Paradigm City: Space, Culture, and Capitalism in Hong Kong (Global Modernity) 0791476650, 9781441603654, 9780791476659

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paradigm city

SUNY series in Global Modernity Arif Dirlik, editor

paradigm city Space, Culture, and Capitalism in Hong Kong

Janet Ng

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany ©2009 State University of New York Press, Albany All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu Production by Ryan Morris Marketing by Anne M. Valentine

Library of Congress of Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ng, Janet. Paradigm city : space, culture, and capitalism in Hong Kong / Janet Ng. p. cm. (SUNY series in global modernity) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–7914–7665–9 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Hong Kong (China)—Politics and government—1997– 2. Popular culture—China— Hong Kong. 3. Hong Kong (China)—Social conditions—20th century. 4. Hong Kong (China)—History—Transfer of Sovereignty from Great Britain, 1997. I. Title. JQ1539. 5 . A58N4 2009 951.2506—dc22 2008005521 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction

vi vii 1

one

“World Suicide Capital”

19

two

Walking Down Memory Lane: On the Streets of the Hong Kong History Museum’s Paradigm City

43

three

Quality Citizens in Public Spaces

65

four

The World Emporium and the Mall City

89

five

Body Weight, Responsible Citizenship, and Women’s Social Space

113

six

Repatriating from Globalization

139

Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

163 167 187 197

v

Illustrations

Fig. 1.1: Bounce Back, Hong Kong!

37

Fig. 2.1: Murray House

53

Fig. 3.6: Protestors gathering in Victoria Park

70

Fig. 3.2: Victoria Park Rules

72

Fig. 3.3: Hong Kong Park

73

Fig. 3.4: Escalator to Hong Kong Park

74

Fig. 3.5: Escalator to Hong Kong Park through shopping mall

75

Fig. 3.6: The Lippo Center looms over Hong Kong Park

75

Fig. 3.7: Tai Ping Street Park

77

Fig. 3.8: Victoria Harbour Promenade

79

Fig. 3.9: Rules of Conduct

81

Fig. 3.10: More Rules

81

Fig. 4.1: Pedestrian Walkway in Central

94

Fig. 4.2: Harbour City Mall Complex

94

Fig. 5.1: Weight-loss mania

117

Fig. 6.1: Women Workers Cooperative

160

Fig. 6.2: Long Hair

164

vi

Acknowledgments

As usual, there are many people to thank for the completion of a major project. I am sure the following list is less than complete. I would like to publicly acknowledge the institutions and colleagues who have inspired and supported this project in material and uncountable ways. I thank the City University of New York, PSC Awards for offering grant money for course releases to enable me to write during the academic year and subvention toward publication costs. I have benefited immensely as a fellow at the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. In particular, I am grateful to Poyin Auyeung, Carmen Bellet, Ashley Dawson, Efrat Eizenberg, Cheryl Fish, Anders Hansen, David Harvey, Valerie Imbruce, Anru Lee, Paula Massood, Emily Pugh, Stephanie Sapiie, Neil Smith, Bill Solecki, Ida Susser, and Stephan Tonnelat (in alphabetical order). Our weekly discussion for a year was valuable to me, as are the wonderful friends I made. A number of people slogged through parts of my drafts, especially Dalia Kandiyoti, Ashley Dawson, and Setha Low, as well as the various anonymous reviewers of my individual essays and the book manuscript. There are also a number of friends and colleagues with whom I am engaged in different projects or whom I constantly bounced ideas off of: Anru Lee, Kate Crehan, Samira Haj, Ida Susser, and Stephan Tonnelat. I am also grateful to all my colleagues at the College of Staten Island, especially in the Department of English, who have been challenging, supportive, and inspiring in many different ways; many have become great friends. Our departmental secretaries, Ann-Marie Franzese, Janet Sadowski, and Susan Chapman have been invaluable in the everyday life at work. I thank all my students, graduate and vii

viii

Acknowledgments

undergraduate, who have been indulgent and patient. Finally, I also owe much thanks to the editors and staff at the State University of New York Press, especially Andrew Kenyon, Larin McLaughlin, and Ryan Morris, whose kind assistance has made the collaboration a pleasure. I reserve my expression of gratitude toward family members and intimates to more personal venues.

Introduction

Hong Kong has a popular image internationally as a city of uncensored capitalism. Since 1992, Hong Kong has been ranked as the world’s most liberal economy.1 The general public, pundits, and government officials celebrated this conferral by the international community, regarding it as an affirmation of Hong Kong’s continuing progress along a universally approved path of capitalist success. When this annual “report card” came in January 2006 for Hong Kong’s performance in 2005, it was particularly reassuring as Hong Kong slowly recovered from the seemingly endless economic, social, and political nightmares that had plagued it since its return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.2 Hong Kong is a complex place as a postcolonial city, a global city, a cultural imperium (It had been the world’s second largest film and entertainment exporter after Hollywood from the 1980s to 1990s, and is still an important force in international media entertainment.),3 and a command and control center of world capital.4 It is politically and economically dominated and influenced by other governments, especially China, but it also simultaneously participates in an exploitative relationship with areas of the global South, especially China.5 Hong Kong thus unsettles facile geopolitical binaries— A Note on Romanization: All the names and titles of works in this volume are romanized according to a Hong Kong Cantonese pronunciation and conventional (though not standardized) way of spelling, or the name holders’ preferred spelling. The English translation of titles or putonghua romanization are italicized and provided in parenthesis when necessary. The only exceptions are those whose names in standard putonghua romanization have already had a broad recognition, for example, the author, Sai Sai (Xi Xi).

1

2

Paradigm City

empire and subject, exploiter and exploited—containing tremendous contradictions within one society. Most important of all, looming over the daily consciousness of the people and all the daily operations of the city is the presence of China as an extralegal superego that conditions the popular sentiments, social, and political rationality, as well as the material and political reality of Hong Kong. Despite the apparent affluence of the city, parts of Hong Kong’s population remain poor, most prominently the new immigrants from China, the legal and illegal migrant laborers from elsewhere in Asia, and the aged. These populations that are otherwise powerless, nevertheless exert an indismissible pressure within Hong Kong as their very existence is a constant irritant to the bourgeois sensibility and undermines the middle-class myth that determines the Hong Kong government’s policy agenda as well as the dominant culture of the city. The official capitalist narrative is partly fostered by Deng Xiaoping’s pledge to Hong Kong in 1984 to guarantee continued “stability and prosperity (anding fanrong).” This promise works effectively as a psychological leash, reining in Hong Kong people’s political aspirations in the name of social peace. The foundational principle of Mainland China’s governance of Hong Kong articulated in the slogan “stability and prosperity (anding fanrong)” emphasizes Hong Kong’s economic development while refuting the people’s right to politics. Accompanying this economism is the rhetoric of Chinese nationalism, which is deployed to restrain local political expression and to safeguard (market) stability. Beijing constantly reminds the people of Hong Kong that social and political harmony is crucial to the continued status of Hong Kong as an international financial center, its ability to attract global capital and to continue its economic success. The market and the state meet in much of the city’s physical plan and organization, which enforce habits and practices that undergird the city’s bourgeois identity. This commitment to free-market capitalism and bourgeois prosperity has direct effects on the people, especially in terms of the experience of their everyday life, and produces many structural inequities in society.6 The spatial organization of the city, which includes the many different state devices of ordering movements, and spatial usages, as well as behavior manipulation in the built environment, shapes the experience and even consciousness of the people. As far as these are manifested in the actual and conceptual spaces of daily life, individual citizens in Hong Kong struggle for their “right to the city” on a daily basis.7

Introduction

3

In this volume, I focus on the period between the Handover in 1997 and the end of the tenure of the first chief executive (CE) of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) in 2005. My discussion is twofold. I examine the city space and the everyday life within it as a kind of text and discuss how, through the design and ordering of the city’s space and the daily general practices that it supports, the state inculcates a particular civic aesthetic among Hong Kong’s population that corresponds to the capitalist as well as nationalist ideologies. At the same time, I explore creative texts, such as film, literature, and art, as articulations of the urban imaginaries and the people’s alternative visions. I use “the state” here to refer to the government of Hong Kong under the influence of the Beijing Central Government, or to the Beijing Central Government’s directed policies. There are, of course, direct and conscious interventions against the manipulations of the state. A number of grassroots or popular movements, from labor cooperatives to alternative currency programs, help many circumvent the existing capitalist and market logics that dictate livelihoods and manipulate human relationships. This is not surprising given that some of these organizations have been in existence for decades, advocating for the people under Hong Kong’s different political regimes. While, I acknowledge the importance of these organized actions, I am mostly interested in individual everyday practices, expressions, and creativity, which are less prescriptive and less recognizable as acts of resistance.8 Underneath an otherwise perfectly ordered and planned “concept city,” in which all deviance is suppressed, Michel de Certeau argues, there is always a counter current of consciousness and existence: “If in discourse the city serves as a totalizing and almost mythical landmark for socioeconomic and political strategies, urban life increasingly permits the re-emergence of the element that the urbanistic project excluded. The language or power is in itself ‘urbanizing’ but the city is left prey to contradictory movements that counter-balance and combine themselves outside the reach of panoptic power.” 9 De Certeau’s theorization of individual everyday practices, captured by the metaphorical individual walking in the city, as significant political acts offers an important theoretical opening here to examine the impact of individual lives on a place as a political and ideological construction.10 The “minor” victories achieved or the aspirations embodied in individual acts within the daily strictures of living in Hong Kong are significant. In my analysis, a built environment is often read for its metaphoric function. That is, rather than to claim that these places and structures are designed to control

4

Paradigm City

and discipline the population, it is more accurate to think that they reflect a political and economic principle enforced by the city government for the good of the people. The experience of this urban space shaped by such social, political, and economic ideologies, as well as the imaginative and unpredictable tactics of the people’s daily maneuvers, are in turn reflected in many creative and popular representations produced in Hong Kong. As Shohat and Stam have said about films, the different kinds of narratives created in a society “are not simply reflective microcosms of historical process; they are also experiential grids or templates through which history can be written and national identity created.”11 More than recording or accounting for Hong Kong’s cultural peculiarities within its historical and cultural contexts, I examine how ideological and political limitations shape the people’s imagination, even producing desires that, in turn, when expressed, ameliorate the particular social and spatial environment. Hong Kong culture at the end of the twentieth-century was variously described as nostalgic, melancholic, and fleeting.12 In addition, much was made of Hong Kong’s fin de siècle postmodern condition and postcolonial ethos in which the people were anxious, bewildered, and resigned about their future.13 The decolonization experience of 1997 and the culture around the new millennium under the new HKSAR government are thus reduced to psychosocial phenomena. The problem with these readings of Hong Kong’s culture at the end of the twentieth century was the primacy they assign to 1997 as the ultimate definer of people’s consciousness. While it is true that the sense of an end deeply colored the experience of Hong Kong at the end of the first millennium, taking a broader view on Hong Kong before and after 1997, one realizes that contemporary Hong Kong culture evolves through a complicated path, rather than being a momentary, visceral response to the Chinese takeover. China means more to Hong Kong people than a metaphor of homeland. The political effect of China in Hong Kong is concrete. Its presence is palpable and insidious, infiltrating into the spaces of the everyday life of the common people. While many discussions of Hong Kong in terms of “postmodernity,” “nostalgia,” and “disappearance,” capture the general aura of the period, they rarely address the political and economic ideologies that foster these emotional and phenomenal conditions. Hong Kong as a polity becomes a fetishized space, detached from global political and economic developments. Similarly, spatial studies of Hong Kong that focus on particular material sites, from shopping malls to public housing units, often create a fine portrait

Introduction

5

of the Hong Kong society and its historical social development through the transformation of spatial usages. However such studies rely on the assumption of space as a given, a material inevitability, rather than as products of a particular set of political and economic rationale. 14 It is my argument that the production of particular spatial structures, from private homes to designated public space, is deeply conditioned by Hong Kong’s relationship with China and its self-perceived position in the world, as well as by the state’s commitment to global capitalism. In other words, space is ideologized and political, which can be deciphered through the cultural imagination from within it. Hong Kong’s governing ideology is apparent when its urban environment is read alongside literary, filmic, or other forms of popular and artistic expressions. Moreover, these texts also reveal individual or collective agency in creating the daily living space, despite the state agenda, demonstrating Hong Kong people’s self-reflexivity within the global context. They also show how the people question their place in the world and test the boundaries of their strictures, transforming the place in which they live. A city, as Kristin Ross argues, following Henri Lefebvre, is a “social fact.” More than a passive or abstract container of our lives, city spaces are “structures we help to create.”15 All the individual or collective efforts, organized or impulsive, spontaneous movements and unorganized individual activism, reconfigure, humanize, and democratize spaces inscribed by the programs of the state.16 These activities might not amount to a political or social movement that will lead to immediate or systematic change; nevertheless, they have the potential for creating an alternative consciousness or discourse that might become a precondition for gradual social change. In this way, the “production of space” is a result of a dialectic between governance and the everyday life of the governed.17 It is significant, therefore, that this imagination or discourse be documented and critically analyzed. This volume is a reading of Hong Kong’s creative texts against its material environment in order to investigate the Hong Kong experience on a physical, visceral, and emotional level. The kinds of space or the particular places I have chosen to examine are primarily symbolic or “paradigmatic.” Each of these kinds of space is discussed as a counterpoint to a literary, filmic, or artistic text. As primarily a literary scholar, I have relied a great deal on the labor of social scientists whose data help me frame my discussion in a social materialist context. If sociological or ethnographical and statistical studies document popular phenomena and broad social trends, individual agencies, willful expressivities of desire, and flickerings of individual aspirations are imprinted

6

Paradigm City

in creative texts. Some of the texts I study were selected for their popularity and hence ability to “represent” the particular social ethos, mood, and sentiments at the time. However, “representedness” is as manipulable and superficial as trends of tastes and fashion since mass desires can be generated by the market or cultivated by the state. The less popular works, products of the same milieu, also need to be accounted for: how they relate to the popular sentiment, how they critique the general consciousness, and what kinds of alternatives they embody or envision for the city. More importantly, they indicate the spaces not reached by the pervasive forces of the state and the market. If de Certeau argues that within the practice of the ordinary is a “science of the singular” that confounds state manipulation of individuals, I am interested in investigating the individual will within ordinariness that makes it singular. An individual work, whether popular or rarefied, represents this will against the general “political unconscious.” Social negotiations are complicated. It is not simply state versus the individual or antagonism between classes, though both are still relevant ways of reading the Hong Kong society. Often, the oppositions are much more nuanced, such as the dominant ideology conflicting with the “common sense” of daily life and the spontaneity or randomness in individual everyday itinerary violating ideas of propriety determined by class consciousness. The understanding of social struggles thus requires attention to the fleeting and the hidden, as well as the documentation of visible activism and mass maneuvers. It is my hope to uncover these ephemeral and the less apparent, against the phenomenal to illustrate the multifarious, paradoxical, and sometimes chaotic cultural life of contemporary Hong Kong. Michel Foucault once commented that if social historians describe how people act (in response to the dictates of state agenda with little consideration for sentiments), humanities scholars focus on expressivity, imagination, or how people feel (without examining the action on the ground).18 In this study, I hope to demonstrate how social sentiments as well as the sociopolitical and spatial technologies of the state are in dialogue or in tension with each other in the creation of Hong Kong’s contemporary milieu. Repatriating the City

The “Handover” of Hong Kong to China in 1997 involved no actual large-scale restructuring of the society that typified the experience of decolonization in other areas of the world. Both the British and the Chinese governments

Introduction

7

worked hard to guarantee peaceful continuity through the transition, so much so that China promised a fifty-year political status quo, sacrificing its stated socialist political principles in order to preserve Hong Kong’s capitalist prosperity. This has resulted in a unique policy of “one country, two systems (yige liangzhi)”—capitalism within socialism. However, despite the Chinese Central Party’s seeming initial political sensitivity, it would seem that the principle of “one country” has consistently overridden the idea of “two systems.” Many have noted that previously, the “Hong Kong person” as a self-identity was built on a deliberate denigration of “Mainlanders” in order to assert Hong Kong’s difference in superiority.19 The depiction of the Mainland Chinese as coarse, uneducated, and unsophisticated was particularly popular in the mass media in the late 1980s and 1990s.20 With the rapid development of Chinese cities, such as Shanghai and Guangzhou in the South, Hong Kong has become more and more peripheral in its position in Asia’s economic power hierarchy and less and less significant to the Chinese state. As China becomes increasingly crucial to Hong Kong’s survival in the twenty-first century, both economically and politically, Hong Kong people have had to revise their attitude toward the Mainlanders. The change in attitude among Hong Kong people toward China can also be attributed to China’s rigorous public relations efforts as well as blunt, even belligerent, demands for patriotic love.21 China’s campaign to reabsorb Hong Kong has emphasized, not just the brute reality of its political dominance but also arguments of familial bonds and cultural affinity. While the British insistently referred to 1997 as the “Handover” of the territory, the Mainland government’s official designation for this event is “huigui “ (returning home). This description of familial embrace was designed to soften the impact of this political event. It was hoped that devotion to the idea of China-as-motherland would refocus Hong Kong’s ambivalent loyalty. The familial metaphor is obviously fraught and problematic. The effects of the patriotic campaign is articulated in a study by Anthony Fung, in which he measures how certain “Chinese” icons as “indicators of emotional identification or disidentification with the national” were received in the years just before and after the “Return.” An example in Fung’s research is the popular reception of the Great Wall of China as a cultural symbol in Hong Kong through the years of transition, from the peak of the national propaganda in 1996 and 1997 to a year after the Return in 1998. In 1996, the Great Wall elicited a “sense of pride” among 77.9% of Hong Kong’s population in the study. In 1997, the percentage rose to 78.8%. By 1998, the figure fell

8

Paradigm City

to 74%. The “sense of affection” toward the image of the Great Wall changed from 59.4% in 1996 to 56% in 1997, dropping to 50.3% in 1998 after the hype.22 Fung’s study also shows that at the height of the 1997 propaganda, 32.1% of the population considered themselves “Chinese.” This reflects an almost 7% rise from the 25.7% in 1996, but it dropped almost 8% to a new low of 24.5% in 1998. A corresponding reversal is reflected in the question of how many considered themselves “Hong Kong people.”23 The percentage dropped from 25.2% to 23.2% between 1996 and 1997 and then rose to a high of 28.8% in 1998. Not surprisingly, as the fluctuation in the figures demonstrate, Hong Kong people’s sense of affiliation toward China rose in connection to the excitement of the Return, and subsided afterward. This is to say Hong Kong people’s sentiment toward China or Hong Kong’s self-perceived Chineseness is very much conditioned by state propaganda. Regardless of whether one considers China’s ideological campaigns successful or not from these figures, they demonstrate how national sentiments and cultural legitimacy are often expressed through, or even directed by, affective responses to iconic objects associated with a particular nation or culture.24 In others words, nationalist feelings can be reduced to attachments to things as national symbols rather than to the nation itself. According to this bric-a-brac brand of nationalism, it is not surprising that, in the same study, Fung discovers that even at the height of Mainland’s propaganda bombardment, Hong Kong people did not respond very well to the political and militaristic symbols, such as the national flag of China or the Great Hall of the People. Popular sentiments for each of these did not go much beyond 20% and there was a noticeable drop in 1998 after the Return hype died down. Response toward the People’s Liberation Army and the Chinese Public Security as emblems of China’s physical dominance over common people even reflected unease. Good feelings toward the latter did not reach beyond 2% or 3%. What this indicates is the contradiction between feelings toward “China” as an abstract cultural concept, and “China” as an actual, political entity. However, the rubric of nationalism does not differentiate between sentimental responses to general cultural concepts and loyalty toward a specific political state. Most Hong Kong people find it troubling that the Mainland government makes little distinction between China as a nation and China as the Chinese Communist Party, or the state, calling for unquestioned patriotic love for the latter as the equivalence of the former.25 Beijing’s promise to Hong Kong of continuing “stability and prosperity” comes with the hidden condition of sacrificing political rights and freedom.

Introduction

9

This unspoken clause of exchange was finally made evident when the HKSAR government attempted to legislate “Article 23,” the “antisubversion law,” in 2003, after a couple of years of major controversy. (It was popularly believed that if this law had been allowed to pass, it would endanger much of the freedom Hong Kong people currently enjoy, including freedom of speech, press, political organization, and religious belief.) This legislation attempt was followed by China’s party legal experts offering an “official” interpretation of Hong Kong’s Basic Law to rebuff the Hong Kong people’s demand for universal suffrage in the election of the CE and Legislative Council (Hong Kong’s parliament) members in 2007 and 2008. This antidemocratic bullying led to several major mass protests in 2003 and 2004. July 1, a public holiday commemorating the official day of Hong Kong’s return to China in 1997, has since become an unofficial day of protest. The demonstrations resulted in Beijing officials’ more vociferous and direct demand for the institution of “patriotic education” in Hong Kong. Designing for Global Capitalism

From the HKSAR government’s point of view, Hong Kong’s success as a city is demonstrated by the decisions of many international corporations to keep their headquarters in Hong Kong or to set up new offices there after the Handover. In 2000, Hong Kong was the host to over three thousand regional headquarters and offices of multinational corporations, more than any other city in Asia. In the first seven months of 2000, at least one new regional headquarters was set up in Hong Kong every week.26 The most high profile of these is the Disney Corporation’s decision to extend its magic kingdom there.27 As Michelle Huang puts it, as Hong Kong continued to pursue its participation in global capitalism after 1997, it went from being a British Empire Colony to a “Disney Kingdom Outpost.”28 In the official language of the Hong Kong government, the aim is to create a “super trade service platform” for international businesses by providing excellent transportation and telecommunication infrastructure, in order to facilitate “seamless and dependable movement of goods.”29 In fact, the physical state of the city, the efficiency of the transit system, the transparency in business practices, and the rule of law, are all cited as factors that make Hong Kong a hospitable place for both tourists and international corporations. The new Hong Kong International Airport opened for use in 2000 was designed to facilitate and process, with utmost ease and speed, the huge volumes of visitors

10

Paradigm City

to the city.30 Since the airport is a crucial component of this internationalization of Hong Kong, it is a priority of the Airport Authority Hong Kong to maintain its ranking as the world’s most prestigious airport.31 The rapid transit systems such as the several underground and aboveground railways and light rails, the pedestrian walkways built over streets with high traffic density, high-speed escalators that transport people to the underground trains or the flyovers, arrows and railings directing pedestrian flow, all serve to minimize friction among people in their daily interactions in order to maximize productivity and profit. The same kind of organizing and management is seen in every aspect of life in Hong Kong to safeguard any unnecessary wastage of time or energy. It is of interest to note that the newer “satellite towns’ in the New Territories, developed in the 1980s, after Hong Kong’s economic takeoff, were particularly influenced by the theories of planners like Le Corbusier. Ideally, Hong Kong’s city space follows a trajectory of orderly and rational planning, where every aspect of the individual’s life and work is organized according to logical use and efficiency.32 The new towns, with Shatin as a prime example, are built around efficient mass transportation with residences surrounding a town center where all public exchanges, such as shopping, entertainment, and everyday transactions take place. Indeed, residential developments that to this day follow this functional design provide great convenience and orderly living to the Hong Kong people. These efforts have proven effective. According to a 2004 survey of more than a thousand European and U.S. expatriates in Asia by a consultancy firm on political and economic risks, Hong Kong ranked second after Australia as the safest and most stable place among fourteen Asian Pacific nations. The same survey also listed Hong Kong as the third least corrupt city in Asia.33 Such a citation allows the Hong Kong government to advertise the difference between Hong Kong and many other Asian cities, especially those in China, as it competes for foreign investment. However, Hong Kong people pay a price for the city’s identity. The notion of individual freedom under such a social schema is always heavily contextualized by the individual’s responsibility to uphold Hong Kong’s international image, so crucial to the capitalist agenda of the city. While the built environment is designed for the smoothest transaction of goods and capital, the citizens are trained to be facilitators, if not direct participants, of such ventures. The interest of the “greater common good”—the economic prosperity and stability of the city—takes precedence over individual will. Citizens have to be

Introduction

11

worthy of the global city, to be lawful, efficient, and adaptive to the rhythm and aesthetic of this global capitalism. A variety of government agencies and programs, such as the Leisure and Cultural Services, the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, and the Housing Authority, function to manage and organize the lives of the population, as well as to inculcate a set of values among them, such as work ethic, hygiene, civility, and consumer etiquette, prescribing appropriate behavior and comportment of Hong Kong’s citizenry. Similarly, the built environment articulated by awesome skyscrapers, and the designated public spaces, such as parks, waterfront promenades, even streets, are all structured to systematize or modify the people’s behavior and by which to nurture civic virtue. These efforts produce and support a paricular international image of Hong Kong people as polite, disciplined, and professional.34 As such, civic rectitude and aptitude replaces civil rights or democratic negotiations as the basis of governance. This Hong Kong citizenship determined by such (bourgeois) standards of behavior implies a predominantly local-born and ethnically Chinese membership. Rhetorically, at least, the HKSAR government has pledged to bring prosperity to all levels of society, guaranteeing the bourgeois dream for all through creating productive employment for all. The investment in the Hong Kong Disneyland, which opened in 2005, for example, was justified by the potential of creating tens of thousands of jobs and bringing development to underinhabited land, thus creating new real estate value. It was also to revive the tourist industry, which would simultaneously benefit other businesses. It is a paradox of capitalism, however, that a state cannot be sustained by universal affluence, because it is necessary to have a reserve army of the underclass to serve as cheap labor, in order to maintain viable competitiveness, to provide basic services to free the middle class for more (economically) productive work, and to serve as a consumer base to avoid the “adverse condition” of overproduction. 35 This paradox of late capitalism, which David Harvey describes as a process of “accumulation by dispossession” is a tacit principle of operation that underlies many of the contradictions of the HKSAR society.36 The “surplus population” is a stabilizing factor in a successful capitalist economic system and is crucial in the continuing prosperity of the city.37 As a result, the ideal capitalist state is necessarily built upon marginalizing certain sectors of the society. Citizenship in the capitalist “utopia” is thus selective and available only to those who meet certain criteria measuring cultural competency and behavior propriety that is beneficial to the growth of capital.38

12

Paradigm City

There is no doubt that both the British colonial and the present HKSAR governments’ land development policies have destroyed natural communities, local economies, and heritage architecture and culture in the territory.39 Both have done much to undermine the social rights of its citizens, especially the poorer segments, through legislatures that reflect preferential considerations for capitalist development and large corporations.40 However, both administrations have been successful to a large extent in harnessing public imagination as well as the consensus and energies of different social classes in Hong Kong to support the economic ideal and the bourgeois ideology. The Hong Kong campaign of the Hong Kong Tourism Board from 2002 to 2004 with banners all over the city announcing Hong Kong as “Asia’s World City,” demonstrates the city’s ambition and ethos.41 However, as Eric Kit-Wai Ma argues: A city’s identity does not happen naturally. It depends on the city’s discovery of a consciousness to create, amass and develop its local as well as global positions. The city’s identity does not solely belong to the corporations, developers, or Hong Kong’s CE, Mr. Tsang. A transnational capital that is appropriate for its local conditions should be developed from a blueprint based on the city’s consciousness of its identity and the citizen’s sense of belonging.42

Hong Kong’s identity as a capital of international finance is certainly not pure ideological invention. Capitalism versus Nationalism

By definition, global capitalism transcends national borders (rather than just crossing or even trespassing), generating a supraterritoriality with its own logic, legality, and practice, making the idea of nation state obsolete. This can adversely affect the lives of the people within its influence, threatening existing social and political values, including democracy.43 However, if global capitalism is Hong Kong’s ideological standard, it, ironically, offers reprieve from another form of state regime. It is Hong Kong’s most important asset as a “world city,” sometimes regarded deprecatorily, characterized not only by its borderless capitalism but by the people’s lack of political and national sentiments and the absence of (national) culture, that becomes its best foil against China’s nationalist enclosure. This global city identity elevates Hong Kong above the passé rubric of nation state. By all recognition, Hong Kong’s identity is as an international city before it is a Chinese city.

Introduction

13

Conversely, one might also assert that patriotism functions to restrain the relentless capitalist development in Hong Kong. In fact, the different political parties and factions in the government often align themselves with these respective ideological positions, using them to hold each other in check. This is most interestingly demonstrated when Choy So-Yuk, a member of the pro-China political party, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), openly reprimanded the Hong Kong CE, Donald Tsang, newly appointed in 2005 after the resignation of Tung Chee Hwa. In a radio show in April 2005, Choy accused the dapper and bow-tied CE Tsang as a product of the Hong Kong-British elite education, the British civil service system, and a strong proponent of free market, of being “a loyal supporter of the British administration.” She made her point by arguing that this was “revealed in his language, personal style, the way he treats people and issues, which results in cultural gap and emotional distance between him and the patriotic forces….” Choy also said that in the eyes of some of the pro-Beijing camp, Donald Tsang was “arrogant and disrespectful of the patriotic values they have fought for and paid dearly for in the last few decades.”44 The nationalist factions were unconvinced that the head of the new HKSAR government, with his cosmopolitan style and politics, would have China’s best interests in mind. On the other side, in December 2004, a couple of senior citizens living in one of Hong Kong’s public housing estates, apparently with the support of a liberal member of the Legislative Council, began a series of legal proceedings to force the government Housing Authority to drop its plans to sell the shopping malls and parking lots in the estates under its ownership to private developers. These individuals claimed that the privatization of these spaces would force up the commercial rents in the malls, resulting in increases in their daily living expenses, as the rental burden would most certainly be passed on to the consumers. When the individuals threatened to challenge this decision in the courts, the Hong Kong government decided to drop the listing of the world’s biggest real estate investment trust (REIT), the Link REIT, a US$3 billion property trust.45 Thus a major government land development initiative was seemingly defeated, or at least temporarily thwarted, by the acts of private citizens. Influential business groups charged the Hong Kong government for turning Hong Kong into “the most communist place in China.” Beijing perceived this incidence as a failure of governance and a result of certain political factions in Hong Kong deliberately fanning dissent and disorder.46 Politics in Hong Kong, as can be seen, are extremely complicated where alignment along conventional lines of “right” and “left” is concerned. Global space, nationalist space, and living space are all created in complex tension with each

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other. While the different forces of nationalism and global economy are pitted against one another, struggling for supremacy and dominance, local citizens nevertheless manage to maneuver this relationship to eek out a living space that is at least closer to their needs, and ultimately, creating “spaces of hope.”47 These different regimes of patriotism and capitalist development reveal that the relationship between the people and the government in Hong Kong is ambivalent and complex. They are often not in positions of clear opposition to each other. It is true that whether it was the British colonial authorities or the present HKSAR administration, and whatever its stated policy, the government has played a crucial part in mediating the seemingly unstoppable advance of capitalism. Through its numerous and still rather generous public and social welfare programs, Hong Kong is much more socialist than many advanced capitalist, neoliberal governments. For example, between 2003 and 2004, the Hong Kong government expended HK$27.9 billion, or 10% of the total public expenditure on public estates, which housed a third of the total population, and subsidized home ownership of another 20%. 48 The public medical spending in the city where universal coverage is guaranteed is one of the highest among developed economies.49 Hong Kong also has one of the world’s most dedicated investments in public transportation. It is an oversimplification to assume that the government has the power and ability to fully implement a coherent policy and has total control over the behavior, imagination, and social beliefs of the people. Even heavy-handed economic maneuvers or political threats cannot always determine the social and cultural agenda of a place. Becoming Citizens

How is social ideology or public consent generated? Together with institutional structures, “fields of sentiments” (public sensibilities, ideas of civility, and emotive affinity) are constructed through state-funded or -sponsored institutions. These state regimes constitute what Ann Laura Stoler refers to as “schooling of desires.”50 Such operations mold a population that is ready and willing to collaborate and cooperate with the dominant political and economic programs of the state. Such obliging obedience demands a yielding of individual rights for civic propriety, or personal fulfillment for the state doctrine. It defines the civic paradigm in Hong Kong. Aside from the obvious venues such as museums and schools, articulations of social and political values in Hong Kong are often manifested in the most

Introduction

15

unexpected and mundane spaces in the city. Officially designated public spaces that have elaborate schemes of organization and control worked into the landscaping and planning are important emblems of the governing ideology. For example, in the urban parks, everything, every activity and every age group of users, has a designated place. In these places, individuals are subjected to transcriptions of actions that promote civic rectitude and public etiquette. These schemas are both actual and metaphoric of how interior borders of the society are drawn—separating those who belong from those who do not. Equally significant, is how the society develops the propensities for particular state technologies.51 In the well-known study undertaken by de Certeau, Luce Giard, and Pierre Mayol, the authors explore the complicated notion of “citizenship.” In the ethnographic analysis of the French neighborhood of Lyons, the Croix-Rousse, the authors reveal the idea of community as one based on established social codes and rules that guide individual actions and behavior.52 The logic of these codes has historical, customary, and practical bases, established upon shared experience and recognition of survival needs balanced with collective good. Individual lives are also profoundly shaped by the experience of being in a particular space and subjected to the spatial codes within it. Individuals are continually “trained” and conditioned by the codes of behavior and appearances governing this space that define membership and belonging. To become part of the collective requires education in individual behavior, subtleties of language, movement and lifestyle, and even aesthetic judgments, from taste in fashion, to music, to food, and so forth. Those who come later must learn to fit in. Mayol also points out that individuals are consumers of public space in the sense that this is where they operate, communicate, and relate to each other. As such, in the study of public space, both the setting (the existing conditions) and the staging (the actual shaping of the space through usage) are equally important. In other words, rather than static and given, public space is a construction site, a dynamic zone that evolves with the practice of the people (a point that Henri Lefebvre also argues).53 It is in this sense that Mayol argues, “neighborhood is a dynamic notion requiring a progressive apprenticeship that grows with the repetition of the dweller’s body’s engagement in public space until it exercises a sort of appropriation of this space.”54 What the de Certeau, Giard, and Mayol project does not articulate are the political or class ideologies behind the community codes. These community codes are inherently conservative—to preserve the logics of practices and values of the dominant group. Many scholars, from Etienne Balibar to Ann

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Laura Stoler, have examined the political nature of social codes that regulate individual behavior within a community, demonstrating how such social structures function to define and preserve a bourgeois identity through identifying the “internal others’ within this society. 55 Often the need for such community conservation is put in the frame of public good. We will see in chapter 3 of this volume how an individual’s lack of attention to socially acceptable behavior codes and etiquette can be seen as a lack of self-discipline (zilu) by the dominant society, which will endanger the body politic. In Hong Kong, such rhetoric of discipline is often aimed at the city’s “foreign” work force, new immigrants, and unruly young people, but as a social trend, it also becomes a gendered disciplinary device manifested through the articulation of women’s bodily ideal, as I argue in chapter 5. Antonio Gramsci proffers the idea that ordinary people and their material conditions are in themselves “revolutionary.” Accordingly, the creation of social alternatives, most of the time, is based on the preexisting practices and common wisdom of the ordinary people.56 However, if this is the case, how does one locate this consciousness or individual or collective will for change? The individual itinerary is singular, unmappable, because unpredictable, according to de Certeau. However, how much do the unorganized and random drifts of daily creativity and adaptive behavior constitute resistance? Differing from de Certeau, in my discussion, peregrination, whether a solitary stroll through city parks or a purposeful walk through shopping malls, is an inevitably social act. Mayol, like Georg Simmel, argues that the city space is the site of daily interactions among people, whether in terms of business, social, or psychological exchanges. Differing from Mayol, however, Simmel sees such interactions as not merely formative but also as a basis of civil society.57The more uniform the built sites of the city, the more uniform are the individual experiences of the city, one can argue. This uniformity that reflects the state strategy of control and regulation can also become the basis of communitarianism. The work of de Certeau and colleagues detaches the particular individual or community at issue from the specific political and economic conditions of the larger social, or further, global context. The class aspect is an important factor in the consideration of societal identity. To separate the individual from his or her class belonging creates a sense of individualism without agency.58 It is this missing political agency that prompted Kristin Ross’s criticism that de Certeau’s description of individual effort is purely aesthetic.59 There is a vast political difference between an individual and a citizen. It is only

Introduction

17

when the individual is situated within the various strata in society as a citizen that his or her actions become socially meaningful. These seemingly conflicting and circular considerations about communities being transformative or conservative exactly capture the political reality and alignment in Hong Kong. The interactions on the different levels of individual situation—community, class, and nation—are complicated and contradictory. The government and the people variously stand on the same side and opposing ends, depending on the issues. The daily “common sense” in Hong Kong is not necessarily opposed to the operating ideology of freemarket capitalism. In fact, we will see that the middle-class imaginary is so strong in most of Hong Kong’s society that on the surface, at least, a hegemonic social culture prescribes the activities, taste, and behavior of individual citizens. In reality, the city and its political affiliation are a lot more complex. For example, while the majority of Hong Kong people are pledged to the city’s capitalist agenda in principle, most are vehemently opposed to the plans for land reclamation around the Victoria Harbour, believing that it will threaten the natural environment as well as the very symbol of Hong Kong’s identity. Similarly, the development plans for West Kowloon were resisted when it became clear that it would mean giving the real estate to large developers at the expense of the use and enjoyment of the people. In fact the competition between state rationalization and the citizen’s use of space can often have unexpected results. Lefebvre argued that cities as living spaces are produced through the uses of citizens in spite of state planning.60 In this frame, I argue that urbanism arises in a dialectical process that harnesses both the creative and the destructive energies of the seemingly unstoppable capitalist development, as well as the oppositional forces of dominance and resistance. Hong Kong’s city space is, as such, dynamic. Hong Kong’s capitalist culture and consumerism have often been used as a proof of Hong Kong people’s lack of political consciousness and interest. Despite its problems, de Certeau’s work is significant in acknowledging the substance of this “unconscious.” It theorizes the effectiveness of the practices of everyday life as a form of resistance, celebrating the street and other banal, mundane locations of daily life as theaters of public dramas of resistance.61Everyday practices, the “tactile guile” or “stratagem” (as opposed to formal, political strategies) are able to elude ideological control and deflect and mitigate the powers and discourses that contain and control our environment because they are “unsigned, unreadable and unsymbolized.”62 The inventiveness of the culture of the quotidian opens up social spaces, no matter how

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fragile and fleeting. In Hong Kong, it is within the overarching cultural conditions of capitalist ecology that we also discover effective demonstration of individual will. In our contemporary global climate of neoliberal economic restructuring and rollbacks in civil rights, social welfare, and human rights, my impulse is to write about the success and heroism of social resistance and mass movements in a society, to show that social transformation and alternative societies are possible, in fact, in progress. In the neoliberal strategies of state governments supported by powerful multinational corporations, where tentacles of control seem to infiltrate the very marrow of daily life, where is the site of resistance? How is the resistance going to be organized? Tempted as one might be to dramatize the power of the people, one realizes, surveying the current state of things that social resistance is traveling along a rather different path. The insidiousness of state ideology is countered by equally “inadvertent” random and creative everyday practices, diffusing “seepage” into private life. The most unforgiving and deliberate technique of control can be and is often confounded by the most off-handed and casual creativity of everyday life. As in the older form of imperialism (one that Hong Kong people are familiar with) the new global free-market capitalism depends on the successful manipulation of the cooperation of local populations. This makes the ventures of the multinational corporations both globally hegemonic and locally fragile because the aggregate population is a dynamic entity. A lesson from the de Certeau, Mayol, and Giard project is how community identity and meaning are drawn through practices of conveniences and oppositions: “We are what you are not.” This definition, by negation, by construction of habits and custom, is often easily disturbed by its own internal contradictions. Identity is in constant flux, responding to momentary challenges, changes in external conditions, or according to a tactical need. Therefore, when social transformation will come is no longer the question. Changes are constantly occurring, invisibly but insistently, through the everyday negotiations among people. Not only is the city itself constantly changing and developing with ever-newer buildings and infrastructure, the nature of the relationships and the force fields within are also constantly mutating, allowing neither state nor people nor capital to sustain a prolonged hegemony.

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“World Suicide Capital”

An excellent way of explaining the Hong Kong society in the first few years of its new status as HKSAR is through three movies that came out during the watershed year of 2002 and 2003. Both the production and reception of these films capture the particular political wrangle between Hong Kong and China and the culminating social anxieties within the Hong Kong society after the “Handover” in 1997. The examination here of these films in connection with the major events of this year serves to introduce the political and social background and some of the issues of the society that frame my discussion in this volume. There was a minor earthquake in the Hong Kong film world in the winter between 2002 and 2003. The gradual decline of the Hong Kong movie industry that began in the late 1990s had turned into a serious slump by the new millennium.1 However, at the end of 2002 and the beginning of 2003, three films in particular, generated unusual excitement in the Hong Kong cinema and the society at large. Infernal Affairs (Wujian dao), a film by Andrew Lau and Andy Mak, a major feature with a cast of Hong Kong’s most prestigious actors, earned over fifty million HK dollars (about 6.2 million US) at the Hong Kong boxoffice alone and proceeded to break the boxoffice records in different East and South East Asian nations.2 It received numerous awards worldwide, including the Hong Kong Film Critics Society Awards for Best Director and Best Picture. It was nominated for twelve categories at the 2003 Taiwan Golden Horse Awards and received five of them, including Best Actor, Best Drama, and Best Director. The chapter title comes from a headline in Asiaone, describing Hong Kong in April 2004 (http://newspaper.asia1.com.Sg). 19

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It was named one of the year’s ten best foreign films in the 2003 Tokyo Filmex. It was featured at the New York Film Festival in 2004, as well as many other film festivals around the world. At the same time that the whirlwind of Infernal Affairs was sweeping through Asia, Zhang Yimou, Mainland China’s master filmmaker, brought out his extravagantly produced historical epic Hero (Yingxiong).3 This film was greatly anticipated, greeted with enormous excitement, and was a boxoffice triumph in China. It was touted as a major film event and was the official entry to the Academy Awards in 2003. (It lost to Caroline Link’s Nowhere in Africa in the best foreign-language film category.) In the midst of the fanfare of these major and expensive productions, was a small film that intrigued audiences and quietly garnered critical admiration within Hong Kong and abroad. PTU is directed by Johnny To, a veteran director of many popular gangster films and romances. It was the opening feature of the 2003 Hong Kong International Film Festival, included in the New York Film Festival; it received awards at the Berlin International Film Festival, the Tokyo Filmex, and the Melbourne International Film festival, among others. Infernal Affairs, a genre film about the contest of power between the Hong Kong police and the Triad, was especially credited for having breathed much needed new life into Hong Kong’s seemingly moribund film industry. It became the beacon for a new cinema after years of overproduction and stagnation. It was praised for the seriousness of its production and sophistication of the script. Proving that audiences can be wooed back to the theaters with quality, much hope was laid on its positive influence on Hong Kong’s cinema culture in general. Though differing significantly in narrative style and plot, PTU shares a similar ethos with Infernal Affairs. These two intensely monochromatic and solemn films contrasted conspicuously with Zhang Yimou’s vividly hued Hero. These three films became the focal point of the film world in Hong Kong in 2003. Each of them evoked different reactions from audiences, provoking unprecedented public attention and discussion. As Nestor Garcia Canclini argues, “[l]iterary, artistic and mass media discourse not only documents a compensatory imagination, but also serves to record the city’s dramas, what is lost in the city and what is transformed.”4 Invested in the interest and debates generated by the films are the hopes and apprehensions of Hong Kong people toward their political future under China. In this way, the discourse created by these films substitutes for the nonexistent public venue for political discussions in Hong Kong. How is the audience’s perception of the respective reality of Hong Kong and Mainland China coded into the images and hues in these films? What politics inform the somberness of the

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two Hong Kong films? And what is so striking about Hero’s brilliance juxtaposed to them? How does the audience’s reception of these films in the winter of 2002 and 2003 echo their sense of the contemporary predicament? Hero is based on a popular story about the historical first emperor of China, the Qin emperor. The historical Qin dynasty only spanned fifteen years, from 221 BC to 206 BC, but the emperor is generally credited with laying the groundwork for a centralized Chinese state and empire. The importance of the emperor’s ability to regularize and standardize the Chinese writing system and weights and measures to the ideology of a unified China is unchallenged in Chinese political thought even today. In spite of this, in the standard dynastic histories and popular fiction alike, representations of the Qin emperor have been consistently focused on his tyranny, his brutal suppression of dissent, and his persecution of intellectuals who held alternative views, putatively burying many Confucian scholars alive and burning their books. He also burdened the common people with heavy levies of physical labor to build massive state projects, such as the completion of the Great Wall, along with his grandiose mausoleum and underground army of tens of thousands of terracotta soldiers. Regardless of the actual merit or demerit of his reign, the historical construction of the Qin emperor is unequivocally as a fearsome and hated despot. Zhang’s Hero is a fictionalized account of a plot to assassinate the emperor to prevent the Qin state’s gradual swallowing up of all the other principalities to achieve a single empire unified under his dictatorship. The central issue is how Wuming, a swordsman, tries to gain proximity to the emperor in order to kill him. The emperor previously made a promise that whoever killed any of his three most feared enemies, all accomplished swordsmen, would be granted bountiful gifts and an audience with him. With each enemy eliminated, the emperor would increase the gifts and allow a closer approach to him, while decreasing the number of guards around him as a show of trust. Wuming’s aim was to prove that he had killed all three by bringing tokens of the slain enemies as proofs so that he could get close to the emperor without his guards. Though the emperor could not dispute what Wuming had accomplished, because of incontrovertible proof, the suspicious emperor proffered his own version of what actually happened. The film was thus made up of four segments containing different versions of the story of how three of the Qin emperor’s most feared enemies were killed. According to Wuming, he exterminated the emperor’s enemies by stirring up feelings of jealousy, mutual suspicion, and hatred among the originally loyal

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friends, leading to the self-destruction of the alliance. However, the Qin emperor believed that, given the training and integrity of the trio, they would not have come to such a sordid end. He postulated that they had deliberately sacrificed themselves so Wuming could approach him. He suspected that the duel between Wuming and one of the assassins, Mingjian, witnessed by the Qin army was staged and that Mingjian had allowed herself to be killed by Wuming. In other words, the emperor had seen through the plot. However, before he called his guards on Wuming, Wuming offered a detail that created a surprising turn in the situation. Wuming revealed that Mingjian was still alive. Because Wuming was a highly accurate swordsman, he was able to control his sword and had only nicked her in the mock duel while she feigned death. However, before their fight, she had to seriously injure her beloved, Changkong, to prevent him from fighting Wuming to stop him from carrying out his assassination of the emperor. This last detail delivered its intended impact on the emperor. Wuming now sat within striking distance of the emperor. Both realized that Wuming’s mission could be completed with one swift blow. However, in the back and forth of the narrative between the Qin emperor and himself, Wuming suddenly became enlightened as to why Changkong had wanted to stop him from killing the emperor. At the end of the film and the end of his conversation with the emperor, Wuming decided to give up his mission and yielded to the emperor. At the news of Wuming’s submission, Mingjian killed Changkong in rage and then killed herself in remorse. After a highly dramatic pause while the emperor struggled to decide what to do, he finally allowed his palace guards to kill Wuming. Changkong had tried to make Wuming understand before his mission that killing the emperor would prolong the division and strife among the various warring kingdoms. In the end, it would only aggravate and lengthen the suffering of the common people. He knew, even if reluctantly, that the Qin emperor was the only man powerful and masterful enough to unify China and to end the incessant wars. It was a theory of peace above all else. Wuming, through his long conversation with the emperor, was moved by the aura of the emperor’s authority and power. He surrendered his life as the ultimate acknowledgment of the legitimacy of the Qin rule. The Qin emperor was, in turn, grateful to Wuming and Changkong’s ability to “truly understand” him— that his persecution of other kingdoms was out of a desire to end all strife and pacify the entire land by unifying it under his own grip. Wuming could easily have killed the emperor, but yielded himself instead to death by a thousand arrows from Qin’s formidable war machine.

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The film was set in the great northern deserts of China, as austere and desolate as they are magnificent, especially under the cinematographer Christopher Doyle’s romantic camera gaze. From the scale of the production to the expansiveness of the scenes, the director, Zhang Yimou, intends to impress the audience with the immensity, awesomeness, solemnity, and grandeur of the Chinese earth, asking the audience to imagine the one who truly deserves to be the supreme sovereign of this land. In fact, the only people on this mythical landscape are the magnificent heroes and heroines who walk the land in their flowing gowns like divinities. The design of the characters is to deliberately highlight the actors’ unusual beauty and largerthan-life quality. This world exists in a special time and space bracketed from the mundane and is beyond the defilement of humans and their messy societies. The movie’s heroic scale precludes the appearance of the common people. In fact, the camera gaze seems to disdain the ordinary. The decision of rulership naturally does not concern them. The audience, as the invisible masses, can merely observe the process of the investiture of power outside of the frame of action. They watch the faceless, ominous black troops of the Qin army swarming the screen and becoming the final pacifiers of the empire, while the heroes each yield to its advance. The marching homogeneous and highly disciplined army embodies the massification of people in which individual subjectivity is not allowed to exist. If the assassins had attempted to assert individual will against the Qin hegemony at points during the film, the ending of the film is a flat refutation of any such effort. In the final scene of the movie, the screen is swallowed up by banks upon banks of the black troops, overwhelming the audience with their victory cries in an ostentatious demonstration of state power. The different segments of the film are the different versions of how the assassins were killed by Wuming. Each of these segments has a dominant color scheme. In the first, in which all the characters appear in red, the assassins are seen to have succumbed under their passions and romantic entanglements. In the second segment in which they are clothed in green, their defeat is attributed to their distrust and jealousy of each other. In contrast to these various colors, the Qin emperor and his war machine appear in a uniform black—threatening and awful. Within this monumental presence of the state, individual colors appear fickle, minute, and inconsequential. This contrast seems to articulate the frivolity of individual expressiveness and desire against the doctrine of the nation. Temperaments and personal sentiments of love, vendetta, jealousy, and so forth, all have to be suppressed in order for individuals to fit into the

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machinery of the state. In the “red” segment of the film, Mingjian engaged in a passionate swordfight with Changkong’s serving girl with the brilliant autumn foliage swirling around them. This scene of whirring silks and fluttering leaves is spectacular. However, no matter how brilliant and creative the individual dance is, it has no place in the order of the nation. In the final segment, in the mourning colors of white, the hero and heroine die, voluntarily or not, their personal will is sacrificed for the greater common good. The production of Hero coincides with an optimistic, powerful, and nationalistic China in the new millennium. Successfully admitted to the WTO in 2002, winning the sponsorship of the 2008 Olympic Games; the ascension of the new technocrats in the Party, Wen Jiabao and Hu Jintao; the rapid economic development in the cities; not to mention sending its first astronaut to space in 2004—China was poised to assume the role as the next world power. This national progress seems to justify individual sacrifices. The disruption of rural livelihoods, the mass displacement of the urban poor, the curtailment of legal recourse, and the suppression of individual expression, especially of dissent, are all in the name of the cohesiveness of the nation and the morale of the society. This expectation of individual sacrifice is articulated in Hero. No individual interest or aspiration can come before the unity and good of the nation. Any state strategy, no matter how ruthless, can be justified as for the sake of national strength. The sweeping takes of Zhang Yimou’s romanticism is a powerful expression of telluric nationalism. The national narrative in Hero is reconstituted and mythologized in an extremely seductive and beautiful manner, if heavily overlaid with nationalistic aesthetic. The sacralization of China’s first emperor as a national myth is unmistakable through the fascistic references—the stark images of Qin’s formidable and highly disciplined black army on the march, their bloodcurdling war chant, “feng!” (translated as “hail” in the subtitles), and the glorification of absolute power of the supreme leader. Hero is a tacit affirmation of the use of military force for the sake of order and unity at the expense of individual will and lives. In interviews, the director, Zhang, insisted that he merely wanted to make a popular film and had no overt political intention. He argued that, ”after a few years … perhaps the main ideas of the movies would be forgotten. All people might remember about it would be a few seconds of images or perhaps the way certain characters look.”5 The disingenuousness and condescension implied in Zhang’s words hardly bear commentary. In a cursory survey of the web discussions of two major movie discussion sites, “Wangyi” in China and “Broadway” in Hong Kong, Zhang Zhiwei points out that the

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Hong Kong audience, even those who admired the visual beauty and technical accomplishment of the film, was mostly troubled by the “reinterpretation” of the character of the historical tyrant. Of the more than one hundred comments logged by Zhang in January 2003, a few weeks after the film’s release, only three supported the notion that the movie actually had an antiauthoritarian message. Zhang commented that the arguments for this “alternative reading” were rather forced and unconvincing.6 Released around the same time as Hero during the Christmas season of 2002 was Infernal Affairs (Wujian Dao, a Buddhist term describing the journey through the lowest level of hell of never-ceasing suffering). It boasts a solid cast of award-winning actors, including Tony Leung and Andy Lau. Infused with Buddhist overtones, the film examines a complex network of people antagonistically bound to each other, conditioned by an inevitability out of their own control. This strong suggestion of karmic bond and individual destiny makes all the protagonists, on either side of the law, tragic heroes. Chan is an undercover police agent in the underworld, whose survival hinges upon his convincing act as the underworld boss’s most trusted man. Lau, on the other hand, is a Triad agent within the police. The tragedy of both characters arises from their desire to be “good” despite their assigned roles in life. Lau’s attempt is facilitated by all the surface paraphernalia—a decent, middle-class lifestyle, a loving companion, a tastefully decorated apartment—but he knows deep at heart he works for the forces of evil. Sharing the same fate, but on the opposite side, Chan is deeply submerged in the underworld of crime, living among thugs and finding it more and more difficult to maintain his identity though he is a legitimate policeman. All the while, both attempt to normalize their lives, trying to be sincere in their relationships with lovers and comrades, fully aware of their own treachery. Both live lives that are limited to accrued surface signifiers without access to interior reality. Chan wants to return to his original identity as a legitimate person in society. But that identity does not exist in material reality, only in his memory and that of his immediate superior who dies in the film. (All his records have been erased to protect him from being discovered.) Worried that he was becoming more and more schizophrenic about himself, Chan’s supervisor sent him to a psychotherapist to help him reach his internal depth to recover his identity. But significantly, each time he tries, he merely falls asleep on the therapist’s couch as if unable to rouse his dormant true self. Lau, on the other hand, avoids probing the depths of his interiority. His lover, a novelist, is unable to complete the portrait of her fictional character, a police officer, based on him. Lau wishes he could be

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legitimized as a decent person and citizen. However, his actual and karmic ties to his criminal origin cannot be simply severed or buried. Mostly set in dark, brooding interiors or against massive modern concrete architectural structures of the city of Hong Kong, Infernal Affairs is a stark contrast to Hero with its expansive landscape. The claustrophobic and monochromatic world of the former, in which all the characters, “good” or “evil,” “cop” or “robber,” are dressed indistinguishably in black and white, is an ironic commentary of a world where there is no simple distinction among people, where nothing is black and white. Instead, making much use of mirror reflections and gloomy illumination, the film represents an illusory world of dim lights and shadows, smoke and mirrors, secrets and lies. The protagonists on both sides of the law have the gravitas and stature of heroes whose actions appear to be of great consequence at specific moments. Ultimately, however, individual identities are meaningless ciphers, to be manipulated, taken, given, and substituted, totally dictated by external forces beyond individual control. Personal struggles and actions placed within the complicated weave of cosmic reality are actually futile and minute. This is the same whether one belongs to the police or the underworld, “good” or “evil.” Individual choice or will is merely an illusion as each person’s life is shackled to a prescribed plot within predetermined historical conditions. Not only does this film seriously question the Manichean divide between good and evil that is the foundation of the crime thriller genre, it also reassesses the notion of individuals as monadic entities with full control over their lives and the choices they make. It questions the notion of individual identity when one is karmicly conjoined to other lives and when one’s story is predetermined and overdetermined by other narratives. Needless to say, these issues are deeply pertinent to Hong Kong people confronting their enforced affiliation with China, with their identity articulated by China’s present agenda, especially under the doctrine of the nation. Is there a Hong Kong identity deeply buried beneath this nationalist narrative to be excavated or is Hong Kong merely glass and steel and what their glossy surfaces reflect?7 In Hero, the protagonists stoically acknowledge and yield to the powerful state monolith in a reality where both might and hegemony are respected and deemed the ultimate necessity, if not good, for the common people. In Infernal Affairs, the control of one’s daily life and individual identity is more insidious, working through the individual’s complicity and consent. It is an ambiguous world of no absolutes that gives a semblance of individual choice and freedom, but only within prearticulated perimeters. However, in contrast to Hero, the

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protagonists in Infernal Affairs are unyielding in their struggle against their destiny. In a similar monochromatic moodiness of Infernal Affairs is another Hong Kong film, PTU. A comparatively small-budget film by Johnny To, PTU opened the Hong Kong Film Festival, which took place in the inopportune month of April 2003, when the entire city was shrouded in gloom by the threat of the SARS (the Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome) epidemic and the suicide of arguably Hong Kong’s most popular and iconic movie star of the 1990s, Leslie Cheung. PTU, in which Simon Yam, as a PTU (Police Tactical Unit) captain, led a small cast, is an intense and minimalist film. It initially received limited popular attention in the theaters but gradually amassed wide critical acclaim and popularity from both home and abroad. The whole narrative takes place within a small district of the city in the duration of a few long hours during a shift in a night patrol. The plot evolves around a police detective’s lost gun and involves three different departments within the Hong Kong Police—the OCU (Organized Crime Unit), the PTU (Police Tactical Unit), and the CID (Criminal Investigative Detectives). Determined not to let this incident mar his chances for a promotion, the Organized Crime detective who lost his gun decided not to report it and asked his friend, the captain of a PTU division, to assist him in recovering it before dawn. The search for the gun led the PTU team through the dark streets of Tsimshatsui. In the mean time, a CID detective investigating the case of a murdered gang boss suspected that the detective who lost his gun was involved in the murder, because, through a complicated mistake, the detective swapped his cell phone with the dead man. The CID led her team, hot on the trail, through the same streets. The suspenseful search for the lost gun was complicated by differences, rivalries, and distrust among the various police divisions. In the final scene, two bosses from rival gangs arrived on the scene to settle scores with each other over the dead man in the CID’s case. On the trails of their different pursuits, the different groups from the three departments converged on the same street. It so happened that a group of heavily armed Mainland Chinese gangsters, who had just come ashore to Hong Kong, were waiting for their contacts at the same site. When all these parties met, a huge street battle erupted. The police units were clearly aligned despite previous misgivings and grievances. When the criminals were decimated, each captain of the different police units averted his or her attention from each other’s foibles, leaving out in each of their official reports the offenses and mistakes that they had all accumulated over the course of the eventful night.

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The action of the film takes place in familiar streets with landmarks and signs easily recognizable to the local audience. However, these streets in this night are completely removed from the geography of everyday life. Nighttime Tsimshatsui in the film is deserted and oppressively silent. In this film, the usually heavily pedestrian city where the streets hop with life and are perpetually lit by neon becomes completely dark and empty except for the patrolling police units and gang runners scampering through alleys like startled rats. This is not a Hong Kong that belongs to the everyday, daylight reality of ordinary people. Every member of the night belongs to either the police or the gangs. However, one cannot be sure if these two are distinct opposites, much less if they can be differentiated as “good” or “evil.” A police undercover agent became a drug addict, caved into the pressure of his job. Officers cowered in fright during operations. They use violent or bullying tactics toward smalltime gang runners. In their semimilitarized gear, the PTU are overlords of the dark, imperiously patrolling their streets; they can be as ruthless as the gang members they deal with. PTU depicts a subterranean world beneath the everyday reality of Hong Kong society, where the antagonistic forces contend with each other, sparking the energy and tension that undergird the great metropolis. This film is about a particular signifying space stretched to its limits—a society in crisis. Such times put to trial the boundaries of relationships in daylight transactions, testing the loyalty among the members of each group and faithfulness among friends and colleagues as each is asked to do things in times of difficulty that exceed the call of duty, even legality. PTU maps the psychological terrain of Hong Kong as a society on the verge. Can the relationships and the social structure survive under such stress? At what point will the tempest of this underworld boil over to the daytime reality of Hong Kong’s everyday life? Like Infernal Affairs, PTU depicts a visually as well as metaphysically very dark Hong Kong society. If Hero and Infernal Affairs respectively capture the Mainland and Hong Kong political ideology and social ethos, PTU depicts the clash of the values of the two places. However, it also reveals that Hong Kong society itself is plagued by acrimony, contradictions, and discontent. Despite their criminality, local Triads have their logic of operation as an alternative organizational mode in society. Lest one romanticizes the loyalty and friendship in the relationships between gang members in the underworld, one is also led to see the enforcement of absolute hierarchy, violently maintained in this world. It is certainly not a desirable alternative to that of the uniformed brutality offered by the police. However, despite the occasional eruptions of

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hostilities between the gangs and the police, there is a space in society for their coexistence, even if within extremely tight strictures. The Mainland gang as depicted briefly at the end of the film is unambiguously a foreign intrusion. The director expends no time to relate their stories. Heavily armed and with little understanding of their environment, the situation, or their opponents, they immediately opened fire on everyone upon arrival on the scene. The police departments, otherwise fractious, became cohesive and aligned when confronting this external challenge. The allegory of the relationship between Hong Kong and China is obvious here. As bad as the Hong Kong social problems might be, here represented by rampant gang activities, these gangs are part of the society and are part of Hong Kong’s problems that are to be resolved internally. The Mainland’s presence, whether culturally or politically, is perceived as a kind of invasion. Through the metaphor of the gangsters, China’s strategy of rule in Hong Kong is represented as a combination of insensitive stampede, ignorant aggressiveness, and ruthless rampage. The differences among the police departments and between the Hong Kong Triads are more a matter of class value than political difference. From the demeanor, behavior, and clothing style, each member of the different departments is seen as a stock character of a particular social class. The detective of the Organized Crime Unit who lost his gun is tough looking, heavy set, disheveled, and rude. He constantly talks about mahjong games and cusses at others, embodying all the stereotypes of a working-class person. The refined CID detective in her impeccable suits and officiousness affects the characteristics of the elitist bureaucrats, often seen as “effeminate” and ineffectual. She is bossy, and throws her rank around; she is cowardly and spineless and is generally an unpleasant and depthless character. The heroes of the film are the members of the PTU, described in detail by Johnny To. They are tough, but disciplined and orderly; they are dedicated in their mission to eliminate criminals but do not hesitate to transcend the rigidity of fussy rules to help a comrade in need. They are highly trained, skilled, and confident. They are hardworking and never shrink from difficulties. They are action heroes, but they also have soul, expressed through their loyalty to friends and to their members. They understand both the rules of the streets and the laws of the city. They mediate between the OCU and the CID who are otherwise irreconcilable in their antagonism toward each other. The PTU, in other words, are the sensible, rational, mythical, middle-class professionals of Hong Kong, who embody the true Hong Kong spirit.

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The director, Johnny To, uses various stereotypical gender characteristics to represent these different sectors of the population. The OCU detective’s hypermachismo and hubris (but total lack of judgment and composure when under danger) contrast sharply with the CID’s effeminate, over-persnickety arrogance but cowardice in actual action. If both of these are less than desirable, the PTU once again captures the ideal gender representation. There are two separate PTU divisions in the film. One is headed by a male captain and the other by a female. In the same uniform, neither evinces any obvious gender characteristics. Both can be violent and ruthless toward their enemies, but tolerant, understanding, and supportive to their comrades. In the film, the two units operate separately but converge seamlessly in a pincer movement in the final battle, fighting courageously and with unflinching coolness. The PTU were the heroes in the actual battle, while the other two groups either cowered or lost their wits. Through the adventures of the characters from the different police forces as well as their enemies, the Hong Kong gangsters or the Mainland brigand, all entangled in the case of the lost gun, the director narrates the way the society confronts and ideally, as in the filmic world, eradicates its problem. If Hong Kong’s social world is rent by class and cultural tensions that can turn explosive, like the surging violence of the Triads, the society ultimately pulls together and overcomes its problems. The film ends with the voices of the captains of each department recording their reports of the night’s events. If these police reports can been seen as a kind of Hong Kong narrative, then the recuperation of consensus in the reporting—what should be kept out of the records and what should be included—represents a triumph of unity at the end. Each police group experiences the event through their different perspectives, but all come to a fundamentally similar understanding of it. Although class division is an issue, Hong Kong society, it is believed, will pull together when confronted with problems, whether internal or external, under the leadership of its hardworking and professional middle class. Reflecting a rather common sentiment in Hong Kong, the film reaffirms the official ideology that, because of the Hong Kong people’s rationality, professionalism, and unity, the city will eventually be led out of its darkness. This is a pervasive understanding of Hong Kong’s “core value” that is considered crucial to the recovery of the city’s economic and social health, the two being seen as equated.8 In the coincidence of their release around the same time at the end of 2002 and the beginning of 2003, the three films in Hong Kong interestingly capture and reflect the range of complicated emotions in a society plagued by many

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troubles during this time. If Hero, as we have seen, is a particularly fitting product of a China on the ascent in the world as an economic, political, and military power, the two Hong Kong films, Infernal Affairs and PTU reflect the society in crisis. The dark alterity of PTU or the counterfeit world in Infernal Affairs are symptomatic of the schizophrenia in the everyday reality of the city. The new HKSAR government that took over the administration of Hong Kong after 1997, headed by the Beijing-appointed chief executive of Hong Kong, Tung Chee Hwa, had proven to be extremely ineffectual and unpopular. Hong Kong had not been able to recover from the 1997 Asian financial crisis before the situation was compounded by the U.S. post–9/11 economic slowdown. The government’s various policies failed miserably to revive Hong Kong’s economy, exposing both the perceived ineptness of the new government and its unresponsiveness to the needs of the people. The unemployment rate between the months of May and July 2003, according to a study by Lingnan University, reached a record high of 8.7%.9 In the midst of the financial problems, in order to assuage the government deficit, the then-secretary of finance, Anthony Leung, proposed a draconian budget policy that called for large cuts to many government services, increases in taxes, and reduction in salaries for the 170,000 civil servants (about 3% of the total population) in Hong Kong. In general, his unpopular economic package asked for immense sacrifice from the citizens of Hong Kong, which resulted in great resentment. At the same time, the society was split by the debate on “Article 23,” the referendum on the antisubversion law to be introduced to the legislature. The HKSAR government was under pressure from Beijing to push through this unpopular legislation. Many believed that such legislation would threaten free speech, freedom of political organization, and worst of all, it would allow government control of the media. The then-secretary of security, Mrs. Regina Lau Yip’s hard sell of the unpopular antisubversion law and her aggressive rhetoric that many deemed arrogant and patronizing, added to the general resentment toward the HKSAR government. The figure of Mrs. Yip soon began to epitomize the entire Tung Chee Hwa government and, to a certain extent, the proximity of Beijing in the everyday life of Hong Kong. She embodied all that was feared about the new Chinese regime—undemocratic oppressiveness cloaked in the guise of enlightened paternalism. She soon became a cathartic figure toward whom all the anxiety and hatred for the new regime was directed. Many Hong Kong people, especially those who grew up under the British, are ambivalent about China. They iden-

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tify themselves according to an image of the modern free world with which they associate the British, and they perceive China as a nation of backward, erratic, and violent politics.10 The antisubversion law became an affirmation of their worst fears about Chinese political encroachment. Mrs. Yip traveled from district to district to try to convince Hong Kong people of the absolute sincerity of the Hong Kong government in its attempt to respect individual rights while also making sure “national security” was not compromised. Her efforts only resulted in a year of contentions and heated debates among all sectors of the society. The final defeat of the referendum led to her resignation. Zhang Yimou’s film Hero opened in Hong Kong in this moment of political impasse in December 2002. It immediately became the target of intense scrutiny by the Hong Kong audience as a sign of the will of the Beijing central government. This was in no small measure because of Zhang Yimou’s status as the party’s most acclaimed director. Not only has he brought international attention to Chinese cinema since the late 1980s with films such as the Red Sorghum and Raising the Red Lantern, he has also faithfully and unapologetically projected an aesthetic portrait of China that avoids the politics and social nuances of his contemporary world, adhering to the party’s sanctioned visions of China’s past.11 This pretense of apoliticism in Zhang’s films was never more ironic than when Hero became the first film ever to hold its premier in Beijing’s formidable state monument, the Great Hall of the People. The Beijing government’s regard for this film was only too clear to the Hong Kong people. As Zhang’s first martial-arts movie set in ancient China, many critics have pointed out that this was Zhang’s attempt to rival the Taiwan national, Ang Li’s international success, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and also to ride the tide of interest in martialarts epics among the international audience Ang Li’s film created. Like Li, Zhang relied on a mainly Hong Kong production crew and cast that have a great degree of international renown in a calculation to attract attention outside of China. For example, his cinematographer, Christopher Doyle, has won recognition for his work with the Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai since the 1980s in such films as Chungking Express, Happy Together, and In the Mood for Love. Zhang even uses Wong Kar-Wai’s favorite leads, Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung, the celebrated screen lovers. The other cast members include Jet Li and Donnie Yen, both Hollywood’s favorite Hong Kong martial arts actors and director. Whether by conscious calculation or coincidence, this particular cast and crew composition managed to attract a lot of interest in Hong Kong. Because they represent the crème de la crème of Hong Kong’s international film industry, their participation in this film immediately rallied local attention

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when most Mainland films, if shown in Hong Kong at all, languish at the boxoffice. From a Hong Kong perspective, this movie inadvertently brought out many difficult questions, especially given the timing of its release. What does “national unity at all cost” mean in terms of China’s policy in Hong Kong? How does it translate into issues of human rights and individual freedom? Ultimately, what is the relationship between this vision of the state and China’s urgent promotion of the antisubversion legislation in Hong Kong? The most disturbing thing about Hero is not necessarily Zhang’s fascist aesthetic or his self-appointed role as China’s Leni Reifenstahl, but the Beijing officials’ warm approval of the film, reflecting their endorsement of the political ideology within it. The popularity of this film among the Mainland audience, despite controversy, also attests to a popular support within China for China’s aggressive “One Country” policy, not just claiming sovereignty over former colonies like Hong Kong and Macau, but also asserting historic rights over disputed regions such as Xinjiang, Tibet, and Taiwan, ROC, in the name of national unity.12 This kind of nationalist doctrine of unification is based on ethnic and cultural fundamentalism and forceful suppression of differences and heterodoxy. There are good reasons for Hong Kong people to be anxious about the Mainland audience’s excitement over this film and its ready embrace of a questionable and problematic reinterpretation of history. The discourse of state tyranny in Hero and the notion of a single individual who is both extralegal and wields absolute power create discomfort in Hong Kong. To many Hong Kong people, it articulates a particular propensity toward political hero worship in China. Zhang Yimou’s depiction of the Qin emperor captures a particular nostalgia for the personal charisma and totalitarian rule of China’s most recent “monarch,” Mao Zedong.13 To many, among the postwar generation in Hong Kong, Mao connotes China’s great famine in the 1950s that resulted from the disastrous experiments of the Great Leap Forward and the destruction of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s and 1970s. Many recall images of the struggle sessions, and news of family members succumbing to persecutions or committing suicide.14 The whole communist experience seen from Hong Kong had none of the vision or exuberance of political possibility of mass movements, only the zealousness of Mao worship and the consequences of rabid nationalism. Because of this, Hong Kong people are wary of “heroes.” Even a decision in 2003 to dedicate in Hong Kong a memorial to Sun Yat-Sen, the early twentieth-century revolutionary and China’s first republican president after bringing down the last dynasty, provoked concern. Although Sun spent his

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formative years and received his education in Hong Kong and is generally an uncontroversial figure, this planned memorial prompted much discussion in Hong Kong society and, particularly, objections from the well-known columnist and film critic Shek Kei. Pointing to the already overabundance of Sun Yat-Sen memorials in Zhongshan (Sun’s hometown), China, and in Taiwan, he admonished his readers: “The era of hero-worship is over. As true revolutionaries, we must oppose this kind of superstitious hero-worship. I recall the story celebrating Sun Yat-Sen himself smashing idols [in temples] when he was a child.”15 For Shek Kei, the propensity for hero worship in popular historical narratives contradicts the spirit of rationality and the principles of the rule of law that Hong Kong residents see as identifying them as part of the “modern” world and as distinct from China.16 Hong Kong people’s fear of Communist China had been ameliorated in the beginning of the 1980s as China gradually shifted to a market economy under Deng Xiaoping and opened up its borders to Hong Kong people, many of whom were able to visit their families for the first time since the 1950s. However, the brutal military suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen prodemocracy movement, in which scores of young college students and their supporters were killed by China’s military, sent shock waves to Hong Kong that reversed much of the trust. Zhang Yimou’s image of the Qin emperor resonated powerfully in Hong Kong because it captures filmicly China’s capacity for violence when the authority of the state is challenged. Though Zhang argued that he had no intention of celebrating militarism, many see it as an inevitable part of the Chinese Communist Party’s absolutism. Hong Kong’s fear of China’s state violence can be seen from the people’s attitude toward various martial symbols of the Chinese state, such as the Public Security and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Even at the height of China’s massive public relations campaign around 1997 to court Hong Kong people’s loyalty and trust, and despite a general surge in nationalist feelings among Hong Kong people toward China around that time, these government organs, ostensibly “in the service of the people (wei renmin fuwu),” were still regarded with distain and distrust.17 The Mainland government had to issue many reassurances to the Hong Kong people that the PLA sent to replace the outgoing British forces in Hong Kong would not interfere with the Hong Kong society. It is hard not to make a visual connection between the awesome images of the Qin emperor’s massive war machines and the banks of PLA entering the territory of Hong Kong on July 1, 1997.18 Both Infernal Affairs and PTU depict a world of shadowy nocturnal cityscape. The battles of the various groups of the subterranean world,

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however, never contaminate the daytime world of the regular citizens of the city. More than Infernal Affairs, PTU maps a terrain of alterity, a signifying space that is the negative space of the city—the psychological underside of daytime quotidian familiarity. What is the relationship between the “subconscious” reality of PTU or the secret lives of the individuals of Infernal Affairs and the everyday metropolis? How do both films recuperate the narrative of Hong Kong against its extravagant representation in the government branding campaigns as “Asia’s World City”?19 Hong Kong was shrouded by sadness, anxiety, and discontent between 2002 and 2003. First, in the world of pop culture, the Hong Kong society was shocked and bereaved by the deaths of two of its most prominent, iconic, and beloved performers, Roman Tam in November 2002 and Leslie Cheung in April 2003. 2003 then ended with the death of another popular singer and actress, Anita Mui, in December. The lives of these popular idols and their particular endings came to be seen as highly symbolic of “the Hong Kong story.” Roman’s songs resounded almost nightly on television and were a ubiquitous part of the everyday life of Hong Kong during the decade of its economic takeoff. In the 1970s and 1980s, Roman’s ornate costumes and extravagant performance style coincided with the ebullience of the time and the flamboyance of, increasingly, a nouveau riche society. He embodied the aspirations and optimism of a whole generation, whose formative years spanned the decade. His decline in health in the late 1990s also coincided with the downward spiral in Hong Kong’s economy, beginning with the Asian crisis in 1997, the year of Hong Kong’s return to China, and hitting rock bottom by the first half of 2003. If Roman represents the native product of the 1970s, whose image was extravagant if a bit kitsch, a working-class success story through hardscrabble, Leslie Cheung epitomizes the 1980s and 1990s generation. Best known to the international audience as the female impersonator in Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine and Wong Kar-Wai’s leading man in Days of Being Wild, Ashes of Time, and Happy Together, Leslie, typical of his generation, strongly identified with European refinement. He studied in the UK, spoke fluent English, and affected a mannered, languid grace. He was Hong Kong’s first and only openly homosexual actor, a fact that seemed to accentuate the melancholy and decadence in his androgynous beauty. His public persona embodied his prosperous generation’s fin de siècle ennui, their reality constantly dominated by a tragic sense of ending marked by Hong Kong’s Handover to Chinese sovereignty. Of course, British Hong Kong ended in 1997, but people’s clinging attachment to the colonial aura in Hong Kong only became irrevocably and rudely severed when Leslie leaped to his death on April’s Fools Day, 2003, from the twenty-first

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floor of the Hong Kong Mandarin Hotel, itself, an extravagant symbol of high colonial culture in Hong Kong. The mourning was barely over when another superstar, Anita Mui, succumbed to cancer, initiating another bout of melancholia. She was publicly dubbed “Hong Kong’s daughter” because of her rags-to-riches story that many see as representative of Hong Kong’s historical experience. Her earthy personality, her sense of righteousness, and her diligence and true talent that helped her rise to superstardom despite her very humble background, were also seen as quintessential qualities of Hong Kong and, as such, she was deemed a personification of the “Hong Kong Spirit.” With the extinguishing of the brightest stars in the entertainment world, the era of prosperity and exuberance had come to a resolute end. The despair and discontent of Hong Kong people were endemic by 2002 and 2003. In this year the city was saddened by a spate of suicides, from college students who could not see a viable future, to owners of failed businesses saddled with immense debt. In 2002, there was a total of 1,100 self-inflicted deaths, which means 15 suicides per 100,000 people. It accounts for 3% of the city’s death rate that year.20 By 2003, Hong Kong was dubbed the “suicide city,” and had one of the highest suicide rates in the developed world, at 16.4 per 100,000 people. It has been reported that the major cause of suicide in Hong Kong was financial troubles, which accounted for 24.7% of the total suicides. 34% of those who committed suicide were men between the ages of forty and fifty-nine. Half of the suicide victims were unemployed.21 The most chosen forms of death were jumping from tall buildings and asphyxiation by burning charcoal at home. Because the collective mental prostration had become so dire by the beginning of 2003, the Good Samaritans began publishing inspirational messages and their hotline number on the bags of charcoal sold in supermarkets. The government was accused of being unresponsive or uncaring with its relentless rhetoric of optimism and continued to alienate the population with its policies. However, if this discourse of cheer was ineffectual in alleviating immediate human problems, it was nevertheless necessary in nurturing the long-term confidence of capital. That is to say, for Hong Kong to continue to accommodate capitalism by providing a safe, orderly, and positive environment that nurtures business, all the pathos of the Hong Kong society would have to be driven underground. This subterranean unsettlement is reflected in the divided worlds in both PTU and Infernal Affairs (fig. 1.1, Bounce Back, Hong Kong!).

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Fig. 1.1: Bounce Back, Hong Kong! In the difficult days of early 2003, many buses and mini buses in Hong Kong had slogans to inspire and encourage painted on them. This one says, “Fallen behind? We will catch up soon!” There is an English version that says, “Bounce Back, Hong Kong!”

In the spring of 2003, societal ennui was spreading like an infection. People were frustrated that the government seemed not to hear the opposing voices to “Article 23.” The chief government officials, the chief executive, as well as the pro-China DAB Party (Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong), became increasingly unpopular. In February, the secretary for home affairs, Dr. Patrick Ho, as in the territory’s old Chinese New Years custom, went to Chegong Temple to divine Hong Kong’s fortune for the year. Much to the city’s collective horror, he received a double negative divination—a prediction of a very bad year for Hong Kong. This incident was criticized as an exceptional government public relations blunder, yet another proof of the incompetence of the government. However, no amount of embarrassed laughing off of this as a silly old custom could disperse the ominous mood it created in the city. As gloom spread like a miasma over the city, the repressed pathos erupted metaphorically and literally in the worst epidemic in the territory’s recent history. The SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak that ravaged

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Hong Kong at the beginning of March 2003 brought the city to its knees, infecting over a thousand and killing 299 people, including doctors and medical personnel on the frontline. By the time everything blew over in May, the SARS epidemic had left the Hong Kong economy, which relies heavily on tourism and its related industries, such as food and entertainment, completely prostrate. The promise of capitalism was unrealized and the incentive to serve its cause dissipated. When the government tried to refocus on the issue of Article 23 after the epidemic subsided, the people erupted. The anti-Article 23 and antigovernment demonstration on July 1, 2003, was one of the largest protests in the territory, second to the 1989 prodemocracy demonstration in support of the Chinese students in Tiananmen. Both the Hong Kong and Beijing governments were alarmed at the size of the event in which five hundred thousand (of a population of six and a half million) people participated. The protest resulted in the resignation of two top officials, the unpopular secretary of security, Regina Lau Yip, and the secretary of finance, Anthony Leung. The government postponed the legislation indefinitely and Beijing accelerated an economic bale-out package for Hong Kong in order to pacify the people, all the while admonishing the Hong Kong people that unity and stability were crucial to reviving the economy.22 The Hong Kong people were understandably proud of the outcome of July 1, believing they had successfully pressured the government to “return governance to the people (huanzheng yumin).” Mainland politicians, however, favored the phrase “fanzhong luangang (rebelling against China, creating turmoil for Hong Kong),” cautioning Hong Kong against being overly tolerant of dissent. This phrase is an adaptation of an idiomatic expression in historical narratives used to describe rebellion against a legitimate dynasty.23 This kind of dynastic reference is particularly redolent with Zhang Yimou’s reinterpretation of the Qin emperor in Hero. Not only does it bring to focus the pretensions of absolutism of China’s central government, it also directs our attention to the military might behind this will to rule. Soon after the July 1 protests, a cartoon in the Ming Pao Daily shows two women celebrating the success of the July 1 protest. One said that she was proud of the orderliness and discipline displayed by the demonstrators. The other said she was even more delighted at the restraint of the PLA.24 Despite the general exuberance about the demonstrations, many in Hong Kong were also keenly aware of the possibility that the Mainland government could have reacted with the same violent intolerance of 1989.

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Hong Kong politicians, Beijing officials, and the common people in Hong Kong alike, watched anxiously to see in which direction the momentum of this demonstration would propel the city politically. Beijing officials continuously harped on the importance of the spirit of nationalism and patriotism. Some Hong Kong writers and commentators urged the people to ride the tide of democratic victory to demand for more electoral rights. Pro-Beijing politicians counseled restraint.25 On November 23, 2003, the first public election since the demonstration, the District Council election, proved momentous. In a city where political apathy was taken for granted, an unprecedented 44% of the eligible population turned out for the vote.26 The result was a massive defeat of the pro-China, pro-Article 23, DAB (Democratic Alliance for Betterment of Hong Kong), which lost twenty-one seats to the opposition Liberal Party. This major defeat for the DAB, despite the generous economic package China offered Hong Kong and despite the gradual recovery of the economy of the city, led to the resignation of DAB’s party leader. Capitalist prosperity and all its promises no longer seemed sufficient to restrain the political desire of the people. In the face of the increasingly more vociferous demand for a democratically elected chief executive and Legislative Council members in the 2007 and 2008 election, China finally made its first retaliatory response on December 4, 2003, through its official mouthpiece, the New China News Agency (Xinhua). In an essay, four prominent Communist Party legal experts who participated as members of the Chinese Communist Party in the drafting of the HKSAR Basic Law before 1997 jointly refuted the idea that the electoral agenda could be determined by the Hong Kong electorate, claiming that it was an erroneous interpretation of the Hong Kong Basic Law.27 This is to say, until the Central People’s Government (CPG) gives its permission, Hong Kong will not have a democratically elected government body. The legal experts emphasized that any attempt to change the current appointment system would be a violation of China’s “One Country” principle. The intention of this piece from the Beijing government’s most authoritative mouthpiece was no doubt a not-so-gentle reminder of China’s limited tolerance for political disobedience in Hong Kong. This piece sparked immense public resentment in Hong Kong. The four legal experts became immediate targets of local satire. They were dubbed the Four Protectors of the (Buddhist) Law, or the Four Divine Monks, after characters from popular knight-errant novels, representing inflexible orthodoxy. The discussion over legislative procedures raged into early 2004, with the

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Mainland experts becoming more hostile and aggressive in their demeanor and rhetoric. Faced with Hong Kong’s own legal experts’ sharp rebuttal and derision (mostly from the uncompromising Democratic Party), one of the “protectors,” Xiao Weiyun, delivered a fierce reprimand at a preliminary study and discussion session organized by the Task Force for Political Reform, announcing that Beijing not only had the right to interfere with Hong Kong’s legislation reform but will definitely “interfere/control to the end (guan daodi).”28 All this happened in the midst of Taiwan’s presidential election and the Taiwan president, Chen Shui-Pian’s controversial proposal for a referendum on policy issues. The proposal was perceived by the Central People’s Government in Beijing as Taiwan’s challenge to China’s “One Country” policy. Taiwan’s insubordination and now Hong Kong’s obstreperousness and Beijing’s more and more bellicose response officially or unofficially through its various mouthpieces realized Hero’s premise. If Zhang Yimou’s film is an accurate measure of Beijing’s political trajectory, then it is clear that this kind of separatism will not be tolerated. In Zhang’s film, for the sake of peace and livelihood of the common people (read “stability and prosperity” in Beijing’s contemporary political rhetoric for its policy toward Hong Kong), the ultimate heroic deed is to sacrifice individual aspirations and independence. This “heroism” will be expected of Hong Kong’s people, Taiwan’s people, and in truth all the peoples of China’s various disputed territories. This suppression and renouncement of the self is perhaps the wujiandao (path of eternal suffering) described in Infernal Affairs. If, in Zhang’s filmic vision, legitimacy of power is built upon the authority and inviolability of order, both Infernal Affairs and PTU reflect a much less sanguine acceptance of power, both its inevitability and its legitimacy. If the filmic representations of Infernal Affairs and PTU reflect the Hong Kong society in 2003, they articulate an acknowledgment of the contemporaneous existence of different worlds. They articulate an acceptance of a reality that is layered and ambivalent, with opposing forces in constant negotiation and balance. The Hong Kong society described in these films is one divided according to class and ranks and exclusivity of positions and affiliations. People speak in coded languages with one another, identifying belonging. In Infernal Affairs, the undercover policeman, Chan, communicates with his superior through tapping out messages in Morse Code on his cell phone. The police language in PTU, full of acronyms, shorthand, and standard command phrases, differs from the everyday vernacular of the common citizens. Similarly, the gangsters’ crude and violent colloquialisms form their own dialect

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that defines membership in their organization. These different segments of society have their own logic of organization even if it is simply a logic of coercion and conformism. Unlike Hero, which upholds hegemony, the power structure in the nocturnal world of PTU is constantly disturbed and challenged. The gun is an emblem of police authority and the power of the state. The lost gun in PTU unsettles the particular power configuration in the city and is the propelling element in the entire night of activities. By the end of the night all that had been thrown up in the air realigned and resettled, and the relationships of power were slightly altered. Thus this world has its own rationality and stability within its volatility. Both Infernal Affairs and PTU reflect a society in which power is constantly contested. Both the police and the gangs have to struggle to maintain their hold in society. Order is a fragile construction through intense negotiations and symbiosis among the different contenders of power. The power of the police is never absolute, but neither is that of the underworld. In this way a strange democracy ensues. Hegemonic control is both impossible and undesirable. By the end of 2003, most people had forgotten about Zhang Yimou’s film Hero, as it seemed more and more removed from the sensibility of the Hong Kong society. However, the sequel of Infernal Affairs was successful in sustaining the excitement created by the first movie. The third and final sequel broke the opening-day records when it premiered on December 12, 2003, opening in one hundred cinemas simultaneously and earning thirty million Hong Kong dollars in a single day, creating another climax in the film industry. PTU gained more and more attention in its itinerary in the international film festival circuit and continued to be celebrated as a rare bloom in a hypercommercialized industry, quietly revolutionizing how Hong Kong people perceive and talk about their reality. These films reflect and record a particular social and political imagination of Hong Kong people in the year between 2002 and 2003, through the fifth-year mark of Hong Kong’s return to China. Although not much of an anniversary, it is, in the minds of many Hong Kong people, a watershed. In the beginning of the new regime, under the Beijing controlled HKSAR government, many people took a passive wait-and-see attitude. By the end of 2003, most finally came to realize the irretrievable end of the old era and understood the importance of asserting self-determination over the future of their society and their city. Cathected on these films are the vacillations and confusions of the previous five years, and the aspirations and a renewed sense of determination

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toward the future despite all odds, despite an overdetermined premise for Hong Kong’s story. Critics have pointed out that both PTU and Infernal Affairs differ from conventional crime movies in their lack of the usual action and violence that are the main selling points of the genre. Indeed, the quiet intensity of both films maps a topology of Hong Kong society that is laden with unspoken and unexpressed anxiety and trauma. In contrast, the historical epic Hero is a grandiose expression of telluric nationalism. The Hong Kong people’s tentativeness toward the Mainland monolith, their gloomy awareness of the passivity of their position vis-à-vis national politics, and their reserved optimism for final justice, are all written into the boxoffice contest between Hero and Infernal Affairs during the dark days of 2002 and 2003.

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Walking Down Memory Lane On the Streets of the Hong Kong History Museum’s Paradigm City

City streets are the major sites of different kinds of civic drama that contribute to a city’s collective identity and memory. As a result, activities on city streets, whether daily commuting, commerce, or political activism receive elaborate attention from the state. Even celebratory events authorized by the state, from street fairs to festival parades that constantly occupy the street space, are part of the state disciplinary regime. In Hong Kong, officers from different governmental departments are constantly clearing the streets of unlicensed street vendors, ticketing litter bugs, or controlling massive flows of people, especially during holidays. Streets are not merely thoroughfares and passageways but, concurrently, symbols of free movement and control and hence, the locus of state power. Henri Lefebvre argues that state-approved street events, such as parades, festival celebrations, and processions, in effect, “caricaturize” public use of streets and are forms of state “appropriation and reappropriation of space”; whereas “true appropriation characteristic of effective demonstrations is challenged by the forces of repression, which demand silence and forgetfulness.”1 Much of Lefebvre’s writing describes the French society at the decline of the French empire when many of the strategies tried out and perfected in the colonies were repatriated and used on its own population in the metropole. However, the new form of colonial strategies in France, as in contemporary Hong Kong, is more the abstract power of capitalist economy than the concrete power of the military. This power is equally spatially manifested and it infiltrates the everyday life of the citizens. Lefebvre refers to such state strategies as “colonization of the everyday.” 2 It is in such a view that the spaces of everyday life, especially the streets where citizens negotiate their daily itiner43

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aries, become sites of contestation and negotiation. As such, Lefebvre argues that the streets harbor revolutionary potential: [R]evolutionary events generally take place in the street. Doesn’t this show that the disorder of the street engenders another kind of order? The urban space of the street is a place for talk, given over as much to the exchange of words and signs as it is to the exchange of things. A place where speech becomes writing. A place where speech can become “savage” and, by escaping the rules and institutions, inscribe itself on walls.3

There has been much scholarship regarding the political possibility of the interchanges among ordinary people on the streets.4 The conservatism of the state, to maintain status quo, is often in direct contradiction to the dynamism of the everyday exchanges in the streets that are random and unpredictable.5 It is not surprising that there are measures of differing nature and degrees of severity to legislate individual behavior, regulate exchanges and interactions among people, and to delimit everyday practices on the streets. In Hong Kong, these strategies also function to cull the collective memory of the experiences of the streets and shape the Hong Kong identity. A symbolic manifestation of the institution of the state is the Hong Kong History Museum. It presents an important metaphor of and a window into the process of state spatial and ideological manipulation. The museum is a simulation of the city of Hong Kong, creating within the expansive exhibition halls a veritable city in miniature. The replication of city streets in the museum is particularly significant given the historical anxiety of the Hong Kong government regarding the civic potentials of such public spaces. The feel-good nostalgia generated in the experience of walking through the galleries of the museum is harnessed into the service of the state. However, despite the seeming effectiveness of such strategies, viewing the interactions between the state and its population historically, it is also obvious that the peace processed out of ideological manipulation of the people is fragile and the state never succeeds in permanently maintaining status quo. Ultimately individuals transform their atomized strength into collective power, thus transforming the space in which they are inscribed. In this chapter, I examine this symbolic space of the museum, which captures the tension between state control of city streets and individual exercises of daily life—the civic drama that forms the collective memory in this paradigm city. The Hong Kong History Museum reopened on August 30, 2001, after much

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anticipation. The original museum housed in Kowloon Park closed in 1995 and the exhibition was suspended for five years while facilities were being built in the new location in East Tsimshatsui for the much-expanded permanent exhibition, “The Story of Hong Kong.” The new Hong Kong History Museum functions as the HKSAR government’s official historical archive and also symbolically pronounces the end of the British era and the beginning of Chinese sovereignty over Hong Kong. More than emblematic of the authority and legitimacy of the new regime, the museum is an apparatus to inscribe a specific political ideology for the new Hong Kong. Even the spatial trajectory in the organization of the “Hong Kong Story” seems to parallel remarkably the Hong Kong government’s strategy in organizing the city and the lives of the citizens. In this sense, the new museum contains a blueprint of the governing ideology of the city. As has been pointed out on numerous occasions, 1997 demarcates Hong Kong’s exit from British colonial control only to enter into another stage of colonialism under China.6 Many people feared Hong Kong would be subsumed by the Chinese cultural hegemony. This was not without basis. Toward the end of Hong Kong’s British era, China’s ambition to reinscribe Hong Kong within the Chinese national narrative, geographically or ideologically, was overt. There was a veritable industry of Hong Kong studies in China under the official sponsorship of different Mainland Chinese academic and political institutions.7 In these writings, Hong Kong’s history, society, and culture are articulated within the Chinese national agenda and thus local experience and culture are elided, erased, or reconstructed.8 At the same time, the physical form of Hong Kong as a city is constantly changing at high speed in the city’s unceasing pursuit of global capitalist development, so much so that Akbar Abbas describes the condition of the city as having “always already disappeared—deja disparu.”9 This contributes to a situation ripe for the culture of musealization, which Andreas Huyssen argues, is a means against “obsolescence and disappearance, to counter our deep anxiety about the speed of change and the ever-shrinking horizons of time and space.”10 In Hong Kong, the fear of cultural as well as historical obsolescence created a societal nostalgia and a “desire for history” in the late 1990s, generating an efflorescence of private memoirs, personal reminiscences, and old picture books, as well as a general boom in the heritage and memory industries, which culminated in the building of several museums.11 If securing one’s past is a way of securing one’s self-determination for the future,12 the sense of nostalgia that gripped Hong Kong at the end of the twentieth century

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was directly related to the people’s sense of anxiety regarding their future under the new Beijing regime, as well as where the breakneck global capitalist development will lead them. It is not surprising that a state-funded history museum should be in the service of the state in inculcating certain ideology. However, the Hong Kong History Museum is much more complicated than its overt premise. It has to fulfill Mainland China’s nationalist demands, local historical identity, civic agenda, as well as general public sentiment. As a result, the museum caters to a societal imaginary of a certain feeling of Hong Kong-ness amid the great changes of the era, as it offers an important venue for the acculturation program of the Beijing government. The Sinicizing of Hong Kong’s History

It is to be expected that there would be differences in the narrations of Hong Kong’s history between the British-Hong Kong government and the HKSAR government. There is much continuity between the former history museum, which was originally set up in 1975 under the Urban Council of the British Hong Kong government, and the present Hong Kong History Museum, built by the transitional government. The new museum’s chief curator, Joseph Ting, also asserts that the new exhibition is a culmination of twenty-six years of research. However, this statement inadvertently places the authority of the present museum above the old. The new exhibition is an “end of term report” to the public, offering a corrected version of history. The museum was moved to the new building in 1998. The new building displays a bland monumentality and modernist facelessness. It is an interesting contrast to the other municipal museum, the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, which was built by the HKSAR Regional Council, opened in 2000, in an imperial palace style, with Chinese “splendid roofs” and sweeping, upturned eaves. The British legacy in the former and the Chinese assertion in the latter, in terms of architectural design, are obvious. Opened to the public in 2001, the new History Museum, occupies 7,000 square meters of floor space. The presentation of “The Story of Hong Kong” makes extensive use of dioramas, life-size replicas, multimedia presentations, and special audio-visual and lighting effects,“aiming to present the story in a “life-like manner.”13 The exhibition is arranged in a series of open galleries that lead from one to another in a single direction, presenting a linear and chronological projection of Hong Kong’s story. The first floor, where one enters the exhibition, is dedicated to Hong Kong’s premodern

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history as well as “native” and folk culture, here presented as Hong Kong’s “Chinese heritage.” As one enters the second floor, after becoming well acquainted with the essential and cultural connections between Hong Kong and China, one enters the realm of the colonial era, from the late nineteenth century to 1997. This part of the exhibition is accessible only by a long escalator ride at the end of the first-floor exhibition. In other words, physically and metaphorically, there is a rupture between Hong Kong’s “historical” experience and its Sinitic culture that is timeless and foundational. The order of the narrative in the museum cannot be reversed. One cannot double back and exit from where one enters. In fact, there are ushers directing the visitor flow between the two floors, encouraging a single momentum in one direction through the museum journey. The size of the exhibition on the first floor, Hong Kong’s pre-British era— the Devonian and the Neolithic periods and the Chinese dynastic eras, from Qin-Han to Qing (ca. 220 BC to ca. 1900)—is substantially larger than the version in the old History Museum. There are massive displays on Hong Kong’s prehistoric and early settlers to emphasize the genealogical unity between Hong Kong and China. In addition to the diorama of prehistoric men and women in their “natural habitat” that was also featured in the old museum, there are reproductions of rock carvings and steles found on the offshore islands of Hong Kong that can be traced to the early Chinese dynastic periods. The new museum also has case upon case of pottery shards and chinaware. These archeological fragments mostly demonstrate a pottery style that connects the native culture of Hong Kong to ancient Mainland pottery cultures. They are the innumerable material proofs of the busy and unceasing commerce and exchanges between the Mainland and Hong Kong throughout history. Similarly, the “ethnographic section” in the exhibition is greatly expanded to present in great detail the different tribal groups that have settled since the Tang dynasty (ca. 600 AD) around what is eventually called the New Territories of Hong Kong. The new displays retain some of the old museum’s re-creation of the typical dwellings of the Hoklo, Hakka, and Tanka peoples. Visitors can enter and explore these various model habitats, whether a farmhouse or a junk dwelling in a fishing village. Sound recordings of market calls in the villages, sea waves, and fisher songs accompany the displays. There are exhibits of the everyday paraphernalia and costumes of the different groups. Audio recordings of wedding music, ceremonial rites, and other general noises of festive crowds are added to the replicas of temples and streets of a Hoklo village.

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Added to this British anthropology are videos of some of these rites performed today, emphasizing the still vibrant native cultures. Together, they present a contrasting narrative to the historical tale that children learned from schoolbooks under the colonial government—that Hong Kong was a mostly uninhabited, barren piece of rock, with scattered villages and insignificant native cultures when the British first came. Both the archeological and the ethnographic sections aim to highlight the continuous presence of China in Hong Kong and the close relationship between the greater “Han” culture and the native one in Hong Kong. The museum texts explain at length the connections between these two places: The people who inhabited South China from prehistoric times were the Nanyue people. From the Qin and Han dynasties, however, the Han people of Central China migrated south, bringing with them advanced culture and technology. With Dayuling Pass (one of the Five Ridges just north of present-day Guangdong Province) being opened up in the Tang dynasty and the Pearl River Delta being developed in the Song dynasty, migrants multiplied in numbers. These periods saw significant development in the South China region, with Hong Kong keeping the same pace as the Pearl River Delta. It was in the Song dynasty that the Tang clan settled in the New Territories, followed by more clans in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Immigration gave Hong Kong’s economy a significant boost.14

The discovery of the material and cultural links between Mainland China and Hong Kong becomes the subject of a separate exhibition. A whole gallery in the museum is dedicated to the history of archeology in Hong Kong, culminating in a detailed documentation of the discovery of a Han dynasty (ca 300 AD) tomb in Kowloon City in the early 1960s. The archeologists are celebrated as cultural heroes who helped reconnect the historical and cultural ties between Hong Kong and China. The major focus of this floor of the exhibition seems to be the assertion of Hong Kong’s ethnic heritage and pre-British culture. The aim is to reinstate Hong Kong as a historic site, contradicting the British claim of its insignificance prior to their investment in the territory. In this way, a full quarter of the museum space is dedicated to the laborious reconstruction of Hong Kong’s connection to the greater “Han” culture of China and to the incorporation of Hong Kong’s past into China’s national history. Even the paraphernalia of the daily lives of farmers and fishing folks, the bowls and furniture, clothes and

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footwear become a part of this assertion of Chinese national identity. Previously scattered around different institutions under the British government, the archeological artifacts have now been hauled out and displayed in toto, seemingly to justify China’s reclaiming of Hong Kong. Frankly, most of these ancient fragments of life are of dubious aesthetic or even historical value and this particular segment of the exhibition is extraordinarily tedious. However, they are ideologically important to the new Hong Kong. The exhibition provides a visible, discursively constructed connection between Hong Kong and China, proving that despite the 150 years of British colonization, Hong Kong is unequivocally, intrinsically Chinese. The exhibition on the second floor focuses on Hong Kong’s economic life and development during the colonial era. There are large-scale replications and original structures of the places of daily life in the city from the early decades of the twentieth century—a teahouse, a grocery store, an original herbal medicine store front, an original HSBC bank counter, among others. An old steam-powered train engine and a rickshaw represent the modes of transportation at the time. From the last half of the century, there are reproductions of a local-style diner, a cinema, an interior of a unit from the earliest phase of the public housing estate, and so forth. All these displays reflect the different aspects of life in Hong Kong, from habitation and transportation to consumption and entertainment. Some of these places still exist in similar forms and are still part of the daily life in Hong Kong. The last section of “The Story of Hong Kong” is on the different phases of Hong Kong’s economic development, from the 1950s’ cottage industries to the development of the service and financial sectors in the 1980s and 1990s, when Hong Kong, as one of the Four Little Dragons of East Asia, contended to become a world financial center. Much of the presentation of this segment celebrates the physical plan of the city, its architecture and cityscape. Following the initial establishing of origins and lineage, the tale of Hong Kong follows a predictable teleology of development—the evolution from a remote fishing village into an international metropolis. Similar to the old colonial museum that presented a typical “colonialist epic of Hong Kong,” a Hong Kong Bildungsroman is invented in this exhibition.15 Politics of Nostalgia

The narrative emphasis on the object culture of the new Hong Kong History Museum in some ways follows a current museal practice that seeks to return

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significance to the mundane. The staging of the everyday life treats objects, not as curiosities or historical bric-a-bracs, but “object lessons” of history placed within a particular chronotope.16 However, the Hong Kong History Museum differs from many contemporary history museums in the way that museumgoers are situated in relationship to the museal narrative. The Museum of the City of New York, funded by the New York City municipal government, for example, recreates interior spaces with real antiques to illustrate the furnishing styles of particular periods. Mannequins are used, dressed up in period fashion, not so much to simulate real life as to present a tableau of history. Often, small objects of daily use are set in separate display cases. These tableaus are usually roped off and visitors view them with a kind of temporal disconnect. The New York Historical Society does not attempt to re-create mise-en-scènes at all. Their collections of furniture and everyday paraphernalia are displayed and stored behind multileveled glass cases stacked together without hierarchy. In these museum displays, there is a very obvious physical division, through the glass cases and roped-off rooms occupied by mannequins, between the contemporary reality and the past depicted. In “The Story of Hong Kong,” however, very little differentiation is made between the city of the past and that of the present world. Rather than the interior being occupied by mannequins, the visitor is encouraged to walk through, to look at the items on display closely, and to experience the space and imagine oneself as a subject living within the space and time of the artificial environment. It is a process of acclimation; one goes to the museum to recuperate the “true” Hong Kong experience that one had somehow missed while busily living. Michel de Certeau argues that the individual walk is mercurial and unpredictable and, as such, it is resistant to narrativization and analysis and thus can slip through the control of the state. Individual recollections of everyday life, in the same way, elude state narrative, because: “Memory is a sort of antimuseum: it is not localizable.”17 However, a project such as the Hong Kong History Museum is effective in harnessing and appropriating this theoretically nonmanipulable individual memory as the object of programmatic management, precisely by capturing the experience of walking. In the museum, the reproduction of old Hong Kong is so complete, so realistic, and so close to the individual experience that walking through the museum is indeed a trip down memory lane. However, this memory is carefully airbrushed as it is channeled through the museum halls. Walking through the exhibitions evokes nostalgia and longing, but for an idealized space, which substitutes as the “true past.”

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In truth, walking through the tableaus or “stage sets,” one becomes inadvertently a participant in the scene constructed. The direct immersion into a narrative creates an instant experience. The museum thus substitutes historical fantasy and imagination for historical memory. Thus a collective historical experience is created anew through the museum experience. This imaginary history is, of course, an official, sanctioned version of the past. In this way, a normative experience of the past is reproduced among the visitors. The focus on material objects and collectibles in presenting Hong Kong’s history also has an important function in the ideological program of the museum. The brand of museal realism or “nostalgic realism” achieved by commodities and emblems associated with the everyday life capitalizes on desire. In this way, the objects become detached from their original function or political or social significance. They become “auratic,” or recalling only sentiments of “unfulfillment” and “unreturnability.”18 Because of this created sense of yearning, these objects become fetishized. They attain, in turn, desirability and value because they are rarified in their status as collectible objects in the museum, fueling fetishistic desire and nostalgia. In this reciprocal process, nostalgia is a fetishism of a likely world of the past that one never experienced.19 Melancholia is the result of the ironic knowledge that the aspects of the past to which one is attached belong to an imagined reality. Susan Stewart thus describes nostalgia as by nature melancholic, because, it is “the repetition that mourns the inauthenticity of all repetition.”20 Since this nostalgia is mediated through objects of desire, one relates to the past through attachments to objects.21 The “structural role of disappointment” of the museum experience, of indulging in unfulfillment, is crucial to the creation of attachment to an idealized past. Hong Kong people’s continued interest in the past, perhaps even in China as a heritage past, is no more than what one desires from Yue Hua Chinese Products, the Mainland China government-sponsored national product emporium, where one can find a notion of China in a much more benign, embraceable, even desirable form—fine handicrafts, exotic kitsch, and “traditional” goods such as silks, porcelains, and gems—things for which China is historically “supposed to be” known. In turn, Hong Kong’s own history, understood often as a history of manufactured goods, exemplifies it as a “capitalist emporium” par excellence, where notions of past can be reduced to an accumulation of objects and spectacles.22 In this way, the understanding of and, as such, access to the past in Hong Kong is always mediated by the capitalist market ideology of desire. This museum narrative reduces

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public history to consumerist attachment to objects, effectively diffusing the political meanings in collective experiences. The museum’s display thus turns the Hong Kong people’s relationship to the past into a consumer fantasy, sanitized of any political meaning. This coincides with the administrative principle of the HKSAR government (See my elaboration of this in chapter 4). It corresponds to the Beijing government’s official designation of Hong Kong as a commercial and consumer center, to play the part, among other major Chinese cities marked for economic development, of the superficial, frivolous and most of all, apolitical consumer and financial center. Deng Xiaoping’s infamous assurance that the dances and the horseraces would continue (“wu zhaotiao, ma zhaopao”) in Hong Kong after 1997 and Beijing’s promise of continued exuberance and prosperity thereafter, are a double-edged sword to ensure that Hong Kong will never become more than an apolitical, albeit glittering city, much like the “pearl of the orient” that ornamented the old British crown. The Culture of Nostalgia and the State Doctrine of Capitalism

The aestheticization and thus de-politicization of the Hong Kong society, which was the general dedicated public policy under the British Hong Kong government, is now continued by the HKSAR government.23 The strategy of systematic denaturing of history and politics in Hong Kong is carried out on numerous levels in society. Particularly revealing are the historic preservation projects of which the reconstruction of the Murray House is a prime example. The historic 1860s colonial-style Murray House was once a colonial administrative building. It was taken over by the Japanese and turned into a prison and interrogation center where hundreds died under torture during the Japanese occupation from 1943 to 1945. It was returned to the British-Hong Kong government after World War II. When the Hong Kong government decided to redevelop the harborfront district of Admiralty on Hong Kong Island in 1982, the old administrative building had to make way. The building was taken down brick by brick, each carefully numbered, packaged, and put into storage. In the year 2000, when the district of Stanley was redeveloped as a tourist destination, the entire ensemble was transported to the new site to be recomposed. The new Murray House, complete with its historic blemishes and stains, is now open to the public, occupied by restaurants and walking galleries.24 This postmodern gesture, with its collision of the different strata of history and functions, transformed the building into a commercial enterprise, ultimately releasing it from its historical weight (fig. 2.1 Murray House).

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Fig. 2.1: Murray House The historic Murray House was moved pillar by pillar from Admiralty to Stanley.

Although it is arguable that this kind of historic preservation and adaptation is more an inevitable late-capitalist commodification of history than an ideological move by the state, put within the framework of the museum project, it can be asserted that the “capitalist compulsion” is a committed effort by the state to influence the nature of Hong Kong’s relationship with the past.25 In fact, the first Hong Kong History Museum, established in 1975, was a direct product of the British Hong Kong government’s general political/cultural policy at the time, which also resulted in the “Antiquities and Monuments Ordinance” that organizes historical redevelopment, including the Murray House project. Moreover, the successful transformation of Murray House from a historical site into a commercial and touristic site is an example of the sanitization of history through preservation, in the service of the state doctrine of capitalist consumerism in Hong Kong. Hong Kong people are well familiar with this partnership between the state and the capitalist agenda. An exhibition of Hong Kong’s industrial designs at the Hong Kong Arts Centre in 1995, curated by Matthew Turner, traced to the 1960s the British government’s deliberate construction of a Hong Kong identity as a capitalist haven, inhabited by a cosmopolitan (that is, not nationalistic), peaceful, and hard-working population.26 The title of Turner’s exhibition,

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“Hong Kong Sixties: Designing Identity,” reflects the curatorial team’s understanding of the relationship between industrial design in Hong Kong and Hong Kong’s self-perception and identity.27 The curatorial team’s analysis suggests that Hong Kong’s identity was shaped through images designed according to state directives, couched in terms of commercial and economic considerations. The designs of this period not only created new products but also a particular international image of Hong Kong, from Suzie Wong to the Chinese sailing junk in the Victoria Harbour—the “East-meets-West” motif, particularly highlighting the accessibility of this “East” compared to the Mainland China’s unapproachable version.28 Not only does this make evident the collusion between economic development and state ideology, Turner also points out that this cultivation of a distinct Hong Kong identity is a direct result of a government initiative in the late 1960s and 1970s. The riots of 1967 and 1968 and the series of public demonstrations and general social unrest in the early 1970s were interpreted by the government as the result of an overidentification with China and instigated by leftist elements in Hong Kong in sympathy with the Cultural Revolution. Also, in 1973, China made an assertion to the United Nations of its rightful ownership of Hong Kong and of its intention to reclaim Hong Kong at some unspecified future time. This threat from China prompted the British colonial government to unfurl a massive public-relations campaign to court the citizens’ loyalty and sense of belonging, in order to discourage emotional or actual associations with Mainland China. Regardless of how Hong Kong’s image was self-fashioned or imposed, whether under political coercion or commercial consideration, Turner reveals the inherent connection between a seeming ontological category and the pragmatic considerations of political control and capitalist operations. In this respect, Turner’s project at the Hong Kong Arts Centre could well have been a critique of the Hong Kong History Museum. The massive ideological or “civilizing” programs under the British colonial government in Hong Kong that resulted in the first incarnation of the Hong Kong History Museum came at the end of the turbulent period of the 1960s. Despite their association with communist activities in Hong Kong, the “Storms of May” in 1967 and 1968 were also expressions of the people’s desire to democratize the street and to pry loose the right to speech from the authority of the colonial state. It was an attempt to regain self-determination over daily affairs, such as reasonable working conditions, use of native tongue in official exchanges, and affordable mass transportation. 29 However, the threat of

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communist infiltration, an all-out class war, general anarchy, and the death of innocent civilians stagnated businesses and alienated the colony’s bourgeoisie. In the end, through heavy police suppression, the streets were once again under the control of the state, which, in the perception of many people, was by comparison a more reasonable manager of public space. Despite the mechanisms of control, the state produced a level of order and calm that at least assured a rational, livable environment that allowed commerce to continue.30 This lure of stability and prosperity is an important ideology with which the new Chinese-Hong Kong government also buys obedience and cooperation from its population. This obedience is being repeatedly cultivated as Hong Kong people are more and more lulled by the promise of continuous personal affluence through increased capitalist opportunities. The Bourgeois Utopia

The History Museum celebrates a history of successful economic development and the social and work ethics that support it. The highly clichéd “rags to riches” teleology, the mythology of social cohesion and unified goals create a picture of Hong Kong as a kind of utopia—a capitalist utopia. The museum display flattens out social disparity in the sense that in the museum the social space, private or public, that is usually codified and segregated by class and social groups, is now open to all. Places like village houses of the Hakka, junks of the Tanka, and government flats of the urban poor that are in reality mostly visited and inhabited only by the working class and the economically oppressed, are here shared by everyone. One of the displays is a rendition of a unit from an early phase of Hong Kong’s much lauded public housing program. Completely furnished with everyday objects, from a fully dressed bed to a hot-water thermos, it becomes an almost cozy and desirable space. Left out of this sanitized space is all the problems related to poverty and crowding, including poor hygiene, family violence, and crime. But also left out is the sense of grassroots community, neighborliness, and camaraderie that arise in the housing estates.31 The assumed audience of this exhibition is Hong Kong’s mythical middle class who most identify with and benefit from Hong Kong’s image as a capitalist city and the corresponding ideology of stability and prosperity. In this “democratized” environment where class issues do not exist, they can gaze on the spaces of poverty without the usual class guilt and discomfort. For those who grew up in these estates, poverty and social oppression are conditions of the past. Nostalgia overtakes all feelings of oppression or memo-

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ries of injustice. The fact that the Tankas are driven out of existence notwithstanding, in the replicas of their villages and junk dwellings, the common conditions of the social underclass are here represented as quaint or merely “ethnic.”32 Also unseen in this utopian space are the many subaltern ethnic groups that work in Hong Kong as manual laborers, or long-term guest workers, or even residents, who are never accepted into the mainstream society, such as the Filipinos, the Nepalese, and the Indonesians, just to name a few. The final presentation of the museum is a slide show of news images of Hong Kong’s major events in the twentieth century. The accompanying music to this account of the last decades of the century is a medley of popular television theme songs from the late 1970s. Given the cultural importance and popularity of television soap operas during this era and their affective influence on the Hong Kong people, as well as nurturing of Hong Kong’s identity and social value, these seem suitable in the museum’s presentation.33 However, one wonders about the ideological intention in reevoking this bygone spirit through this music. Here is an example of the lyrics from the song “Fendou (lit: Struggle for Success)” written by Joseph Koo and sung by Jenny, used in the video presentation: Holding hands together, radiating a thousand points of heat, a thousand points of light; \ lighting up my love, shining your way forward, \ I will thrash the brambles and blaze a trail, breaking through the obstacles before us, offering up all my love, offering up my all.

“The Story of Hong Kong” has an obvious moral at the end, of triumph over adversity as the result of the Hong Kong people’s diligence, ingenuity, and endurance, and of course, the efficiency of the Hong Kong government. The use of these songs in the museum, especially as the backdrop to Hong Kong’s development tale, makes them anthems of sorts for the city, glorifying and canonizing a certain value and attitude that would be the Hong Kong spirit. The world within the history museum celebrates a homogenous experience of Hong Kong, a city unified by common goals and aspiration. The ending of the Hong Kong story is triumphal and celebratory. The ideological burden of this ideal society dominates the imagination of the Hong Kong people; it is the home that Hong Kong people are continually pursuing and continually failing to attain, but its seeming immanent possibility becomes the ideological leash that manipulates popular sentiment and conditions the

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behavior of the people. The concept of “Hong Kong is my home” first appeared in the late 1970s and the 1980s as a public slogan, corresponded with other civic programs such as the “Clean Hong Kong Campaign” and the “Courtesy Campaign” to educate civic propriety and values.34 This articulation of citizenship was again important after a decade of migration and emigration of the 1990s. The brain-drain, in which a large segment of the middle and professional classes in Hong Kong fled abroad in the face of the Mainland takeover deprived Hong Kong of an important nativeborn and educated workforce, as well as a middle-class bulwark. At the same time, the influx of immigrants from Mainland China threatened the existing social fabric. By the end of the 1990s, a quick acculturation of “Hong Kong-ness” seemed crucial for social stability and political viability. The artificial environment in the museum is a reinforcement of Hong Kong’s capitalist ideology, that “prosperity” is available to everyone. Stability is crucial to the continued functioning of capital and markets—social order becomes the civic value. It stands to reason that the History Museum also has a substantial educational component.35 As all official historical accounts, the museum effectively promotes a uniformity of experience by manipulating memory and appropriating everyday experiences, thus producing governable homogeneity among the citizenry. The exhibition corrals a collective remembrance of Hong Kong’s past as a cohesive society. The poor envision being borne along by this development tale while waiting for their turn to become rich, while the wealthy share a sense of participation in the economic struggle of Hong Kong. Both identify with the telos of the Hong Kong Bildungsroman that provides epistemological cohesion to the society. The belief in the necessity for order and social control blinds many, especially among the bourgeoisie and the aspiring middle class, to the inherent oppressiveness of this ideology. Control of the City Streets

Museum spaces are often highly controlled and rationalized in which even interchanges among visitors are reduced to the minimum. The one-way transmission of information, from the recordings of the guided tours to the lectures of the docents and the printed information on the display, monopolizes our attention and disrupts our relationship with our companions. Guards are posted around the galleries to police against erratic and obstreperous behavior and movements, sometimes even to hush overly rowdy visitors. This is certainly the case at the Hong Kong History Museum. Visitors are both the audience for

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the tale of Hong Kong and part of the story as they become the street life, populating the staged drama of the tale of development. However, though they wander through the replicas of the normally lively and exuberant places, going in and out of these elaborate sets of streets, stores, homes, and temples, acting as “the public” of the staged tableau, normal civic activities are unavailable to them. These activities of urban relationships and communication, from exchanges of money and goods between street sellers and shoppers to common civilities and greetings among strangers and acquaintances, are missing in these artificial public spaces. The museum is only a caricature of the city of Hong Kong, in which the apparent interactions and relationships among the visitors merely mimic the normal activities of the public on the actual streets outside, while eliminating the democratic potential of the streets and the rebellious possibility of the individual’s daily spontaneous theatricalities.36 In this way, the museum exhibition is like a themepark ride, with one colorful tableau after another as one passes through the galleries presenting lulling illusions and evoking sentimentalism and longing among the local viewers. It creates fantasies of happy daily life while containing the discontent of the people. Similar to other historic preservation projects around the city, these state-sponsored memory institutions turn historical experience into fetishized objects and, as a result, successfully divest the sites of any political memory and meaning. Individual everyday life is immaculately staged, generating a kind of materialist epistemology that is solely about fulfilling individual yearning. This is a process of instilling forgetfulness or denaturing history into mere aesthetic objects of desire or monuments.37 In the progression through the course laid out in the museum’s “hyperreal” halls, one learns to forget history and exits as an acculturated citizen.38 If Lefebvre is correct in arguing that public streets, the sites of seemingly innocuous everyday life, are full of revolutionary potential, it is little wonder that to demonstrate control of the streets is of such a political priority to a state government. The 1997 Handover ceremonies, for example, included a protracted, televised procession of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army into Hong Kong, demonstrating very clearly who was in charge of the streets of Hong Kong. The use of the streets, whether on the daily level of individual exchanges or violent protests of rebel groups, is a contest over who owns the normative right to define legitimate usages and activities. Crowds that occupy a specific space of a certain size can change the nature of space or render it unavailable for the assigned, “normative” activities. (See chapter 3 in regard to the Filipino domestic workers and their Sunday street parties, for example).

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Illegal street venders that the Hong Kong authorities are forever trying to restrain frequently turn a sterile thoroughfare into a busy marketplace. A demonstration that occupies a street prevents normal transportation or regular commerce to take place there, causing disruption of regular transactions. For a capitalist economy such as Hong Kong’s, the effects are constantly calculated in terms of the loss of monies. In the “Storms of May” of 1967 and 1968, actual violence or the threat of violence had significant impact on the daily life of the people of Hong Kong. Although the government was successful in curtailing further disruptions of similar scale in the colony, popular movements and protests have never stopped. However, a certain cautiousness or wariness regarding class issues has since colored Hong Kong people’s attitude toward public protests. The July 1, 2003 mass march against Article 23, the antisubversion legislation, for example, though attesting to the power of the people, was turned into a testament of the superiority of Hong Kong’s dominant bourgeois culture. The media reporting of the demonstration made much of the “good behavior” and “high quality” of Hong Kong’s citizenry, emphasizing on the “middle-class” composition of the demonstrators. The headlines of Ming Pao Daily, for example, declared: “60% of the July 1 demonstrators have college education,” quoting the results from surveys conducted by the University of Hong Kong and the Chinese University of Hong Kong of 1127 people at the demonstration. However, the statistics actually reveal a complicated composition behind Hong Kong’s “middle-class-ness.” Among the demonstrators, 40.1% held professional or semiprofessional occupations. The rest, 60%, were made up of 3.3% housewives, 4.1% manual workers, 4.5% laid-off or retired, 9.1% “others,” 17.5% office workers and those employed in the service industry, and 20.9% students.39 Hong Kong no longer has a viable manufacturing industry. The working class is no longer the traditional “blue collar.” It is possible to see that minus the 20% who were students—conventionally the most radicalized group—40% of the demonstrators interviewed belonged to the popular classes. In Hong Kong, as in most of the developed world, college degrees have been so devalued in recent years that they no longer guarantee automatic entry to the bourgeoisie. While this focus on the “quality” of the people dispelled any notion of class as a premise of social discontent and gave gravity to the political action by diminishing any association with unruly street mobs, it also inadvertently signaled the fact that the middle-class dream was broken. The very middle class that was the ideological backbone of Hong Kong was now rising up in discontent.

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The survey also significantly points out that while 89.8% of the people came out to protest against the antisubversion legislation, 91.9% named their cause as dissatisfaction with the Hong Kong government and its ineffectual economic policies, which they felt had led to unprecedented unemployment and poverty levels in the territory. Beyond issues of press freedom, free speech, and human rights that were perceived to be threatened by the antisubversion legislation, the main reason for the demonstration was Hong Kong’s depressed economy. If the “middle class” was unraveling, the basis of Hong Kong’s social consensus was at risk. What this July 1 demonstration also revealed was how social order precariously sustained by the veneer of a common dream is easily ruptured. The occupation of the street was to demand for a government that is accountable to the Hong Kong people and not to Beijing. Of course, both Beijing and the Hong Kong government were quick to point out that the fact that the people could take to the street was in itself an indication of Hong Kong’s incomparable political freedom. However, this demonstration is not merely a result of the indulgence of the government. In fact, the government was totally caught off guard by the unanticipated enormity of the protest. Despite being in a position of power, the authorities could only watch helplessly, pushed to a position of passivity. In this sense there is truth in de Certeau’s argument that it is the randomness and “unmappableness” of individual action that often incapacitates state measures and plans. As this unprecedented political event showed, it is the sum of such individual actions and the collective “unmappableness” of the masses that defeated the organized and, as such, inflexible measures of state machines. In the aftermath of the July 1 demonstration, the state propaganda machine worked furiously to repair and bolster the “middle-class myth,” employing a language that deliberately invoked bourgeois sentiments. Beijing attempted to describe the demonstration as a British-American imperialist conspiracy. When that could not be substantiated, it characterized the demonstration as willful and intemperate, instigated by those who would threaten Hong Kong’s economic and political stability and destroy the city. This rhetoric aimed straight at the fears of Hong Kong’s middle class. Without doubt Beijing equates dissent with outright rebellion as is implied in their constant use of the shopworn term “luan (chaos),” which, in Chinese historical narratives, is often used to refer to peasant uprisings or rebellions and employed by the PRC government to justify police or even military action against the public, as in the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre. Vilifying civic dissent, Beijing officials warned about the danger of Hong Kong descending into chaos (luan) and accused Hong Kong

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people for being spoiled and impulsive—taking to the streets at the slightest whim. The deputy secretary for the Beijing Liaison Office (Zhonglian ban) in Hong Kong, Cui Zhekai, publicly admonished Hong Kong regarding the importance of stability to Hong Kong’s prosperity, hyperbolically equating the mass demonstration to the mobs of China’s Cultural Revolution: People were protesting in the streets all day, criticizing this person, struggling against that one. In the end the entire economy was on the verge of collapse. People suffered unspeakable hardship. The memory of the catastrophe is unbearable. . . . Our comrade Deng Xiaoping’s conclusion of the heavy historical lesson learned in the ten years of Cultural Revolution made a deep impression. He pointed out that stability was above everything. He emphasized the importance of the stability and unity of the nation so we could focus all our energy on economic development. In the last ten years, the positive and negative experiences of our nation have taught us that we need to attend to the stability of the Hong Kong society as if we were protecting our own eyes.40

In the months following the demonstration, Mainland Chinese officials seized every opportunity to reprove the actions of the Hong Kong people as a parent scolding an obstreperous child. On September 4, 2003, the deputy director of the Hong Kong Macau Affairs Office of the State Department, Xu Ze, urged the HKSAR government to increase their efforts in education, believing that the opposition to the antisubversion legislation is a result of the Hong Kong people’s lack of nationalistic sentiment: “The return (huigui) of hearts has to begin with teaching the people the idea of nationalism.”41 Despite the threat of increased ideological control after July 1, Beijing also granted a whole series of special economic privileges to Hong Kong under the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA), China’s first free-trade agreement, which aims to boost Hong Kong’s flagging economy.42 This was followed by a new, easily obtained visa arrangement, allowing Mainlanders from certain major cities to visit Hong Kong as individual tourists. This has attracted tens of thousands of visitors to Hong Kong each day, bringing a major windfall to the tourist businesses, retailers, and other service sectors in Hong Kong. This trade-benefit package from Beijing, which had been in negotiation for some time, was solidified in September 2003, two months after the mass demonstration. These conciliatory gestures and the generous economic aid from Beijing were obviously aimed at pacifying Hong Kong’s bourgeoisie, strengthening the

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capitalist ideology, buying back Hong Kong people’s sense of loyalty to China, and thus stymieing further social dissent. Breaking the Mold

As we have seen, the “prescribed space” of the museum fosters a passive reception of a particular narrative of Hong Kong, which alienates the visitors from the quotidian. They see aspects of their daily life objectified and fetishized in the displays. They are informed about their life stories as a historic fait accompli. In order to break away from this passivity, individuals have to reconnect the contemporaneousness between their everyday life and history’s realization; also, to recover the heterogeneous social fabric that marks the reality of living in Hong Kong. Writing on how the U.S. First Amendment law often privileges the rights of specific classes of people while excluding the “undesirables” in society, Don Mitchell points out the necessity of continually keeping alive the negotiations on issues of citizens’ rights. He argues that it is important, “as Raymond Williams says, for people to ‘go again to Hyde Park’—to constantly meet and speak in public spaces, not only for some particular issue, but also to claim again and again the right to meet and speak in public.”43 The interactions of people and different classes ultimately break down the social homogeneity carefully constructed in the official rhetoric. The July 1, 2003, demonstration definitely disrupts the prevalent social discourse. Subsequent demonstrations of the various labor unions and interest groups also dispel much of the myth about the dangers of class differences. Political movements provide a venue for the intermingling of people, which results in the recovering of speech, commerce, and interchanges; that is, recovering the activities of the streets. In this way, mass demonstrations are also one of the many random aspects of the everyday life in the streets as decided by the people. From the disorder of the crowds comes “the seeds of change,” argued Lefebvre, revealing the fissures inherent in any officially constructed discourse, breaking up the constructed status quo. The state memory of the explosiveness of the 1967 and 1968 riots has had lasting effects on the institutional behavior of the Hong Kong government in terms of redefining public security legislation, but it also resulted in creating a more participatory and responsive government. In this regard, 1967 was a crucial event in the long road of democratizing Hong Kong. The millionpeople demonstration in 1989 against Beijing’s violent suppression of the Tiananmen Democracy Movement was perhaps tacitly encouraged by the

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British colonial government. However, the lessons of mass demonstration and the experience of the sheer power of collectivity, of physical bodies occupying the major arteries of the central business district and government offices, are unforgettable to many. In fact the July 1, 2003, demonstration is constantly spoken of in connection with the 1989 precedent. In turn, the July 1 demonstration was considered a defining moment for the current generation and would have significant influence in the notion of civil rights in the immediate future. In fact, it created a new civic culture, spawning several mass demonstrations in the subsequent years. 2003 could not have happened without the experience of 1989, which in turn could not have happened without previous activism. A Hong Kong history that includes the diversity of voices from the different classes and different communities is crucial, because the accumulated legacies of all the past activism continually fuel resistance whether 1967, 1972, 1989, or 2003. The contest and negotiation between the state and the people are necessarily continuous and on going. Each generation has their formative event, each inheriting from the experience of their predecessors. Public memory is persistent and an important counterbalance to the state’s historical projects. Just as the people need to learn the process of political expression through the accumulated experience of the past, the government also needs to be trained by continuous challenges from the grassroots to understand the value of negotiation and be vigilant to the voices of the people. As a result, a public space, once forged, cannot easily be repossessed by the state. The streets around the central Hong Kong government might be monuments to the colonial powers past and present, but time and again their symbolism is worn away by their actual function. They have become, in recent years, also a space for political expression, an autonomous space, even if temporary, where the desire of the people is made visible. The reclamation of everyday life and its narrative from its repression in public memory is continuous throughout the history of Hong Kong. A real decolonization of Hong Kong should be accompanied by a decolonization of Hong Kong’s narrative. Events that are relegated to the honorific but purely aesthetic role of historical nostalgia or nationalist fetish should be released back to the public memory. Every time there is a massive demonstration, the power of the government reverses a step backward; whereas the power of the people advances a step forward. The state and the citizens form a perpetual dialectic, demonstrating the importance of “[going] again to Hyde Park,” to exert the citizen’s full rights for the streets of their daily lives, again and again.

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Quality Citizens in Public Spaces

Parks, as officially designated public spaces, have a fraught history in Hong Kong as exclusionary spaces, whether symbolizing the racial inequity of high colonialism in the early twentieth century or bourgeois values in contemporary society. The urban parks today are spaces reserved for play and recreation that ostensibly contribute to a healthful lifestyle and provide release from the constraints of work and daily cares. However, lacking public squares or other large open urban spaces in Hong Kong, large urban parks also often become venues for social and political gatherings. As public spaces, parks are meant to be open to everyone, but as they have become more and more a part of Hong Kong’s urban image and are popular tourist destinations, they have also become more and more spaces of careful government management. As a result, municipal parks in Hong Kong, scattered around the high-density areas of the city, are tightly regimented spaces. The numerous interdictions and rules that one finds posted in these parks make it clear that the availability of these spaces for the citizen’s leisure activities is a reflection of the state’s indulgence; it is a privilege, and not a citizen’s natural right. Although Hong Kong has numerous natural reserves and country parks (which deserve separate analysis), urban municipal parks, limited by space and located within a highly built-up metropolis, are not the wilds where one escapes urban life. They are the designated play spaces that reflect careful attention on rationality and order, whether in the “traditional” Chinese Jiangnan style with the requisite gazebos, rock gardens, and fishponds, or generic playgrounds. This kind of spatial planning embeds a notion of a particular kind of lifestyle and reflects a particular kind of social value. The users of the space are expected to subscribe to the social standards entailed. In 65

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fact, paradoxically, since parks are supposed to be open to everyone, one enters on contract, only on condition that one recognizes such principles and abides by the behavioral code. The everyday life in Hong Kong is often ordered and designed according to the capitalist ideology, especially the market logic of real estate. The endless construction, absorption of land by large developers, and neighborhood renewal projects create a constant experience of estrangement. As the urban parks are places of childhood play and idyllic leisure activities, they capture sentiments of collective and neighborhood experiences. Parks become natural sites of assertion of community longing. Such assertions often focus on the minutiae of everyday life, and often result in creating a tighter communal solidarity than existed, even producing community where none existed. At the same time, as the only obvious open spaces that allow congregation of large numbers of people, parks also become the natural venues for mass social and political activities. In this sense, these spaces open up possibilities for individual and collective creativity as political opposition. Because of the contradictory nature of such spaces, they have strategic and political potential, despite their association with activities of leisure. The parks, as a result, are carefully managed and excessively designed.1 They illustrate what de Certeau would describe as “panorama cities.” The space within these parks is rendered completely rational, transparent, and readable, expressing in full the governing ideology of the Hong Kong SAR government. However, de Certeau’s description of such “perfect” cities is precisely to argue against their viability, pointing out that “panorama cities” remain only an operational concept. In reality, no matter how regimented or organized, de Certeau argues, total transparency of urban space is confounded by the unpredictability of everyday individual itineraries.2 Individual footsteps are untraceable and unmappable. They slowly transform the space they tread, as individuals are themselves transformed by the space. In this way, spatial development is a dialectic between the seemingly static physical conditions and the dynamic user habits—an idea that resonates through the writings of Lefebvre as well. The people’s natural usage of space often contradicts the space’s ideological function. The parks are as such, not just metaphors but microsites of the negotiations between the citizens’ use of space and the state’s planning. As such, these organized spaces in Hong Kong reproduce and reflect the complex power relationship between the citizens and the government. In these pseudo public spaces one can see most clearly the process of the creation

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of citizenship on the one hand and the people’s assertion of their “right to the city” on the other.3 Paradigm City

The Beijing Central Government’s promise to Hong Kong after 1997, repeated like a mantra, “stability and prosperity (anding fanrong),” becomes not only a guiding principle of the social and economic policy of the HKSAR government; it is also Beijing’s ideological leash on the Hong Kong society. In other words, this capitalist pursuit is both a compulsion within the Hong Kong bourgeoisie as well as the strategy of the state to gain support and allegiance of the Hong Kong people. Both are concerned with the maintenance of an orderly and disciplined society. On the necessity of social control in public space, Robert C. Ellickson’s argument is convincing. He points out that public spaces as “open-access land” are important for the fulfillment of democratic ideals: “For a romantic, the ideal is to have some spaces that replicate the Hellenic agora or the Roman Forum. A liberal society that aspires to ensure equality of opportunity and universal political participation must presumptively entitle every individuals [sic], even the humblest, to enter all transportation corridors and open-access public spaces.”4 Furthermore, it is not enough that individuals have access but that everyone should feel comfortable within them, which necessitates certain rules of behavior to prevent abuse of these spaces. The originally “informal norms of public etiquette” become slowly codified into regulations. Ellickson explains that these rules are not unlike the use of Robert’s Rules of Order in meetings to help guarantee equal right to expression. While it is true that rules and codes of behavior protect equal access, what Ellickson does not consider in his argument is how they are often based on “norms” of public etiquettes that are in turn, class defined. In Hong Kong, especially, rules of behavior are often informed by the values of exclusivity of the dominant bourgeoisie. On approach to any urban park in Hong Kong, one is confronted by a ubiquitous list of rules. One enters the park with the understanding of the protocols of use of this space. One’s behavior within such spaces of leisure is thereby conditioned by a defined idea of correctness and propriety. Although built on the premise of providing physical and mental respite, for the leisure and health of the citizens, urban parks are places with many rules that restrain and deny many of the needs and expressions of the physical body.

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Lefebvre has argued that leisure is a device of capitalist control over the working masses, as leisure activities are turned into an industry that serves the purposes of capitalism.5 Extending from this argument, it is only logical that the spaces for such activities must also be ordered according to an idea of proper use that would promote capitalist growth. Hong Kong’s park space is organized according to the aesthetic of capitalism and of the bourgeoisie. By entering the parks and abiding by the behavioral expectations within this space, one acquires a status of belonging, or enters into a kind of citizenship defined purely by social propriety rather than collective memory, action, or even historical community. This behavioral consensus in turn becomes the basis of exclusion of those who do not fit in. Examining this kind of seemingly innocuous behavioral management in public spaces in U.S. cities, Don Mitchell argues that it actually has extremely oppressive and discriminatory social implications. He points out that these laws of consent are in actuality an “annihilation of space by law.” These laws are implemented to take away specific kinds of individual rights in spaces that are deemed public.6 They privilege the habits and usages of the propertied class and target the nonpropertied, especially the homeless, with the aim of limiting their access to public space. To those whose primary civil rights—that is, the right to privacy—is unavailable to them (privacy to carry out personal functions such as bathing, urinating, defecating, even eating and resting), forbidding such activities in public spaces is tantamount to depriving them of their basic humanity.7 Thus, Mitchell argues, these “nuisance laws” that impose a certain standard of behavior that are seemingly reasonable and benign actually deliberately criminalize poverty and homelessness. Since “desirability” is class based, citizenship is, in short, a class criterion. These laws result in the revocation of citizenship of the “undesirable” members of society. Though lacking the racial factor that underlies this kind of social control in the United States, Hong Kong’s capitalist logic is equally effective in controlling individual expressions in public space. This is, in fact, a form of privatization of public space. Privatization of space is an unstoppable reality in Hong Kong. Shopping malls have become de facto public spaces.8 Natural street life has been routinely coerced into the sanitized and organized pathways inside malls and arcades, turning spaces otherwise open to all into places of exclusive citizenship. (I describe this in further detail in chapter 4.) Such privatization of space ultimately reduces the venues for democratic expressions and political activities of the people, as Ellickson argues.

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If parks and other similar public recreational spaces are idealized as places of leisure and freedom, where one is unshackled from quotidian responsibilities and mundane rules of behavior one might argue that Hong Kong’s major urban parks reflect a particular kind of utopian ideal. However, utopia is, ironically, where not only daily strife would end but politics would also cease—foreclosed—as Fredric Jameson points out.9 The Victoria Park

The Victoria Park, a typical municipal park, occupies an important page in the colony’s political history. A bronze statue at the entrance of the eponymous queen at once commemorates the British Empire at the height of its power and the British government’s self-representation of enlightened paternalism in its rule over the colony. It is therefore not without irony that Victoria Park has become a major site of political activities in Hong Kong where most large-scale political protests and demonstrations take place. Its political role as a symbol of civil society is equal to, if not more important than its intended function as a leisure spot for the people. The most violent protests and repressions took place there during the summers of 1967 and 1968. (See chapter 2.) Even today, all the major demonstrations and political marches in Hong Kong take place in or commence from Victoria Park.10 The annual June 4 commemoration for the failed democracy movement and the subsequent massacre in China in 1989 takes place there, for example. The five-hundred-thousand-people-march on July 1, 2003, to protest the legislation of the antisubversion law (Article 23), of course, also commenced from Victoria Park. Extending its image as Hong Kong’s “Hyde Park,” the publicly funded RTHK (Radio Television Hong Kong) sponsors a weekly political forum there where councilors, politicians, government officials, social representatives, and the public hold debates over policy issues. These meetings on Sunday mornings are often attended by, among others, a group of highly opinionated and vociferous elderly supporters of the Chinese Communist Party who have been exasperatingly referred to as the “wai-yun ah-bahk” (the geezers of Victoria Park). The proceedings are televised simultaneously to audiences at home and rebroadcast in various radio and television stations, as well as over the Internet. The intent of such a program needs little elaboration. A government sympathizer might consider it a way for the policy makers to communicate with the people. A cynic might consider it a safety valve to channel possible discontent or, perhaps, a mere government public

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relations ploy. More likely, it is a combination of all of these. Regardless of the purpose and effect of such a gesture, the status of Victoria Park, acknowledged by both the government and the population as a symbol of Hong Kong’s culture of free speech (hard won by the 1960s’ and 1970s’ protesters) and a site of civic activism, is irreplaceable (fig. 3.1. Protesters gathering in Victoria Park). Being such a civic symbol, it is perhaps not surprising that Victoria Park also receives the most focused attention from the Department of Leisure and Cultural Services, the official body that oversees the parks and other leisure facilities and programs. Every year, the park is the site of different major festivities sponsored or organized by a variety of government agencies, from arts and crafts fairs, outdoor concerts, and international sports championships to festival carnivals and holiday celebrations. After riots and civil unrest rocked Hong Kong in the “Storms of May,” in 1967 and 1968, led mostly by young union workers and university students, the British Hong Kong government began promoting a series of festivities and

Fig. 3.1: Protestors gathering in Victoria Park The July 1, 2004 demonstration to demand for the resignation of the then Hong Kong CE, Tung Chee Hwa and for universal suffrage gathered at the Victoria Park. The banner reads, “Love Hong Kong; Love Democracy.”

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leisure programs to divert the people’s attention from political issues, to direct the perceived destructive youthful energy, and to court loyalty from the people. Massive public dance parties, parades, and fireworks were the standard programs of the annual Hong Kong Festivals in the 1970s.11 Victoria Park, a site of serious confrontations between protestors and government forces was turned into a major venue for the celebrations in an attempt to change the image of the park. It is true that throughout the late 1970s and all through the 1980s and 1990s (with the exception of 1989 and subsequent June 4 commemorations, which are not against the colonial government), major political activities in the park were few and far between. However, all through the park are signs of the government’s attempt to contain the users’ historical memory of this space. As one enters from the front entrance of the park, one is immediately confronted by a litany of park rules printed on two separate boards, listing twelve different items in pictorial symbols and in writing. Every park in Hong Kong has similar rules for individual conduct. However, no other park’s list is quite as extensive. These include universal interdictions of unruly behavior, such as, “No Spitting,” and “No Loud Radio Playing.” But some reflect real micromanagement and behavior control, such as “No Picking Flowers,” “No Lying on Benches,” and “No Playing of Remote Control Cars” (fig. 3.2. Victoria Park Rules). In view of a massive relandscaping of the park undertaken by the new HKSAR government in the new millennium, these park rules seem especially indicative of the government’s intent to transform and defuse this space. The newly overhauled park is beautifully organized, reflecting a new definition of use: physical activities for the sake of physical health. The landscaping reveals a careful consideration of local health practices and caters to the exercise needs of all ages. There is a pebble path and exercise area for senior citizens, surrounded by a carefully cultivated and well-manicured garden. As a form of reflexology, walking on these paths paved with pebbles to simulate a dry riverbed is a health trend among the elderly in Hong Kong. For the more youthful and rigorous, there is a jogging trail that winds along the perimeter of the park, complete with outdoor equipment for interval training, such as parallel bars, sit-up benches, balance beams, and even step machines. For children, there are the usual playground facilities like swings and slides. There is a large, neatly bordered lawn for those who wish to sit or picnic on the grass, but each specific sport has its assigned area. The soccer fields, basketball and tennis courts, and swimming pools are at different designated areas. The ramblers are guided around the park through the many manicured gardens along paved paths. There is also a pond

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Fig. 3.2: Victoria Park Rules Read before you enter the Victoria Park.

built specifically for electric model boats. These installations and equipments keep the visitors constantly occupied and constantly directed along in the park, which is immaculately maintained by a large team of gardeners and park managers and security patrol. The Hong Kong Park

Perhaps no other park articulates more accurately Hong Kong’s capitalist agenda and governing principals than the Hong Kong Park that opened in 1991, when Hong Kong’s economic boom was at its zenith. Converted from a British military compound in the exclusive “Mid-Levels” on Hong Kong Island, it is another carefully landscaped, organized, and cultivated oasis in the middle of the concrete jungle. The devotion of a large tract of public land of prime real estate value in Hong Kong’s busiest central business district and central government to public leisure seems to be an act of immense generosity by the British Hong Kong government. The Hong Kong Park certainly provides an important breathing space for the people working in the area. As a kind of urban wonder, it has also become a ubiquitous tourist site. From its history as

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a British military compound to its present existence as a municipal park with the most symbolic of its architecture still extant—the Flagstaff House, the former residence of the British military commander, which has now been turned into the Museum of Tea Ware—the park retains the aura of the state, albeit one that is benign and full of good will (fig. 3.3. Hong Kong Park). The Hong Kong Park, built in the middle of Hong Kong’s busy financial district, is encircled and brimmed by the most spectacular of Hong Kong’s capitalist landmarks. I.M. Pei’s Bank of China Tower, Sir Norman Foster’s Hong Kong Shanghai Bank, and the Lippo Centre, among others, loom over its horizon. The park itself sits atop a hill accessible by a long escalator ride inside the Pacific Place Shopping Centre that houses high-end retail stores and designer boutiques. On the other side of the escalator is a government office complex, linked to the shopping center by a pedestrian bridge. This metaphoric coincidence is too suggestive to ignore. The Hong Kong Park as a microcosmic capitalist utopia is supported from the foothills by the twin pillars of power in Hong Kong—global consumption and state administrative headquarters. In the space of the park, the associations of leisure with the

Fig. 3.3: Hong Kong Park Hong Kong Park, ringed by tall buildings of the Central Business District.

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market economy and state ideology become seamless (fig. 3.4 Escalator to Hong Kong Park; fig. 3.5 Escalator to Hong Kong Park through shopping mall; fig. 3.6 The Lippo Centre looms over the Hong Kong Park.) The park is beautifully appointed and landscaped with many of the classical Chinese garden motifs, such as an artificial lake where carp and other ornamental fishes are kept, the requisite water fountain, a huge aviary, a tai-chi corridor, children’s playground, and so forth. There are many “photogenic corners” specially marked for photographers. Through such careful, even considerate planning, the Hong Kong Park is a very pleasant place of respite in the midst of the oppressive pace of both human and vehicular traffic in that area. In general, this is a park packed full of charm that particularly appeals to the idea of leisure as a genteel past-time of tempered activities, such as admiring flowers and birds and rambling through gardens and ponds. The different attractive destinations located at fair intervals from each other encourage promenading. However, while there are plenty of benches for sitting and resting, the rough and tumble activities of play and ballgames are not

Fig. 3.4: Escalator to Hong Kong Park The Hong Kong Park sits atop a shopping mall and a government office building. It is accessed by a long escalator from the mall.

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Fig. 3.5: Escalator to Hong Kong Park through shopping mall Escalator to the Hong Kong Park (bottom left)—through the high-end shopping mall, Pacific Place. The walkway in the background leads to the Admiralty government office complex.

Fig. 3.6: The Lippo Centre looms over Hong Kong Park Symbols of power—The Lippo Centre looms over the Tea Ware museum, the old British military commander residence inside Hong Kong Park.

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accommodated. There are not even lawns for picnics or sunbathing. In other words, this is a space devoted to aesthetic experiences that are divorced from all physical assertions and noises and unpleasant manners of the masses (of course, spitting, hawking, and blasting of radios are seriously prohibited). This park, as the local designer and commentator, Mathias Woo, pointed out, is another of Hong Kong’s excessively designed spaces: It ironically erases the flavor of a park. It is like an amusement park with pavements and buildings everywhere. There is not much greenery; but the Tea Ware Museum in the park is much more low key, though it is a highprofile kind of low key.12

In a study of the Tak Wah Park in Tsuen Wan, a working-class district, Kwok Yan-Chi Jackie and Ng Chit-Hang point out similar inappropriateness in the design. Like many Chinese-style parks all over the urban areas in Hong Kong, the Tak Wah Park is built according to the utopian principles of the classical Jiangnan-style gardens. The Jiangnan style, mostly applied to private garden designs, embodies a philosophical principle of great harmony between humans and nature, and between the opposing forces of the universe, articulating the dominant ideals as well as the taste and lifestyle of the political and economic elites in dynastic China up to the early twentieth century.13 Kwok and Ng question the suitability of this kind of park architecture and topography for the late twentieth-century urban Hong Kong. Along the lines of Lefebvre’s argument of leisure as a capitalist tool of control of the laboring class, they question the intention behind the development of this particular recreational space intended for “gentlemanly pursuits” for the grassroots population in the working-class neighborhood of Tsuen Wan. It would seem that more than merely a leisure space, the design of the park reveals a state regime of management (fig. 3.7. Tai Ping St. Park): The Hong Kong government, having the ambition to create the identity of Hong Kong, continues to build theme parks for the citizens of Hong Kong. Such projects show the intention to inscribe diverse daily activities of people into the frame of an artificial expression of space and to turn the park into a “stage.” The users, once entered onto the “stage,” are expected to perform certain acts indicatedly [sic] the spatial background. But it is always in vain, unless there is a system of surveillance available to “guide” the acts of the users or guard against unwanted behavior.14

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Like Tak Wah Park, there is no doubt the Hong Kong Park and Victoria Park provide reprieve amid the city’s high-powered work environment. However, they are more like “theme parks” in their designs, with designated activities in different areas in a very restricted sense of what recreation means and how each physical activity should be carried out. Even with the artificially created “free speech corner” of the Victoria Park, this kind of park design only “alters a place into a superficial ‘scene’.”15 Urban parks in Hong Kong reflect the agenda and anxiety of both the British colonial government and the new HKSAR government. The ideal of the designs and landscaping of these municipal parks is not to return to the untrammeled natural world in which one recovers from the spiritual contamination of urban life, as the ideal of English gardens, but an affirmation of the triumph of urbanism and social order over human inclination toward chaos and unruliness. It also provides a well-maintained topography of containment and socialization for the citizens. In other words, these city parks reflect order and cleanliness as the official aesthetic of the city of Hong Kong.

Fig. 3.7: Tai Ping Street Park A small park in the working class neighborhood of Sheungwan designed in the “traditional” Jiangnan style.

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More so than regular streets as routes of daily movement and transit, public recreational spaces in Hong Kong are in many ways paradigmatic spaces conceptualized according to particular notions of order and prosperity that are measured according to the volume of international business in the city. In truth, the authorities are not imposing any unreasonable constraints on the individual. The landscaping and planning reflect careful consideration of the park as a heterogeneous space of varied activities for different age groups. However, this regulation of the use of space and individual behavior curtails other extraordinary or creative uses of these spaces. The enjoyment of parks for the relief of the cares of the everyday is a social right that, ironically, predicates on restrictions of personal behavior, whether movement or speech. As Mitchell argues, this kind of urban public space planned “according to the dictates of comfort and order rather than those of political struggle,” contains only the signs of public and social contact and not actual social exchange.16 Democratic rights in such spaces are no more than an illusion. This exchange of civil rights for social privileges as the condition for prosperity and stability is familiar to most Hong Kong residents in its history of nondemocratic governments, first the British and now the Chinese. Social Order and Quality of Citizens

The lawfulness and cleanliness of the city are the two primary indicators of the “quality of the citizens” of the city. It is no wonder that a social uproar ensued after New Year’s Eve in 2002 when New Year’s revelers trashed the Kowloon waterfront promenade along the Victoria Harbour, another popular recreational public space. The waterfront promenade is a ubiquitous tourist destination and the very symbol of Hong Kong’s international status with a view dominated by a skyline formed by the silhouettes of Hong Kong’s bluechip architecture: the I.M. Pei Bank of China Tower, Norman Foster HSBC headquarters, the Cheung Kong Centre, and so forth. After a night of youthful New Year’s orgy, the promenade was buried in garbage and monuments were defaced by graffiti. This was just a week after Christmas Eve when another such unruly celebration also left an unsightly mess (fig. 3.8 Victoria Harbour Promenade). The news media created much sensation about the riotousness of the party crowds, provoking great concern from government officials and citizens alike. Academic experts and psychologists were invited on television shows to expound on the “youth problem” in Hong Kong.17 The cleaning staff on site

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was interviewed about the mess that confronted them and commentators gave vent, on their behalf, to the immensity of their task and the long hours they had to labor to put the place back in order. There was a chorus of social lament on how all this was symptomatic of the declining civility in Hong Kong, of the eroding sense of civic responsibility, and the disappearing sentiment of community. The wife of the then HKSAR chief executive, Tung Chee Hwa, appeared on television, leading a group of volunteers to pick up garbage on the promenade. When interviewed, Mrs. Tung remonstrated with great vehemence, “Hong Kong cannot go down the drain! Hong Kong cannot go down the drain!” Mrs. Tung’s outburst might be puzzling to any foreign observer. A television reporter interviewing a European tourist asked what she thought of the huge mess left from the New Year’s Eve celebration. The bemused tourist, clearly not understanding the point of the question, answered that it was usually much worse in Paris and New York. Though opaque to the outside observer, the equation of disorderliness and filthiness with Hong Kong’s economic “going down the drain” is, however, apparent to its residents. Mrs. Tung’s demonstration of

Fig. 3.8: Victoria Harbour Promenade Victoria Harbour Promenade from the Kowloon side, looking out at the blue chip architecture—the symbols of global capitalism.

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civic uprightness, picking up garbage in the waterfront park, and the tremendous social concern from all parties over these events, illustrate how deeply economic ideology is infused into the social consciousness in the city. Perhaps it is true that the New Year’s orgy and the trashing of the Cultural Centre and the waterfront promenade were effects of Hong Kong’s depressed economy and the resultant disenfranchising of many young people. If the behavior was a public demonstration of frustration and discontent, it was at best a symbolic opposition rather than real political action. However, it provoked a disproportionately vehement response from society at large. The ideology of discipline and orderliness is so entrenched within the cognitive and affective sense of identity among Hong Kong’s citizens that any threat to it, no matter what the cause, would provoke a social clamor to suppress it. The waterfront is certainly an iconic symbol of the city of Hong Kong, dominated by the impressive skyline of international capital. The collective sense of ownership toward this piece of real estate is so fierce in Hong Kong’s bourgeois society that the unruliness of the young people was seen as an attempt to storm the citadel of capitalism. The anxious response from the authorities toward the New Year’s party gives us a hint of how such a seemingly random and “playful” event can provoke a sense of crisis in governance. This kind of “ludic” even if spontaneous gathering exposes the intolerance of state regimes, which, as in the case of the parks, presents itself in benign form, as indulgent, protective, or nurturing. (fig. 3.9. Rules of Conduct; fig. 3.10. More Rules). Cleanliness, order, and civility are crucial to Hong Kong’s operation and economic survival, as well as its international image. The behavioral aptitude and compliance of the people become a measure of the economic performance of Hong Kong and vice versa. Thus, from Beijing’s standpoint, Hong Kong’s economic troubles since the 1997 Return must also be an implicit indication of Hong Kong people’s insubordination, which justified a stronger hand of the state in disciplining the city. This progression of logic was ominously realized in the attempt of the HKSAR government to legislate the antisubversion law (Article 23) in 2003 and Beijing’s summary rejection of Hong Kong people’s demand for universal suffrage for the 2007 and 2008 election of the CE and members of the policy-making body, the Legislative Council. Other Users

The major users of Hong Kong’s urban public spaces on the weekends, especially Sundays, are the South East Asian household workers and manual laborers, primarily Filipinas who numbered over 200,000 in 2002, working in

Fig. 3.9: Rules of Conduct Preparing for New Year’s Eve Party, banners are hung around the Victoria Harbour Promenade to remind one not to deface the public space.

Fig. 3.10: More Rules Also at the Victoria Harbour Promenade before New Year’s Eve.

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1.4 million households.18 Legally entitled to a day off every Sunday, these foreign workers in Hong Kong go in large groups to the urban parks and other public spaces where they attend organized outdoor religious services, prayer meetings, picnics, parties, and performances. These can be small groups of close friends or large gatherings of village associations. To cater to the large numbers of such weekend gatherings, many different forms of businesses, formal and informal, have sprung up, selling home-cooked food, beauty potions, and used clothing, and offering personal services like letter writing and grooming.19 These activities turn the normally sterile spaces into lively bazaars and street parties. The oldest and most symbolic of these Sunday gatherings is the one located in Statue Square Garden, a small park outside of the administrative headquarters of the HKSAR government. Spreading out newspapers, collapsed cardboard boxes or plastic sheets, and wares for sale, the Filipino community completely takes over the garden. Year after year, as the numbers grow, they expand to the nearby thoroughfares, occupying the exits and entrances of pedestrian subways and flyovers, squatting under building awnings and sheltered walkways. The government eventually closed down some of the streets to traffic on Sundays. This is Hong Kong’s Central Business District (CBD), which during the week is the epicenter of finance and politics, surrounded not only by the law courts but the symbols of high colonial culture and financial authority, from the Mandarin Hotel to the monumental bank buildings. The Sunday subaltern gatherings use the space “left over” from the weekday “legitimate” activities of money and power. Not only do the Filipinas ignore all interdictions against loitering, sitting on streets, and blasting of radios in public spaces, but also blatantly disregard all rules of public behavior.20 Private or even intimate acts are performed on the streets, bringing otherwise personal activities such as grooming, trying on clothes, or physical intimacy to public sight. In fact the passerby often gets a distinct feeling of trespassing a private function while walking through these areas. The pedestrian’s unease arises from witnessing activities that one should not be seeing, even though it should be the performers’ discomfort to reveal publicly such private acts. In these situations, it is very unclear who the “outsiders” of this society is. This reversal of spatial and public power is a result of asserting private and everyday functions in the space of economic and political authority. If, as Judith Butler has argued before, there is subversion within the performativity of one’s deliberate, if banal, acts of daily life, one can see how these intimate gestures of the users of space render the powers of governance irrelevant.21

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These everyday performances in public space, at least in this case, are symbolic assertions of citizenship, or some kind of participation in society. We recall Mitchell’s argument that when laws prohibit private activities in public space, such as urinating, sleeping, or bathing, it really is to criminalize the right to be human of a segment of the cities’ residents—the homeless.22 The interdiction against their daily essential functions in public effectively forecloses their right to exist. In truth, Etienne Balibar points out that human rights are only guaranteed for those who already enjoy the rights of citizenship, of being legally recognized as a participant within the polity in which they live.23 Participatoriness is key here. Though legal in their status as workers in Hong Kong, the Filipinas have very few rights. Their only protection against abuse and exploitation by employers is through the lobby of certain NGOs that work on their behalf, such as the Bicol Migrant Workers Hong Kong, the Mission of Filipino Migrant Workers (HK) Society, and the Philippines Alliance. Despite their large numbers, they are often seen and not heard in Hong Kong society, or if they are heard about, it is often through unflattering news reports as legal offenders, stealing from their employers, abusing their children, or as victims of atrocious mistreatment by employers. Seen in this context, the activities in the Sunday gatherings are politically significant. Gathered together in great numbers, they can easily be organized or can easily organize themselves into political interest groups. These groups have in the past, lobbied successfully for legislation of fair labor laws to protect their rights. They have formed watchdog groups to provide protection and legal support for those involved in lawsuits with their employers. Together, in their sheer number, they annul the nuisance laws, easily taking over significant public space in Hong Kong. Engaging in otherwise intimate activities, they assert their claim of the place through “privatizing” it. It is in this way that the urban parks and public squares have been effectively turned into true public space where a true civil society can develop. The monuments and statues around the area display the authority of the government as well as the power of international capital. They also embody the state’s bourgeois ideology and the lifestyle it promotes, which is the primary reason the Filipino women are in Hong Kong in the first place. The mass gatherings of the migrant workers, however, are a temporary if joyous refutation of their position of social subjugation in Hong Kong society. In this way, once a week at least, the seat of the HKSAR government is given over to the city’s subalterns. Here, one sees the emergence of a social space through need, use, and relationships. These congregations demonstrate Lefebvre’s

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understanding of the transformation of space through the biological (literally bodies in space) of how space is used and molded by the physical presence of people in their daily lives.24 Although, this kind of fêting cannot be qualified as a political movement, a community that had been marginalized now gains visibility and is able to assert their belonging in a society in which they are crucial in facilitating the bourgeois dream of many. Their spontaneous activities were initially regarded as nuisances by local residents who found their presence and behavior at odds with the local sensibilities of order and tidiness. However, out of resignation, Hong Kong people relent these spaces to them. What this demonstrates is not only that political action should be tightly associated with quotidian use, but also, the accumulated efforts of individuals as communities produce a transformative effect. A public square or park, rather than being just a superficial and symbolic space as a result of urban planning, is redeemed and becomes a truly public space. This is a political act. Reclaiming the City

The same way that the Filipino community turns the most symbolically oppressive space into a place of belonging, particular configurations of relationships and eccentric usages of space make a place home. Home is determined by how citizens “think” about their city in connection with the needs and demands of their minds and bodies. The homely place is, as such, a result of social production and democratic invention. Reclamation of space from state manipulation is performed through the everyday functions and relationships—that is, in Lefebvre’s vocabulary, from symbolic to actual use. The struggle for the right of space in the city of Hong Kong takes place on many different levels, from the formal and always overheated real estate market to people jostling against each other on busy streets, to finding a square foot of standing room on rush-hour trains. However, claiming the city as a citizen is not just about having ownership of a specific piece of real estate, though that is important, but a sense of collective belonging and feeling of home toward a place. In the fast morphing cityscape of Hong Kong and in the unwavering drive toward capitalist development and consumerism, this notion of collective space is hard to identify even if it is already inadvertently experienced in the everyday life of the citizens. It is de Certeau’s argument that individuals everyday itineraries “poeticize” the spaces of their activities. However, immersed in their everyday lives, people

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are not always conscious of their imprint in space. A “curatorial” project by the artist “Anothermountainman” (Stanley Wong) is an attempt, not so much to produce public space but to “refabricate” the extant social and cultural marks to produce consciousness of such spatial belonging. One of Wong’s more wellknown artistic endeavors over the past ten years is his photographs of the use of the durable, all-purpose, “made-in-Hong Kong,” red-white-blue polyethylene material around the city, in construction sites, as store canopies, made into carrying bags, and so forth.25 So commonly seen all over the city, this material has become iconic in Hong Kong. Almost everyone who has lived in the city in the 1970s and 1980s, even to the 1990s, will remember the huge bags of provisions and appliances Hong Kong people hauled on the KCR (KowloonCanton Railway) to bring to their relatives in China. It has an inerasable association for most Hong Kong people of “hometown” in China and of the hardscrabble at the time. However, because of the durability and strength of the material, it is also a metaphor for endurance and triumph over hardship. This, according to Stanley Wong, is the “signature material” of Hong Kong because it represents the “core value” and the “spirit of Hong Kong.”26 The formal induction of Wong’s work into official venues such as the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, or as an official entry of the Fifty-first International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 2005 obviously has much to do with the fact that Wong’s artistic values coincide with the official ideology of Hong Kong. However, he has been taking photographs of random street scenes, capturing the sightings of “redwhiteblue” since 1993, when the Hong Kong society was undergoing a particular social crisis. In the aftermath of the Tiananmen Massacre of 1989, many in Hong Kong lost their confidence in Mainland China, which resulted in a huge emigration tide. When Wong set out to capture the “core value” of Hong Kong, to define the idea of home, it was because the notion of “home” was in crisis. It is more than a coincidence that his work was considered of particular representational value in the new millennium. In the 2004 Hong Kong Heritage Museum exhibition, his function was as both an artist and a curator, commissioning, collecting, and compiling the works of a large group of artists and designers (both commercial and fine artists) who were asked to work under this theme of “redwhiteblue.” Many of these artists, most notably Alan Chan, are renowned for their commercial and commodity designs. The crossover between fine arts and commercial arts in this project is intentional and obvious. Alan Chan’s “Louis-Vuitton-esque” shoulder bag made with the “redwhiteblue” material pokes fun at the brand name and logo obsession in

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Hong Kong’s consumer culture, while asserting the competitive value of local creation vis-à-vis imported luxury goods. Crossover has become a major theme in Hong Kong arts and design in recent years. Wong’s project, which he began in 1993, to capture the “redwhiteblue” throughout the city in its various functions, is an obvious example of this crossing over. In Wong’s gaze, a local object of everyday functionality transcends its banality and lowly status to become an icon. The commonness and availability of this icon to everyone in the city, in their homes and in their daily pursuits and activities is significant. The use of the material in Wong’s work turns masses of strangers into a community through their recognition of a singular emblem. Through recognition, identification, and the feelings of affiliation evoked by the “redwhiteblue,” stories of collective past are recalled. The artist simply records, accumulates, and edits these imaginaries into a common narrative of Hong Kong in his photographs. In fact, this is what he attempted to accomplish in the “rewhiteblue” exhibition at the Heritage Museum. Aside from commissioning works from Hong Kong’s top designers and artists, Wong also solicited works from school children, asking them to use the same material to design images that represent their version of Hong Kong. Because “redwhiteblue” is an almost unavoidable sight in Hong Kong, Wong’s work not only results in a heightened sensitivity among the citizens of the signs in their environment, but also makes them interpreters of their environment and not just passive spectators. This process of seeing, recognition, and interpretation turns the spectacles of the city into a meaningful discourse of collective experience and history. This recognition of spatial meaning transforms an otherwise impersonal cityscape into a public sphere of collective identification and mutual understanding. These “redwhiteblue” paraphernalia in the city therefore insert the mark of community in the seeming relentless capitalist development and commercialism. Whether it is Stanley Wong’s works or the defiant usages by the Filipino community, they point the way to how a space dominated by abstract forces of power can be reclaimed by actual, productive, social relationships and community activities. Within public spaces is embedded an idealistic possibility of an egalitarian and democratic society. However, this utopia needs to be reenvisioned, not as an “end of politics,” as in Jameson’s critique of utopian ideals, but as an “agora,” in Ellickson’s explanation, where the basis of society is fluid, allowing continuous change and evolution through democratic discussions and uses of the people.

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Ideology does not produce social space, despite the state’s propensity to preach. On the contrary, it is the productive relationships within social space that produce ideology. Here is the crux on which many in Hong Kong rest their hope in their political participation—that Hong Kong is to be defined by the users or inhabitants and their relationship with each other in their different uses of the space and not through legislation by the state of what can or cannot be articulated, or what can or cannot be done. As Lefebvre points out, “The transformation of society presupposes a collective ownership and management of space founded on the permanent participation of the ‘interested parties,’ with their multiple, varied and even contradictory interests.”27 The only possible way of altering the operation of the centralized state is to recognize the pluralism in society.28 Conclusion

Despite the excitement over the success of the “people power” demonstrated by the July 1, 2003, march (as mentioned in the previous chapter), what was most highlighted about this event in the local media was the impressive orderliness of the crowd. Critics and experts were eager to comment on how this reflected the superior quality of the citizens of Hong Kong. The media made a point of interviewing the US and UK ambassadors in Hong Kong about the incident for assurance that the city’s international image was not tarnished by this outpour of mass sentiment.29 A local newspaper columnist sarcastically commented that these annual peaceful and orderly demonstrations in Hong Kong, which everyone is so proud of, could be turned into another spectacle for tourists or another selling point by the government about Hong Kong.30 On December 26, 2003, one year after a particularly rowdy Christmas carnival that resulted in the defacing of the Tsimshatsui waterfront promenade, Ming Pao Daily reported that compared to the 13 kilotons of garbage collected on the same site a year ago, there were only 2.4 kilotons, an 80% reduction. The walls and trees and public sculptures were intact and clean. An eighty-year-old morning exerciser interviewed claimed that it was the cleanest Christmas celebration he had seen in ten years. A cleaning staff also commented that while it took him half a day to clean up the mess the previous year, it only took three hours this time. A Legislative Council member analyzed that after the July 1 demonstration and the November district council election in 2003 (which saw an unprecedented voter participation, resulting in the unseating of a large number of pro-Mainland councilors in the Legislative Council) most

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young people had developed a stronger sense of responsibility toward society and, naturally, no longer engaged in destructive behavior.31 How should one assess this “new” behavior of the youths? Have they been successfully acculturated or did the participatory politics in the past year turn a capitalist space into a real public space that affords a sense of collective ownership and inspires responsible behavior? An upshot of the huge ado about the 2002 Christmas and New Year’s orgy, was that the media had been assiduous in its reporting of the tonnage of garbage and the condition of the public spaces after each major holiday, not just at the waterfront promenade but other major sites of celebration, including the Victoria Park. The population’s tidiness and civility (or the lack thereof), have become an unspoken and unofficial measure of social performance. These reports have become a way Hong Kong society monitors itself and strives at self-restraint, indicating the internalization of the social ideology. It can clearly be seen from such media intervention in Hong Kong’s spatial usage how the contest of space is very much a discursive contest: Who owns the dominant discourse about this space? How does this discourse become a part of the everyday ideology of the city? The answers to these questions depend on one’s political stance, illustrating how perceptions of space are as much about the physicality of it as about one’s social position and relationship to it. It is as such that cultural and intellectual interventions like Stanley Wong’s are as important as mass demonstrations, from the Filipino domestic workers’ recreation to the general Hong Kong public refusing a particular repugnant legislation. These challenges to the official zoning and organization of space might be deliberate, subconscious, or passive. However, their combined effect proves that the collective body and the biological and physical usages of bodies in space arbitrate the most intentional state planning and manipulation of space.

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The World Emporium and the Mall City

Consumerism represents a particularly facile aspect of urban culture that supposedly lacks depth and seriousness. However, consumerism in Hong Kong is deeply associated with its international image and self-identity, through which people in Hong Kong define a common historical experience.1 Even without the state’s promotion, every Hong Kong citizen understands the importance of consumption to the identity of the city, indeed, the survival of Hong Kong as a polity. Hong Kong’s historical role was as an entré-pôt and a free port that facilitated the movement of goods between China and the rest of the noncommunist world in the 1950s and 1960s. Since the 1980s, Hong Kong also operates one of the world’s largest container cargo terminals and logistics and processing center.2 The resultant accumulation, circulation, and availability of goods in the city have earned it the status of a “shopper’s paradise” and the “world’s emporium.”3 Such designations reveal that while Hong Kong is despised for its shallow materialism, blatant consumerism, and lack of historical culture, it is also admired as a true capitalist holdout in a region that saw much communist insurgence and victory in the middle of the twentieth century. In fact, Hong Kong, once known as the Berlin of the East, was developed to be a buttress against communist China.4 Now that China has embraced free-market economy and consumer ideals, Hong Kong becomes the mainlanders’ shopping mall. What is the impact of living within a monolithic discourse of consumerism and nationalism that renders the city a vessel for market development and political posturing? How does the need of the state and consumer capitalism, in the use of space, conflict with the needs of the individual and community? What are the survival strategies in a society in which 89

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human relationships are often quantified and defined through practices of consumption? Chan Wai’s popular fictions of the late 1990s illustrate the imaginary, the aspirations, and the sense of identity of the people living within the conditions of such consumer practices and state ideology. Commodities contribute to the “integrative and communicative rationality of a society,” Nestor Garcia Canclini argues. 5 Luxury consumer goods, for example, are symbols of the upper class. By ensuring “the scarcity of [certain] commodities and the impossibility that others should have them,” these items cement and solidify class status and social structures.6 In her study of the case in South Korea, Laura Nelson demonstrates that not only can consumption habits be manipulated to promote and articulate class identity within a society, but the control of such habits is also a way to strengthen the national agenda and discipline the population whenever individual habits or desires become “out of hand.” Nelson demonstrates how women, who have especially been identified as agents of consumption, become the target of the Korean state ideological program. Women were assigned the blame for South Korea’s political and economic troubles in the 1980s, for example, by endangering the nation and national identity through their “excessive desires” for foreign goods.7 However, South Korea’s well-trained women consumers can also be deployed to support national projects. By exercising consumer discretion, abstaining from imported goods and foreign vacations, and supporting national products, they dutifully fulfill their roles in promoting national wellbeing. Consuming for the Love of Hong Kong

Consumption as a means of facilitating state programs was also borne out in Hong Kong in 2003 when Hong Kong was recovering from three months of SARS epidemic. When foreign tourists stopped arriving, Hong Kong’s largely service and retail economy, weakened since the “Asian Crisis” in 1997, bottomed out. Faced with the widespread disaffectedness of the people who perceived the city government as ineffectual and impotent in the face of the many social and economic problems, the government rigorously promoted an “I Love Hong Kong” campaign that championed local consumerism as an act of civic responsibility.8 People were encouraged to go out and buy things and eat in restaurants in order to “save” Hong Kong’s economy, but most of all, to reestablish the social fabric that had started to fray at the edges in the numerous crises of the new millennium.

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The Beijing government, sensitive to the rising frustration and discontent of the Hong Kong people toward the HKSAR government, opened Hong Kong’s borders to Mainland Chinese tourists from many different regions in China at the end of 2003, immediately attracting tens of thousands to visit and consume in Hong Kong. In 2004, the Hong Kong Tourism Board initiated the first annual “Shopping Festival” from June to August to further Hong Kong’s image as a shopper’s paradise. All these measures resulted in an infusion of much needed tourist cash, staving off further discontent in Hong Kong. The equation between consumption and political control is never clearer.9 In Hong Kong, the immense physical compression in the dense city and the channeled individual itinerary along shopping routes decorated with neon spectacles, colorful shop windows, and billboard images, create urgency in the individual’s relationship to consumer goods. These daily conduits—the walkways and arcades that crisscross through the entire city—provide a venue in which the people of Hong Kong take in their daily lessons— “learning to consume.”10 Consumption as forms of expression of both conformity to and individuality from the dominant social aesthetic, as many sociologists have pointed out, is a complex expression of social and personal negotiations. Consumerism, as we have seen, serves the purpose of the state. However, unmanaged, it can also lead to social fragmentation. In an environment of endless commercial manipulation through advertisements everywhere in the city, shopping in a particular way may be an indirect, if deliberate, strategy, through which consumers assert their sense of individual choice. This point is argued by Annie Hau-Nung Chan in her ethnographical work, “Shopping for Fashion in Hong Kong,” in which she follows her informants around on their shopping tours, each presenting cogent and elaborate rationale over their particular choices of clothing items, asserting individuality and subjectivity in their selection and not mere blind pursuit of trends.11 The sense of personal control is important to the shopper who constantly negotiates between the fashion or the norm and the expressiveness of individuality and desire. It is this aspect of consumption that Nelson’s work explores, pointing out the political potential of such individual assertion, including endangerment of social consensus and cohesion. Along the same vein, Mary Douglas also argues how bourgeois consumption is fundamentally selfish and antisocial, directing what are potentially socially beneficial resources to private use.12 This explains why consumers and consumption habits are monitored closely by the state, directing

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individual desires “into demands and socially regulated acts” in order to foster political order.13 However, if citizens’ political participation is restricted to supporting the economy through consumption or expressing their desires through consumerism, despite the array of spectacular possibilities in the vast emporium of Hong Kong’s capitalist society, consumption as culture, in fact, demonstrates not the availability of individual choice but precisely it’s lack. The growth of consumerism reveals a corresponding constriction of political space. If Hong Kong’s capitalist culture and consumerism have often been used as proof of Hong Kong people’s lack of political consciousness and political passivity, these have been calculatedly fostered by the Beijing-dominated HKSAR government. The city is planned around shopping and tourism, as Lui Tai-Lok shows in his study of the “malling of Hong Kong.” The construction of the once exclusive Ocean Terminal mall as the world’s largest shopping mall in the 1960s was for the convenience of tourists who arrived in Hong Kong in ocean liners. The mall was to provide a clean, orderly, and exclusive shopping arena for wealthy tourists, so they would not have to go to the local shopping venues of messy street markets and chaotic small grocery stores. The mall was occupied by stores that sold luxury and high-ticketed goods that few locals could afford at that time. The gradual expansion and popularization of the mall, however, played an important role in slowly nurturing local material desire, taste, and shopping habit. The Ocean Terminal mall (now part of the Harbour City mall complex) thus played an important role in the acculturation of a whole new generation of consumers, especially as Hong Kong’s economic conditions continued to improve. By the late 1970s, malls all over the city were built and frequented equally by locals and tourists.14 In Hong Kong today, shopping malls and arcades are ubiquitous. Every underground Mass Transit Railway (MTR) stop leads into a mall or an arcade. The MTR stations are themselves small-scale malls with convenience stores, bakeries, sometimes even boutiques, banks, and bookstores. Commuters usually have to go through walkways and flyovers that take them directly into a mall or a shopping arcade before they can exit onto the street. Often the malls also function as extensive networks of throughways in the city, connecting one place to another. They provide welcome air-conditioned passages in the city where one can walk around without being subjected to air pollution, traffic, and the elements, especially when summer temperatures regularly rise to a humid 32° C in Hong Kong’s subtropical

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climate. For example, one can walk from Central all the way to Sheung Wan, an adjacent district, on foot bridges that lead in and out of several malls, including the gigantic, luxury shopping center in the IFC (International Financial Centre) towers.15 Similarly, large office buildings often have arcades on the ground floor that connect with another building or lead to another street. Pedestrians are encouraged to walk through them to reach their destinations. Every satellite town or housing estate, public or private, is provided with extensive shopping complexes.16 In this way, whether it is one’s intention to spend money, whether there is an actual need or not, one participates every day in the pleasurable worlds of consumer materialism and spectacles, to the point where actual or window shopping becomes part of the everyday regime (fig. 4.1. Pedestrian walkway in Central; fig. 4.2 Harbour City Mall Complex). These malls, arcades, and walkways that form a superstructure over the city or a network underground shape the episteme of the city. Walking and shopping in these venues become equally incorporated into one’s work life and leisure time. Citizens jokingly refer to shopping as their favorite “sport” in Hong Kong.17 However, frivolities aside, figures of retail volume illustrate the “seriousness” of this activity there. In 2001, in a city with a population of 6.7 million, there were about 40,000 retail businesses, for example, which represented 23.4 percent of the total number of commercial establishments, defined as “wholesale, retail, and import/export trades, restaurants and hotels industries.” It’s total value of goods for sale represented almost 8 percent of the total industry that generated USD180 billion that year. This amounts to USD2800 a year per consumer in Hong Kong. There were 10,334 apparel, accessories, and shoes stores in Hong Kong’s one thousand square kilometers of land, generating USD20 billion in sales, which meant over USD300 per consumer in the economically troubled year of 2001.18 Square foot by square foot, Hong Kong generates the largest sales figure on luxury-brand fashion and accessories in Asia. The Asian market in turn occupies 40 percent of the world’s total sales of luxury-brand items.19 Hong Kong is an important base for many European and American designer fashion houses, such that in December 2004 the “Luxury 2004” conference, titled “Lure of Asia,” organized by the International Herald Tribune and attended by representatives of the world’s most influential fashion houses, CEOs and designers of fashion business empires, was held for the first time, not in Paris, which hosted the previous three years, but in Hong Kong.20 This not only shows the growing importance of the Asian market in the high-fashion business, of

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Fig. 4.1: Pedestrian Walkway in Central One of the many walkways in Central that connects between buildings and malls.

Fig. 4.2: Harbour City Mall Complex Canton Road is lined with luxury goods boutiques of the mega mall that comprises of several buildings linked together through walkways: The Ocean Terminal, Ocean Centre, Marco Polo Hotel and Arcade, Gateway Arcade and Harbour City. Called the Harbour City Complex, it is the largest shopping complex in Asia, with 700 stores and 500 restaurants.

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which Hong Kong occupies an important share, but also the importance of Hong Kong as a command and control center for many of these luxury goods companies poised to conquer the putatively even more lucrative Mainland China market. In fact, as the host of this forum, Hong Kong has established its international status as a luxury goods retail center. Lefebvre once argued that there is a direct equation between the culture of leisure and the capitalist economy, in which leisure is a device of capitalist control over the working masses.21 The activities associated with the culture of consumption, from seeing movies, and walking around in the malls to shopping, certainly bear out his argument of how different industries of leisure are developed to serve the purposes of capitalism.22 In Hong Kong, the city space captivates and channels the maximum number of people along passages that lead them past rows upon rows of stores with high efficiency. Citizenconsumers are acculturated in their everyday lives, moving about the plant of the city, where one’s sensory perception is continuously mediated by the commodity culture marked by desire and creation of desire. The residents of this mall city relate to each other through transactions of objects—they see each other through objects and speak through objects. This collection of objects, in turn, defines an epistemic community that is Hong Kong. We will see in the following, through the works of Chan Wai, how the experience of the city, as well as the relationships among people, are mediated by this consumer culture. Commodity and the Hong Kong Identity

The importance of this phenomenon of commodity culture to the definition of individual experience and to the articulation of local identity is apparent in the way many Hong Kong people think about and narrate their Hong Kong stories. In chapter 2, I mentioned that there was an efflorescence in the memory industry just before 1997. It resulted in numerous volumes of personal reminiscences, collective impressions, photo essays, and albums of old pictures of Hong Kong. These works memorialize Hong Kong’s way of life through consumer goods, from fashion to foods to toys. A few examples of such compilations include the anthology, This Is How We Grew Up, a project sponsored by the newspaper group Ming Pao Daily, which collected writings from famous writers as well as selections from open submissions.23 Old Pictures of Hong Kong is a series that bring together written impressions of well-known writers accompanied by photographs that capture an era or a

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cultural moment.24 The photographs are often from personal albums of the writers and not official or media archives, exemplifying the everydayness and commonness of the experiences they have chosen to narrate. Many of these pictures are selected to show the fashion, appliances, famous stores, popular restaurants, and other establishments iconic of the reminiscing generation. One photograph, for example, shows the author as a small child in his parents’ modest apartment. The author was careful to point out the centrality of the television set and the refrigerator in the phonograph, the particular objects of desire at the time.25 Hong Kong 101 is another such nostalgic compilation of photographs and essays. The editors stated that it was their mission to provide a comprehensive presentation as well as commentary on all things “cool” in the Hong Kong mass culture since the early 1960s.26 Some of the items collected include the cheap, white, Chinese-made canvas shoes that every child wore in the 1960s and 1970, some iconic tin or plastic toys of the era, the local breakfast and tea-time favorite, a thickly buttered “rocky bun,” as well as popular television or music idols of the different decades. The importance of commodity culture to Hong Kong’s self-identity and historical perception that is reflected in these popular publications received legitimization from the cultural establishment when a major Hong Kong design retrospective exhibition was presented at the Hong Kong Arts Centre in 1995.27 The exhibition was aptly titled “Design/Identity,” directly relating Hong Kong’s industrial design of consumer goods to the articulation of local identity (see chapter 2.) The Hong Kong Heritage Museum also organized a small-scale exhibition on Hong Kong food culture in 2003.28 Similarly, the narrative of Hong Kong history since 1949 in the Hong Kong History Museum is through a display of Hong Kong’s manufactured objects (see chapter 2.) In May 1998, Chan Wai, a new writer with little previous publishing experience and without having won any major prizes, burst onto the literary scene with her novel, Sahpheung Kei (Shixiang ji, The Records of Sahpheung). Published during the height of Hong Kong’s societal nostalgia and accurately locating Hong Kong people’s identification with the culture of consumption, this novel brought her to immediate literary stardom and established her career as one of the most popular writers in Hong Kong. By April 1999, the novel had already gone into its third printing. The Records is a novelistic attempt at organizing and narrating a history of Hong Kong and Hong Kong’s everyday experience from the early 1950s to 1997 through the consumer industries and their products. This history of Hong Kong is narrated by a child, Sahpheung, the youngest of the ten children of the allegorical Leen family,

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through her observation of her family’s fortune in the history of Hong Kong’s industrial development through time. Chan’s work not only delineates the embeddedness of objects in the daily lives and relationships among people but, more importantly, how our consciousness, subconscious, and memories are formed around consumer objects, because these objects are the intermediary of our experience of the world. In this way, we are truly, as Canclini describes, communities defined by commodities. In Chan’s work, the emphasis on the “thingness” of experience and the “objectification” of relationships underlies individual expression and identification. The names of the ten children in the fictional family all represent some manner of cultural or commodity consumption, from famous stores to brand names of consumer goods in Hong Kong. For example, Seihoi (Four Seas), the name of the fourth son, reminds one of an old, well-known silk and brocade store. The second child, Seungfung (lit: Chance Meeting) is a common name for restaurants. The sixth child, Lukhup (Six Together) shares the same Chinese name with Hong Kong’s Lottery game, Mark Six. The Seventh child, Tsahthei, is the Chinese rendition of the soft drink Seven-Up. The Eighth Child, Baahtbou (Eight Treasures), is the name of a famous Chinese dessert or, generally, meaning full of treasures. In the same way, important events or phenomena, cultural or historical, are memorialized and embodied by the births of each of the ten children. For example, the third child, Saahmdo, was born in 1953, the day after the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Saahmdo’s birth was marked by parades and festivities on Nathan Road in celebration of this event. The summer of 1963 was the summer of a severe drought in Hong Kong, when water was supplied only once every four days. This year was commemorated in Chan’s narrative by the birth of the sixth child, Lukhup. On July 17, 1964, when the screen idol Lin Dai committed suicide, Mrs. Leen was shocked into labor by the news and the seventh child, Tsahthei, was born a day later. This equation between births and media events reveals the interlocking relationship between the material culture and private lives. The Records of Sahpheung traces Hong Kong’s material history by following the development of the major industries from the early 1950s to 1997, through the different enterprises of the Leen family, from small-scale cottage industry, to manufacturing, to transportation, to service, and to entertainment. However, Chan’s interest in Hong Kong’s economic development is purely superficial, only in order to establish a mise-en-scène. Despite her reference to the different stages of Hong Kong’s industries, the subject of her narrative is

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not industrial and economic development, which dominates conventional histories of Hong Kong, but the consumers at the other end, their everyday experiences and relationships captured through their use of the products of the industries. The novel provides a detailed historical catalogue of Hong Kong’s developing consumption habits and commodities of everyday life. Each object Chan mentions is iconic of an era. For example, the change from using metal water buckets to plastic ones captures how local industries evolved from scrap metal to plastic in the 1960s, but also immediately evokes the everyday life of the 1950s and 1960s, during the years of water shortage. Chan also makes references to the early handicraft trade of embroidery and beading in the late 1960s, which led to the beginning of the formal apparels industry in the 1970s. On an individual level, these changes reflect an important aspect of social development important for women. For many, it marked the move from the home, where they did craft work to subsidize household income, to becoming engines of Hong Kong’s industrial development as they were recruited en masse to the newly established factories. Gradually becoming a skilled labor force, they produced highly valued apparel and electronic consumer goods.29 The progress of the electronic industry and the growing affluence of the Hong Kong society are articulated through the ninth child of the Leen family, who, born in affluent times, owned all the various generations of music appliances from his childhood to adulthood, beginning with a transistor radio, then a boom box, then a Walkman, and finally, a Discman, witnessing through his consumption, the development of the electronic industry. Similarly, the second child Seungfung’s possession of the various generations of telecommunication gadgets, from a beeper to the cordless phone to the various generations of cell phones, not only illustrates how consumer technology intersects with historical development but, as ubiquitous accessories of every working person in Hong Kong’s high-pressured lifestyle, the social and economic conditions there as well. The change in fashion and commodity trends reflected in the consumption of the different members of the Leen family reveals how individual lifestyle is completely intertwined with the economic and social changes of the city. Conversely, the technological developments in consumer products deeply mark the individual experiences of reality through time. Chan’s work traces the sense of collectivity created by the common commodity experience of the citizens, which in turn contributes to the sense of Hong Kongness, substantiating Canclini’s argument that consumerism defines citizenship.

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However, Chan also reveals to us some of the human costs of living in a society so mediated by experiences of material possession and consumption as symbols of social experience. We have already seen how names of individuals and hence their identities are often direct references to consumer goods or events. Chan describes this impact in more detail through the third Leen girl, Saahmdo, who is obsessed with the popular media, to the point where her self-expression and even life plot are usurped by the entertainment industry. Because of her voracious appetite for pop culture, her entire existence is formed in idiomatic relationship to television commercials, pop songs, tabloids, and films. She can speak only through titles and lines from films and television shows, quoting from familiar characters or popular song lyrics. The major events in Hong Kong’s entertainment history are milestones in Saahmdo’s personal narrative, as her story is inscribed within this media history. She remembers her first detention in school because it was the momentous day of the finalé to the extremely popular television series, King of Kings. At age eighteen, she tried to register for the Miss Hong Kong beauty pageant, an accelerated means for young women to break into the entertainment business. Her first boyfriend was a television director whom she met at the registration. Later in life, she discovered her husband’s affair with a starlet through the tabloids. The popular media interpolates her perception of the world, conditions her internal understanding of herself, and influences her relationship with people around her. She is unable to act or speak unless the contents or lines have already been scripted or uttered by some characters in the celluloid world.30 Her life seems to follow the hackneyed plot of a soap opera. She is totally entrapped within the world generated by mass media. Her whole being is a cliché; her own intellect and sense of self remains underdeveloped and finally withers away. When the narrator became old enough to contemplate her sister’s life, she was stunned by what had happened over the years: At this moment, I suddenly realized that in these many years, Saahmdo had slowly, imperceptibly moved, folded and pushed herself into a tall, narrow and straight glass jar. She diligently maintained her motionlessness, till she became a human specimen. This had happened within our purview; however it was impossible to tell when it began. When we looked up again, the woman in the bottle had already turned into a precious and fragile specimen. It was like magic. We haven’t had time even to applaud before the spotlights were dimmed, and the

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curtains were lowered. In surprise, the audience could only file out of the theater. Saahmdo, the formaldehyde that preserved you, made you pale. You have become faded in the sunlight, like an unpublished scroll of poems. Saahmdo, I wish I could hold you up to show the world.31

Chan’s work contains within it an emporium of Hong Kong’s society, filled with wares and objects in great array and riotous abundance, revealing how personal experiences are spun out of spectacles and commodity trends of the city. However, within this pursuit of the bric-a-brac, there is a vacuity. In this narrow, confining display case of life, social life is defined only by narcissistic needs. In the same way, the world is seen through the distorted and myopic container of one’s live. For example, 1963 was memorialized because it marks the death of the local movie star Lin Dai. However, the death of the U.S. president, John F. Kennedy, a world political event with serious historical consequences, made no impression on the consciousness and emotional life of this consumer group. Citizenship in the society constructed by Chan is defined merely by consumption, an unproductive activity that neither gives the people agency over the creation of their world nor participation in world history. The alienation as a result of such commodity fetishism, in Marxist terms, occurs not only as a result of the separation between the process of production and the goods produced, but also because the accumulation of commodities actually occludes social relationship and human affects, as in Saahmdo’s case. Citizenship Rights in the Consumer Society

The Hong Kong identity through this kind of ownership narrative reflects an underlying bourgeois value that perceives material affluence as a form of progress and wealth. This is consistent with an all-pervasive official and unofficial political ideology and social ethos in Hong Kong under the HKSAR government that valorize “Prosperity and Stability (fanrong wending)” above all else. Economic success is an indicator of social success. In short, citizenship and participation in this bourgeois society is measured by wealth and possession; citizen’s status is evaluated according to accumulated material symbols of wealth. If Mary Douglas is correct in arguing that bourgeois consumption is defined by decisions in favor of the individual at the expense of community, this commodity culture results in further atomizing the indi-

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vidual from social life. 32 This kind of competitive consumerism tears down community and solidifies class differences. Chan’s writing seems to affirm the dominant ideology of consumer capitalism in Hong Kong society. However, it is equally arguable that it is precisely her effort to attach human faces to her history of objects—making objects relevant to human lives through her characters—that she attempts to humanize this object-obsessed society. Her characters are unable to refute the powerful commodity manipulation, but they nevertheless find spaces of redemption within it. Chan’s work alongside the concurrent phenomenon of mass nostalgia and the innumerable volumes of picture albums and memoirs that collect the images and paraphernalia of old Hong Kong also reveals a general desire and effort in society to transcend the tyranny of objects by making objects symbols of community rather than as emblems of individual status. This gesture of collecting is to compose a commonality in Hong Kong’s social experience on the most basic level of everyday life, establishing a sense of collectivity and belonging among the people. How does this rethinking of objects become a way to rethink collectivity, or as Bill Brown asks, “How does the effort to rethink things become an effort to [re]institute society?”33 These histories of desire and possession, to which the anthologies and Chan’s Records belong, have the effect of reifying memories and sentiments into common objects, making the fleeting and abstract palpable and concrete. As far as visual or sensual objects are evocative or auratic (in Walter Benjamin’s terms) in that each encapsulates an entire historical period or personal world, even things as simple and mundane as candies or a lunchbox are placed in these narratives to inspire infinite fantasies beyond their actual “thingness.” But it is also precisely this entrusting of the narrative of Hong Kong to common and humble objects that democratizes ownership of this story. John Treat argues that consumer culture is without fixed center or hierarchy. It contains diverse classes and subcultures, discourse and negotiations that circulate liberally with equal claim to legitimacy. It is, in this sense at least, egalitarian and democratic.34 In this way, the history of Hong Kong can literally be held in the hands of its citizens. This knowledge of Hong Kong based on objects is necessarily heterogeneous, because each individual has a unique relationship to different objects and has different stories and experiences relating to their unique and different uses of the objects. The user of the object becomes the subject of this history. A history based on an assemblage and individual ownership of historical

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objects returns historical agency to the people who can literally make the world their own. In a place lacking huge public squares and open spaces, developments of malls further privatize and thus reduce civic space, as many scholars have pointed out. However, the case in Hong Kong is slightly different from that in U.S. cities, for example, on which some of the important theories about malls are based.35 In his discussion of the “malling of Hong Kong,” Lui points out while the development and popularization of malls naturally support and foster the culture of shopping, the malls inadvertently open up a form of public culture and public space not anticipated. The appearance of cafes in the arcades, for example, opens up a space for young intellectuals in the late 1960s to sit for long periods of time, to read books, exchange ideas and aspirations. The creation of such spaces of consumption helps foster relationships and alliances that directly and indirectly contribute to the cultural and political movements of the late 1960s and 1970s. In particular, Café do Brasil in the Ocean Terminal mall, served as the home base for many of the young intellectuals at the time. The generation that grew up with the opening of these new “public spaces” became critical participants in Hong Kong’s cultural history, whose legacies are still evident today. The editors of the iconic City Magazine (Hou Oi), for example, met each other at the cafe. 36 The magazine became an important iconoclastic voice in the struggle for social justice in the 1970s. From the 1980s to the present, it has been variously, a venue for alternative cultures and introduction of European and North American cultures, nurturing the intellectual and aesthetic values of the postwar, nativeborn generation in Hong Kong. Despite the relentless commercial culture that creates a superficial society, despite Hong Kong’s everyday life being so inscribed in capitalist space and individual peregrination so manipulated in the capitalist ecology, alternative paths manage to flourish. Nurturing Belonging

Chan’s later work Sound and Taste (1998) investigates how individual consumers fulfill collective aspirations.37 The novella “Taste,” in the volume, which is conceptually similar to Sahpheung’s Records, can be read as its supplement. In “Taste,” Chan demonstrates the same ambition to record Hong Kong’s history through the contents of everyday life. In this work, the object of consumption is food, articulating a Hong Kong experience that is on an even more minute and personal scale. This smallness of scale allows Chan to describe, at close range, the affective quality of everyday life in Hong Kong.

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Its allegorical signification aside, Chan’s “Taste” is also a part of the trend of writing histories of objects during the last years of the twentieth century. It is a gastronomical catalogue and guide to Hong Kong, collecting and documenting the specific Hong Kong food customs through the different periods. The table of contents is a veritable menu of Hong Kong’s everyday food: chapter 1, Campbell’s Vegetable Soup; chapter 2, Cantonese Roast Meats over Rice; chapter 23, Vitasoy Milk; chapter 26, Curried Fishballs; chapter 28, Smarties; chapter 42, Red Bean Popsicle; and so forth. This grocery list of sixty of Hong Kong’s most common and favorite daily foods is a kind of phenomenology of Hong Kong’s desire. The items range from the most extravagant banquet foods of roast suckling pig and shark’s fin soup, to such childish delights as Smarties and Malteesers, to the everyday staples of busy households of Campbell’s Soup and instant noodle. The extremes in Chan’s list capture the flamboyant consumption habits of Hong Kong people on the one hand, but also reflect, on the other, the oppressive franticness of the daily life of many who resort to prefabricated dinners from a can or a box. In between are childhood snacks and comfort foods and the uniquely Hong Kong treats, such as egg custard tarts and fishball noodles from local diners. Food stories are popular internationally, perhaps because food is sustenance and is an accessible and universal metaphor for daily life. On the simplest level, Chan’s story, “Taste,” is a variation on a rather popular genre. On a political level, Chan’s description of food consumption and the effects and sentiments associated with different kinds of food is a way to elucidate an emotional aspect of daily life in Hong Kong under historical and social pressures that are often inarticulable. Chan’s novella published in 1998, one year after Hong Kong’s Handover to Mainland China, contains a direct analogy to Hong Kong’s political situation. The names of Chan’s characters have unmistakable allegorical significance, pointing toward the broader social and sensual experiences of living in Hong Kong under the control of an often bellicose Mainland China. The first two children of the Mok family are named Yahtsaan and Yisau, which literally mean One Mountain and Two (natural) Beauties (the city of Hong Kong is made up of two main parts, the Kowloon Peninsular and Hong Kong Island). These names also evoke Hong Kong’s situation as a Chinese Special Administrative Region after 1997, represented by the slogan “yiguo liangzhi (One country, two systems),” referring to the maintenance of Hong Kong’s capitalist economy within a communist system. The third and the fourth Mok children, Candy (Tiimtiim) and Cocoa (Hohhoh), are the two major “flavors” of life—sweetness and bitterness.

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The experiences of the Mok family mirror Hong Kong’s condition at the end of the colonial era. The novella includes, in the middle, a twelve-course New Year’s dinner. A television crew filmed its step-by-step preparation by the two sisters, Candy and Yisau. This family dinner, wonderfully abundant and elaborate, was attended by all the family members, but each of them was disinterested, preoccupied, and unhappy, haunted by their private unfulfillments and anxieties. This parallels another extravagant festivity, equally ambivalently and reluctantly celebrated—the billion-dollar extravaganza the Hong Kong government put on for the Handover ceremony on July 1, 1997, eagerly documented by the international press. The Beijing and HKSAR’s official rhetoric of optimism, persistent cheerfulness, and strenuous display of normalcy while under the relentless camera scrutiny of the international media barely veiled Hong Kong people’s simmering anxiety about their future. In the novella, the unhappy Mok family was continuously under the inquisitive gaze of two television cameramen, sent to the Mok household to record Mrs. Mok’s and later, her two daughters’ cooking demonstrations for a television program. Mrs. Mok is a famous television cooking instructor. The family and the television crewmembers consumed the elaborate meals prepared for the television program after each show. The abundance, the apparent festiveness, the activity of eating, were all part of an unremitting charade of normalcy in the Mok family that barely masks the substratum of alienation, anxiety, and dysfunctionality. If optimism and normalcy were the official ideology of the new Hong Kong under China, Chan’s portrayal of family meals demonstrates precisely the pathology and oppressiveness behind this “normalcy.” On a personal level, through the experiences of food, Chan describes family relationships between a husband and a wife, a mother and her daughters, sisters, and their relationship with men. Chan’s work narrates a typical tale of urban alienation, of estrangement among people. Her characters are plagued by inarticulation and inability to connect with others. Each family member harbors inerrable feelings of unrequited love, unfulfilled aspirations, anger, or frustration toward each other. The mother, Mrs. Mok, is so obese that she never leaves the family apartment. The father, Mr. Mok, estranged from his wife, never comes home for dinner, but eagerly savors the delicious food that his wife saves for him in thermoses every night. The selfish oldest son, Yahtsaan, is married and only comes home with his equally spoiled wife for dinners and to be waited on. The youngest son, Cocoa, never speaks during meals. Candy, unable to resist her mother, grows fatter everyday from Mrs. Mok’s

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misplaced and suffocating indulgence. She finally moved out in order to undergo a weight-loss odyssey, yet could not let her mother know why. Yisau, the neglected second child, aspires to become a culinary expert like her mother but did not dare tell her. The family members are avid but inattentive consumers of food, while Mrs. Mok, morbidly obese and depressed, barely fulfills her function in the household, but through her elaborate cooking, she smothers all their unhappiness and unfulfillment with food. Food is directly connected to the emotional life of the consumers and directly related to desire and desirability, transcending the simple binary logic of the consumer economy of object and desire. Candy’s desirability as a woman and her unfulfilled dreams and hunger for particular taste and flavor of food intertwine into a complex emotionality. When Candy was feeling depressed about being dumped by her boyfriend, she wandered to his neighborhood, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. She absentmindedly collided with a small child, causing him to spill his tube of Smarties. The sight of the pretty, colorful candies, a childhood favorite, scattered all over the pavement, becomes also a metaphorical release of her bottled up emotions, helping her let go of her unrequited love. Chan uses food to articulate the daily and emotional life of Hong Kong people. Malteezers and Smarties conjure childhood memories. Malt biscuits and red bean soup evoke societal nostalgia for a different era. Egg custard tarts and fishball noodle soup are reassuring of everyday normalcy. The unconscious logic of individual feelings and social relationships are articulated and negotiated through food—the desiring, offering, and sharing. In this way, Chan’s work not only serves to define culturally and socially what Hong Kong is on a visceral level, but also provides a taxonomy of personal desire within the state ideology of consumer capitalism. Food Culture in Hong Kong

Aside from serving as a record of Hong Kong’s popular food, the novella “Taste” is also a kind of cooking manual, filled with all kinds of practical information about food, including special tips for shopping, handling, and preparation. In this way, Chan’s work participates in one of the most popular book trends in Hong Kong. In the 2003 Hong Kong’s Bestsellers List, of the fifty long-term bestsellers, fifteen are books on food and drinks. Together with cookbooks these gastronomica are the largest category on the Hong Kong popular list.38 Besides publishing, food programs abound on Hong Kong

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television. Both the broadcast networks, TVB (Television Broadcasting Company) and Asia TV, have had for decades fierce competitions with each other in their afternoon variety shows that target housewives. For years, the two broadcast channels each have under contract famous cooking instructors and chefs from renowned restaurants to demonstrate cooking and discuss culinary issues and consumption of foods in general. There are documentaries on special foods from different cuisines around the world. Large segments of popular travel programs focus on descriptions of native cuisine and exotic foods of other regions of the world. The new food channel and programs on cable television continue to fuel the growth of interest in food consumption in Hong Kong. Many local magazines are dedicated to this subject, such as Food Culture (yuhmsik manfa) and Shuangru on Food (Sheungyu tam sik). Popular magazines, from Ming Pao Weekly to East Touch, regularly offer restaurant guides and recipes. In 2001, there were 11,553 restaurants registered in Hong Kong, serving a population of 6.7 million. The restaurant industry employed over 200,000 people (3 percent of the population).39 This was during a year of continuing economic recession, when many restaurants went out of business. One can only imagine the importance of the food industry at Hong Kong’s height of economic prosperity. In fact Hong Kong people like to refer to the city as a gastronomic paradise (yumsik teen tong) where one can find the best cuisines from all over the world. Chan’s work about food and television cooking hosts taps into this most familiar visceral space and imagination of the Hong Kong society. Within this food culture of Hong Kong, Mrs. (Sally Yam) Fong is somewhat of a phenomenon. She has been teaching cooking on television for decades and has authored several dozen cookbooks. More than a household name, she is a cultural icon in Hong Kong. Unlike many of her well-known counterparts either in Hong Kong or elsewhere, Mrs. Fong’s main audience is not gourmands or people who cook for entertainment or pleasure. Her programs are also not about lifestyle. The majority of her cookbooks and her TV programs aim at modest everyday cooks and thrifty housewives. The books are often small cheap paperbacks. Her dishes are simple and economical to make. They are conventional, requiring ordinary and seasonal ingredients, and are suitable for busy households. In fact, it is probably her attentiveness to the overextended family cooks on a tight budget that makes her a household favorite. Always in touch with life in Hong Kong and always practical in her approach, a few years before 1997 she even began a course on simple putonghua through cooking on TV.

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Unlike some of her North American or European counterparts (Martha Stewart comes to mind), Mrs. Fong and her media enterprise are not about inventing a middle-class domestic fantasy or defining “tasteful” living. Her shows are geared toward the money-and-time-conscious housewives or working mothers. Judging by the commercials that sponsor her shows, one can even assume that her audience base is predominantly women from lowerincome households. Unlike Martha Stewart who is a logo and a brand name, and a ubiquitous icon in American suburban life, Mrs. Fong’s image is very much as a regular individual attuned to the oppressive pace and strictures of urban life in Hong Kong. She is preferred over other cooking hosts because of her low-key, perhaps even bashful personality and plainness in appearance. Unlike a typical television host, she seems introverted, of few words and though accomplished in her cooking skills, she was almost awkward in front of the camera. She always wore modest and casual outfits underneath colorful aprons, supporting an image of a busy woman who is ready to move on to her next task when the apron comes off. She offers neither promise nor pretension of domestic glamour or attainable perfection as the Martha Stewart principle, but acknowledges the difficulties and flaws in life. Her issues are not matching curtains and bedspreads, nor even projecting abundance and felicity in an extravagant family meal. Her cooking shows are never more than ten or fifteen minutes long to emphasize the simplicity of her meals. She always introduces or concludes her cooking demonstration by commenting on how a particular dish would be appetizing on hot, sultry days or comforting on wintry days or how it would appeal to a willful child or suitable for frail, old people, or how it was nutritious, easy, and economical. Casual as these remarks might be, they reveal the premise of her show, which is about extending care to others in the family, especially under less than perfect conditions, while acknowledging the difficulties of the task. Her show demonstrates an empathetic understanding of the trials of everyday life and proposes a modest attempt in their relief. More importantly, cooking shows like hers establish, in Canclini’s words, an “aesthetic foundation” of communities, because they motivate a collective sensibility based on the value of pragmatic survival through mutual care expressed through food.40 Sharing of Food

It is interesting to read Chan’s work “Taste” in tandem with the phenomenon of Mrs. Fong and the social ethos she represents. In the novella, when Mrs. Mok

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suddenly succumbed to a stroke and was admitted to hospital, the two sisters, Candy and Yisau, took on the responsibility of the family’s food production and continued the cooking program in their mother’s name. It is through Chan’s elaborate description of their cooking, step by step, that readers also learn cooking and shopping tips, just as one might from Mrs. Fong’s program. In a way similar to Mrs. Fong’s show, which is ostensibly about domestic and private life but has a strong social valence, the activities of the Mok sisters in Chan’s novella also have a social trajectory. More than defining and expressing sentiments, food is a means of altering perspectives and attitudes. Candy’s and Yisau’s cooking instructions help one appreciate, not just the primary tastes of food, but the subtle savor of discordant combinations, such as the tartness and bite of a whole orange cooked with sticky sweet beans. They also teach strategies for dealing with the unpalatable, such as using salt to take out the bitterness of a bitter gourd. If food is the sensory equivalence of the everyday, the Mok sisters’ instructions on cooking are creative solutions to the obstacles and unpleasantness in life, aimed at transforming ways of thinking, changing the inevitable, making tolerable the unsavory, and teaching inventiveness to imagine an alternative reality. Food is the centerpiece in the Mok family. Because the serving of food is fundamentally about extending care and expressing affection to others, the sisters’ efforts, like Mrs. Fong’s, offer a modicum of comfort and cheer in Hong Kong’s fast-paced and alienating society, improving the quality and connection among people, even if only modestly. However, as long as the family members remain passive consumers, atomized in their taste and in their daily eating habits, the family remains fragmented and members isolated in their individual secrets and pains. It makes sense that as Chan uses a story of food to elucidate the situation of social alienation and political anxiety in Hong Kong, she offers metaphorical consolation and healing through her characters in replication of Mrs. Fong’s project. It is not farfetched to describe the cooks’ activities as socially performative and transformative in that they are means to establish connections with others. It is through the visceral consumption of food that the characters communicate their feelings to others most effectively. For example, Candy plopped a large, salted plum in her mouth as she watched her mother, unconscious from a stroke, being pushed into the hospital on a gurney. The extreme saltiness and tartness of the preserved plum caused her to pucker and tear. The others watching her also empathetically cringed and salivated. Candy’s complicated

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feelings of anxiety, guilt, and sadness are thus effectively cathected and communicated to others in an act that transcends individual consumption. The sensuousness of the ingestion and the tastes of food make eating a language of the inerrable in its ability to convey complex emotions. This episode of the salted plum is also the watershed in the story in which everyone began to realize his or her connectedness to each other. The process of rebuilding the family began when Candy and Yisau started to cook together. From here on, the story also turns from the process of consumption to the process of production. The shopping, the preparation, the frustration and difficulty of the entire enterprise of cooking the meals become the focus. It is this process that transforms an individual from a passive and narcissistic consumer to an active shaper of his or her condition according to his or her desire. It is in this process of creation that one is afforded the power to reimagine one’s place within the constraints of everyday structure. At the end of the story, communication is reestablished among the family members. The unexpressed regrets and guilt are conveyed through their reappreciation of the food they partake with each other. Meals no longer are mere obligations, but are opportunities to share individual feelings, even silent ones. The mundane and private activities of Chan’s characters are ultimately outwardly oriented and social. In this way, they are metaphorical of the performativity and politics of everyday life. This realm of the everyday, despite its personal location, is communicable and communal. As an outward symbol of a particular lifestyle, trendy commodities are readily embraced in a society like Hong Kong. The focus on objects has always been read as an inevitability of Hong Kong’s consumer culture and superficial materialism. Though these characterizations cannot be denied, this materialism is, however, also revealing of an effort to redefine a tactile world of community and human connections amid the sense of the atrophying reality and vacuity of contemporary life. The Value of Transience

Chan’s works map the epistemological space or the “structures of feeling” of Hong Kong society through recording private consumption. 41 These “consumption sites” are social centers, where everyday activities and local identity fuse. They return tactile and visceral experiences and thus the contextual reality of communities to the everyday spaces that have been made abstract by the relentless “malling” of Hong Kong’s city space. The effectiveness of

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narrating a local experience and a local belonging through listing of consumer products, as in both of Chan’s works discussed here, and the numerous picture books and memoirs, is that these things are “auratic” and steeped in history and politics, whether they are the plastic buckets in the 1960s, used during water shortage, or the Hong Kong diner staple, black tea with condensed milk. As Hong Kong enters another kind of political dependency, the commodity list Chan provides is an attempt to create a distinct Hong Kong local flavor and identity. This identity allows general participation but cannot be colonized because the objects of everyday life, especially the gustatory, are both intensely private and social and, as yet, outside of political determination. The food list in Chan’s “Taste” and the list of consumer objects in Records present a kind of checklist of Hong Kong’s social membership. Rey Chow has argued that our cultural and social identity is a sum of the objects we accumulate around us.42 Chan’s writings memorialize particular practices and things of the everyday life that create a local sentiment and identification. These are visceral responses to specific social and political conditions. Presumably, this list is immediately meaningful to those who have lived in Hong Kong for an extended period of time. In fact, it is likely the nuances and references in Chan’s works are incommunicable to someone who has not lived in Hong Kong. This general desire to distinguish a Hong Kong identity through taste, possession, and consumption behavior that we see in Chan’s works reflects a defensiveness against the hegemonic discourse of Chinese nationalism— historic culture, traditional heritage, ethnic lineage, or national essence—the universal, the unchanging, and the permanent qualities. Chan’s capturing of the culture of ephemera in her work presents an interesting counternarrative of Hong Kong, not written according to the conventional measure of the historical values of things according to their timelessness, but from the lifetime of disposable consumer objects. Everyday objects in these works are valued, precisely, for their properties of fleetingness and limited relevance to the particular daily rituals of a particular place and time. The focus on the everyday invests Hong Kong’s self-narration within the ephemeral and the specifically local and the locally meaningful. This restless pursuit of the new and the fleeting, ironically, diffuses the potency of the static state discourse and its infiltration into the everyday life. The interchangeability and disposability of trendy objects make them desirable because they surpass older things and, in turn, are replaced by newer ones. This self-destructive course of consumer culture, subjected to the fashion and taste of the day, is its demise as well as fundamental value.

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Chan’s works are among a general wave of discursive efforts of the period to displace the overdetermined narrative of 1997, which has turned Hong Kong people and Hong Kong as a place into mere symbols of Chinese national pride. In such overwhelming chauvinism, Hong Kong recedes into invisibility. The focus on the everyday life and its objects is a strategy of returning signs to material reality, and returning history to the Hong Kong people. It returns a sense of the materiality of everydayness and community to the abstract space in post-1997 Hong Kong.

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five

Body Weight, Responsible Citizenship, and Women’s Social Space

We have already seen how consumption as a way of life and citizens as consumers are complementary to Hong Kong’s society and political ideology. In this chapter, I take a closer look at the gender implication of this consumer economy, especially through the new weight-loss and beauty industries. What is the relationship between body weight, capitalism (state ideology), and social space? The simple answer to this question lies in the following factoid: In 2000, commercial airplanes consumed an extra 350 million gallons of jet fuel because of an average ten-pound increase in the body weight of their passengers. This weight increase per customer in the past decade had cost the American airline industry in the new millennium $275 million a year.1 However, the equation between women, bodyweight, and their sense of selfpositioning in society involves complex economical and political factors. The prolific newspaper columnist and film critic Shek Kei pointed out that the image of fat people in Hong Kong’s media had always been a positive one before the 1980s. They were considered cheerful and happy-go-lucky souls who also brought joy to those around them.2 One of Hong Kong’s favorite comedians, Lydia Shum (Din-Ha, 1945–2008), who started making movies in the 1950s as a girl star and worked in television till her death, had been affectionately called Fei-Fei (Fatty) and “Hoi Suhm Guo” (lit: happy-nut—Hong Kong name for pistachios). Shum was very much a symbol of contentment in the new millenium. However, perhaps because of the social and economic trials of the several years after Hong Kong’s Handover, or perhaps it was just a matter of age, Shum’s image had become more matriarchal and authoritative than cheery. Lydia Shum’s daughter, Joyce Cheng, who was considered chubby and cute as a child, was, by the 2000s, regarded as a pathetically overweight teenager. 113

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Gossip columns’ descriptions of the indulgent but overbearing mother feeding her daughter shark’s fin, abalone, and other delicacies every morning for breakfast, have become the stuff of Hong Kong’s urban legend. At sixteen in 2003, Shum’s obese daughter provoked more pity than amusement. Fat people are now no longer considered so funny, but often suffer derision as many of the society’s crises and anxiety are cathected on them. Overweight women suffer doubly, since women are also assigned much of the burden, psychological and actual, in maintaining the well-being of the consumer economy, as we have seen in the last chapter. The phenomenon of Joyce Cheng, who became the most notorious celebrity and the weight-loss industry’s poster girl in 2004, reveals the workings of this social logic. The “inspiring” story of Joyce’s weight loss can also be read as a tale of capitalist promise transcribed onto the experience of the feminine body. In the first section of this chapter, I will examine the issue of women’s body weight, the beauty industry, and its relationship with Hong Kong’s political and economic conditions. I will begin by examining women’s “physical” role in the capitalist conditions. This is embodied by the figure of Joyce, her weight issue, and the general fervor for weight loss and aesthetic self-definition in the Hong Kong society. In the second section, I look at other creative representations of women’s body, examining in particular the independent film Ho Yuk (Let’s Love Hong Kong, 2002), written and directed by the female director, Yau Ching. Through this film, I explore the issue of women’s social space in Hong Kong’s economic climate. The New Feminine Shape and the New Economic Conditions

As we have seen in chapter 1, 2002–2003 was a watershed year for Hong Kong for many reasons: the unexpected deaths of four major superpop idols who embodied Hong Kong’s golden era, the SARS epidemic, the economic slump, and the July 1 mass demonstration that defeated the reviled Article 23 (the Antisubversion Act). One year later, on July 1 2004, there was another anniversary march, reflecting Hong Kong people’s continued sense of political disenfranchisement. Exacerbating the mood of discontent and even anger was the perceived Beijing intervention in local democratic movements with its summary rejection of Hong Kong people’s demand for universal suffrage, as well as the gradually narrowing space for free speech. Within this year too, many important officials of the chief executive’s cabinet had had to resign under public pressure over their poor performances. Hoping to temper Hong Kong people’s disaffection, China’s central government in Beijing approved

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package after package of economic privileges for Hong Kong. The CEPA (Closer Economic Partnership Agreement) benefits Hong Kong businesses and industries by opening up South China to investors. The loosening of individual travel restrictions encourages massive numbers of Mainland tourists to the city, bolstering the retail and hospitality industries left flagging from the SARS epidemic. While many attempted to maintain their political bearings and values amid all the twists and turns in the debates and negotiations in Hong Kong politics, the dizzying crowds of tourists, and the economic roller coaster, the most memorable icon of these couple of years was Lydia Shum ‘s daughter, Joyce Cheng. The story of her struggle with body weight stood out amid the economic, social, and political turmoil of the year. Joyce’s story became a parable or an embodied articulation of some basic principles of life in Hong Kong that caught the imagination of many. At the end of the summer of 2003, when Hong Kong was still reeling from its recent battle with the SARS epidemic and jubilant about the defeat of Article 23, Joyce, weighing 103 kilos then, announced that she was going to embark on a weightloss program with the help of Chueng Yuk-Shan, the doyenne of Hong Kong’s beauty and slimming industry.3 The media guessed immediately that this was another advertising gimmick for Cheung’s company. Both parties, however, denied that there was any commercial transaction. Cheung said she was merely trying to help a determined young girl to fulfill her dreams. Joyce returned to Canada at the end of her summer vacation to begin her diet and beauty regime. Except for the occasional fuzzy snapshots captured by paparazzi, most Hong Kong people were not privy to her progress until a year later, in July 2004, when she returned to Hong Kong on summer vacation, to unveil her new body. Forty kilos lighter, Joyce instantaneously became the most newsworthy celebrity, her image adorning almost every single cover of local gossip and entertainment news magazines. It turns out that she had been working on a book documenting her weight-loss odyssey during the year as well. The book became the hottest selling item at the Hong Kong Book Expo—the world’s largest annual Chinese-language books expo—that opened that month. She was there to sign copies and to receive her many admiring fans. All fifteen thousand copies of the initial printing of her book were sold out within a week of its publication. Weight loss is a huge industry in Hong Kong. Movie and television stars are paid tens of thousands of dollars to be spokespersons for different beauty and fitness companies. Dozens of aging movie actresses and minor starlets have jumpstarted their moribund careers by demonstrating their miraculous

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transformation using these products. Celebrity mothers demonstrate how one does not have to sacrifice beauty and sex appeal for childbirth. Giant billboards of a fifty-something actress in a bikini were the talk of the town. No amount of public warning from the medical establishment of their possible harm to health has been able to quell the public enthusiasm for the instantaneous weight-loss programs. Even reports from the normally respected, trusted, and influential Hong Kong Consumer Council on the lack of evidence of the effectiveness of these products had been unable to dissuade women from their belief in the efficacy of these products and regimes. Women participate in great frenzy in the weight-loss programs whether they are overweight or not. In fact, a study by the Hong Kong Department of Health, the “Public Health and Epidemiology Report,” published in September 2004, discovered that 15.8% of the female population in Hong Kong was below normal weight calculated according to BMI (Body Mass Index) standards.4 This means, one in every six women in Hong Kong was underweight. The situation among women between the ages of twenty and twenty-four was particularly serious with 38% of these women underweight. Among these underweight women, only 12.1% acknowledged their weight problem, while 66.7% of them did not think of themselves as underweight at all. Of course, even without the Handover of Hong Kong to China, the bodybeauty industry would still boom and excite; but this driving, almost masochistic fervor to alter oneself is especially, if not completely, a postmillennial phenomenon. These public body spectacles of physical transformation and all the stories that come with this experience capture the imagination of many women in Hong Kong because they embody fantasies, conscious or unconscious, of how unfulfilled potentials and unexpressed desires, buried just below the surface, are awaiting to be uncovered. The marketing of weight-loss products is often through a particular celebrity icon whose very person embodies a story. Infomercials incorporate personal testimonies of participants of weight-loss programs, their struggles with weight, their problems in life brought about by their weight, and their new lives after their physical transformation. The failure to govern the body is related directly to failures in life, from professional to romantic, these usually being conflated. In this sense, the beauty industry is, in reality, not just selling a beauty product, but a complete life plot as well. Joyce’s weight-loss diary fits directly into this strategy of marketing of personal stories. It is not just about losing weight, but life transformation, of how a heavy or unsuccessful and unhappy woman finally reveals to the world her true glory and unrecognized

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potential, to be publicly adored. Joyce’s celebration by so many people who vicariously shared her success, turning from duckling to swan, shows that what is important is not merely the number of kilos she lost or how, but the story of triumph over adversity through hard work. Through her, the foundational myth of Hong Kong has once again been proven true (fig. 5.1. Weight-loss mania). The reliance on celebrity narratives or personalities to inspire lifestyle consumerism, such as the Joyce phenomenon, creates a curious kind of collectivity. Joyce’s weight-loss saga created a following of fans.5 Many different beauty and fitness companies depend on fan effects surrounding the celebrity spokespersons to generate attention and excitement for the products. According to William Kelly, fans activities are a kind of “agitated consumption.”6 The peculiarity of this kind of consumption is that it involves performance or production. There is no passive consumer. The weight-loss groups, at least those organized through the infomercials, like fan clubs, create a community of shared concern and commitment.7 Those who watch the weight-loss infomercials or pursue Joyce’s story are not unaware of the artifi-

Fig. 5.1: Weight-loss mania A stall at the Hong Kong products expo in 2004 advertising with Joyce Cheng as the poster girl, modeling her new body.

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cially constructed or induced camaraderie. Ironically, as Daniel Miller points out, in fan culture, “to be a consumer is to possess consciousness that one is living through objects and images not of one’s creation.” That is to say, the belief that thinness and beauty are the solution to all one’s problems is what consumers consciously and deliberately buy into despite their awareness of its fallacy. Borrowing Miller’s logic, one might explain that “[c]onsumption then may not be about choice, but rather the sense that we have no choice.”8 However the lack of choice is understood in Hong Kong, whether it is the loss of autonomy as individuals are thrust along the inevitable trajectory of history, or the lack of individual political power in the increasingly constricting civil space, it is compensated by a rigorous culture of consumption as a way of exercising individual choices. As seen in the idea of “shopping out of love” after SARS in the last chapter, there is a social ethos that political impotence is easier to accept if the economy is vibrant, and exercising consumer choices are a way of, if not changing, at least defining the social or cultural landscape.9 In a survey conducted among two thousand women by the Hong Kong YWCA in 2004, women between the ages of thirty and fifty-four gave themselves an average 6.4 points out of 10 in the assessment of their physical shape. Most of these women had a BMI between 21.23 and 22.43, well within the normal BMI of 18.5 to 22.9. Among these two thousand women interviewed, about 20% had used various diet drugs and 36% of them had tried losing weight. On average, these women spent 18.4% of their monthly income or HKD1212.4 (about USD155) on beauty products, including HKD345.3 (about USD45) on weight-loss products and HKD867.1 (about USD105) on facial products.10 Special spas and clinics provide services for body contouring, body-fat elimination, breast enlargement, and “detoxification” of the body system through nonsurgical procedures. They also treat various complexion “problems.” Laser beams of different velocity promise to erase age spots, freckles, and wrinkles. Chemical peel and dermabrasion procedures correct skin dullness, eliminate blemishes, and lighten skin tone. Numerous over-the-counter supplements and tonics in pharmacies promise slimness and youthfulness. There are pills and creams for breast enlargement, cellulite elimination, and purging of water retention. Cosmetic companies push their various creams and powders to control skin oil and sweat, brighten dark circles under eyes, bring rosy-ness to sallow cheeks and lift sagging and wrinkled skin. Hairproduct companies draw women’s attention to their thin hair, flakiness, dullness, tangling, and graying. Women are accosted multiple times everyday about their physical flaws by the relentless and deafening sales pitches around

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the city, blaring or flashing on the mass media, on billboards, on neon signs, and plasma screens everywhere.11 Not one thing about a woman’s natural body is good or beautiful or even acceptable without some medical or chemical intervention. Nowhere is the direct relationship between the violence of capitalist strategies and its claim on women’s bodies more apparent than this hysteria over the state of women’s appearance in the city. This is not to suggest that capitalism’s assault on Hong Kong women was a new phenomenon. At the height of Hong Kong’s societal affluence in the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, most of the interest in women’s appearance seemed to be focused on the accumulation of brandname apparels and accessories. Owning brandname items was a class assertion. In the new era, through technology, one can alter one’s physical form and change what one would have, at one point, considered inevitable conditions or processes of nature. Perhaps one could even claim that there is a new “democratization of beauty.” However, this “democratization” is concurrently bound to the commodity culture and the market economy that condition individual desires and affects toward one’s body. Joyce’s body is disciplined according to an aesthetic ideal largely promoted by the forces of the beauty industry. In other words, this notion of correct physicality is very much a creation of capitalist aesthetics. The citizens are “made over” according to the terms of market ideal. This market-ideal becomes a symbolic law that regulates consumer consciousness and behavior, turning them into ideal consumer-citizens. The success of the beauty industry in Hong Kong creates a significant tool for regulating bodies and disciplining women’s habits and behavior. Through these chemical mediations, the female body is shaped according to a market standard and the social demands of capitalism. Shaping up Citizens

In the previous chapter, I argue that there is a direct equation between being a good Hong Kong citizen and being a good consumer, since consumption is more than individual participation, but is a “state” project of survival.12 As the “I love Hong Kong” shopping campaign shows, so intricate is the link between individual’s daily life and the economic system that one’s action has private as well as public implications and one’s citizenship shifts between one’s private and public roles. As a civic duty, it might be said that consumption has come under careful state directives. If the Beijing Central Government has so far been unable to inspire nationalistic sentiments in Hong Kong, the cultivation

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of shared social values and codes among people through consumption is an important by-product of the consumer economy. As Canclini argues, “commodities and consumption [serve] to give political order to each society. Consumption is a process in which desires are converted into demands and socially regulated acts.”13 In Hong Kong, consumption as a collective project toward prosperity creates a collective identity as it promises the continuing status of Hong Kong as a cosmopolitan and international city. While commodities sustain the biological and symbolic needs of the people, the marketplace is where sociocultural interactions take place, providing a context where people might encounter one another.14 Insofar as symbolic, juridical, and political decisions organize consumption in Hong Kong and insofar as consumption intersects the public and the private in everyday life, consumption is the foundation of citizenship. If Nelson is correct in her study of consumer culture in South Korea, arguing that “consumer practices and consumer images have become distinctly gendered, and these gendered images feed back into the definition and allocation of social and political roles and responsibility,”15 the questions here are what role do Hong Kong women play in this new economy and how are they gendered in this new economy based on luxury consumption? It would not be far off the mark to claim that Hong Kong women lead the consumer market in Hong Kong and internationally. Hong Kong women’s importance in the consumer economy lies, not only in their consumption power, but also in their role as trendsetters and vanguards of markets, leading consumption habits in East and South East Asia and particularly in China and among the large Asian diasporic communities in North America. They thus have an important function in facilitating the opening up of markets. This has a lot to do with the powerful influence of Hong Kong’s entertainment industry in these regions. Many products are tried out and established in Hong Kong before their launch in South East Asia and Mainland China. The recent weight-loss and beauty fervor, for example, has spread to the coastal cities of China from Hong Kong. Many Hong Kong businesses are opening branches of their spas and treatment centers in China. This is the reason why, as I mentioned in the previous chapter, major international fashion houses set up headquarters in Hong Kong for their long-range development in Asia. From this perspective, Hong Kong, women’s contribution to market development and the economy of Hong Kong as well as worldwide, is remarkable.

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However, because of this crucial role in the consumer economy, it is also necessary that Hong Kong women, whatever their achievements, maintain appropriate, market-approved feminine images and habits. That is, women have to “look feminine” and “want to” look feminine so that they consume according to their designation, so that they can support the mainstream market. This creates a strictly dimorphic and heterosexual culture in which women look and behave a certain way and men, another. This behavioral conditioning according to a heterosexual norm renders invisible certain groups, especially the lesbian population. (I will return to this issue in the second half of the chapter.) The popular image of the female citizen of Hong Kong generated through various commercial and government venues is ubiquitously that of a middleor upper-middle class professional woman somewhere in her thirties. She is ferociously achieving and exceedingly discerning. In the immensely popular 1999 movie Needing You, directed by Johnny To and Wai Ka-Fai, a simple office romance with a typical Pygmalion twist, for example, a midlevel OL16 in her late twenties or early thirties, who had been dumped by her boyfriend and overlooked by other men because of her shyness and physical awkwardness, is “made over” by her playboy boss. He falls in love with his “project” after uncovering her inherent loveliness. After much misunderstanding and missed opportunities, they finally end up together. Before the discovery of her potential sexual power, the heroine embodies a stereotype of Hong Kong women— professional, highly trained, efficient, financially independent, overly sober, serious and lacking in sexual desirability. Despite the happy ending, the film presents a rather condescending view of Hong Kong women. However, judging by the box office success of this film and its popularity among woman viewers, it probably captures a degree of reality in Hong Kong women’s self-perception. The image of Hong Kong women as capable, professional, and economically powerful is corroborated by social figures. While many sociologists have noted that women are usually more vulnerable in terms of their employment opportunities during economic downturns, this situation is the reverse in Hong Kong.17 In a 2004 Hong Kong census publication on gender issues, it is reported that at the height of Hong Kong’s economic troubles in 2003, while the male unemployment rate rose to an all-time high of 9.35%, women’s was 6.2%. While male self-employment figures dropped 6%, the number of women entrepreneurs rose 2% from the previous year to 8.2% (28,500 persons). On average, women professionals were paid the same salaries as their male counterparts. Though the number of female full-time homemakers still

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reigned high with 67,550 persons, the number of male full-time homemakers rose 25% from 2002, from 9700 to 12,200 persons. This was out of a population of about 6.7 million. 18 There was also an increase in university enrollment among women in 2003. Woman students made up 55.1% of the total university student body. Over 70% of the students of the humanities departments were women. However, even in professional schools and science programs, such as medical, dental, and physician assistants, woman students made up 63.3% of the total student body. In the sciences, which had always boasted a male majority, the percentage of male students dropped from 65% in 1996 to 61% in 2003.19 All these figures might indicate an adjustment or disturbance in the gender power balance in favor of women by the end of the first millennium. However, if the statistics were accurate representations of reality, women’s social ascension in this period also corresponded with Hong Kong women, as a collective body, gradually losing their previous feminine desirability, that is, their status as women. In other words, the film Needing You was quite on the mark in its representation of the societal view of professional women. In 2003, there were only 939 men to every thousand women in Hong Kong. It is expected that by 2033, for every thousand women in Hong Kong, there will only be 698 men.20 This situation of gender disproportion is aggravated by the fact that the majority of migrant laborers in Hong Kong are women. In the state of such unfavorable gender ratio, what is more troubling for many Hong Kong women is the perceived competition from their Mainland counterparts. Their endangered position, as popularly perceived, is captured in Chan Kwun-Chung’s novella “Nothing Ever Happened” (1999).21 The narrator, an arrogant but successful Hong Kong businessman, makes a comparison between Hong Kong and Mainland women: I was pleasantly surprised by this kind of Mainland women. They are truly determined and able to “hold up half the sky” in China. They are open, adaptive, and fearless and will actively pursue their happiness. They have long ago broken the stereotype of women. This is the stage to which Mainland women have been able to progress. Pity the Hong Kong women who are still lost in their dreams. Hong Kong women are independent and have their own opinions about things. They are straightforward in speech. They give all at work. They are androgynous. They are trendy in appearance, but when it comes to sex, they are very conservative. Many probably lack proper sexual nourishment for long stretches of time. They retain idealism about

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men. They fantasize about men being faithful to them. They are intolerant of men having more than one sexual partner at a time. That’s why Hong Kong women are destined to be disappointed. They are destined to lack competitiveness.22

Hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong married men have established secondary households or extramarital domestic alliances in China. By 1997, it was estimated that 300,000 men (especially working-class men) have such secondary households in China.23 In 2003, 17,686 Hong Kong men married women from Mainland China, constituting 45% of the total number of Hong Kong men getting married that year. 24 In an interview, Mr. Wong, one of these men who met his wife in China, said that Hong Kong women were great, but their demands and expectations of daily life were very high, creating immense pressure for men. In contrast, Mainland women were simpler.25 Competition with Mainland women is alluded to as a factor of Hong Kong women’s lack of suitors. Carolyn Cartier pointed out that the stereotypical Mainland woman had already been considered an immense threat to family organization and much resented by Hong Kong (and Taiwan) women.26 The fact that there is an annual influx of Mainland women to Hong Kong on visitors’ visas or illegally to work as prostitutes does not help their image among Hong Kong women as their sexual rivals. (In 2004, 15,727 Mainland women who went to Hong Kong either through visitor visas or illegally were apprehended and deported for prostitution.)27 The gain in importance in the public and economic arena means for Hong Kong women a corresponding loss of sexual power, expressed more directly as a loss of domestic, or even feminine, status as women. The effect of the census figures is less celebratory of the achievement of women than threatening and disciplining. The same census document that celebrates the entrepreneurial achievements of women also contains negative information about Hong Kong women’s low reproductive rate and decreasing chances of marriage. According to the Hong Kong Census Bureau figures, Hong Kong’s birth rate is 925 per ten thousand woman of childbearing age in 2003, the lowest among the advanced capitalist nations, including Japan, England, and the United States, with their respective figures of 1,320, 1,670, and 2,080 per ten thousand. Maria Milagros López argues that there is an undeniable connection between reproduction in women and women’s economic performance in a capitalist economy. She points out that in the politics of reproduction the constraint in

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childbearing among women could be read as an internalization of the capitalist strategy of permanent job readiness, whether spatially or temporally.28 Hong Kong women are caught in a strong social ambivalence toward their high economic productivity and low reproductive capability. They are both necessary and resented. Regardless of what the actual causes are for women’s low incentive to bear children in Hong Kong, it is socially understood, as evidenced in how this figure is reported in Ming Pao Daily, one of Hong Kong’s most respected newspapers, as an indicator of the undesirability of Hong Kong women as spouses and mothers. The more economically productive they are, the more irrelevant they are as women. In fact, all the maternal chores and customary work of a wife are often loaded upon the less educated and less skilled new immigrant women from Mainland China who go to Hong Kong via marriage visas, or “outsourced” to nannies and domestic workers, as even sex is outsourced to women from China, Thailand, and other poorer nations who survive as sex workers in Hong Kong. In other words, Hong Kong women have become dispensable as women, defined according to very crude social measures of womanhood. Bodily “perfection” as a new social demand on women preys on their vulnerability as women. As they lose hold of the domestic realm, that traditional province of womanhood, women look for other ways to reassert their femininity. The fact that more and more Hong Kong men are finding domestic and sexual solace among foreign women is a complex issue. It speaks to the by and large still significant economic difference between Hong Kong women and Mainland women. Even in their most selfish perspectives, no Hong Kong woman can ignore many of these Mainland women’s extremely compromised and exploited conditions as companions, or worse, as prostitutes in Hong Kong. Even as legal wives, because these marriages are often out of economic and other pragmatic considerations rather than romantic compulsions, these women are particularly vulnerable to abuses by their husbands.29 The deliberate body modification of Hong Kong women directly relates to the anxiety of Hong Kong women over sexual or feminine desirability. This relies on the constructed difference between them and other women, economically, culturally and aesthetically. Hong Kong women have to be more of everything than their Mainland counterparts—more fashionable, more professional, more educated, wealthier, prettier, slimmer, and so forth. To be thin means to be wanted, not so much desired as a sexual object, but in demand as a successful professional. It means being busy, occupied, wealthy, and hence, wanted. Whereas being fat is everything opposite. Of course, this kind of

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application of moral values on body weight and physical aesthetics is nothing new. However, in Hong Kong, this kind of judgment of and by women of themselves is also fueled by a need to differentiate themselves aesthetically, that is, culturally and economically, from Mainland women. To be extremely thin is to give up on sensuality and sensuousness and all the values associated with it, such as slothfulness, coarseness, and sexual promiscuity that are often associated with Mainland women. Citizen Joyce

There is a parallel between the situation of Hong Kong women in regard to Mainland women, and the situation of Hong Kong vis-à-vis Mainland cities. As many Chinese cities have developed rapidly in the last decade, especially Shanghai and those of the Pearl River Delta, which are now the targeted zones for development, Hong Kong’s position and international status as the most important city in southern China are slowly being eroded. This resulted in Hong Kong’s desperate attempt to revive its tourist industry and to develop ever faster, more efficient and newer infrastructure and facilities to make it more attractive and competitive as a city.30 This often meant correspondingly reducing resources in other public services. Already, after the 1997 Asian economic crisis, as in many other Asian nations, Hong Kong’s government attempted to impose a strict structural adjustment program, which called for the rolling back of government services, reduction of the number of civil servants, raises in public service fees, and cutbacks in welfare. Metaphorically, at least, the much-streamlined female population in Hong Kong was aesthetically in line with the HKSAR government’s new leaner and meaner public programs. As such, women and women’s bodies are deeply, if subconsciously, in correspondence with the economic and political reality of Hong Kong. It is for this reason that Joyce’s weight-loss miracle fueled citywide attention. This story is a familiar personal tale made public. Joyce’s weight problem was frequently assumed in the press to be a result of her childhood unhappiness as the offspring of divorced television celebrities. She grew up with an overbearing mother who compensated for her daughter’s loss of a father with extraordinary material indulgence. Her miraculous seventy-pound weight loss is regarded as an impressive act of determination and willpower unusual in a young woman. Joyce’s story resonated with the collective experience in Hong Kong, constructed or real. The metaphoric representation of Hong Kong as an offspring of powerful but, finally, divorced

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parents—China and Britain—is trite but persistent.31 In this narrative, just as Joyce had been bloated on rich food and delicacies, Hong Kong grew up under the domineering influence of an oversized mother China after the gradual withdrawal of the father figure (Great Britain) and develops all kinds of complexes about its identity while reveling in its material abundance. The fact that Joyce’s story had a good ending, which corresponded to the rebound of Hong Kong’s economy, made her an even more popular icon. However, paralleling so well with Hong Kong’s economic situation, Joyce’s story had a cathartic effect for Hong Kong people, which was an unexpected boon for the state ideology machine. Beauty and femininity are often totally antipathetic to politics. The beautiful body is often the apolitical body. Joyce’s phenomenon that illustrates the hysteria over fatness and the general fixation on the body also reveals how political discontent had been redirected to individual dissatisfaction with the self. Women’s bodies act as filters that separate out political desire from daily desire. Women thus absorb a lot of the social resentment with their bodies. In other words, the discipline of Joyce in her weight-loss program is part of the “biopolitics” in the capitalist ideology of Hong Kong society. If Joyce is a symbol of Hong Kong, her new silhouette reflects the post1997, neoliberal city and the triumph of the free-market economy. This triumph of the market over consumers’ rights can be seen in the diminishing authority of the once all-powerful Hong Kong Consumer Council. What was most talked about in Joyce’s experience were not the usual celebrity paraphernalia such as fancy fashion, personal charisma, style, unusual beauty, or talent. It was the narrative of weight loss enhanced by her family melodrama. The most significant part of this saga is that, at the success of Joyce’s makeover, she regained her father’s approval and attention. She appeared on television with both her divorced parents together, as a family. It was reported that her father had proudly reclaimed his estranged daughter, praising her beauty and achievement publicly; the mother moved into the background, admitting her overindulgence and pledging her support for her daughter’s continued struggle with her weight. One can read infinite meaning into the drama of this most famous family of the season. As a political metaphor, the retreating mother and the increasingly prominent father, parallel the declining influence of the pro-China political faction in Hong Kong and the return of the old British-trained bureaucrats, as superficially reflected in the resignation of Tung Chee Hwa and the naming of the new CE, Donald Tsang. However, most importantly, Joyce’s story illustrates the restoration of

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normativity on all levels—aesthetic ideal, heterosexual family ideal, and ultimately, paternal authority. The new prosperity had been literally generated and shaped through women’s bodies, revealing the importance of women in Hong Kong society and their succumbing to patriarchal norms and social roles, just as Hong Kong as a city succumbs to the logic of the monolith of Chinese political ideology. Embedded in the fans’ embrace of Joyce is women’s contradictory celebration of their economic power and lament for the physical exaction of success. This sacrifice is equivalent to the cost of the city’s body politic in its quest for “stability and prosperity.” Women’s Social Space

In the primacy of capitalist transactions in the daily life in Hong Kong, where is women’s social space, especially when they are increasingly marginalized in the domestic sphere? How do they deal with the assault on their physical beings under the aesthetic criteria of capitalist consumerism? At the turn of the new millennium, there are a number of oral histories or collected writings of and by women of different age groups to document their daily lives, sexuality, and aspirations.32 The increased interest in “ordinary” women is a subtle indication of an unvoiced crisis of womanhood. Yau Ching’s Ho Yuk (English title: Let’s Love Hong Kong), which literally means, “restless,” is a filmic expression of this sense of crisis of femaleness in Hong Kong. As we have seen, there is a deep connection between capitalist economic strategies and the market claims on women’s bodies, whether it is for work readiness or to reflect capitalist aesthetics. Women’s bodies are medically, chemically and surgically conditioned in this feverish trend of body altering. Hong Kong women seem to have internalized the global economic trend for a streamlined government. In these terms, thinness is an embodied statement of the obedience of the female citizens. Those who attempt to escape the capitalistic “disciplinary force fields,” such as the protagonists of the film Ho Yuk, are ostracized and alienated. This film is regarded as Hong Kong’s first lesbian feature film, because the three main characters, Chan Kwokchan, Zero, and Nicole, are lesbians or express attraction to other female bodies. Lesbians are considered deviants in Hong Kong society’s heterosexual reproductive normativity. If, as we have seen, heterosexual women have literally been carved to fit into a tightly prefigured social space, this issue of space is magnified for lesbians. Unlike gay men, who, for better or worse, have been

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subjects of numerous films or literary works, lesbians are invisible in Hong Kong. However, this condition of invisibility, though much more exaggerated, is not dissimilar in form to that of the childless, unmarried women or women whose domestic roles have been “outsourced.” These women are a nonexistent social group, no matter what their economic contribution to Hong Kong, because they have no specific role within the heterosexual domestic domain. They have economic power without social space. They cannot be articulated through traditional domestic discourse and are, therefore, “homeless.” Seen in this way, lesbians are female hyperboles. Not to diminish its importance as a film about lesbian issues, Ho Yuk, with its exaggerated descriptions of social conditions and the lesbian protagonists, is also a film about the situation of Hong Kong women in general, but amplified. Situated in an unspecified near future when real employment and housing become impossibilities, Ho Yuk presents a dark and pessimistic projection of post-1997 Hong Kong. The city, as opposed to the usual representation as a gleaming, ultramodern metropolis, is depicted as dilapidated, gloomy, and bizarre. Of the characters, Chan Kwokchan functions as a fulcrum that animates the other two, Zero and Nicole. Kwokchan (Guocan), whose name literally means “[Chinese] national product,” is a model for an erotic website. She strikes provocative poses and masquerades in wigs, hats, and suggestive feminine costumes. Her work identity is so covert that not even her mother knows what she does. Kwokchan and her parents live in a tiny government one-room flat where there is absolutely no privacy and no personal space. Despite her colorful virtual appearances on the web, which are playful and provocative, in reality she is wan, melancholic, and withdrawn. In real life, Kwokchan is also androgynous in appearance: Her hair is short like a man’s and she wears clothes that totally disguise her female body. It is ironic that Kwokchan should become an erotic icon. She leads a very schizophrenic life. Though her existence in the mainstream society is invisible, clandestine, and removed from others, it is her sensuality and sexuality that connect her, flesh and body, to others, albeit virtually. In this alternate reality, Kwokchan is flamboyant, multifaceted, and welcoming. She is as palpable in this medium as she is ungraspable in real life; her virtual existence is as expansive as her real life is limited. Her two personalities, the physical and the virtual, are irreconcilable. These two levels of simultaneous existence confound the other two women, Nicole and Zero, who are attracted to her image, either on the Internet or in person.

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The political metaphors surrounding Kwokchan in this film are elaborate. Kwokchan, as her name implies, is a melancholic representation of a Hong Kong person who lives with the burden of the nation. By the mere fact that she lives in Hong Kong, she is expected to embrace a certain Chinese identity when nowhere in her life is this identity relevant, except, ironically, when she puts on her China doll lingerie and wig for her website masquerade. One feels the oppressiveness of this burden as Kwokchan carries herself wearily and cheerlessly through her daily routine. Her only hobby is to view apartments listed for sale, looking for the dream home that she will probably never be able to afford to own. If her mother, an overweight and somewhat coarse and domestically inclined woman, is the metaphorical motherland, Kwokchan is totally disconnected from her. Her father, the metaphorical England, is barely present in the film (shades of Joyce). Kwokchan fits uneasily into the inherited world of her parents. Kwokchan’s mother, a fat, sensuous woman, is constantly preparing and eating food. Though obviously she cares about Kwokchan, she does not seem to have any sense of her daughter at all. Kwokchan’s father, whose presence in the film is barely more than an inarticulate, lumbering animal in the flat, seems totally detached from her, as she is to him. In fact, though not hostile to each other, they barely notice each other at all. The huddle of a flat that they share together is no more than a place where Kwokchan sleeps restlessly at night, occupying a bed space on the upper level of a bunk bed. If Kwokchan’s mother is the archetypical housewife, Kwokchan is exactly her opposite. While the mother is rigorous and substantial and comfortably ensconced in her domestic environment, Kwokchan is wraithlike, withdrawn, and is ill at ease at home. Kwokchan notices and compares her mother’s snugness in her space with her own discomfort. At one point in the film, she watched admiringly the way her mother ate her food with sensual relish, but when her mother offered her some, Kwokchan had no appetite. Unlike her mother’s robustness, Kwokchan constantly complains of a headache or lack of appetite. Her mother’s world is grounded and completely limited to the little flat, especially the kitchen where she is constantly preparing food. However, Kwokchan’s world is outside where she roams restlessly like a spirit in search of final peace. We never see Kwokchan relaxing at home. We never even see her sitting down at home. She complains to her mother that the world seems to move nonstop around her, perhaps implying her frustration at being unable to find a foothold in this fast-paced world that is always eluding her.

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Kwokchan’s desire “to be home” can be seen in many ways. Her mother, obviously noticing her daughter’s pallor and unease at home, tried to anchor her down with substantial domestic tasks. She tried to teach Kwokchan how to make radish cakes, explaining that this was a traditional dish that Kwokchan should know how to make, implying Kwokchan’s inherent domestic role and even national responsibility in procreation and continuation of the family. She took Kwokchan’s hands and immersed them into the massive bowl of sticky mixture, teaching her how to grab, knead, feel the texture, and work the dough. The sensuality of handling the dough reflects the mother’s substantial immersion in life. However, despite having her hands held by her mother as they mixed the dough together, Kwokchan appeared forced and distracted. Kwokchan does not necessarily resist such domesticity. In fact she admires her mother’s dedication to it and feels sad that she cannot participate fully in it. In one of the final scenes of the movie, Kwokchan climbs down from the bunk bed that she shares with her mother to lie down next to her. By taking hold of the voluminousness of her mother, Kwokchan hopes to embrace life fully and physically. Her unhappiness changes to contentment as she cuddles with her mother, revealing her yearning to embrace fully the corporeality of this life. One of the characters attracted to Kwokchan’s virtual performance is Nicole, a successful executive who lives alone in a large empty house furnished with multiple television and computer screens. Nicole spends a lot of time in a pub where she has superficial conversations with a few gay male friends and expatriates. At home, she spends her time accessing Kwokchan’s pornographic websites and masturbating to her image. At the end of the film, she encounters the real Kwokchan on the street, who, typically, ignores her approaches. Zero, the third character is on the opposite end of the social spectrum from Nicole. She squats in an abandoned cinema, occupying one of the seats there with many others. She literally lives shoulder-to-shoulder with her neighbors in the theater, climbing over many people to get to her seat every night. Nevertheless, crowdedness and proximity among people do not translate to real relationship and intimacy, which seems only to exist in the virtual reality or imagination. Zero spies Kwokchan’s image on her neighbor’s computer screen. Before this discovery of Kwokchan’s work identity, she had met her by chance while working as a real estate agent, showing an apartment to a client, while Kwokchan was being shown the same apartment by another agent. After the initial meeting, intrigued by her, Zero started following her.

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For whatever reason, political, social, or biological, these three characters have chosen not to participate in Hong Kong’s mainstream heterosexual social organization. Zero’s homelessness, Kwokchan’s lack of personal space, and Nicole’s unease in her house (to the point of hiring a Feng Shui master to evaluate her space), all articulate the condition of being out of place for “unconventional” women in Hong Kong’s society. They weave in and out of the society silently and unnoticeably. None of the three women in the film leaves any mark in the world around them. Their clandestine identity, the secret life, the uneasiness and homelessness describe the situation of lesbian life in Hong Kong. The intense loneliness of all three characters dominates the atmosphere of the entire film. The irony of the consumer economy, as we have seen in the previous section, is that women “disguise” themselves according to a particular norm of femininity in order to be seen. It is only when she is also recognized socially as a woman that she becomes of value in this economy. This is most exemplified by Kwokchan’s situation. The virtual version of herself in her work life relies totally on her physical charms and sensuality. She is a commodity in Hong Kong’s marketplace where her value is determined by her ability to masquerade the feminine. Kwokchan does have a sensuous side and a sexual life. She regularly seeks the services of a sex worker. However, despite their genuine affection for each other, Kwokchan insists on paying her even when the woman tries to refuse payment. Their relationship can never be normalized; it can never go beyond the hotel rooms. However, by insisting on paying for sexual service, Kwokchan regularizes her own relationship with the world. She turns from being a sex commodity to becoming a consumer. Instead of being an object of other people’s fantasy, she attains subject status by owning a fantasy. This is probably the reason why she resists Zero and Nicole’s approaches. To give in to them is to return to her role as an object. While as a lesbian or a virtual erotic model her existence has no weight and reality, Kwokchan’s act of sexual consumption substantiates her being. In this way, we can also understand Nicole’s need to be a sex consumer by her constantly accessing Kwokchan’s image on the website. Nicole is a Chinese from abroad settling in Hong Kong for her work. She is equally fluent speaking to her friends in English or speaking to a Feng Shui master in a northern Chinese dialect, but not Cantonese that is commonly spoken in Hong Kong. Nicole’s success in the business world does not bring her social acceptance. Suspended in different pasts and cultures, she seems to have trouble settling

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comfortably into the Hong Kong society. Not being able to immerse herself into the everyday life of the city, she surrounds herself in her empty house with images of artificial intimacy brought to her through multiple screens and monitors. As an act of consumption, Nicole exerts utmost control over her choice of goods. Her masturbation also affirms her own substantiality and corporeality in a society that does not “love” or even notice lesbians and other unmarried women. The Feng Shui master Nicole hires to evaluate her space tells her that the numerous monitors in the living room affect the “chi” of her place. Through their conversation, they discover that they have family from the same part of China and can speak the same dialect. Like Kwokchan’s mother who extends a family embrace to Kwokchan through teaching her how to cook a traditional dish, the Feng Shui master attempts to bridge Nicole’s detachment from society through affirming their common ancestral roots, without knowing that familial order is precisely that which alienates both Nicole and Kwokchan from society. Nicole’s vicarious living through the virtual images reflected on her monitors and screens compensates for her lack of real relationships beyond a few equally alienated drinking friends at the pub and her business associates. Because of her sense of disconnectedness from mainstream society, her house is not a home and is not the space where she feels comfortable. It is only a vessel for her fantasies when she spends her time in pursuit of a virtual life. At the end of the movie, when she chances upon Kwokchan on the street, she tries to reconcile her dichotomized world by making the real Kwokchan correspond to her virtual idol. By refusing her advance, Kwokchan denies Nicole a way home. In contrast to Nicole’s brooding alienation, Zero is a happy-go-lucky young woman who engages in a series of odd jobs in the film. Zero owns nothing, but what she carries on her back in a backpack. She has no obvious family or friends or any kind of human bonds and leads a starkly existential life. Every evening, she returns “home” to her seat in an abandoned cinema to read her mail, go through her few personal effects, and read the newspaper for new jobs for the following day. There seem to be a few dogs and cats she feeds when she comes “home” to the cinema. One is not sure whether these are her pets or are merely fellow lodgers there. Zero develops a fascination for Kwokchan and follows her around. However, her most concrete moments with Kwokchan are always when they pass each other, each on their way to somewhere else. As a real estate agent, Zero passes through spaces that will eventually become someone else’s homes. She changes jobs all the time and is constantly in transit.

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In her different jobs, she facilitates exchanges of commodities from one side to another. She chases after a cipher of a woman whose most physical and expressive moments are virtual. Zero owns nothing, while things and people flow by or through her without stopping. Like the others, Zero is rejected by society. Her situation seems the direst among the three. Her living condition is appalling. She is completely alone and, not having any stable employment, her livelihood is precarious. However, among the three, Zero is paradoxically, the least affected by her lack of home or security and most able to retain some sense of equanimity. The scene in which Zero first meets Kwokchan illustrates the difference between them. When they meet in an apartment being shown to prospective buyers, Zero is acting as a real estate agent for someone while Kwokchan is the client of another agent. Their opposite attitudes toward life are clearly displayed in their respective alignment in this transaction. Kwokchan needs to derive her subjectivity from ownership. Just as she insists on paying the prostitute as an assertion of her power to possess, she desires to own her home. However, as she stands on the verandah of the apartment, watching the pedestrians hurrying by below, her detachment from the world around her, her inability to own a space, and ultimately her inability to gain a foothold in this world become all too apparent. Zero, however, asserts her subjecthood through her actions. She participates in the economic and social transactions around her not through what she owns and what she has to sell but as an agent. Though not any more accepted by the society, she nevertheless keeps apace with it. She goes out on the verandah to check out Kwokchan and tries to engage her. She stands next to Kwokchan to look at the traffic below, but in the next scene we see her walking in the streets, immersed in life below as Kwokchan remains above, looking on. Zero is never a bystander; though not often successful, she initiates action. She is constantly on the move, constantly looking for the next job, whether it is selling real estate or erotic paraphernalia. She moves goods around and is the agent of sales. She is the “ho yuk” character in the film—constantly moving about or circulating things. Though without job security or real social success, she also does not become a commodity or an object of fantasy. Unlike Nicole, she was attracted to Kwokchan before discovering Kwokchan’s erotic avatar. She is attracted to Kwokchan’s real, corporeal self, though she is also later intrigued if saddened by the images she discovers on the computer screen. More than Kwokchan, who is the source of illusion, Zero has a grasp of what is real and what is fantasy, and is able to reconcile the invisible reality with the superficial imagistic existence of their world.

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The character, Zero, is an important demonstration of how one overcomes Hong Kong’s coercive and punishing urban conditions. Of the three characters in the film, we are most privy to aspects of Zero’s daily life. We see the oppressiveness and the shabbiness of her living space, but we also see how in her continual movement she makes irrelevant the concern over spatial restrictions. We see her lonesomeness—without home and without family. However, we also see how she refuses to accept her ostracism. By feeding and caring for stray animals, she demonstrates clearly her difference from pitiful abandoned animals. She is not a victim of society because she takes care of its victims. Her assertion of subjectivity and control over her situation is nowhere clearer than this subtle act of kindness in the film. She is also the only one among the three characters who is willing to initiate communication with anyone, whether a potential customer or someone she likes, like Kwokchan. Zero makes her way through life with a lightness that eludes Kwokchan and Nicole. She seems to be happy with very little and seems happy to do anything to make a living. She is able to thrive in a place that confounds all others. In incessantly moving in the film, she cares little about home; she cares even less for “stability,” not to mention “prosperity.” If there is a lesson in this film for Hong Kong and especially for Hong Kong women trying to survive in an image-driven world, it is embedded in Zero’s character. Home as Commodity

Ho Yuk interrogates the category of women and the idea of belonging or home and their mutual inference. In this film, the director, Yau Ching denaturalizes our daily lives, making it strange and unfamiliar in order to expose the absurdity and the cruelty of our social conditions, especially the oppression of nonconforming women. On a broader scale the notion of home and belonging is a particularly sensitive and suggestive issue for many in Hong Kong. Physical space is a major commodity there, driven by the insatiable real estate market. More than simply a container of human life and its related activities, real estate is an ultimate object of desire. Everyone’s lives are conditioned and controlled, even inscribed by the real estate market and the idea of home as a commodity in Hong Kong. Chandra Mohanty has once lamented her condition of alienation as a woman of color in the United States. Pointing out that the stability of

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“home” as an inherited space is not available to people like her, an immigrant woman, Mohanty argues for the necessity of women to invent a strategic space that transcends this normative inherited “home.” She defines this “strategic space” as imaginatively created by women themselves through political solidarity to produce a sense of family. 33 Through the character, Zero, Yau Ching refuses outright the idea of home as traditional space or even inherited space. The symbolic burden of the notion of “home” that Kwokchan carries in her name, “national product,” is so crippling that she is incapable of comfortable adjustment in society. Similarly, not even the Feng Shui master’s offer of national or local connection could restore Nicole’s sense of home. In fact, these only serve to remind them of how impossible home defined in such patriarchal terms is to them. Zero’s total lack of family or any kind of conventional anchor, or even a stable shelter, results in her kinetic movement. It is also this movement that helps Zero escape both Kwokchan’s and Nicole’s sense of unsettledness, because Zero is the agency of her own unsettledness, not the one being left out of things. In the last scene of the movie, when Nicole finally meets the “real” Kwokchan, the two of them stand on a street corner, as an inarticulate inhibition prevents Nicole from approaching Kwokchan and Kwokchan’s habitual unresponsiveness leaves her standing there passively as well. While the city rushes past them, they are paralyzed by some unknown force and cannot take control of their situation to break out of their voicelessness and isolation. Zero’s freedom and fluidity is a result of her nonparticipation in the normative capitalist value system in society. Her lack of possession and her lack of desire for possessions are important clues to her transcendence from it. She participates in the market economy only as far as she needs to survive while being totally cynical about and distanced from it. She would sell anything from real estate to sex toys with the same enthusiasm and playfulness, just to make enough to eat and to feed her animals. She will work to survive, but not be trapped in the system of capitalist exchange and speculation that seem to surround Nicole’s life and condition Kwokchan’s dream of home ownership. Within the film, there are several clips of a documentary film about giraffes that intercut the main narrative. We hear the voice of the narrator of the documentary asking rhetorically why giraffes find their sustenance in high places. The voice answers that it is because shorter animals are not able to compete with them for food. Yau Ching shows us that Zero has a fondness for giraffes. She cuts out pictures of them to stick in her scrapbook at night in her theater

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seat. Like giraffes, Zero is above the busy scampering for what is deemed valuable in Hong Kong society, real estate titles, above all. Hong Kong people slave for their ideas of home in the form of real estate and the requisite human organization within the walls of their homes—heterosexual marriage and family. Their pursuit of such social success entraps them in rigid and disciplined economic behavior. It is this notion of home where women are most susceptible to the violence of capitalist strategies and the “biopolitics” of the state. Kwokchan’s feminine masquerade as a means of survival shows that this site called home is where women are turned into commodities and feminized beyond their biological female conditions. In the snippets of the documentary film on giraffes, we see the animals’ natural grace as they move around in their habitats, feeding on leaves on treetops and nuzzling each other. We see Zero’s similar grace as she negotiates the daily life in the city. It is Zero’s naturalness and ease that provides a clue to her strategies of overcoming the capitalist regime. She is the only one in the film who truly attends to daily living. Her fundamental connectedness to living, despite her complete lack of conventional habitual paraphernalia of living, and her concentration on the efforts of daily life, as strange as her daily life might seem to others, help her compose her space as truly a strategic space. We have seen how the desire for a place entraps Kwokchan and Nicole. Zero’s strategic space is not located in a specific place. Zero’s space transcends the “hereditary” notion of home. It thus transcends the domestic. Her notion of home is defined broadly; it is inclusive of beings and people. Her activities, like feeding stray animals or following Kwokchan, include even those that do not have exchange value. Because she operates outside the exchange system of capitalist relationships, she is both autonomous and connected to others in a deep sense. By way of conclusion, I return briefly to the issue of body image and the phenomenon of Joyce in the Hong Kong society. There is a certain parallel between Joyce and Kwokchan. Both achieve social approval and love (though of a different sort) through the images they project. However, the exchange for this social success is a complete commodification of their femininity, even corporeality, modified according to the normative social imagination. They become, in this process, a cipher, or in Joyce’s case, a brandname, totally disconnected from their own self-meaning. They become participants in the system of capitalist relationships in which they no longer represent themselves but are commodities. In this way, they are cut loose from communal

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relationship with families and friends, which used to define them as persons. They become homeless. Likewise, Hong Kong women, bear the burden of the city branded as an international financial center. Hong Kong women are always depicted as professional, efficient, educated, stylish, and, of course, slim. They are embodiments of the city itself, standing in for capitalist success and capitalist aesthetics. With their role as Hong Kong’s capitalist city logo, it is no wonder that Hong Kong women equate extreme body modification with their economic ascension.

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six

Repatriating from Globalization

In the previous chapters, I discussed the Hong Kong government’s dedicated effort in creating Hong Kong’s image as a global capitalist city. The logo “Asia’s World City” as the city’s official branding was formally deployed in 2001.1 The effect of such globalism is most obvious in the various forms of Hong Kong popular culture, especially music and movies. Hong Kong’s entertainment industry has in turn made an important contribution to Hong Kong’s global status through its aggressive opening of overseas markets, chiefly in East and South East Asia and joint productions with companies in different nations. The adjustment to the needs and tastes of a broader, international audience has resulted in Hong Kong culture’s particularly extroverted character right before and after the Return to China. In this chapter, I will continue my discussion of Hong Kong’s capitalist space and daily life and also examine the aspirations and creative responses of the people and how they build their sense of home and belonging amid the unceasing pursuit of globalization. In the first section of this chapter, I identify broad trends in popular media culture, music, and film under the regime of global markets. In the second section I will focus my discussion on the 2003 novel The Girl Who Met a Sea Lion in 1997, from a new literary voice, Ho KaWai, which I believe, captures the feelings of individuals in Hong Kong’s social and economic environment. The novel records a young woman’s experience of her life abroad in Australia, then her painful attempt to readjust to the frantic life of Hong Kong after her return. In the last section, following the resolution of the novel of how the protagonist overcomes her alienation and rebuilds her sense of community, I examine the direct actions from a few local communities to “domesticate” the capitalist space of Hong Kong. 139

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Redevelopment

The skyline of Hong Kong is dominated by the monuments of international capital—a spectacular sampling of the work of international blue-chip architects. Given the number of landmark buildings in Hong Kong designed by Norman Foster, from the HSBC headquarters, to the new Hong Kong International airport, to the controversial proposed cultural complex in West Kowloon, a local commentator ironically referred to Hong Kong as the “Sir Norman Foster town.” The Hong Kong government is committed to maintaining a city that provides accessibility and efficient services to foster continued flow of international investment in the territory. The investment in the city’s infrastructure and physical appearance, from building of mass transit systems, to reappointing of parks and planting of gardens, to civic campaigns of courtesy and cleanliness, all of which I discussed in the previous chapters—is part of the articulated and unarticulated agenda to attract foreign capital, and businesses, as well as tourists. More and more, since the late 1990s, Hong Kong has also been asserting itself, in tandem with all this official and unofficial policy, as a center for international arts and culture. For example, the annual Hong Kong Arts Festivals boasts programs of world-class artists and troupes from Europe and America. The Asian Arts Festivals, on the other hand, showcase equally prominent performers and groups from East and South East Asian nations. Hong Kong perceives itself as particularly well positioned to host these events, turning into an advantage what used to be considered its embarrassing cultural hybridity and lack of national culture. The ambitious West Kowloon development proposal is part of this incessant drive to place Hong Kong on the global stage as “Asia’s World City.” This West Kowloon project, an arts complex to be built on a newly reclaimed territory, has, however, been stalled because it has been the site of bitter contention. It has been so fought over despite the stated purpose of the development, which is to offer a venue for leisure activities and enhance the cultural life of the local population, perhaps because the government’s notion of “culture and leisure” is at odds with the local needs and imagination.2 At the same time, the surrounding area of prime real estate is developers’ paradise. The headline of a Ming Pao Daily report succinctly summarized the real issues at stake in the development of West Kowloon, using the hyperbolic language of warfare in Chinese historical narratives: “To conquer West Kowloon is to conquer the empire.”3 Again, this is a case of the competition for space between big businesses and individual citizens.

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Such developments to advance global capitalism and the international image of the city rarely take into serious consideration the daily needs of Hong Kong’s residents. The contradictions between citizens and large corporations in their uses of space are often substantial. When the Wan Chai historic district was slated for redevelopment, part of the proposed plan was to close down the street market where the local people do their daily shopping. In his study of Hong Kong street culture, Lui Tai-Lok points out that street markets are important social venues that support community culture and relationships. 4 Sometimes, as in the case of the North Point, Chun Yeung market, the neighborhood identity hinges on the daily interchanges among the residents there.5 Similarly the redevelopment of Temple Street, the renowned “nightclub of the working class,” threatens the social ecology made up of informal theater or opera performers, street musicians, snake oil sellers, sex workers, and other providers of exotic services.6 The city space is more and more taken over by large corporations, while the space of individual daily life continues to contract. In chapter 3, we have seen how this privatization of public space is a way of limiting access of “undesirable” social classes whose habits are “unsightly,” according to an unspoken international capitalist aesthetic.7 The elimination of street markets, which can be chaotic, dirty, and noisy, is a case in point. These development projects result in the reduction of space for social gatherings, but also significantly, for political negotiations. Akbar Abbas describes Hong Kong as an “exorbitant” contemporary city in its competition to become more spectacular than others. However, the accumulation of “visual logos”—the super landmarks created by “brandname” architects—only results in making the city more invisible than ever as it looks like every other major city in the world. Abbas uses his discussion of Hong Kong through the two films, In the Mood for Love, directed by Wong Kar-Wai, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, by Ang Li, to reveal the sense of boredom, ennui, and forever postponement of desire in contemporary Hong Kong.8 The competition to be a global city takes its toll on the local population. Globalizing “Hong Kong” Culture

The pursuit of the global market is most obvious in the development of popular culture in Hong Kong. In many ways, popular media is the engine of Hong Kong’s global advance. The emergence of Hong Kong as a center of popular culture in Asia began in the 1970s, led by the rise of local television

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production. According to Ng Fong, the period between 1978 and 1984 was the golden age of Hong Kong television, when Hong Kong was the largest exporter of television shows in the world.9 Locally, many dramatic series, especially those created by the Television Broadcasting Company (TVB) such as Shanghai Tan, King of Kings (Qian huang zhi huang), and The Strongman (qiangren), were able to captivate up to 70% of the entire population of Hong Kong every night.10 Television stars became part of the family as they made their nightly appearance in individual homes.11 People rushed home from school and work to catch the nightly unfolding dramas. We saw Chan Wai’s rendition of this phenomenon in The Records of Sahpheung in chapter 4. The famous RTHK (Radio and Television Hong Kong)12 series Under the Lion Rock was initially a dramatized, informational, and outreach program for the government, which later evolved into an influential social realist drama about the everyday struggles and joys of a particular working-class community in Hong Kong. It became iconic of the times. “Lion Rock,” a lion-shaped peak of the Kowloon mountain range that looms over the peninsula, became the symbol of Hong Kong society, especially in the hardscrabble days in the beginning of Hong Kong’s industrialization. So deeply imprinted into the popular consciousness is the television culture of this period that some of the theme songs of the shows still resonate strongly thirty years later. When Hong Kong was in the grips of economic recession and political discontent in 2002, the theme song of Under the Lion Rock was invoked by the then secretary of finance, Anthony Leung, to encourage the population to hunker down and look to the future for better days, as well as to prepare for immediate sacrifice as he dealt out different government rollback plans. The song struck such a chord that when the original singer of the song, Roman Tam, died of liver cancer in the winter of 2002, it signaled the beginning of a period of near societal mental prostration (see chapter 1). These television songs have more significance than their apparent content. Their importance lies in the fact that they were sung in Cantonese, the official and main dialect spoken in Hong Kong. They were part of the nascent Cantonese pop culture from Hong Kong that broke like a tidal wave over East and South East Asia in the 1970s and 1980s, including Mainland China. Cantonese became a “hip” dialect, imitated by Chinese communities all over the world, supplanting the importance of the Mandarin culture associated with the national culture of China, whether PRC or ROC, the major claimants to Chinese cultural authenticity. This is to say, in the late 1970s, Hong Kong slowly emerged as the center of an “alternative” Chinese culture.

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Among Hong Kong’s performers of the 1970s, Sam Hui, regarded as Hong Kong’s native son, is considered the first to establish Cantopop as the official local popular genre, targeting, particularly, the working-class audience (unlike other young singers at the time who sang exclusively in English or Mandarin).13 Chinese pop music was associated with nightclub singers and bawdy audiences, while English-language popular music, with high school and college students. Sam Hui was a University of Hong Kong graduate, no mean feat at a time before the nine-year free education system and when there were only two universities and entrance exams were extremely competitive. However, he eschewed the elitism of the cultural industry, and together with his two brothers, the Hui brothers, spearheaded a working-class culture through their films and music. Their collaboration in movies created classics such as The Private Eyes (Buungun Baahtleung, banjin baliang) series. Their most successful films are about everyday, unremarkable working people. They base their jokes on mundane situations, using props from familiar surroundings. 14 Though considered vulgar and crass by some, they were wildly successful and defined a whole era of Hong Kong cinema in the late 1970s and 1980s, characterized by a certain raucous local, scatological, and slapstick humor and the use of colloquialisms. Sam Hui popularized Cantonese singing to the point where no selfrespecting Hong Kong pop musician could sustain a career performing exclusively English or Mandarin songs. The rise of a local ethos, local language, and creativity was the beginning of a local Hong Kong identity as distinguished from that of China or Britain, which coincided with Hong Kong’s economic take-off in the late 1970s. 15 Sam Hui’s success was so phenomenal and long lasting that he was graced by the title of the “God of Songs” in Hong Kong. The international triumph of Cantonese films, since Hui, produced such mega stars as Chow Yun Fat and Leslie Cheung, and later, Andy Lau, Maggie Cheung, and Tony Leung, and secured the Hong Kong cultural industry’s dominance in Asia during the 1980s and 1990s. It is no surprise that the so-called Hollywood of the East, became the second largest exporter of movies in the world after the United States, till the industry’s decline in the beginning of the new millennium.16 However, there is a cost to this gradual internationalization of Hong Kong’s popular culture industry. As budgets for production became bigger and bigger and directors were more and more aware of their international market, the subject matter, humor, and references in their films also became less local. There were fewer and fewer films about Hong Kong people and Hong Kong situations.

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They became more and more reliant on international idioms and universal aesthetic. Many of Hong Kong’s veteran directors like Ronny Yu and John Woo were recruited by Hollywood studios and simply left the Hong Kong film industry. We see the trend of internationalization in the works of many Hong Kong directors in the 1990s, from Jackie Chan to Wong Kar-Wai. Jackie Chan’s earlier movies, such as the Police Story series, were squarely located in Hong Kong, dealing with society and crime in the city. As he began casting his eyes toward the American market, he began making films like Who Am I (dir. Benny Chan, 1998) and The Medallion (dir. Gordon Chan, 2003), in which the setting for his movies slowly migrated from Hong Kong to different locales around the world, from the United States to Italy to Morocco. His hero turned from being a Hong Kong policeman to becoming a member of the Interpol, busting international crime rings. Similarly, Wong Kar-Wai’s first breakthrough film, As Tears Go By (Mongkok Carmen) (1988), is about triad members in Hong Kong, in which Mongkok, a working-class district and gangland, is a strong local reference. Wong’s films slowly retreated from contemporary Hong Kong’s social reality into nostalgic imaginary, from Days of Being Wild to In the Mood for Love (2000); to postmodern fragmentation in Chungking Express (1994); to temporal sojourning in 2046 (2004). Though much appreciated by the international audience for his films’ beauty and style, Wong’s works rarely have boxoffice success in Hong Kong. Though these directors have become successful in the international film circuit, their creations are not often well supported by the local viewers. This tendency of Hong Kong films to be detached from the Hong Kong society as a commercial consideration or to appeal to a broader audience or critics in the film festival circuits became even more pronounced with the opening of the China market. Because of China’s protectionist policies, it was not till 2004, as a result of CEPA (Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement), that coproduction films with rigidly apportioned Hong Kong to Chinese cast and staff ratio could be shown without the usual red tape and restrictions. However, films shown in China continue to face strict censorship, which has determined their content, subject matter, and even plot denouement. Since the enormous Mainland market is vital to the continued viability of Hong Kong cinema, a significant number of Hong Kong films have either been coproductions or have plots and contents tailored to the Chinese government standard and audience taste. Not only does this kind of collaboration dilute the unique characteristics of Hong Kong films, it also means taking out local issues or subjects from the plots.17

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Similarly, pop singers with their eyes on the Mainland market have started to sing in Mandarin as well. Some singers opt to produce two different versions of their songs, one for the Mandarin-speaking market (which also include Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia), the other for the local, Cantonese audience. They do not simply switch between dialects; the lyrics of these songs are often totally different in order to speak to audiences in different areas of Asia. Sometimes even their personal images had to be adjusted. Kelly Chan, one of the most successful singers to cross over to the pan-Asian market, especially the Mainland market, was the target of some sneer in the Hong Kong press when she began appearing with her hair in bows and wearing elaborate and decorative short dresses in the early 2000s. Her manager retorted that that was what appealed to the Mainland audience. No one questioned the economic shrewdness behind her image change. The globalizing of Hong Kong’s culture is an unquestioned economic strategy. If Hong Kong has been criticized for its lack of culture before (that is, Chinese national culture), now it is precisely this “non-Chinese” cosmopolitanism so rigorously pursued that attracts Mainland tourists. Saturated with their own nationalism, they come to look at this bastard child. However, as Hong Kong popular culture has become completely geared toward external markets, and as the city itself has become more and more adapted for visitors, what happened to local expression and local representation? In the late 1990s, Hong Kong’s music and film industries began to experience a drastic downturn. Many artists simply abandoned the local market and traveled to China to make television shows or movies there. Many became rich and famous in Mainland China but totally forgotten in their home base. Quite a number of Hong Kong industry people blame rampant pirating and illegal downloading of media in China for destroying the entertainment industries in Hong Kong. Although it might be true that pirating affects total sales, one wonders if the bigger issue is disaffection among the Hong Kong audience, because these films and songs no longer speak to them. Turning Inward

In the previous chapters, I have described the nationalist program the Beijing government had constantly tried to impose on Hong Kong since the Handover in 1997. This became an urgent project after the mass demonstration of July 1, 2003. This hard sell of nationalism in Hong Kong has variously been countered by irony, sarcasm, and derision in newspaper essays and

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comic strips by local commentators (see chapter 2). As Hong Kong continued to be plagued by economic difficulties and a high unemployment rate in the early 2000s, not to mention the various actual or threats of epidemics, such as the SARS, H5N1 Avian flu, and dengue fever or the smog and acid rain that were constantly blowing over from Mainland China, Vietnam, and other places, the public became more and more uncertain about the benefits of relentless globalization. As we have seen in chapter 1, between 2002 and 2003 there was a gradual withdrawal, at least emotionally, among some Hong Kong people from this international trajectory. This was clearly demonstrated during the SARS epidemic. When the inhabitants of the residential complex the Amoy Gardens were moved from their apartments to a quarantine camp, they became a metaphor of the city of Hong Kong itself. Tourists and business people stopped coming and Hong Kong people were shunned overseas. The Special Olympics in Ireland attempted to block Hong Kong athletes from going to compete in the games. The Swiss watch expo and the U.S. jewelers’ convention barred Hong Kong representatives from attending.18 Rejected, betrayed, and abandoned by the world community and marooned in collective sadness, there was a rapid disillusionment with internationalism and a decided societal inward turn. This focusing inward expressed itself in the formation of many mutual aid efforts and community-based activism during this period. The residents of Amoy Gardens were quick to organize their own self-help units, such as cooperatives for childcare, activity groups, and clean-up teams. The entire city rallied in solidarity behind the residents and the patients and frontline medical personnel shut in hospitals, overwhelming them with well wishes, small gifts, and treats, as well as daily supplies. Much was made of this new sense of “home” and the spirit of community in the media. Hong Kong’s theme song in that difficult year of 2003 was Joey Yung’s “Pride in Your Eyes,” a song sung in Cantonese interspersed with English phrases. It swept up numerous prizes in award ceremonies sponsored by various radio and television stations based on sales figures, frequency of broadcast requests, and karaoke requests, as well as popular votes. It launched Joey from a secondto first-tier popular singer in Hong Kong. The sweetness of Joey’s voice not withstanding, the song lyrics speak volumes about the general societal aspirations and capture the spirit of mutual support at the time: Pride in your eyes—rewrite the story of the second half of my life, finding in your eyes the confidence that I had lost; it is then that I understand how one

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who is loved can live with such courage. I am fortunate that your eyes light the way for my journey in the clouds. See me fly; I’m proud to fly up high; not because of the air current, but because of your love. Believe me I can fly; I’m singing in the sky; as if I were a fairy tale, I create more happiness because of you. Pride in your eyes; sparkle for me as in the beginning; only you understand me most—more than even myself. I will work hard so you can be even prouder. It no longer matters who despises me; no one can stop me now. I hope for the day when I can hold you in my embrace and proudly tell the world that I had sailed on your wind: Let me fly; I’m proud to fly up high; not because of the air current, but because of your love. Believe me I can fly; I’m singing in the sky. If love is a miracle, I am happy to create this miracle with you—All because of your love. (Original English phrases in italics)19

It takes little analysis to understand why this song had such an appeal in the difficult days of 2003. The message of mutual encouragement and ultimate triumph through hard work resonated deeper and broader than the usual saccharine love songs of the young pop idols. The tune of this song became so well known and entrenched in the popular imagination that it was coopted and sung by an interest group at the July 1 demonstration with alternative, politicized lyrics superimposed over it.20 Joey’s song was part of a more and more obvious trend in the 2000s. The deaths of the superstars Roman Tam (2002), Anita Mui (2003), Leslie Cheung (2003), and the “godfather” of Cantopop lyricist James Wong (2004), brought about a strong sense of the passage of Cantopop culture’s prime associated with Hong Kong’s golden age in the 1980s and 1990s. It also invoked anxiety about the continued existence of the local Hong Kong culture and identity, creating the nostalgia for closeness and communitarianism in society that they represent. This is reflected in the return to a local emphasis in the entertainment scene in the early 2000s. There was, at the end of 2003, a small revival of Hong Kong cinema, as we have seen, led by the huge success of Infernal Affairs and its sequel and prequel. (See chapter 1 for a discussion of this film.) These films are unambiguously about Hong Kong, shot on location in Hong Kong, and are about the Hong Kong society. Its success in Asia revived the status and confidence in Cantopop culture to a certain extent. This series (at least the first two of the trilogy) is neither a coproduction with China nor does it employ any Mainland actor or crew. There are, as a result, two different endings, one for the Hong Kong audience and one for Mainland China (and Malaysia). PTU

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(2003), another film discussed in chapter 1, and Breaking News (2004), both by Johnny To, have the same Hong Kong focus. But we even see a return of the riotous local humor in a number of films, such as “Dragon Reloaded 2003” and “Men Suddenly in Black” (2003). These films did extremely well at the boxoffice, reversing a trend of dismal cinema attendance. In terms of the music industry, 2003 and 2004 brought the return of a number of 1980s Cantopop superstars, now mostly in their late forties and fifties but with surprising appeal. Most of them had retired in the early 1990s with the rise of youth idols superpackaged for international taste. The most dramatic was Sam Hui’s return in summer 2004 after a hiatus of more than a decade. Sam Hui’s return was rumored for a while and impatiently anticipated once it was formally announced. Beginning in May and ending in August 2004, he gave thirty-eight concerts, titled “Keep on Smiling.” It was estimated that five hundred thousand people attended his concerts. Sam hoped that his performances could cheer Hong Kong people up after a very difficult year with a record suicide rate. The publicity build-up for the return of the “God of Songs,” the exorbitant media hype and general excitement made the event, indeed, seem like a divine dispensation to Hong Kong. One of the many costumes of his sold-out concert series during the summer was a suit made of the red, white, and blue polyethylene weave of the notoriously durable hauling bags, the same material used by the local artist Stanley Wong discussed in chapter 3. The metaphoric possibilities of this polyethylene material are limitless, representing local pride and value for the simple, hardworking, resilient common person—the mythical protagonists of Hong Kong’s story of success in the 1970s. These values were now once again conjured to help Hong Kong overcome the troubles of the 2000s. If the first Sam Hui phenomenon in the 1970s marked the rise of local culture, the excitement around his return to the stage indicated a return to the local in Hong Kong culture after more than a decade of rushing toward becoming a “world city.” Sam’s concerts, unlike those of the current superstars that regularly expend millions of Hong Kong dollars on extravagant spectacles, from fashion to stage gimmicks to dancers, were deliberately understated to evoke sentiments of old times, when Hong Kong was a smaller, perhaps more intimate town. A few months later, Anthony Wong, one of the most iconoclastic and political popular singers in Hong Kong, who started his career as the popular duo “the Tat Ming Pair” with Lau Yi Tat in 1984, issued a new CD with his new production group “People Mountain People Sea” in 2004. This new collection

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titled Song of Tomorrow (Mingri zhige) contains almost all covers of memorable television songs from the 1980s, rearranged and updated.21 Wong narrates Hong Kong’s twentieth-century history in this album through music, while also using it as a portent of Hong Kong’s future. He arranges this collection of eleven songs in thematic order so that together they compose a montage of Hong Kong’s recent history. Removed from their original association with specific television programs, these songs are used by Wong to articulate Hong Kong’s society as it went through rapid development from the 1970s to the present. However, his evocation of Hong Kong history is very different from the nostalgia in Chan Wai’s writings that we saw in chapter 4. Using music to recreate the ethos that accompanied Hong Kong’s economic development, Wong also tries to inspire the courage to move forward. For example, the opening song, “Rainbow in His Pen,” embodies the sentiment at the beginning of Hong Kong’s economic takeoff through the words of an artist. It reflects the aspiration and the sense of possibility despite immediate hardships: My faith never wavers. Even though I might be poor now, the layers of obstacles ahead cannot extinguish my passion. My heart—I do not want to be toyed with; my pain—I have no way to speak of it now; but my devotion and my determination will move the heavens.22

The determination, diligence, and the belief in future success are deeply ingrained in the psyche of Hong Kong people as part of the myth behind Hong Kong’s can-do spirit.23 Songs number four and five in the CD, from the television series Fengyun (The Tempest) and Shanghai Tan (Shanghai Bay), reflect the transformation of society in the process of development, both in terms of the landscape and the relationships among people. “The Tempest,” in light of Wong’s social politics, could be a lament about the environmental cost, but it can also be a celebration of the endurance of love and human relationships despite life’s vicissitudes in the rapidly developing city: The green mountain used to be my companion. I chased the white clouds in front of me. The blue sea was my heart’s delight; I spent my childhood in the wind…. Who made the mountains change color, to look so vulgar? And who made the ocean change, that its turbid waves reach the sky? In the wind, we are still madly devoted to each other; we haven’t let the gathering clouds ruin our pledge. Even though the sea might dry up and the mountains collapse, our promise will never change.24

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Originally about war, this song is now used to describe the mercurial changes in the urban and social landscape. The hatred and alienation accumulated through the various struggles and contests in society as a result of the economic development are captured in the next few songs of the CD. Most of these were written originally for gangster or knight errant dramas. Here, the flashes of swords or guns in the vendettas of the underworld become veiled references to the aggressive competitiveness of the capitalist society. However, through it all is an assurance that loyalty, friendship, and humanity will prevail. The collection makes an interesting turn at song number ten, also the title song of the CD “Song of Tomorrow” (Mingri zhige). What makes this song an important transition is the fact that it is the only one sung in Mandarin in this collection. In terms of the historical teleology constructed in the song order of the collection, the mandarin language immediately suggests China and thus hints at the approaching 1997. The prelude to the song begins with a musical phrase that is identifiable as the first four notes of the British national anthem. Structurally, these four notes in Wong’s new arrangement have no relationship to the melody of the song. Read together with this musical reference, the lyrics capture the immense societal anxiety for the future as well as the sadness of separation among friends and families during the emigration tide of the 1990s when many people left Hong Kong to escape the prospective Chinese rule: I want you to sing for tomorrow. In tears, I make an earnest wish. I’m going; I’m going. The flowers will still be as sweet tomorrow. I will be gone; I will be gone. The sun will still be as bright tomorrow. You and I will sing for tomorrow. In tears, I make an earnest wish. We will part; we will part. Tomorrow’s wine you will drink on your own. We will part; we will part. Tomorrow’s song, you will sing on your own. It will be hard for us to meet again tomorrow; I ask the heavens why this grief. I place in my heart every line from our murmurs of the pillow. In tomorrow’s sunlight, I will sing aloud and look forward. Tomorrow, tomorrow, we will see each other in our dreams. I want you to sing for tomorrow. I leave behind me this piece of writing in cheer. Forget all; forget all. Tomorrow will no longer be sad. Remember, remember, tomorrow is filled with hope. Remember, remember, tomorrow is filled with hope.25

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The singer of this song encourages the listener to face the future bravely, while also trying to convince him or herself to do the same. Despite or because of the insistence that the world will still be the same tomorrow, the sadness and anxiety about the future is poignant. This is a song of separation between friends or lovers; but broadly, it is also a last love song of Hong Kong to Britain or vice versa. The four notes that begin the song bring it to an end, fading away. After this melancholic farewell to old relationships as well as a known lifestyle, the entire CD concludes with the aforementioned “Under the Lion Rock,” that had become the theme song of the era: In our lives there is happiness, but unavoidably, there are also tears. When we meet each other under the Lion Rock, there are usually more laughs than sighs. Human lives are unavoidably full of obstacles. It is hard not to have any worries. Since we are all in the same boat under the Lion Rock, we should help each other along. Get rid of differences and seek cooperation. Release our enmity for each other and pursue our dreams together. Travelers on the same boat, we pledge to follow each other, without fear and without trepidation. We find ourselves at the limit of the ocean, the edge of the sky; we hold hands to level the rocky path. Together, we use our hard work and diligence to create the legend of Hong Kong.26

As pointed out previously (chapter 2), television programs and songs such as Under the Lion Rock were effective in fostering a sense of belonging and commitment in society after the riots of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Emphasis on collectivity, mutual help, and diligence in building a harmonious society was promoted by the British-Hong Kong government in the 1970s to distract the populace from their dissatisfaction toward the government because of corruption and lack of social services. The fact that this song was evoked by a public official again in 2002 was a sure sign of the resurgence of public discontent in Hong Kong. In its pursuit of parity with the rest of the developed world, Hong Kong’s government was slowly abandoning the liberal social policies developed in the 1980s. Nevertheless, the fact that this song resonated so deeply in the early 2000s also revealed the yearning for closeness among people in a city that had become less and less concerned with local needs as it became more and more hospitable to international visitors and capital.

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Hither, Thither

The title of Ho Ka-Wai’s new collection of stories, The Girl Who Met a Sea Lion in 1997 (Cosmo Books, 2003), might not be immediately descriptive of the social situation around the time of its writing and publication. However, the surprise, the attraction, and yet the unease in the encounter between these two land and sea creatures in the title capture the condition of an individual feeling out of synchrony with her environment—a condition that typifies the Hong Kong experience in this period of sojourning and globalization. Ho is a new literary voice in the 2000s; she has received several awards for her short pieces, some of which are included in this volume, which is her first booklength work. The stories in this collection are all united in a vaguely semiautobiographical framework. They are all about the experience of the character, Ah Mahn, who migrated to New Zealand with her family in the 1990s. She went to university there, but Hong Kong was still a sort of home base. The first half of the book contains stories about her relationships with lovers and friends or those ambiguously in between while she was in university. The second half of the book contains pieces about her experience back in Hong Kong after she graduated, trying to survive the work culture there. Although the theme of the book is primarily about the narrator’s relationships with the people around her, her connections to them are often barely disguised extensions of her feelings of home and belonging. When she was in New Zealand, she was deeply entangled in a complex triangle with two other people from Hong Kong, attracted by the sense of familiarity about them. While she was in Hong Kong, she yearned for her estranged lover, a New Zealander. The title story of the volume, “The Girl Who Met a Sea Lion in 1997,” is about the relationship between Ah Mahn and Dick, her lover, a New Zealander of European descent, or the “sea lion” in the title. This relationship also becomes the fulcrum from which all the other stories evolve. Ah Mahn was studying economics at the university where Dick was a lecturer. The entire relationship, from its ambiguous beginning and end to the emotional and psychological negotiations in between, is conveyed through email exchanges between these two characters. The major differences in the problematic relationship between Ah Mahn and Dick can be interpreted as cultural.27 However, this cultural difference has nothing to do with the respective ethnicities of Ah Mahn and Dick. Rather, it is caused by their respective sense of space. Ah Mahn continuously looks for

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gravity and permanence in a relationship, while Dick’s attitude toward relationship is lighthearted and noncommittal. Ah Mahn is a peripatetic sojourner from Hong Kong, a small place, the political situation of which has always seemed transient and changing. Dick is a New Zealander who is at ease and secure in his expansive land and stable sense of belonging. The huge contradiction between these places was shocking to Ah Mahn when she tried to adjust to Hong Kong after years in New Zealand: I think about how scores of people pushed onto an underground train with each person only occupying a space so tiny that one could barely fit one’s feet in. Our bodies intertwine with another’s; we breathe with difficulty on strangers’ faces…. I felt suffocated. I had originally owned a large piece of the brilliant sky and a bungalow surrounded by green trees. There were dances on the streets; at night, one could gaze at the stars in the sky at leisure. But I had chosen to come back, to force myself into this crowd. Everyday, I rush for the train or for the bus; I wait for tables in restaurants with people I don’t know. I have to do everything faster than everybody else, to achieve more than everybody else.28

New Zealand and Hong Kong are the loci of Ah Mahn’s contradictory desires. If one can broadly say that New Zealand represents the emotive and the natural way of being for Ah Mahn, Hong Kong is where she is expected to be rational, repressed, contorted, and highly productive. Ah Mahn left New Zealand to escape her failing relationship with Dick. She felt that in Hong Kong she could use her training as an economist and regulate her emotions through the rigid rhythm of her work. However, in Hong Kong she found her work oppressive and her life becoming more and more mechanical and stressful as she tried to meet the daily demands of her clients and her supervisor. She also found the Hong Kong she “returned” to after her studies in New Zealand a different city that “looks like an old acquaintance, but whose appearance has completely changed.”29 The estrangement even occurred within her family: With unspoken agreement, my brother and I became similarly cautious about our independent lives in this space where it was impossible to avoid each other. I heard that when we were little, I was my big brother’s favorite. But now, we are distanced to this degree. I feel very sad … my younger brother and sister have already moved away. My big brother is so close by, yet

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seems to be in a different world from me. My parents are in another place, even though their traces are so close to me. And where… is he?30

Complaining about her loneliness and the distance she felt among people in Hong Kong, clinging to the memories and pining for communications from Dick to nurse her flagging spirit, she lamented, “My home is in a faraway kingdom. In this city where I work, there is so much wealth that one gets lost in it.”31 Ah Mahn yearns to return to New Zealand, but she knows that she has been contaminated by Hong Kong’s urbanity. Ho describes an imaginary dialogue Ah Mahn had with the subway train she took to work every day: “The train shook its head: You already belong here. Look at you! From the top of your head to the bottom of your feet, there is not a place where you do not look like a typical Hong Kong office lady…. Where is your home? Here or there? Is it about your heart or is it about a place?”32 Ah Mahn herself knew that she belonged to neither world: “It is only a little after eight. There are already a lot of people on the street. Those who are rushing to work hurried by along their disorderly paths. When I return to the other shore, my life will be a simple one, without this kind of hardship and without this kind of extravagance. At that time, will I miss the accelerated pace and the strong urbaneness of this place? Will I?”33 One quickly discovers that the location of “home” in this work is very ambiguous. It is always beyond Ah Mahn’s reach because it is not connected to a specific place. Ho sometimes refers to going back to New Zealand as “returning” home. Sometimes, she refers to going to Hong Kong as a “return.” The inconsistency in her writing not only reveals her ambivalence for either way of life represented by these two places, but also the elusiveness of the feeling of home. If the crowds of Hong Kong aggravate one’s experience of distance among people, the spaciousness of New Zealand seems to highlight the claustrophobic human relationships that tether people together. Ho’s description of Ah Mahn’s life in New Zealand is all about incredibly painful human entanglements—miscommunication and betrayals between lovers, and ambiguous, semiincestuous relationships among friends. Ah Mahn’s status as a “flexible citizen” of the world and her “cosmopolitanism” only contribute to her sense of alienation from both Hong Kong and New Zealand.34 Ah Mahn’s schizophrenia articulates the paradox of the Hong Kong society—the ambitious pursuit of globalization and the disaffectedness and alienation from what this pursuit has created.

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Another Space

In the end, Ah Mahn resigned from her job and decided to leave Hong Kong. However, it was not to New Zealand that she went. She joined a tour to the Pamirs in Xinjiang, the pristine border area of China. Ho describes the Pamirs as a place where the rushing rivers and mountain air are so pure they seem to have been distilled. It is clear that Ah Mahn’s journey is one of spiritual purification. Since she could not “return” home to either New Zealand or Hong Kong, the only solution to her dilemma is to readjust her vision and relearn survival strategies to start anew. The journey is literally a boot camp, which demands immense physical exertion. Ah Mahn receives training in physical endurance as well as mental stamina and attitude. In fact, her guide, a tall, strong man with shaven head, is called “coach.” When she was feeling very alienated in the materialistic society of Hong Kong, Ah Mahn had lamented, “Human beings are inherently independent individuals. You carry your baggage. I carry mine. Neither is able to put it down.” 35 During this journey, Ah Mahn learned a different lesson about human relationships. On their return trip, the group encountered bad weather. The rain caused mudslides and rolling boulders. The group constantly had to race to cross critical points before the roads or bridges were washed away. Several times, they had to wade across torrents hanging onto ropes, jump across swirling mud pools, or clamber along narrow mountain paths with sheer drops. During the difficult journey, the members of the group helped each other with their bags. At the end of the trip, at a particularly difficult crossing, each person was asked to rid themselves of as much excess baggage as possible. Ah Mahn decided to toss the diary she had been keeping throughout the journey. This gesture of releasing her psychological burden and her emergence from her self-centeredness are part of the exercise of this journey for her. Through their various dangerous experiences, the members of the tour group developed closeness, honesty and trust for each other, admitting weakness and exhibiting strength by turn. Ah Mahn learned to rely on her teammates, as she also became a source of strength for others. Such functional communitarianism is very different from the relationships based on emotional reliance and insecurity she developed in New Zealand. Placing Ho’s work in the context of Hong Kong in the late 1990s to the early 2000s, it can be read as a record of the city’s rapid urban development, cosmopolitan pursuits and their toll on individuals. In Ho’s work, Ah Mahn’s

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sense of loss of who she was, where she belonged, and how to ground herself in a society of “disappearance” reflect the general experience of “homelessness” and bereavement of self that I described earlier.36 Many in Hong Kong, like Ah Mahn, experienced separation of family and friends as many went to different parts of the world to work, study, or seek foreign passports. Like Ah Mahn, many returned to Hong Kong to find an estranged home. The city is no longer familiar, not only because of Beijing’s attempts to “Sinicize” it, though this is undoubtedly a cause, but also because the city has embarked on a relentless pursuit of development at such a breakneck speed that residents literally feel the ground below them shift as they walk. Ah Mahn as a transnational citizen reflects the confusion of an individual in our contemporary world, especially in Hong Kong, where there is constant stress on the adaptability of its citizens to the demands of global capital.37 Ah Mahn had unsuccessfully tried to base too much of her sense of self in particular places, whether expansive and comfortable (as in New Zealand) or crowded and frenzied (as in Hong Kong), while understanding too little of the human space between people. The ending of Ho’s writings in a “third space”—outside of Hong Kong and New Zealand—is significant. Where is this third space in one’s everyday reality? The experience in the Pamirs is characterized by an active engagement with the environment together with all its problems—an experience marked by cooperation and effort from every member in the group. In fact, no one individual could have survived the journey by him or herself. The ending of this adventure is a refutation of Ah Mahn’s claustrophobic mental world, plagued by solipsism. Ah Mahn discovered that the diary she had tossed away was actually in the safekeeping of one of the members of the group who told her “the story of the torrents must be continued,” because, it is now more than merely a personal record. 38 It is a story of collective experience and courage. This “third space” of Hong Kong, as Ho reveals in her writing, is defined through collective effort in overcoming obstacles and the camaraderie created through common hardships. Ah Mahn’s experience in the Pamirs helps her “return home” to Hong Kong. Home is, thus, defined by continuous action and activism. It is about articulating an alternative narrative in the overriding structure and discourse of international capitalism and Chinese nationalism. In this sense, Ah Mahn needs to continue her writing about the “torrents,” because it is a story of collective struggle and collective homecoming.

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Third Space in Hong Kong

Such communitarianism blossomed in Hong Kong society during the social and economic crisis in the early 2000s, and especially during the SARS epidemic. As the government continued to roll back its social services, it became evident that community actions were more effective and more crucial to many people’s survival. These organizing efforts in the shadows of the huge corporate headquarters create viable alternatives to the capitalist system of transactions that determines social relationships as well. Often, they compete for space for their respective activities. The years between the late 1990s and early 2000s saw the development of many effective neighborhood movements and organizations. The most well known and apparently successful is the “alternative currency” program set up by a community of people in the district of Wan Chai. This collective has been the subject of scholarly investigations, television documentaries, and newspaper articles because it was effective in addressing both the material and psychological needs of the people during a particularly bleak period in Hong Kong. It helped provide for the daily needs, relieved demoralization, and revived the ideal of community for which many in Hong Kong had grown nostalgic. Studying their experiments, Hui Po-keung argues that such efforts provide viable and effective alternatives to the seemingly undefeatable and irreversible neoliberal, free-market capitalism.39 This community collective employs many different alternative currency strategies that have already been developed by many different organizations around the world, such as the LETS (Local Exchange and Trading System) and the Ithaca-HOURS. LETS, a system developed by a Canadian, Michael Linton, is popular in Western Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand. It is estimated that there are fifteen hundred LETS organization worldwide. HOURS is another similar alternative currency system developed by Paul Grover in 1991 in Ithaca, New York. These alternative systems are large in scale, and some of them have memberships of thousands.40 In Hong Kong, such forms of time-dollar programs or mutual aid organizations are usually established in a local district or a housing estate or labor community. They are set up at the instigation of a local social service organization or community center like the Caritas, or labor organizations, such as the Hong Kong Women Centre and the Catholic Labour Association. In such programs, local residents provide services for each other on an

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exchange basis. A typical organization issues coupons with which residents redeem services from others. Each of these coupons is good for a kind of service for a certain amount of time, usually, one hour. Different kinds of work are valued at the same rate. For example, one hour of legal service is equivalent to one hour of cleaning or babysitting or carpentry service. Sometimes, the exchange rate is democratically negotiated by the organization to ensure fairness.41 This kind of alternative currency system helps people who are not formally employed to utilize their skills in a respectful way in exchange for services and goods that they could not otherwise afford, such as piano lessons or tutoring for their children, legal or computer services. Many unemployed or underemployed but able-bodied people in Hong Kong consider welfare shameful and demoralizing. These kinds of community organization offer a way to dignify the talents and skills of those cast off by the capitalist economy. Of course, professionals such as medical doctors or lawyers suffer less from unemployment caused by the deindustrialized economy. As a result, medical or legal services might not be available for exchange unless doctors and lawyers set aside some time within their workdays. Many professionals who choose to participate in such community organizations believe they receive more in terms of relationships than simply services for which they can well pay with actual cash. An important condition in one’s participation in all these programs, including the alternative currency programs and the cooperatives, is that one cannot merely receive services or merely render services, as they are clearly not charities. There has to be exchange or collaboration. Unlike the usual capitalist transactions that reduce things and dehumanize people into abstract monetary value, in these community collectives there is a face attached to every exchange. As a result, relationships are forged and reinforced with every transaction. Service providers do not work for those requesting services. There is no social hierarchy among the different professions, because all services are remunerated at the same rate. Every decision in these groups is democratically made. Many workers’ cooperatives were also formed or strengthened during this time. For example, the Hong Kong Women’s Manual Labour Association in cooperation with the students at the Chinese University of Hong Kong formed a worker’s cooperative that owns and runs the school cafeteria at the university. This project, which began in 2000, received financial support and physical help from many faculty members and students at the university. The students lobbied school officials to accept the business bid from the workers coopera-

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tive instead of big corporations and solicited donations from the university community to help finance the bid to start up the business. The cooperative members were former women factory workers, laid off from their previous employment. The movement has spread to the campuses of two other universities, the Lingnan University and the City University of Hong Kong where cooperatives operate other kinds of businesses serving the students. Developing a different and more responsible habit of consumption is precisely the point of the cooperatives at the universities. Students and faculty line up for the lunches provided by the cooperatives rather than buy fast food from chains, because they want to support businesses that treat their employees equitably. The existence of these cooperatives challenges the unquestioned acceptance of exploiting workers as business as usual. In other words, these organizations defy relational conventions in a society operating under the principles of the market economy that are the basis of inequality among people. They offer a paradigm for another kind of social organization. Cooperatives such as these have more benefits than the obvious in providing employment opportunities to laid-off factory workers who are the main victims of Hong Kong’s economic restructuring. They offer retraining in other kinds of livelihood as well as an instantaneous community for moral support during difficult times. The women involved in these cooperatives explained that they derived a great sense of satisfaction in knowing that they might be of help to others in their situation since these organizations usually branch out into other services as they become bigger. They also feel gratified at the thought that they are serving the student community through their work. The students, on the other hand, learned their first lessons in issues of social and economic justice through working with these cooperatives, as well as honed their skills in grassroots organizing. Some of these students became full-time activists after their graduation from university.42 Another similar kind of workers cooperative is operated by the Employers and Workers Relations Association, a union organization established in 1993 initially to help deal with the mass layoff as a result of the apparel industry moving north to China. Aside from providing legal support, the union’s most important function at the time was to offer retraining to laid-off women workers, especially in Chinese typing, with very limited success. In 2001, it organized the Women Workers Cooperative and started a thrift store. It has since become one of the most successful of these cooperatives. By the end of 2003, the organization decided to diversify its business by opening a grocery store as well.

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These cooperative businesses, though small in scale, can pose some challenge to huge corporations. The grocery store of the Women Workers Cooperative is a step in breaking the monopoly of the two most powerful supermarket chains in Hong Kong, Welcome and Park’n Shop. It offers alternative consumer products at competitive rates, attracting many consumers away from the chains in the neighborhood. By breaking up the market control of a couple of huge corporations, it helps dispel these corporation’s manipulation of consumer taste and need through controlling commodity choices and lifestyle options. When Stuart Hall argued that individual consumers have the potential to change the social landscape, he perhaps did not foresee the effect of this alternative collective consumer movement.43 Aside from the camaraderie and mutual support the members and employees derive from working together, through its membership of six thousand, the Woman Workers Cooperative also became a viable political pressure group. During the July 1, 2003, demonstration against Article 23 and the New

Fig. 6.1: Women Workers Cooperative Banners of the Women’s Workers’ Union at the July 1 2004 mass demonstration, demanding for universal suffrage.

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Years Day 2004 labor demonstration, the association and its members decided to close up shop to participate in the historic events.44 Individuals in their daily lives seem no match for huge multinational corporations in the competition for social space. However, many local residents in Hong Kong discover that embedded in their daily struggle for survival are the many seeds of grassroots political and social change. Most cooperatives and mutual aid programs, as demonstrated by the Women Workers Cooperative, form natural interest groups. Many participants of these groups who used to be isolated in their individualized daily struggle now discover themselves part of a movement. Empowered and radicalized, many take their political commitment farther in different forms of political activism (fig. 6.1. Women Workers Cooperative banners).

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Conclusion

The usurpation of social space by the forces of capital threatens communities and neighborhoods. Ironically, it is when traditional public spaces become privatized and constricted that aspects of private life become of necessity politicized, even becoming public movements. In the intense drive toward internationalism and global capitalism, when the very streets that used to contain the customs and behavior of local daily life are turned into spaces for tourists and businesses, sanitized and organized according to a standardized aesthetic, local organizing and political activism are pushed to the arena of daily life. There is a shift from a spatial mode of community life to a more pervasive and more wholesome community “mentality” that begins from individual life. In this sense, the social movements, since they involve the actual everyday habits of the members of the community, are holistic. The successes of all the various grassroots organizations and labor movements in 2003 create a radicalized population. The gradual rise of consciousness of social and economic justice through these programs is not insignificant in contributing to social change. Perhaps it was an indication of things to come when Leung Kwok Hung, the well-known grassroots dissident, was voted into the Legislative Council (Legco) as a political representative with sixty-thousand votes in the general election of councilors in 2004. Nicknamed “Long Hair” because of his unkempt shoulder-length hair, he defied the elitist dress code and etiquette of the Legco by insisting on wearing his “uniform” of Che Guevara t-shirts to the meetings despite open reprimands by the chairperson of the council. At the swear-in ceremony, he insisted on pledging his allegiance to “the people,” rather than to “the Chinese Communist Party,” creating immense political embarrassment for the HKSAR government.1 For 163

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his obstreperous behavior, he had been publicly dis-invited to Beijing by the central government. However, the general population adored Long Hair. It was reported that the night before the election there was not one Che Guevara tshirt to be found in stores in Hong Kong, because there had been a run on them by his supporters. Analysts pointed out that Long Hair had raised young people’s political interest and participation. The reverse is also true: Long Hair was embraced by the population because it was ready for a grassroots hero in 2004 (fig. 6.2. Long Hair). In December 2004, there was a proposal to raze the residential buildings in a rather new development, the Hunghom Peninsular, in order to build larger buildings to increase the number of saleable square footage. The developer, Sun Hungkee, however, yielded to public pressure and backed off from the plans. In another case, an elderly woman held up the Link REIT’s bid to privatize shopping malls in public housing estates through a lawsuit, claiming that it would push up retail rents and, by extension, consumer burden (see intro-

Fig. 6.2: Long Hair Grassroots hero, “Long Hair,” rallying the crowds at the July 1 2004 mass demonstration. The placate reads, “End tyranny; return governance to the people.”

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duction). At an economic forum on December 13, 2004, the chairman of the Hang Lung Group, Ronnie Chan, enraged by how development events had been stopped by public opinion, accused the politicians, especially the democrats in the Legislative Council, for being “only concerned with wealth distribution and not caring about wealth creation,” and that they were turning Hong Kong into the “most communist place in China.”2 Ronnie Chan typically argued that this kind of willfulness would deter investors and would adversely affect Hong Kong’s economy. Cynically, Shih Wing-Ching, the chairman of Centaline (Holdings) Company, commented that businesses have no advocates at the Legco, that they should fire the Liberal Party (the supposedly probusiness) councilors because they had openly helped public housing residents fight to overturn the Housing Authority’s plan to increase rent. He suggested that the business league should use ten billion dollars to “rent a party” to advocate for businesses’ rights. In an English editorial, Ming Pao Daily analyzed the public actions in the new millennium, from the defeat of Article 23, the West Kowloon Cultural complex debacle, the halting of the Hunghom Peninsular development plans, to the Link REIT lawsuits. These are only a few of the more successful local actions. There were also organized protests against further plans of land reclamation in the Victoria Harbour, demand for public official accountability, and so on. Finally, in 2005, the unpopular China-appointed CE for the HKSAR government, Tung Chee Hwa, resigned. Quoting Lau Siu-Kai, who headed the Central Policy Unit, a government think-tank, the Ming Pao Daily analysis pointed out that rather than to view these events as a crisis of governance, it was more accurate to see them as a result of the growth of civil society and a rejection of the colonial style, executive-led government. The title of the editorial piece “Surge in People Power” perhaps best describes the feeling of collective empowerment at the end of the tenure of HKSAR’s first CE. There is no question that many in Hong Kong deeply believe in the ideal of “Stability and Prosperity” and that one leads to the other. This is the reason that I focus narrowly in this book on a few years after 2000, when the free-market economy failed expectations. My study of the textual and artistic culture is to decipher the popular desire that is not evident through statistics and factual data. My aim is to bring out the contradictions in a capitalist society, where personal fulfillment and economic progress, in spite of what is apparent or expected, are often at odds. My use of Michel de Certeau’s theory of the everyday is to underline the idea of inadvertent rather than organized resistance and ambivalence toward, rather than outright

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rejection of the dominant ideology. Personal activisms such as those I discussed should be contextualized within the particularly difficult years of the new millennium. However, as I have argued before, public space, once opened, is very hard to be reenclosed. What happened in these few years of Hong Kong would have indelible influence in the political negotiations in its immediate future. The articulation of a Hong Kong identity has been a preoccupation among local intellectuals since the end of the colonial period. Regardless of whether a conclusive definition is possible, there is no doubt that the experience of the first five years of the HKSAR period was formative. In addition to the official branding as Asia’s financial headquarters and a “world city,” the citizens have made sure that written into this descriptive is their will for political expression and democratic governance. The experiences of these five years have made sure that within capitalist space, there will also be “spaces of hope.”

Notes

Introduction

1. Wall Street Journal, January, 4, 2006. 2. An overwhelming mood of celebration when Hong Kong was granted this title for yet another year can be seen in the editorials of all the major newspapers in Hong Kong on January 4, 2006, from the respected and generally politically liberal Ming Pao Daily, to the sensationalist Dong Fong (The Orient), to the conservative and right-leaning Singdou, and all those in between. 3. Bollywood might have always exceeded Hong Kong in the volume of its film production. However, in terms of export value, it consistently lagged behind. Despite the decrease in the volume of output of Hong Kong films in recent years, their influence in world popular culture is still considerable in terms of their substantive contribution. 4. Frederic Dannen and Barry Long, Hong Kong Babylon: The Insider’s Guide to the Hollywood of the East (New York: Miramax, 1997). 5. Lii Ding-Tzann, “A Colonized Empire: Reflections on the Expansion of Hong Kong Films in Asian Countries.” Also, Law Wing-Sang, “Managerializing Colonialism in Hong Kong.” K. H. Chen. ed., Trajectories: Inter-Asia Cultural Studies. New York and London: Routledge, 1998, 122–41. See also, the section, “Northward Bound Imagination,” in Stephen C. K. Chan. ed., Cultural Imaginary and Ideology: Contemporary Hong Kong Culture and Politics Review (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1997), 3–184. 6. For a discussion of the free-market capitalism as the ideological norm propelled by the mass media, see Hui Po-Keung, “Word Use And Translation: The Spread of the Ideology of Free Economy in Hong Kong,” in What Capitalism Is Not (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2002), 107–26. 7. Don Mitchell, The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space (London, New York: Guilford, 2003). Phrase originally from Henri Lefebvre.

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8. Michel de Certeau, “Walking in the City,” The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 91–110. 9. De Certeau, “Walking in the City,” 95. 10. De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). 11. Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, “From the Imperial Family to the Transnational Imaginary: Media Spectatorship in the Age of Globalization,” in Global/Local, ed, Rob Wilson and Wimal Dissanayake (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 154. 12. Ackbar Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997); Nuala Rooney, At Home with Density (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003); Kwok Yan-Chi Jackie, ed., The Production of Space in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Crabs, 1998). Woo Yun-Wai Matthias, Hong Kong Style (Hong Kong: CUP, 2005); Gordon Mathews and Lui Tai-Lok , Consuming Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2001); Huang Tsung-Yi Michelle, Walking between Slums and Skyscrapers: Illusions of Open Space in Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Shanghai (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004). 13. Lok Fung, City at the Fin de Siècle: Hong Kong Popular Culture (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1995). Also, Leung Ping-Kwan, Hong Kong Culture and Literature (Hong Kong: Youth Literary Bookstore,1996); Hong Kong Popular Culture (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 1993). 14. Gordon Mathews and Lui Tai-Lok, eds., Consuming Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2001). 15. Kristin Ross, The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 8. 16. Kwok Yan-Chi Jackie, ed., The Production of Space in Hong Kong. 17. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (London: Blackwell, 2003). 18. Rux Martin, “Truth, Power, Self: An Interview with Michel Foucault,” in Technologies on the Self, ed., Martin, Gutman, and Hutton (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 9–14. 19. Eric Kit-Wai Ma, “Hong Kong’s Self-Awareness as City,” Ming Pao Daily April 3, 2005, B11, U.S., East Coast edition. See also Television and Cultural Identity (Hong Kong: Breakthrough, 1996). 20. Television and Cultural Identity. For example, Stephen Chow’s lampoon in From Beijing with Love (1994) and Her Fatal Ways (lit: You’re Great, Cousin!) (1989) by writer and director, Alfred Cheung (Zhang Tingjian). 21. For an interesting discussion of the complex state of patriotism among Hong Kong people through the response to a propaganda music video broadcast in Hong Kong in 2004 during the October 1 national holiday, see Eric Kit-Wai Ma and Chow Pui Ha’s Aiguo zhengzhi shencha (An Examination of the Politics of Patriotism) (Hong Kong: Subculture Studio, 2005). 22. Anthony Fung, “What Makes the Local? A Brief Consideration of the Rejuvenation of Hong Kong Identity,” Cultural Studies 15 (3/4) (2001): 591–601. 23. Ibid.

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24. Rey Chow, “Fateful Attachment: On Collecting, Fidelity, and Lao She,” Critical Inquiry (Autumn 2001): 286–394. 25. Eric Kit Wai Ma and Chow Pui Ha, An Examination of the Politics of Patriotism (Hong Kong: Subculture, 2005). 26. Keynote address by Peter Woo, Chairman of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, March 26, 2001 (http://www. tdctrade. com/tdcnews). 27. Ibid. 28. It is Michelle Tsung-Yi Huang’s point to discuss how the physical plan of the city of Hong Kong itself is dominated by this ideology of global capitalism, which competes for space with the people. The discussions of the new airport as well as Hong Kong Disney are dealt with in great detail in her study in “Hong Kong: A Nodal Point of Dual Compression from British Empire Colony to Disney Kingdom Outpost,” Walking between Slums and Skyscrapers: Illusions of Open Space in Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Shanghai (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004), 15–30. 29. Keynote address of Peter Woo, chairman of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, March 26, 2001 (http://www.tdctrade.com/tdcnews). 30. In 2004, 24. 2 million air travelers were processed by the Hong Kong Immigration Department. In 2005, the number increased to 26.0 million. The department achieved 92% success rate in clearing travelers within fifteen minutes in immigration procedures (http://www.immd.gov.hk). 31. The mission statement of the Airport Authority Hong Kong reads as follows: “Airport Authority Hong Kong (AA) is a statutory body that holds a mandate to maximise the value of Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) for the benefit of the territory’s prosperity. Wholly owned by the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), AA was established in 1995 to operate and maintain HKIA, with an emphasis on enhancing Hong Kong’s status as a major centre of international and regional aviation” http://www.hongkongairport.com/eng/aboutus/profile.html. For five consecutive years since its opening, Hong Kong International Airport has been named best airport worldwide in passenger surveys, receiving the Gold Award in the “World Airport Awards” (http://www.airlinequality.com). 32. Michael Siu-Kin Wai, “To Put in Order: The Ideas of Le Corbusier on Urban Planning,” in The Production of Space in Hong Kong, ed. Yan-Chi Jackie Kwok (Hong Kong: Crabs, 1998), 50–77. 33. Asia Pacific Management Forum, April 25, 2002 (http://www.apmforum. Com). 34. See the mission statement of the government agency, Civics Education Committee. (http://www.cpce.gov.hk). 35. Frederic Jameson, “Politics of Utopia,” New Left Review 25 (2004): 35–56: 38. 36. Harvey describes this process in many of his works; most recently, it is developed in The New Imperialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003) and A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). 37. Terminology of Mike Davis in Planet of Slums (London: Verso, 2006). 38. Frederic Jameson, “Politics of Utopia. “ 39. Hung Hou-Fung, “Thousand Years of Oppression, Thousand Years of Resis-

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41. 42. 43. 44.

45.

46. 47. 48.

49.

50. 51.

52.

Notes to Introduction

tance: The Tankas before and after Colonialism,” in Civic Culture and Political Discourse in Postwar Hong Kong, ed. Law Wing-Sang (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1997), 113–40. The Link REIT incident in 2004, in which the Hong Kong Housing Authority attempts to sell the malls and car parks of the housing estates in its ownership to private developers is seen by some as a typical strategy of privatization in Hong Kong that sacrifices the rights of the poor in order to promote development. I describe this further in a later section of this chapter. www.brandhk.gov.hk Eric Kit-Wai Ma, “Hong Kong’s Self-Awareness.” Jan Aart Scholte, “Global Capitalism and the State,” International Affairs 73, 3 (July 1997): 427–52. Quoted from Ming Pao Daily, April 4, 2005, B14, U.S., East Coast edition. “Tsang’s Colonial Past May Stall His Political Rise,” The Hong Kong Standard, April 4, 2005. “H. K. Gov’t Drops Planned REIT Listing Amid Legal Uncertainty,” Japan Economic Newswire, December 20, 2004; “Link Collapses,” The Hong Kong Standard, December 20, 2004. Ming Pao Daily, December 14, 2004, B14, U.S. East Coast edition. David Harvey, Spaces of Hope (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000). According to the Hong Kong Yearbook 2003: “The year of 2003 marked the fiftieth year of public housing development in Hong Kong. About one-third of the population in Hong Kong now lives in public rental housing with another 20 percent in subsidised home ownership flats. The total housing stock in Hong Kong in December amounted to 2,363,410 flats, comprising 689,450 public rental housing (PRH) flats, 394,630 subsidised home ownership flats and 1,279,330 flats in the private sector. The revised estimate of public expenditure on housing in 2003–04 was $27.9 billion and reached 10 percent of total public expenditure” (http://www.yearbook.gov.hk/2003/english/chapter11/11_00.html). See also, Nuala Rooney, At Home with Density (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003). 13% of The Hong Kong government total recurrent expenditure is allocated for the public hospital system. “Landscape on Health-care Services in Hong Kong,” discussion paper of the Health and Medical Development Advisory Committee, March 15, 2005 (http://www. hwfb. gov. hk/hmdac/English). Ann Laura Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995). Michel Foucault readjusted our perspective in calling attention to how social groups create the conditions for particular regimes of state discipline. See History of Sexuality, vol. 1 (New York: Vintage, 1990). Michel de Certeau, Luce Giard, and Pierre Mayol, The Practice of Everyday Life, vol. 2: Living and Cooking, trans. Timothy J. Tomasik (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 10–11.

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53. Henri Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003). 54. De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, vol. 2, 11. 55. Etienne Balibar, We, the Citizens of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); Ann Laura Stoler, “Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in North American History and (Post) Colonial Studies,” Journal of American History (2001) (http://www.historycooperative.press.uiuc.edu). 56. Anne Showstack Sassoon, “Introduction: The Personal and the Intellectual, Fragments and Order, International Trends and National Specificities,” in Sassoon, ed., Women and the State (London: Hutchinson, 1987), 13–42. 57. Georg Simmel, “The Metropolis and Mental Life,” in Metropolis: Center and Symbol of Our Times, ed. P. Kasinitz (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995), 30–45. 58. Ibid. 59. Kristin Ross examines the essential difference between de Certeau’s notion of the street and that of Althusser’s. She argues that while the street for the former is a metonym for “the people” and symbolizes resistance, for the latter, it is a site of our subjection by the state, which is all-pervasive, basing her discussion on the famous anecdote Althusser relates about how one turns at the voice of a policeman on the street. Kristin Ross, “Streetwise: The French Invention of Everyday Life,” Parallax 2 (1996): 67–76. See Michel de Certeau, “Walking in the City” in The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 91–110. 60. Henri Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution. 61. Kristin Ross, “Streetwise: The French Invention of Everyday Life,” Parallax 2 (1996): 67–76. See Michel de Certeau, “Walking in the City” in The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 91–110. 62. Michael Sheringham, “Attending to the Everyday: Blanchot, Lefebvre, Certeau, Perce,” French Studies 54, 2 (2000): 187–99.

Chapter One. “World Suicide Capital”

1. In 2002, Hong Kong produced only 67 feature movies (not for television), down from 133 in the already depressed year of 2001. BBC January 3, 2003 (http://www.news.bbc.co.uk). 2. Compare this to the combined 46 million Hong Kong dollars boxoffice earnings of the international blockbuster Lord of the Rings, parts one and two combined. Figures quoted from Ming Pao Weekly, December 7, 2003, U.S., East Coast edition. The rights for this film were acquired by Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment in 2003 and remade as The Departed, directed by Martin Scorsese. 3. This is Hong Kong-Mainland coproduction. 4. Nestor Garcia Canclini, Consumers and Citizens: Globalization and Multi-

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5.

6. 7.

8.

9. 10.

11.

Notes to Chapter One

cultural Conflicts, trans. George Yúdice (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 65. Quoted and translated from Zhang Zhiwei, “Propagating Tyranny or Against Tyranny? The Political Reading of Hero,” in Ming Pao Daily, January 18, 2003, Section C, U.S. East Coast edition. Ibid. Right before and after 1997, there was almost an urgency in Hong Kong to articulate or discover a “Hong Kong identity,” resulting in an industry of Hong Kong studies, fictionalized history, personal memoirs, and collective accounts. See for example, the series of seven volumes of Hong Kong Cultural Studies published by Oxford University Press, one of which, Stephen C. K. Chan, ed., Identity and Public Culture (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1997), focuses on identity issues. Personal accounts and memoirs include the series Hong Kong Old Pictures (Hong Kong: Cosmo, 1999) and This Is How We Grew Up (Hong Kong: Mingpao, 1997). Xi Xi’s fictional history of Hong Kong, Feizan (Flying Carpet) (Taipei: Hung-fan, 1996). In his futuristic collection, Visible Cities, the fiction writer Dung Kai-Cheung describes the process of an archeological expedition in some future age to uncover the historical truth of Hong Kong after the city was submerged and disappeared after the end of the twentieth century. This reflects an obvious anxiety of the disappearance of a “true” Hong Kong after the turnover of its sovereignty to China after 1997 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Arts Centre, 1998). The idea of a Hong Kong “core value” or the “Hong Kong spirit” has been hotly debated since 2003 and 2004 and the various social and political events of these years, which I will describe later. The iconic City Magazine held a forum attended by some of the more well-known Hong Kong cultural critics and academics to identify the “Hong Kong Spirit” (on December 20, 2005, in another Hong Kong institution, the Chui Wah Diner, the three-story Hong Kong-style diner in Central). City Magazine 352 (2006): 174–75. Quoted from Ming Pao Daily, October 2, 2003, Section B, U.S. East Coast edition. Lo Wing-Sang points out that the peculiarity of Hong Kong politics is only possible in a place with immense hostility toward notions of native soil. This is because “the imaginary of native soil is often ineluctably equated with the backwardness and erratic politics of China. In Hong Kong this powerful antinative notion is very deep-seated. “ See Law Wing-Sang, “Transforming Colonialism through Managerialism,” in Whose City: Civic Culture and Political Discourse in Postwar Hong Kong, ed. Law Wing-Sang (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1997), 79. One of China’s “fifth generation” film directors, a generation characterized by their reaction against the hyperpoliticized social realist style since 1949 and then the “Sample Drama” of the Cultural Revolution, Zhang’s films are known for the extravagant romantic depiction of a China that emphasis more on surface cinematic beauty than “realism.” See Rey Chow, “The Force of Surfaces: Defiance in Zhang Yimou’s Films,” Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chinese Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 142–72.

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12. Hero has earned more than two billion Hong Kong dollars at the boxoffice. However as commentator Guo Qiancheng points out, most of this is created by the Mainland boxoffice. Ming Pao Daily, January 16, 2004, Section C, Hong Kong edition. 13. Michael Dutton, ed., “Stories of the Fetish: Tales of Chairman Mao,” Streetlife China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 238–71. 14. Rey Chow writes about this episode in “Introduction,” Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies (Indianapolis: University of Indiana Press, 1993), 1–26. 15. Ming Pao Daily, November 17, 2003, Section C, U.S. East Coast edition. 16. Law Wing-Sang. 17. Anthony Fung in “What Makes the Local? A Brief Consideration of the Rejuvenation of Hong Kong Identity,” records the changing perception toward various national icons from 1996 to 1998. Toward the symbols of the state, the People’s Liberation Army, only 10.0% felt a sense of pride toward it in 1996, while 30.3% of the population felt a sense of unease toward it. In 1997 and 1998, the numbers read 10.9% and 9.3%. More relevant on an everyday level, the public security of China was regarded with a sense of pride by 3.0%, 2.7% and 4.4% in the three years. But those who felt a sense of unease numbered 38.9%, 24.8% and 19.7%. Hong Kong people’s fear of China’s state apparatus significantly decreased as China’s pledge of “One country two systems” and “Hong Kong governed by Hong Kong people” was realized, but not eliminated (Cultural Studies 15 (2001): 599). 18. The ominousness of the PLA entering Hong Kong is documented with great poignancy by the film director Fruit Chan. The footage is incorporated in his film The Longest Summer (1998). 19. http://www.brandhk.gov.hk 20. The Hong Kong Medical Journal (December 2003) http://www.hkmj.org/resources/digest0312.html. Also, study of the University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Jockey Club Center for Suicide Research and Prevention (http://csrp1.hku.hk/index.php). 21. Quoted from Asiaone (http://newspaper.asia1.com.sg). 22. Under the CEPA (Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement), which was described as offering “a much better deal than China’s WTO commitments,” Hong Kong enjoys preferential access to China’s market as it moves toward greater liberalization. It guarantees zero tariff privilege for exports from Hong Kong to China, freer market excess of eighteen service sectors, 1005 ownerships of Chinese ventures. The Hong Kong Trade Development Council boasts that it will make Hong Kong “the simplest and most profitable route into China.” See Hong Kong Trade Development Council official website (http://www.TDC.COM). 23. See, for example, the admonishment of Cui Zhekai, deputy director of the Hong Kong Office of Chinese Affairs. Ming Pao Daily, August 7, 2003, Section B, U.S. East Coast edition. 24. Comic strip, “Muhn Dou dai (Getting to the bottom),” drawn by Wong King-

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26. 27.

28.

Notes to Chapter Two

chai and written by Lee Chat. Ming Pao Daily, July 2, 2003, Section C, U.S. East Coast edition. For example, Cui Zhekai, the deputy director of the Hong Kong Office of Chinese Affairs (Zhonglian ban), publicly admonished Hong Kong people about the importance of stability, hyperbolically equating the mass demonstration to the mobs of China’s Cultural Revolution. The deputy director of the Office of Hong Kong-Macau Affairs of the State Department, Xu Ze, urged the SAR government to increase their efforts in education to nurture nationalistic sentiment in Hong Kong (Ming Pao Daily, August 7, 2003, and September 5, 2003, Section B, U.S. East Coast edition). In response, the famous commentator and writer Tou Kit (Tao Jie), in an essay “New Government, New Hong Kong,” wrote, “We have demonstrated; Article 23 has been postponed; What next? (original in English.) The next step is to force Old Tung to vacate, and for direct election of the Chief Executive,” Ming Pao Daily, July 7, 2003, Section B, U.S. East Coast edition. Joseph Y. S. Cheng, “The 2003 Council Election in Hong Kong,” Asian Survey 44, 5 (2004): 734–54. “Six-monthly Report on Hong Kong: July–December 2003. Presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs by Command of Her Majesty” (February 7, 2004) (http://www.fco.gov.uk/Files/Kfile). Also, “Commission staff working document: Hong Kong report. From the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament: HKSAR Annual Report” (http://www.delhkg.cec.eu.int/en/EUHKReporto4.dec). Reported in Ming Pao Daily, January 17, 2004, Section A, Hong Kong edition.

Chapter Two. Walking Down Memory Lane

1. Henri Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 21. 2. See Kristin Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture (London, California: MIT Press, 1995). 3. Henri Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 19. 4. Ibid. 5. Chantal Mouffe, “Democratic Citizenship and Political Community.” Dimensions in Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship, Community (London: Verso, 1992), 229–58. 6. This idea of Hong Kong’s recolonization by China is a stance held by various scholars in the early 1990s, most notably, Rey Chow’s, Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993). Scholarship in the late 1990s tends to complicate this idea by pointing out that because Hong Kong is a powerful cultural and economic influence in China, one can also perceive Hong Kong’s relationship with China as “conquering north” (beijin), thus reversing the power hierarchy between the two. See the series of essays on the “beijin imag-

Notes to Chapter Two

7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21.

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inary” in Stephen C. K. Chan, ed., Cultural Imaginary and Ideology: Contemporary Hong Kong Culture and Politics Review (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1997). As Hong Kong’s economic situation weakens since the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2002, this relationship needs to be once again reevaluated. Wong Wang-Chi, Stephen C. K Chan, and Li Siu-Leung, Hong Kong UnImagined: History, Culture and the Future (Taipei: Rye Field, 1997), 95–132. Ibid. See also, Esther M. K. Cheung, “The Hi/Stories of Hong Kong,” Cultural Studies 15 (3/4) (2001): 564–90. Akbar Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997). Andreas Huyssen, “Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia,” Public Culture 12 (1) (2000): 21–38. John Ngnuyet Erni, “Like a Postcolonial Culture: Hong Kong Re-Imagined,” Cultural Studies 15 (3/4) (2001): 389–418. Written as an introduction to a special issue on Hong Kong culture, Erni explains: “We took heed of the enduring lesson learned during the transitional period leading to decolonization (1984–1997) that in order to have a future, Hong Kong must desire history. Wanting our own history has been a political act at that time, for it disrupted attempts of historical erasure and rewriting by the departing colonialists and by the southward nationalist historians” (392). Michael Kanmen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Vintage, 1993). http://www. lcsd. gov. hk/CE/Museum/History Ibid. Esther M. K. Cheung, “The Hi/Stories of Hong Kong,” Cultural Studies 15 (3/4) (2001): 564–90: 564. See Bill Brown, “Regional Artifacts (The Life of Things in the Work of Sarah Orne Jewett),” American Literary History (2000): 195. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1988), 108. John Frow quotes from Robert Hewison, who applies the Benjaminian concept to contemporary Britain: “From the perspectives of everyday life, the unique heritage object has aura, and in this respect that national heritage seems to have a persistent connection with earlier traditions of bourgeois culture—a connection which may even be especially strong as the modern past reaches out to include not masterpieces but the modest objects of bygone everyday life in its repertoire,” Time and Commodity Culture, 253. See Rey Chow, “Fateful Attachments: On Collecting, Fidelity, and Lao She,” Critical Inquiry (Autumn 2001): 286–394. Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, The Collection (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1984), 23. In her discussion of the issue of antique collection in the short story “Lian (Attachment),” by Lao She, Rey Chow explores the issue of individual subjection and how one’s cultural belonging, class, and even national identity are defined according to one’s possessions. Chow points out, “History appears in

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22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28.

29.

30. 31.

Notes to Chapter Two

the form of culture—the cherished collectibles that supposedly, enhance people’s sense of their own refinement. Remarkably, Lao She depicts changing attitudes toward history by way of changing attitudes toward collecting and thereby incidentally introduces the issue of ‘class’ understood in cultural, rather than economic terms.” National identity can be interpreted as a form of desire sublimated through acquisitions and possessions of such historical symbols as antiques. Rey Chow, “Fateful Attachments: On Collecting, Fidelity, and Lao She,” Critical Inquiry (2001): 290. See Akbar Abbas, “The Last Emporium: Verse and Cultural Space,” City at the End of Time (Hong Kong: Twilight, 1992), 3–19. Mathew Turner and Irene Ngan, eds., Hong Kong Sixties: Designing Identity (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Arts Centre, 1995). Li Zhaoxing (Bono Lee), Hong Kong Postmodern (Hong Kong: Zinanzjen jituan, 2002), 36–37. In fact, some would argue that global capitalist economy is directly related to the growth of heritage industries. Joe Moran points out that the fetish of childhood objects and the sustaining myths of childhood that dominate the heritage industry in contemporary Britain, for example, reflect the “anxieties about the effects of recent economic and social changes on both adults and children, even if the ‘solutions’ it offers are necessarily individualistic and backward-looking.” “Childhood and Nostalgia in Contemporary Culture,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 5 (2002): 55–173: 171. The exhibition was produced by the Hong Kong Museum of History exhibition director, Oscar Ching-bin Ho. See the accompanying publications. Mathew Turner and Irene Ngan, Hong Kong Sixties: Designing Identity. What is this international image? According to Hong Kong Arts Centre director Oscar Ho on the image constructed during this period: “Occasionally ‘East meets West’ is used to define Hong Kong culture, mainly for promoting tourism. Situated between the two powerful cultures, the Chinese and the British, Hong Kong does have difficulty in standing on her own. ‘East meets West’ is convenient and superficial enough for Hong Kong. If our father is British and our mother, Chinese, who are we? Would that ‘East meets West’ adequately explain the complexity of our culture? Culture is not something that one can clearly outline, but it does not require too much observation to see the distinctiveness of Hong Kong culture. ” Ho, “People with No Faces,” in Hong Kong Sixties: Designing Identity, by Mathew Turner and Irene Ngan, xii. Steve Tsang, A Modern History of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004). See also, Elsie Tu, Colonial Hong Kong in the Eyes of Elsie Tu (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003). Steve Tsang, A History of Modern Hong Kong. There are many memoirs and short pieces that touch on the issue of the sense of community and self-help among neighbors among the public estate dwellers. For example, Tsin Wai-Yi, “The Days of Matchbox Houses,” in Leung Wai-Ling et al., eds., Come in for Tea: Self-narrative of a Group of University Students (Hong Kong: Subculture, 1996), 7–12. There are also

Notes to Chapter Two

32.

33.

34. 35.

36.

37. 38. 39. 40.

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studies about how redevelopment of aging housing estates upsets communities that have existed around them. See Kwok Yan-Chi Jackie, and Siu KinWai Michael, “The Hidden Rhythm of Life: A Study of the ‘Elderly Estate’ in Hong Kong and the Experience of Life, “ in Kwok Yan-Chi Jackie, ed., The Production of Space in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Crabs, 1998), 102–21. Hung Hou-Fung, “Thousand Years of Oppression, Thousand Years of Resistance: The Tankas Before and After Colonialism,” in Law Wing-Sang. ed., Civic Culture and Political Discourse in Postwar Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1997) 113–40. Eric Kit-Wai Ma. Television and Cultural Identity (Hong Kong: Breakthrough, 1996); Ma, Culture Politics and Television in Hong Kong (London and New York: Routledge, 1999); Ng Fong, The History of HK Television (Hong Kong: Subculture, 2003). “Pleasant environment, Clean Hong Kong History” (http://www.fehd.gov.hk/pleasant_environment/chk). The museum operates in close association with the Hong Kong Institute of Education to develop programs for school-age children. They jointly produce a “learning kit” from the exhibition, which includes traveling display boards, slides, and a video collection for lending out to schools. They sponsor annual interschool competitions that give prizes for study projects on Hong Kong history and culture. As a state project, the museum also offers wide accessibility to the general public. It is free to school children. But even for the general public, the cost is only ten Hong Kong dollars per person, which amounts to about one dollar and twenty cents in U.S. currency. Moreover, admission to the museum is free to the public every Wednesday. There is a large amount of theoretical discussion on the importance of civic interactions among people in the democratizing of public space. According to Raymond Williams, for example, these spaces are “the place where new social and economic and cultural relationships, beyond both city and nation in their older senses, were beginning to be framed,” thus it nurtures the democratic and revolutionary potential of the masses and the multitude (44). Raymond Williams, “Metropolitan Perception and the Emergence of Modernism” in The Politics of Modernism: Against the New Conformist (London: Verso, 1989), 37–47. Also, Chantal Mouffe writes that the natural process of democracy is predicated on difference, divisions, exclusions, and contestation that are naturally present in such places. See “Democratic Citizenship and Political Community,” in Dimensions in Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship, Community (London: Verso, 1992), 229–58. Andreas Huyssen, Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia (New York and London: Routledge, 1995). Umberto Eco, Travel in Hyperreality (New York: Hill and Wang, 1990). Ming Pao Daily, July 7, 2003, Section B, Hong Kong edition. Quoted and translated from Ming Pao Daily, August 7, 2003, Section B, Hong Kong edition.

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Notes to Chapter Three

41. Quoted and translated from Ming Pao Daily, September 5, 2003, Section B, Hong Kong edition. 42. Under the CEPA, which was described as offering “a much better deal than China’s WTO commitments,” Hong Kong enjoys preferential access to China’s market as it moves toward more and more liberalization. It guarantees zero tariff privilege for exports from Hong Kong to China, freer market excess of eighteen service sectors, 1005 ownerships of Chinese ventures. The Hong Kong Trade Development Council boasts that this will make Hong Kong “the simplest and most profitable route into China.” See Hong Kong Trade Development Council official website (http://w.w.w.TDC.COM). 43. Don Mitchell, The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space (New York, London: Guilford, 2003), 50.

Chapter Three. Quality Citizens in Public Spaces

1. Architectural critic Matthias Yun-Wai Woo made such criticism of Hong Kong parks in his book Hong Kong Style. Matthias Yun-Wai Woo, Hong Kong Style (Hong Kong: CUP, 2005). 2. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), 97. 3. Henri Lefebvre, “The Right to the City,” in Writing on Cities, ed. and trans. E. Kofman and E. Lebas (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 63–181. 4. Robert C. Ellickson, “Controlling Chronic Misconduct of City Spaces: Of Panhandlers, Skid Rows, and Public-Space Zoning,” The Yale Law Journal 105 (1996): 1165–1248: 1167. 5. Henri Lefebvre, “Work and Leisure in Everyday Life,” in Critique of Everyday Life, trans. John Moore (London: Verso, 1991), 29–42. 6. Don Mitchell, “The Annihilation of Space by Law: The Roots and Implications of Anti-homeless Laws in the United States,” The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space (New York: Guilford, 2003), 7. 7. Ibid. 8. Mathias Yun-Wai Woo, Hong Kong Style (Hong Kong: CUP, 2005): 70. 9. Jameson, “Politics of Utopia,” New Left Review 25 (2004): 35–56: 42. 10. For a brief rundown of Hong Kong’s social movements and mass protests, see Lui Tai-Lok and Stephen Wing-Kai Chiu, “Changing Political Opportunities and the Shaping of Collective Action: Social Movement in Hong Kong,” in Sing Ming ed., Hong Kong Government and Politics (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2003), 503–504. 11. See Matthew Turner and Irene Ngan eds., Hong Kong Sixties: Designing Identity (Hong Kong: The Hong Kong Arts Centre, 1995). 12. Woo, Hong Kong Style, 40. 13. Kwok Yan-Chi Jackie and Ng Chit-Hang Ken, “The Analysis of the Design of Tsuen Wan Tak Wah Park, “ ed. Kwok Yan-Chi Jackie, The Production of Space in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Crabs, 1998).

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14. Kwok and Ng, 165. 15. Ibid. 16. Don Mitchell, “The End of Public Space? People’s Park, the Public, and the Right to the City,” The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space, 140. 17. Unruly and rebellious behavior of young people in Hong Kong is often regarded with great concern. Lui Chi-Wai argues that youth is a constructed social category. Their actions are constantly seen as “problems” rather than social protests. See Lui Chi-Wai, “Modernity, Social Control and Hong Kong’s Youth Problem 1945–1979,” in Reading Hong Kong Popular Cultures 1970–2000, ed. Ng Jun Hung and Cheung Chi-Wai (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2002). 18. Amy Sim, “Organizing Discontent: NGOs for South East Asian Migrant Workers in Hong Kong,” Working Papers Series 18 (2002), the South East Asian Research Center, City University of Hong Kong (www. cityu.edu.hk/sarc/ wp18_02_sim.pdf). 19. Nicole Constable, “Sexuality and Discipline among Filipina Domestic Workers in Hong Kong,” in Gendering Hong Kong, ed. Anita Kit-Wa Chan and Wong Wai-Ling (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2004), 492–519. 20. Ohashi Kenichi, “Gatherings of Filipino Square—Filipino Domestic Workers in Central,” in City Contact—Observations of Hong Kong Street Culture, ed., Lui Tai-Lok and Ohashi Kenichi (Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 1992), 173–97. 21. Judith Butler, “Gender Is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion,” in Film Theory: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies, ed., Philip Simpson, Karen J. Shepherdson, and Andrew Utterson (London: Taylor and Francis, 2004), 249–66. 22. Don Mitchell, “The Annihilation of Space by Law: The Roots and Implications of Anti-homeless Laws in the United States. ” 23. Referring to Hannah Arendt’s argument that human rights is the foundation of political rights, Etienne Balibar believes that, in our world today, this is often reversed. Human rights are a privilege of citizenship, granted or protected at the indulgence of state governments. Artificial borders that render illegal or expel many world sojourners from formal membership of different nations leave them without any basic rights and protection. Etienne Balibar, We, the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). 24. Henri Lefebvre, Everyday Life in the Modern World (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1984), 205. 25. http://www.anothermountainman.com/ 26. Stanley Wong, “exhibition pamphlet” of Building Hong Kong “Redwhiteblue,” Exhibition Series 4 (17/11/2004–18/4/2005), the Hong Kong Heritage Museum. 27. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 422. 28. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 382. 29. Ming Pao Daily, July 2, 2003, Section B, U.S. East Coast edition.

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Notes to Chapter Four

30. Kiu Ching Wah, “July 1 Demonstration as Selling Point,” Ming Pao Daily, October 31, 2004, Section C, U.S. East Coast edition. 31. Ming Pao Daily, December 26, 2003, Section B, U.S. East Coast edition. Chapter Four. The World Emporium and the Mall City

1. Gordon Mathews and Lui Tai-Lok, ed. “Introduction,” Consuming Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2001), 1–22. 2. Peter Woo, Chairman of Hong Kong Trade and Economic Council Keynote Address, March 26, 2001, http://www.tdctrade.com/tdcnews. 3. Appellation of Hong Kong used by many. See Ackbar Abbas, “The Last Emporium: Verse and Cultural Space,” in City at the End of Time (Hong Kong: Twilight, 1992), 3–19. 5. Ibid. 6. Nestor Garcia Canclini, trans. Goerge Yúdice, Consumers and Citizens: Globalization and Multicultural Conflicts (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 42. 7. Ibid., 40. 8. Laura C. Nelson, Measured Excess: Status, Gender, and Consumer Nationalism in South Korea (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000). 9. Pricewaterhouse Coopers Retail and Consumer Growth Dynamics from New Delhi to New Zealand, “Hong Kong Country Report 2003/2004,” 11 (http://Pwchk.com/webmedia/doc). 10. It is estimated that in the first two weeks of July the city attracted 1.6 million visitors from China, generating about HK Dollars 9 billion for the city. The Financial Times, July 10, 2004. 11. Rudi Laermans, “Learning to Consume: Early Department Stores and the Shaping of Modern Consumer Culture 1860–1914,” in Theory Culture and Society (1993): 10: 79–102. See also Yau Jen, “The Order of Life in Mutsukoshi Department Store,” in Reading Hong Kong Popular Cultures, 1970–2000, ed. Ng Jun-Hong and Cheung Chi-Wai (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2002), 342–43. 12. Annie Hau-Nung Chan, “Shopping for Fashion in Hong Kong,” in Consuming Hong Kong, ed. Gordon Mathews and Lui Tai-Lok (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2001), 141–72. 13. Mary Douglas, “The Consumer Revolt,” Thought Styles: Critical Essays on Good Taste, ed. Mary Douglas (New York: Sage, 1996), 106–25. 14. Canclini, 42. 15. Lui Tai-Lok, “The Malling of Hong Kong,” in Consuming Hong Kong, 23–46. 16. Matthias Yun-Wai Woo, “The World of Flyovers,” in Hong Kong Style (Hong Kong: CUP, 2005), pp. 54–59. 17. Matthias Yun-Wai Woo, “Hong Kong Is a Super Mall,” Hong Kong Style, 69–71. Tse Ou-Sheung, ed., “Wandering through the Malls of Hong Kong.” Hong Kong Love Letter (Hong Kong: Subculture, 1999), 173–91. 18. Tai-Lok Lui.

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19. Census and Statistics Department, Hong Kong Administrative Region, The People’s Republic of China: Hong Kong Annual Digest of Statistics, 2003 edition, 79. 20. Hong Kong Economic and Trade Council, December 2004 issue (http://www.hketo.Ca). See also “CE’s Speech at ‘Luxury 2004: The Lure of Asia’ Conference” (http://www. infohk/gia/general/200412/01/1201109.html). 21. Henri Lefebvre, “Work and Leisure in Everyday Life,” in Critique of Everyday Life, trans. John Moore (London: Verso, 1991), 29–42. 22. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (London: Blackwell, 2003), 384. 23. Lung King-Cheung, ed. , This Is How We Grew Up (Hong Kong: Ming Cheung, 1997). Volume 3 was published in 2002. 24. Yau Sai-Man et al., Old Pictures of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Cosmo, 1999). 25. Lung, 77. 26. Lee Jiu-Hing, ed. , Hong Kong 101: 101 Reasons to Love and Hate Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Man Lam Seh, 2000). 27. “Hong Kong Sixties: Designing/Identity,” curated by Matthew Turner. Hong Kong Arts Center, 1995. See accompanying publication edited by Mathew Turner and Irene Ngan (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Arts Center, 1995). 28. “Hong Kong’s Food Culture,” The Hong Kong Heritage Museum, September 17, 2003, to April 26, 2004. 29. This history is documented in Yauhahmyausiu: ahpoh haosuht si Youhanyousiao: ahpo koushushi (Laughing and Crying: The Old Ladies’ Oral History) (Hong Kong: New Association for the Advancement of Women, 2001). 30. Of course, Sahmduo’s case is an exaggeration of what scholars have long pointed out about the influence of television on individual as well as societal consciousness. Ng Fong, “Our Souls Are Molded by the Television,” in The History of Hong Kong Television (Hong Kong: Subculture, 2003), 24–32. Also, Eric Kit-Wai Ma, Television and Cultural Identity (Hong Kong: Breakout, 1996). 31. Records of Sapheung, 153. 32. Mary Douglas, “The Consumer Revolt.” 33. Bill Brown, “Thing Theory,” Critical Inquiry (2001): 10. 34. John Treat, Contemporary Japan and Popular Culture (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996). 35. Margaret Crawford, H. “The World in a Shopping Mall,” in Michael Sorkin, ed., Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space (New York: Hill and Wang, 1999) 3–30. 36. Lui Tai-Lok, “The Malling of Hong Kong,” Consuming Hong Kong, 12–46. 37. Chan Wai, Sound and Taste (Hong Kong: Subculture, 1998). 38. Zhonghua tansuo (Exploring China), a Ming Pao Daily, U.S. East Coast edition, Saturday supplement (January 29, 2005), 12. 39. Hong Kong Annual Digest of Statistics, 2003 edition, 98. 40. Canclini, 151. 41. Raymond Williams, Culture and Society (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985).

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Notes to Chapter Five

42. Rey Chow, “Fateful Attachments: On Collecting, Fidelity, and Lao She,” Critical Inquiry (Autumn 2001): 290.

Chapter Five. Body Weight, Responsible Citizenship, and Women’s Social Spaces

1. The Berkeley Wellness Letter: The Newsletter of Nutrition, Fitness, and Self-care 21, 5 (February 2005), 8. The newsletter also points out the environmental impact of this extra consumption of fuel. It resulted in the release of about 3. 8 million tons of carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) and other pollutants. The direct and indirect costs of such a level of pollution are perhaps beyond calculation. 2. Ming Pao Daily, July 20, 2004, Section C, U.S. East Coast edition. 3. Cheung is the chairperson of the extremely successful Sau San Tong Holdings. 4. Priscilla Kwok, L Y Tse, “Overweight and Obesity in Hong Kong—What Do We Know?” (September 2004) (http://www.dh.gov.hk). 5. See the fans blog in “What Do You Think of Joyce Cheng?” (http://www. asianfanatics.net). 6. William Kelly, ed. , Fanning the Flames: Fans and Consumer Culture in Contemporary Japan (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004), 7. 7. Kelly, 7–8. 8. Ian Condry, “B-Boys and B-Girls: Rap Fandom and Consumer Culture in Japan,” in Fanning the Flames, 19. 9. The September 12, 2004, election for Legislative Council (Legco) members in which the otherwise popular Democratic Party that had rallied general support in their criticism of Article 23, and then agitation for universal suffrage, suffered a loss of two seats, while the pro-China, nationalistic, DAB gained two seats, which ended the majority control of the Democrats in Legco. This election result reflects the people’s fear of chaos brought about by too much antagonism toward China, but also is a result of China’s economic packages to bribe the Hong Kong public’s obedience. The discipline of capitalism is never more obvious than in this relationship between the Hong Kong people and the Central government of Mainland China. 10. Reported in Ming Pao Daily, July 12, 2004, Section A, Hong Kong edition. 11. Jessica Leung wrote, “According to admango. com, a company that monitors advertising media in Hong Kong, advertisements on slimming products and services increased by 75% in the past year. From January to May 2002 alone, a record HKD500 million was spent on slimming advertisements. More money is spent on advertising in the diet industry than in any other industry in Hong Kong,” in “The Dieting Phenomenon in Hong Kong: The Changing Attitudes toward Dieting amongst Young Women in Hong Kong” (http://www.civic-exchange.org). 12. See Laura C. Nelson, Measured Excess: Status, Gender, and Consumer Nationalism in South Korea (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000).

Notes to Chapter Five

183

13. Nestor Garcia Canclini, Consumers: Globalization and Multicultural Conflicts (Minneapolis: Minnesota, 2001), 42. 14. Georg Simmel, “The Metropolis and Mental Life,” in Metropolis: Centre and the Symbol of Our Times, ed. P. Kasinitz (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995), 30–45. 15. Laura Nelson, Measured Excess: Status, Gender and Consumer Nationalism in South Korea (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 169. 16. “Office Ladies” or “OL” is the common appellation for women office workers in Hong Kong. 17. Teresa Carillo, “Cross-Border Talk: Transnational Perspective on Labor, Race, and Sexuality,” in Talking Visions: Multicultural Feminism in a Transnational Age, ed. Ella Shohat (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998). 18. However this is not true for women in the service industry, especially in the low-paying positions. They are paid on average HKD2000 (about USD250) less per month than men in the same positions for the same jobs. 19. All figures quoted from Ming Pao Daily, July 30, 2004, Section B, Hong Kong edition. 20. Hong Kong Census Bureau (November 24, 2005) (http://www.3.news.gov.hk). 21. Collected in his Hong Kong Trilogy (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2004). Chan Kwun-Chung is a well-known writer and a keen observer of the Hong Kong society. 22. Ibid. 23. Carolyn Cartier, Globalizing South China (Oxford and Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2001), 194. 24. Hong Kong Census Bureau (November 24, 2005) (http://www.3.news.gov.hk). 25. Ming Pao Daily, July 1, 2004, Section A, Hong Kong edition. 26. Ibid. 27. Immigration Department of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Review 2004 (http://www.immd.gov.hk). 28. Maria Milagros López, “No Body Is an Island: Reproduction and Modernization in Puerto Rico,” in Talking Visions: Multicultural Feminism in a Transnational Age. 29. Tin Shui Wai, the poorest district in Hong Kong, where there is a particularly large concentration of new immigrants from China, is the site of a shocking incidence of domestic crime in which a man murdered his three children and wife, a new immigrant woman from China, a long-suffering wife who had been physically abused for years. In a 2004 investigation by the City University of Hong Kong in collaboration with Hong Kong Student Aid Society in response to this incident, 39.7% of the interviewees in a survey answered yes to the question of whether he or she had financial difficulties. 63% of women had been in Hong Kong for less than five years. This area has the second highest figure for spousal abuse in Hong Kong. It ranks highest in Hong Kong in terms of family violence. The report is posted on line in its entirety: “Study on Family with Needs in Tin Shui Wai” (http://www.hksas.org.hk). This publication in turn launched the social work project, “Operation Tin Shui Wai,” in June 2004.

184

Notes to Chapter Six

30. Michelle Tsung-Yi Huang explained that Hong Kong’s successful bid for Disneyland, beating out Shanghai and other cities, is an important testament to its still leading position in terms of infrastructure. Huang quoted Mike Rowse, Hong Kong’s Tourism Commissioner: “Mr. Green (Chairman of Disney’s theme park division) said that Disney was also attracted by Hong Kong’s infrastructure. With a spectacular year-old airport and a gleaming network of roads, railways, tunnels and bridges, Hong Kong is one of Asia’s easiest cities to get to and get around in.” Michelle Tsung-Yi Huang, Walking between Slums and Skyscrapers: Illusions of Open Space in Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Shanghai (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004), 16. As the Disney bid shows, continuous investment in infrastructure is the only way to maintain Hong Kong’s status among Chinese cities. 31. See for example, Si Suqing’s Butterfly Trilogy for a popular rendition of this narrative of Hong Kong as a poor offspring of mighty parents, China and Britain. 32. See for example, Yau hahm yau siu, ah po hau suhd si (Laughing and Crying: An Oral History of Old Ladies), published by the Association for the Advancement of Feminism (2001). Also, 16+Siu nui hau suhd si (Sixteen-Plus: An Oral History of Young Women) (Hong Kong: Association for the Advancement of Feminism, 2002). 33. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Crafting Feminist Genealogies: On the Geography and Politics of Home, Nation, and Community,” Talking Visions: Multicultural Feminism in a Transnational Age, 491.

Chapter Six. Repatriating from Globalization

1. http://www.brandhk.gov.hk/brandhk/eresea3.htm#hk 2. Cultural Uprising (wenhua qiyi) (A collection of critical essays by local commentators) (Hong Kong: CUP, 2004). 3. Ming Pao Daily, November 26, 2004, Section B, U.S. East Coast edition. 4. Lui Dai-Lok and Ohashi Kenichi, City Contacts—Hong Kong Street Culture (Chengshi jiezu—Xianggang jietou wenhua guancha) (Hong Kong Commercial Press, 1992). 5. Kwok Yan-Chi Jackie, The Production of Space in Hong Kong (a collection of studies undertaken by the School of Design, Hong Kong Polytechnic University) (Hong Kong: Crabs, 1998). 6. It is true that prostitution has become more rampant in recent years because of the more relaxed immigration procedures at the borders to the point where residents of the neighborhood complain about being constantly harassed. 7. See Don Mitchell, “The Annihilation of Space by Law: The Roots and Implications of Anti-Homeless Laws in the United States,” in The Legal Geographies Reader, ed. Nicholas Blomley, David Delaney, and Richard T. Ford (London: Blackwell, 2001). 8. Akbar Abbas, “Cinema, the City, and the Cinematic,” in Global Cities: Cinema, Architecture, and Urbanism in a Digital Age, ed. Linda Krause and Patrice

Notes to Chapter Six

9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14.

15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27.

185

Petro (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2003). Abbas employs Rem Koolhaas’s notion of the “Generic City” to make his argument. Ng Fong, The History of Hong Kong Television (Hong Kong: Subculture, 2003), 150. Ibid. In fact the local phrase to describe a television actor who has successfully gained popularity is “yuhp uk” (to have entered homes). It is a government-funded but independent broadcasting venue, after the model of the BBC. Ng Hung, “A Critique of Sam Hui (P’ai poon Hui Koon Kit),” in Reading Hong Kong Popular Cultures: 1970–2000, ed. Ng Jun-hung and Cheung Chi-wai (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2002), 200–205. Cheung Fung-Lun, “The Comic Characteristics and Meaning from Four of the Hui Brothers’ Comedies.” Lo Kun-Cheung and Man Kit-Wai, eds., Age of Hybridity: Cultural Identity, Gender, Everyday Life Practice, and Hong Kong Cinema of the 1970s (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press), 171–80. Ibid. Frederic Dannen and Barry Long, Hong Kong Babylon: The Insider’s Guide to the Hollywood of the East (New York: Miramax, 1997). Ilaria Sala, “CEPA and Hong Kong Film: The Mixed Blessing of Market Access,” China Rights Forum 4 (2003): 1–3. “New-Look Baselword Gets off to a Rocky Start,” Antwerp Facets 2, 7 (May 2003) (http://www.antwerpfacets.com/upfiles). “Hong Kong Withdrawal from World Jewelry and Watch Fair 2003 in Basel,” Legco Panel on Commerce and Industry (http://www.legco.gov.hk/yr02–03/English/panels/ci/papers). Joey Yung, “Pride in Your Eyes,” music by Chan Kwong-Wing; lyrics by Anders Lee. OP: Click Music, 2003, Emperor Entertainment (Hong Kong). A fragment of this song is recorded in the documentary “2003.7.1” (VCD/03/71/HK), publisher and director unlisted. Mingri Zhige, Music Icon Records, 2004. Original song by Joseph Koo; lyrics by Chang Kwok-Kong; sung by Danny Chan (1984). OP: Warner/Chappell Music, HK. A description popularized by the writer, Chan Kwun-Chung. Song written by Joseph Koo, lyrics by James Wong; sung by Liza Wang (1980). OP: Musicell, SP: Universal Music Publishing. Song written by Joseph Koo; lyrics by Tao Tsin; sung by Cheng Ting (1967). OP: Shaw Brothers (HK), SP: EMI Music Publishing HK. Music composed by Joseph Koo; lyrics by James Wong; sung by Roman Tam (1979). RTHK. See Chu Yiu-Wai, “Hong Kong’s Local Consciousness in the Song Lyrics of Hong Kong Popular Music,” Ng Jun-Hung and Cheung ChiWai, 254–61. This song was updated in 2006 when the RTHK produced a new “Under the Lion Rock” series that began airing in May 2006. The new version of the song is sung by Joey Yung. It overlays Roman Tam’s version. Before his death, Joey was one of his students. See introduction.

186

28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36.

37.

38. 39. 40. 41.

42. 43.

44.

Notes to Conclusion

Ho, 142. Ho, 141. Ho, 89. Ho, 93. Ho, 147. Ho, 148. Aihwa Ong’s vocabulary describing transnational citizens. Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999). Ho, 128. Term used by Akbar Abbas to describe the postmodern instability and illusiveness of Hong Kong culture at the end of the 1990s. See Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997). The quick adaptability of Hong Kong businesses to new demands and constraints of the world markets is often considered another virtue of Hong Kong people and a crucial character that contributed to Hong Kong’s financial success. Ho, 191. Hui Po-Keung, What Capitalism Is Not (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2002). C. C. Williams, “The New Barter Economy: An Appraisal of Local Exchange and Trading Systems (LETS),” Journal of Public Policy 16, 1: 85–101. There has been a lot of interest in these grassroots alternative economic organizations in Hong Kong. In 2003, Oxfam Hong Kong published a volume, Not Utopia: Community Economy Theory and Practice (Hong Kong: Oxford, 2003), that collects the writings of scholars, social workers, and journalists on such organizations. The popular magazine Ming Pao Weekly also published a long article introducing the various community efforts and grassroots organizations in 2004. Ming Pao Weekly 1837 (January 24, 2004): 14–22. Ibid. Stuart Hall, quoted from Laura C. Nelson, Measured Excess: Status, Gender, and Consumer Nationalism in South Korea (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 175. See Ming Pao Weekly, 1837 (January 24, 2004): 14–22.

Conclusion

1. “Hong Kong: Pro-Beijing Media Condemn Long Hair,” South China Morning Post, October 7, 2004 (http://asiamedia/ucla.edu). 2. Ming Pao Daily, December 14, 2004, Section B, U.S. East Coast edition.

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Index

Abbas, Akbar, 45, 141, 168, 175, 176, 180, 184, 185, 186, 187 agora, 67, 86 alternative currency, 3, 157, 158 Amoy gardens, 146 Anothermountainman, 85, 179, 187 Wong, Stanley, 85, 86, 88, 148, 179 annihilation of space by law, 68, 178, 179, 184, 193 Anthony Fung, 7–8, 168, 173 antisubversion law, 9, 31, 32, 33, 59, 60, 61, 69, 80, 114 Article 23, 9, 31, 37, 38, 39, 59, 69, 80, 114, 115,160, 165, 174, 182 As tears go by, 144 Asia TV, 106 Asia’s world city, 12, 35, 139, 140, 166, 187 Asian crisis (1997), 35, 90, 125 aesthetic foundation of communities, 107 auratic, 51,101, 110 Balibar, Etienne, 15, 83, 171, 179, 187 Basic Law, 9, 39 Bank of China, 73, 78 beauty industry, 114, 115, 116, 119 Beijing Central Government/ Beijing/ Central People’s Government, 2, 3, 8, 13, 31, 32, 33, 38, 39, 40, 46, 52, 60–62, 67, 80, 91, 104, 114, 119, 145, 156, 164 Beijing Liaison Office (Zhonglian Ban), 61

Benjamin, Walter, 101, 175 Bicol Migrant Workers Hong Kong, 83 biopolitics, 126, 136 body politic, 16, 127 Breaking News, 148 British Colonial Government/British Hong Kong/ Colonial Government 6, 7, 9, 12, 13,14, 31, 32, 35, 36, 45, 46, 49, 52, 53, 54, 63, 69, 70, 72, 77, 78, 151, 169 Brown, Bill, 101, 175, 181, 187 Butler, Judith, 82, 179, 187 CEPA (closer economic partnership arrangement), 61, 115, 144, 173, 178, 185 Canclini, Nestor, Garcia, 20, 90, 97, 98, 120, 107, 171, 180, 181, 183, 187 Café Do Brasil, 102 cantopop, 143, 147, 148 Caritas, 157 Cartier, Carolyn, 123, 183, 188 Catholic Labour Association, 157 Census Bureau, 123, 183, 190 Centaline (Holdings), 165 Central Policy Unit, 165 De Certeau, Michel, 3, 6, 15, 16, 17, 18, 50, 60, 66, 84, 165, 168, 170, 171, 175, 178, 188 Chan, Alan, 85 Chan, Annie Hau-Nung, 91, 180, 188

197

198

Index

Chan Kwun-Chung, 122, 183, 185, 188 Chan, Kelly, 145 Chan, Jackie, 144 Chan, Ronnie, 165 Chan, Wai, 90, 95, 96–111, 142, 149, 181, 188, 189 Chen, Kaige, 35 Chen Shui-Pian, 40 Cheng, Joyce, 113–119, 125–127, 129, 136, 182 Cheung, Leslie, 27, 35, 143, 147 Cheung Kong Centre, 78 Cheung Yuk-Shan, 115 Chinese Communist Party, 8, 34, 39, 69, 163 Chinese University Of Hong Kong, 59, 158 Chow, Rey, 110, 169, 172, 174, 175, 176, 182, 188 Choy So-Yuk, 13 Chungking Express, 32, 144 citizenship, 11, 15, 57, 67, 68, 83, 98, 100, 113, 119, 120 citizen-consumers, 95, 98, 112, 119 female citizens, 127 “flexible citizen,” 154, 186, 193 City Magazine, 102, 172, 189 City University Of Hong Kong, 159 civil society, 16, 69, 83, 165 civic duty, 119 “Clean Hong Kong Campaign,” 57 collective experience, 52, 86, 125, 146, 156 collective memory, 44, 68 collectivity, 63, 98, 101, 117, 151 colonialism, 45, 65 concept city, 3 competitive consumerism, 101 consumerism, 17, 53, 84, 89, 90, 91, 92, 98, 101, 117, 127 lifestyle consumerism, 117 consumption, 49, 73, 88, 90, 91, 92, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 102, 103, 106, 108, 109, 110, 113, 117, 118, 119, 120, 131, 132, 159, 182 agitated consumption, 117 consumers, 91, 92, 93, 98, 100, 102, 105, 106, 109, 112, 117, 118, 119, 131, 160, 164

women, 90, 120 citizen, 95, 101 consumer culture, 86, 95, 101, 109, 110, 120 consumer capitalism, 89, 101, 105, 127 consumer choices, 118 consumer economy, 105, 113, 114, 120, 121, 131 consumer ideals, 88 consumer materialism, 93 consumer practices, 90, 120 consumers’ rights, 128 consumption sites, 109 cooperative, 146, 158, 159, 160, 161 Women Wokers’ Cooperative, vi, 158, 160, 161 labor/workers cooperatives, 3, 158, 159 le Corbusier, 10, 169, 194 cosmopolitanism, 145, 154 Courtesy Campaign, 57 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 32, 141 Cui Zhekai, 61, 173, 174 Cultural Revolution, 33, 54, 61, 172, 174 DAB (Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong), 13, 37, 39, 182 Days Of Being Wild, 35, 144 Deja disparu, 45 Democratic Party, 40, 182 Deng Xiaoping, 2, 34, 52, 61 Dengue Fever, 146 Department of Health, 116 Department of Leisure And Cultural Services, 11, 70 District Council, 39, 87 Douglas, Mary, 91, 100, 180, 181, 189 Doyle, Christopher, 23, 32 Dragon Reloaded 200, 148 Ellickson, Robert, C., 67, 68, 86, 178, 189 East-Meets-West, 54 Employers and Workers Relations Association, 159 end of politics, 86 ephemera, culture of, 110

Index

fans, 117, 127 family ideal, 127 female citizens, 127 female body, 119, 127, 128 fields of sentiments, 14 Filipino Community, Filipinas, Filipinos, 56, 82, 83, 84, 86 Filipino Domestic Workers, 58, 88 First Amendment (US Constitution), 62 Flagstaff House, 73 flexible citizen, 154, 186, 193 Fong, Mrs. Sally Yam, 106, 107, 108 Foster, Sir Norman, 73, 78, 140 Foucault, Michel, 6, 168, 170, 189, 192, 194 gender, 16, 30, 113, 120, 121, 122 Girl Who Met A Sea Lion In 1997,The, 139, 152–156, 190 Giard, Luce, 15, 18, 170, 188 God of Songs, 143, 148 Good Samaritans, 36 Gramsci, Antonio, 16 Great Leap Forward, 33 grassroots, 3, 55, 63, 76, 159, 161, 163, 186 grassroots hero, 164 Grover, Paul, 157 H5N1 Avian Flu, 146 HSBC (Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation), 49, 78, 140 Hakka, 47, 55 Hall, Stuart, 160, 186, Handover, July 1, 1997, 1, 3, 6, 7, 19, 34, 35, 58, 80, 103, 104, 113, 145, 150 Hang Lung Group, 165 Harvey, David 11 Hero (Yingxiong) 20–26, 28, 31–33, 38, 40, 41, 42 Ho Ka-Wai, 139, 152–156, 190 Ho, Patrick, Secretary for Home Affairs, 37 Ho Yuk, 114, 127–136 Hoklo, 47 Hong Kong Arts Centre, 53, 54, 96, 176

199

Hong Kong Book Expo, 115 Hong Kong core value, 30, 85, 172 Hong Kong Consumer Council, 116, 126 Hong Kong Festivals, 71 Hong Kong Heritage Museum, 46, 85, 86, 96, 179, 181, 190, 195 Hong Kong History Museum, 43–57, 96 Hong Kong identity, 26, 44, 53, 54, 95, 100, 110, 143, 166, 172 collective identity, 43, 120 Hong Kong International Airport, 9, 140, 169, Airport Authority, 10, 169 Hong Kong Macau Affairs Office of the State Department, 61, 174 Hong Kong Park, 72–76, 77 Hong Kong Spirit, 29, 36, 56, 85, 172 Hong Kong Tourism Board, 12, 91 Hong Kong Women Centre, 157 Hong Kong Women Manual Labour Association, 158 Housing Authority, 11, 13, 165, 170, 190 Hu Jintao, 24 Huang, Michelle, 9, 168, 169, 184, 190 Hui, Po-Keung, 157, 167, 186, 190 Hui Sam, 143, 148 Hui Brothers, 143 Hunghom Peninsular, 164, 165 Huyssen, Andreas, 45, 175, 177, 190 In The Mood For Love, 32, 141, 144 Infernal Affairs (Wujian Dao), 19, 20, 25–28, 31, 34–36, 40–42, 147 International Financial Centre (IFC), 93 International Herald Tribune, 93 Ithaca-Hours, 157 Jameson, Fredric, 69, 86, 169, 178, 190 Jenny (Singer), 56 Jiangnan-Style Gardens, 65, 76, 77 July 1 Demonstrations, 9, 38, 59–63, 70, 87, 114, 145, 147, 160, 164

200

Index

June 4, 69, 71 Tiananmen Prodemocracy Movement (1989), 34, 38, 60, 62, 63, 85 Kelly, William, 117, 182, 189, 191 Kowloon Park, 45 Koo, Joseph, 56, 185, 195–6 Kwok, Yan-Chi Jackie, 76, 168, 169, 177, 178, 179, 184, 185, 191, 194, 195 LETS (Local Exchange and Trading System), 157 Lau, Andrew, 19 Lau Siu-Kai, 165 Lau, Yi Tat, 148 Lefebvre, Henri, 5, 15, 17, 43, 44, 58, 62, 66, 68, 76, 83, 84, 87, 95, 167, 168, 171, 174, 178, 179, 181, 191, 194 Legislative Council, 9, 13, 39, 80, 87, 163, 165, 182 Lesbian, 121, 127–8, 131, 132 Leung, Kwok Hung (Long Hair), vi, 163, 164, 186 Leung, Anthony (Secretary of Finance), 31, 38, 142 Li, Ang, 32, 141 Liberal Party, 39, 165 Lingnan University, 31, 159 Link Reit, 13, 164, 165, 170 Linton, Michael, 157 Lippo Centre, vi, 73, 74, 75 Lopez, Milagros, 123, 183, 192 Long Hair (Leung Kwok Hung), vi, 163, 164, 186 Lui, Tai-Lok, 92, 102, 141, 168, 178, 179, 180, 181, 188, 192, 193 Luxury 2004, “Lure of Asia,” 93, 187 Ma, Eric Kit-Wai, 12, 168, 169, 170, 177, 181, 192 Macau, 33 Mak, Andy, 19 Mandarin Hotel, 36, 82 Mao, Zedong, 33 Mass Transit Railway (MTR), 92 Mayol, Pierre, 15, 16, 18, 170, 188 Medallion, The, 144

Men Suddenly In Black, 148 Miller, Daniel, 118 Mitchell, Don, 62, 68, 78, 83, 166, 178, 179, 184, 193 middle-class myth, 2, 60 Ming Pao Daily, 38, 59, 87, 95, 124, 140, 165, 167, 168, 170, 172, 173, 174, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 186, 191, 192, 193, 196 Mission of Filipino Migrant Workers (HK) Society, 83 Mohanty, Chandra, 134, 135, 184, 193 Mui, Anita, 35, 36, 147 Museum of the City of New York, 50 Museum of Tea Ware, 73, 75, 76 Needing You, 121–122 Nelson, Laura, 90–91, 120, 180, 182, 186, 193 neoliberal economy, 18, 157 neoliberal city, 126 neoliberal government, 14 New China News Agency, 39 New York City Municipal Government, 50 New York Historical Society, 50 Ng, Chit-Hang, 76, 178, 191 Ng, Fong, 142, 177, 181, 185, 193 nostalgia, 4, 33, 44–45, 49–64, 96, 101, 105, 147, 149 repetition, 51 Ocean Terminal, 92, 94, 102 one country, two systems, 7, 103, 173 Pacific Place Shopping Centre, 73, 75 panorama cities, 66 Pearl River Delta, 48, 125 Pei, I. M. 73, 78 People’s Liberation Army (PLA), 8, 34, 38, 58, 173 People Mountain People Sea, 148 Philippines Alliance, 83 political unconscious, 6 politics of reproduction, 123 “Pride in Your Eyes,” (Joey Yung), 146–147, 185, 196

Index

Private Eyes, 143 production of space, 5 PTU, 19, 27–31, 34–36, 40–42, 147 Public Security 8, 34, 173 “Rainbow in His Pen,” 149, 195 Redwhiteblue, 85, 86, 195 Regional Council, 46 Reifenstahl, Leni, 33 repetition (nostalgia), 51 return governance to the people (huanzhen yumin), 38, 164 right to the city, 2, 67 Riots 1967–1968. 54, 59, 62, 69, 70. See also Storms of May Robert’s Rules of Order, 67 Ross, Kristin 5, 16, 168, 171, 174, 194 RTHK (Radio Television Hong Kong), 69, 142, 185, 196 Sahpheung Kei (Shixiangji, Records Of Sahpheung), 96–100, 102, 110, 142 SARS (Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome), 27, 37, 38, 90, 114, 115, 118, 146, 157 sexuality, 127, 128 schooling of desires, 14 Shanghai, 7, 125 Shek Kei, 34, 113 Shih, Wing-Ching, 165 Shopping Festival, 91 Shum, Lydia, 113, 115 Simmel, Georg, 16, 171, 183, 194 social space, 17, 55, 83, 87, 113, 114, 127, 128, 161, 163 Songs of Tomorrow (Mingri Zhige), 149–151 South Korea, 90, 120 Sound and Taste, 102, 181, 188 “Taste,” 103–110 Special Olympics, 146 stability and prosperity (Anding Fanrong), 2, 8, 10, 40, 54, 55, 57, 61, 67, 100, 127, 134, 165 Stoler, Ann Laura, 14, 16, 170, 171, 195 Storms of May, 54, 59, 62, 69, 70

201

Story of Hong Kong, 45, 46, 49, 50, 56 strategic space, 135, 136 structures of feeling, 109 suicide, 27, 33, 36, 97, 148, 173, 195 Sun Hungkee, 164 Sun Yat-Sen, 33, 34 Suzie Wong, 54 Taiwan, ROC, 19, 32, 33, 40, 123, 145 Tak Wah Park, 76, 77 Tam, Roman, 35, 142, 147 Tanka, 47, 55, 56 Task Force For Political Reform, 40 Tat Ming Pair, 148 Tiananmen Prodemocracy Movement (1989), 34, 38, 60, 62, 63, 85 June 4, 69, 71 Tibet, 33 Ting, Joseph, 46 thingness, 97, 101 To, Johnny, 20, 27, 29–30, 121, 148 transnational capital, 12 citizen, 156 Treat, John, 101, 181,195 Tsang, Donald 13, 126 Tung Chee Hwa, 13, 31, 70, 79, 126, 165, 174 Mrs. Tung Chee Hwa, 79 Television Broadcasting Company (TVB), 106, 142 Under the Lion Rock, 142, 151, 185, 196 United Nations, 54 University of Hong Kong, 59, 143 Urban Council, 46 Utopia, 11, 55, 69, 73, 86 Utopian Space, 56 Utopian Ideal/ Principle, 69, 76, 86 Venice Biennale (51st International Art Exhibition), 85 Victoria Harbour, 17, 54, 78, 79, 81, 165 Victoria Park, 69–72, 77, 88 Waterfront Promenade, 78 Wai Ka-Fai, 121

202

Index

Wan Chai, 90, 95, 96, 142, 149, 181, 188 Wen Jiabao, 24 West Kowloon, 17, 140, 165 Who Am I?, 144 Women Workers Cooperative, 159, 160, 161 womanhood, 124, 127 Wong, Anthony, 148 Wong, James, 147 Wong, Kar-Wai, 32, 35, 141, 144 Wong, Stanley, 85, 86, 88,148, 179 Woo, Mathias, 76

Xiao Weiyun, 40 Xinjiang, 33, 155 Xu Ze, 61, 174 Yau Ching, 114, 127, 134, 135 Yip, Regina Lau, 31–32, 38 Yu, Ronny, 144 Yung, Joey, 146, 147, 185 YWCA, 118 Zhang Yimou, 20–25, 32–34, 38, 40, 41, 172 Zhang Zhiwei, 24, 172