Strangers at the Red Door (1989)

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A foreign ghostwriter visiting Hong Kong partners up with the disembodied spirit of the most dangerous novelist in China to find a local bookseller who's been disappeared by the authorities after attempting to smuggle the novelist's subversive masterpiece onto the mainland At a train station in China, three people meet, only two of whom are actually alive. The first is Faron Jones, on his way to Hong Kong to interview an Iranian film director-turned-dissident holed up in the Japanese consulate. The second is Mildred Chen, a Hong Kong bookseller detained at the border crossing for attempting to deliver copies of the most dangerous novel in China over to the mainland. The third is the deceased author of that very novel, Jiang Ming, now a wandering spirit trapped in the middle world between life and death. Soon after this encounter, and for no reason he can understand, Faron learns that he's suddenly acquired flawless Mandarin and Cantonese, languages