Organizer and Chair: David Y. H. Wu, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Discussant: James Watson, Harvard University
This panel aims to report from anthropological points of view symbolic discourse on a Hong Kong culture, its social and political meanings, and its impact on China's urban popular culture. Since 1983 when the Sino-British Joint Declaration was signed, formalizing the reversion of Hong Kong sovereignty to China in 1997, there has been a surge of awareness and popular search for the meaning of a Hong Kong identity (being xianggangren). In particular, intensive discussion of a Hong Kong culture rapidly developed after the June 4th incident in 1989. Popular culture in Hong Kong, which has played an active role in mediating Western culture and Chinese customs, serves as a powerful and effective means to create the notion of Hongkongness and contributes to a Hong Kong identity among people in the territory.
Papers in this panel document recent activities in Hong Kong that demonstrate the construction of a Hong Kong identity in the area of youth culture, food and cuisine, religious festivals, cultural tourism, and the impact of "Hong Kong style" cuisine, fashion, and popular culture in China.
The panel examines the theoretical implications of such scholarly notions as "culture," "ethnicity," "tradition," "modernity," "Chineseness," and "Westerness" in understanding the process of cultural invention and the construction of a unique Hong Kong identity. The panel discussant, James Watson, who has done research on Hong Kong during the past 25 years will provide a comparative perspective by placing the Hong Kong case in a wider context of cultural transformation in the modern world.
Hong Kong's China Practice: Lawyers as Cultural Brokers in a Global City
Joseph Bosco, Chinese University of Hong Kong
This paper examines the lawyers in Hong Kong who specialize in business law supporting investment in China, which is known as "China practice." Despite the opening up of China to international business, a large proportion of business services are provided from Hong Kong rather than from within the PRC. Hong Kong still retains its role as a gateway to China. In addition to offering legal advice, China practice lawyers help foreign clients structure deals in politically and culturally sensitive ways. They help overcome cultural barriers and misunderstandings, including different concepts of property that led to the Beijing McDonald's controversy. Hong Kong has changed since the mid 1980s from a manufacturing center to a service center, a global city that is a node in the economy of East and Southeast Asia. The growing importance of legal and financial services is representative of this change. The paper examines the ethnic and multi-cultural educational background of China practice lawyers, and the cosmopolitan ethos that develops which has led some lawyers to renounce their natal (including U.S.) citizenship and take passports of convenience. Given concern over the rule of law in the territory after 1997, and the rapidly improving communication and transportation infrastructure in China, the prospects for China practice lawyers based in Hong Kong are a barometer of the prospects for a continuation of Hong Kong's role as a major business node in the region, a bridge linking China to the rest of the world.
Cultural Tourism and Hong Kong Identity
Chin-hung Cheung, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong has long been one of the most favored destinations for tourists from around the world. Recently, the tourist industry in Hong Kong has increasingly involved the restoration and invention of Hong Kong's identity through the packaging and promotion of cultural materials that are believed to represent Hong Kong. This paper analyzes cultural practices and popular discourse in Hong Kong by investigating promotion of Chinese festivals, establishment of museums, designation of heritage trails, and the emphasis of a Hong Kong character through the restaurants and antique markets.
The notion of "frozen culture" is proposed to theoretically challenge popular conceptions of "old fashion," "tradition," and "authenticity" in tourism. Frozen culture as a transient process reveals the selection and preservation of "cultural" items in the past for popular consumption in a particular social context. This study focuses on the symbolic meaning of frozen culture in Hong Kong's tourist industry that helps to understand the emerging Hong Kong identity and the crisis of facing 1997.
Youth Culture in Hong Kong: Re-rooting of an Identity
Siumi Maria Tam, Chinese University of Hong Kong
This paper examines how young people seek to construct their identity in the cultural flux of Hong Kong which they call home. Their self ascription of being xianggangren (Hong Kong person) epitomizes their pride in being a member of Hong Kong the Metropolis, exemplified in their eager adoption of American-Japanese popular culture in terms of fashion, comics and music. Yet young people born in Hong Kong are constantly reminded of their Chinese ethnicity. But, without the refugee background and sojourner mentality of their parents, their Chinese identity is shakily rooted in a symbolic affiliation with a "Chinese Culture."
Young people born and raised in Hong Kong have taken advantage of the highly commercialized but politically apathetic economy that flowered after the fifties. As the colonial period comes to an end, the inevitable return of Hong Kong to China and suspicion of Chinese politics have created anxiety. Young people show an urgency to re-root themselves as part of the social search for a "Hongkongness" from electoral reforms, views of the self and sexuality, to the creation and export of a Cantonese popular culture with Hong Kong as the center.
The Soft Wind from the Southern Window: Hong Kong Popular Culture in Mainland
China
Yun-xiang Yan, Johns Hopkins University
This paper examines the increasing significance of Hong Kong popular culture in mainland China. Parallel to the flux of Hong Kong investments in the economic sphere, Chinese people have witnessed a sweeping "invasion" of Hong Kong popular culture in the past ten years. Among other forms, pop music has taken the lead, and many Hong Kong stars have become household names in both urban and rural China. Similarly, Hong Kong fashion and cuisine are welcomed by older and younger generations alike. New cultural values and life styles brought in by these cultural forms have become influential in everyday life-especially for urban youth-and helped to create taste differences and social distinctions in the newly emerging hierarchy based on economic classes. Such a trend is characterized as a "soft wind" from the southern window, and its impact on Chinese socialism has caused an on-going debate among leaders of the party-state. By analyzing the diffusion and development of Hong Kong popular culture in both Beijing and villages in Heilongjiang and Shandong provinces, this paper addresses the following questions: First; What is the current image of Hong Kong people and culture in the eyes of mainland Chinese? Second; How does Hong Kong popular culture help ordinary people from Hong Kong and China understand each other? And finally, given the approaching 1997 transition, what are the political and social implications of the present popularity of Hong Kong popular culture in mainland China?