WHEN THE SUN RISES

Tomorrow is 1 July 1997 and six million Hong Kong residents will wake up in Communist China.

Do the ominous storm clouds portend trouble brewing?

For some, this is simply the world’s biggest party. But most of the residents of this city are anxious about what tomorrow will bring.

The lives of five residents literally collide during the final hours under British rule. Each feels trepidation and anxiety for the future.
Martin the young entitled British-banker is desperately trying to hale a cab to get to his ball, impossible on a night like this. Egregiously late, he may have scuppered his chance of promotion and enlists the help of Florence, a British educated Chinese mystic whose loss of family fortune led her to seek a spiritual existence. Martin is dating Nancy, his older American girlfriend and works for her father at the bank. Desperately wanting to settle down and have kids, Nancy’s biological clock is ticking away; she is expecting Martin to propose to her tonight.
May Lee the Shanghainese octogenarian fled China as a young woman in the 1940’s with her sister Wu Lin during the Communist uprising. Tomorrow, she wakes up in Communist-China, fearing for her future.
A Cantonese taxi-driver, loyal to British crown all his life, feels abandoned by the Thatcherite-government. No passports have been issued or safe-haven offered from the Brits to this “slanty-eyed English-man” who sets out on a mission of petty revenge.

These characters are drawn unexpectedly into each other’s worlds having lived separately-together under British rule for the last 155 years. But now they “see” each other for the first time. Different languages, different cultures, yet on the eve of the handover they experience their shared humanity.