stage of globalization.

Key Words: body, role-playing, identification, globalization

Dr. Liu Jialin is Professor of Literature in School of Humanities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He is Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Modern Life Writing Studies and associate director of SJTU Center for Life Writing. He is the author of The Poetic World of Vladimir Nabokov (2012). His Chinese translations include Brian Boyd’s Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years (2009 ), Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years (2011), Harold Bloom’s Ruin the Sacred Truths (2013), and Joseph Frank’s Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal ( 2016).