A 2017 Los Angeles Times article tells the tragic story of Lai Hang, a terminally ill woman who killed her 18-year-old son George, who’d been diagnosed with schizophrenia.
It’s a carefully reported story by journalist Frank Shyong about a family, about the shame and stigma that can surround mental illness in Asian American communities, and how media portrayals of people with mental disorders can perpetuate harmful misconceptions.
So when Shyong was first approached about the idea of adapting the story he wrote into a narrative film, he had some “very intense” concerns about whether a film would get the story right.
But after conversations with the filmmakers, and thinking through the potential value of telling fictionalized stories based on real-life events, Shyong says, “ I think I realized that my story was in a lot of ways incomplete.”
Nine years later, the film, titled Rosemead, is finished. Directed by Eric Lin and written by Marilyn Fu, the film stars Lucy Liu as Irene, a character based on Hang, and Lawrence Shou as Joe, who’s based on George.
And Shyong, who is credited as an executive producer and served as a consultant on the film, says “it’s sort of completing the circle a little bit” — fleshing out Hang and George as “full 360 degree human beings” and giving glimpses of how their story might have ended differently.
Reporting on trauma in Asian American communities
Back in 2015, when the events depicted in Rosemead happened, the breaking news coverage revealed the basics of what was known at the time — that a woman had fatally shot her son in a Rosemead motel and turned herself in.
“ I think a lot of people probably realized there was more story there,” Shyong says. But the only person who knew the details, Hang’s longtime friend Ping Chong, had declined to talk to the media.
Still, Shyong kept following up because the court records hinted at a story that he thought should be told.
The court records revealed that Hang had been dying of cancer, and that Chong continued to visit her after she turned herself in, performing Buddhist rituals for her.
“Just knowing those two facts,” Shyong says, “and knowing Asian American families, and how complete and terrifying the sense of responsibility that a parent can feel toward a child, I just thought there's gotta be something there.”
He would visit Chong’s shop, a traditional Chinese pharmacy, leaving notes for her and talking to her about why he wanted to know more. And he gained her trust.
”You just have to say, ‘This is [the] story I think is here. And do you think that story is true? And if so, can you help me tell it?’ And that's all I did,” Shyong says. “I think that's all any journalist ever does.”
It’s a story that Shyong says he would come to learn is more common than many may expect. “When you are a caregiver in these communities,” Shyong says, “you can find and name a tragic story like this in probably every zip code.”
How filmmaking and journalism can complement each other
Shyong’s article ends with this poignant quote from Chong, about her friend: “People will only know her as the mother who killed her son [...] But she was more.”
The piece itself goes a long way toward dispelling Chong’s concern, including details about Hang’s life — that she was a talented graphic designer, that she was “beautiful, smart and ambitious,” that she’d lost her husband to cancer, and that she deeply cared about her son.
But “in this case fiction,” Shyong says, “could give closure to characters in a way that I couldn't in reality. It could tell the fullness of this family story.”
The film shows Liu’s character Irene having fun with her son at the beach, and joining his therapy sessions at the urging of a psychiatrist, despite being visibly uncomfortable doing so.
It shows George (Joe in the film) with his friends, who come to visit him after he has an intense schizophrenic episode at school.
The sound design gives a sense of what it’s like to experience schizophrenia, and a part of the film where Joe runs away shows how quickly a boy with a mother and friends who care about him can become an unhoused person who someone might fear on the street.
Ultimately, the film ends on a note of hope, which grew out of something that Shyong learned from Chong after the article was published. In a way that he couldn’t do in print, “It added parts to the story that I wanted to see depicted.”
