Chu, Yiu-Wai. Leung, Eve. Remapping Hong Kong popular music covers, localization and the   waning hybridity of Cantopop. Cambridge University Press. 2013: 65-78. 17. Apr. 2016.

This piece is a historical research on Cantopop, a genre of music originated from Hong Kong. While Cantopop gained popularity, particularly in Asia, during the last 20th century, many cultural experts would agree that its popularity is declining in recent years due to globalization. To educate myself on how Cantopop emerged and evolved throughout Hong Kong’s modern history, I stumbled upon this literature review on Cantopop. While I mainly used the historical information in this article in my project’s Sang and Sung component, it allowed me to make correlation and an argument that Cantopop is a representation of Hong Kong’s self-definition in modern history. I also drew parallel between Cantopop’s growth and Hong Kong’s self-definition after the handover and prompted the audience to ponder if Hong Kong’s identity would fall along with Cantopop given the recent events. It’s interesting that Chu commented on Cantonese as an “everyday” language in Hong Kong and defined HOng Kong culture as a hybrid of neighboring Asian countries and Western influence.

HK Man. HK Man (香港在消失ing). Digital image. Flickr.com. Flickr.com. Web. 17 Apr. 2016.

While I was looking for pictures of Hong Kong’s street views from the 1930s to 1990s, I’ve found HK Man’s flickr album in which he took photos at the same place of some historical photos. I’ve included some of his works in the photo gallery of the project site. Even though the project is mainly a writing project, through HK Man’s photos, I experienced history visually by focusing on details that might not have recorded in writing. For example, the western brand of cars, the Victorian balconies of buildings, the traditional Chinese clothing occasionally contrasted with formal Western clothing, and the pavement of the roads are all part of how Hong Kong had transformed throughout history. In particular, some of HK Man’s photos had showcased how in some areas, urbanization was more aggressive and completely changed the layout of the city. It reminded the audience that despite a holistic identity shift of Hong Kong at different historical times, within Hong Kong itself, there is also a spectrum of identities due to differences in urbanization.

The Hong Kong Story (History of Hong Kong 1841 to 1997 ). Dir. Libby Halliday. Prod. Elaine   Forsgate Marden. The Hong Kong Story. The Film Business Ltd., 5 Feb. 2014. Web. 17 Apr. 2016.

This is a documentary about Hong Kong’s history up till the handover. While I had vague concepts of the major events in Hong Kong’s history, by learning Hong Kong’s history in one sitting, I discovered that Hong Kong was unique in its constant and simultaneous localization and globalization. Hong Kong is one of the most international and diverse city in the world, having residents from all around the world. Yet, growing up in Hong Kong, I didn’t actively register that because the international community and the local community are still pretty segregated by space. In the past, it was the governmental policy that had actively separated the communities between say the British and Hong Kong people. Likewise, during the Japanese Occupation, Hong Kong was divided between the Japanese military’s stations and local residential areas. Even though these separated areas are not reinforced in current Hong Kong society, I could see that in areas such as the Western side of Hong Kong Island and the areas near Wan Chai and the Peak, there are more western pubs and restaurants that have been in business for a long time. I wonder if Hong Kong one day will become a completely integrated society.

Hyland. "The Seven Elements of Culture." The Seven Elements of Culture. Web. 17 Apr. 2016.

Capturing Hong Kong’s self-definitions throughout history was a challenge for me while writing up the project. This is because it’s difficult to attribute historical records that describe Hong Kong as either an external definition imposed on Hong Kong or an internal definition initiated by Hong Kong. In other words, words themselves could not directly distinguish the point of view. Therefore, I decided to use cultural products to examine Hong Kong’s self-definitions through the perspective of Hong Kong instead of history. At the beginning of my project design phase, I looked into how culture could be defined and what exactly constituted culture. Hyland’s The Seven Elements of Culture suggested a sociological view towards culture. It suggests that culture is composed of social organization, customs and tradition, religion, language, arts and literature, forms of government, and economic systems. In my project, I had touched on the themes of language, arts and literature, and forms of government in Hong Kong’s self-definitions. Given more time, I think it would be interesting to look into customs and tradition as well as religion.

Lim, Louisa. China’s war on information; Censorship and Control in Xi Jinping’s China (and Beyond). Department of Communication Studies. (2016).

Louisa Lim is an award-winning journalist and expert who has reported from China for a decade. She has experiences as the BBC’s Beijing Correspondent and is the author of The People’s Republic of Amnesia Tiananmen Revisited. When Lim presented the increasing censorship of China in recent years, I was not surprised. However, in her presentation, she had utilized Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post and Umbrella Movement as two examples of many of China’s censorship future. It is very obvious that Hong Kong is associated with an area of freedom of speech while mainland China is associated with silence and controlled media. While I did not actively utilize her materials in the final version of my project, I found it interesting that from Hong Kong’s point of view, mainland China is targeting Hong Kong but in fact, China is targeting the international media, even in the U.S. too. If the project is extended in scope, it would be interesting to look into whether Hong Kong’s perspective towards mainland China align with the overall international perspective. If so, in what ways and to what extent?

Times Out Hong Kong. "The Greatest Cantopop Songs of All Time!" The Greatest Cantopop

Songs of All Time! Time Out Hong Kong, 3 June 2014. Web. 17 Apr. 2016.

At first, I wanted to analyze how music itself could tell us about Hong Kong’s identity. However, during my research process, I realized that it was not the individual music that identified Hong Kong, but the genre of Cantopop that had given rise to Hong Kong’s self-definition in recent years. Times Out Hong Kong had developed the most popular Cantopop since the emergence of Cantopop. From this timeline, I’ve found it particularly interesting that the themes of most popular songs were slightly similar depending on their time periods. By listening to songs from different time periods, the audience could also hear the influence of Western music and rhythm on Hong Kong’s Cantopop too, indicating that again, Hong Kong is a city both internationalized and localized at the same time.

【第三十五屆香港電影金像獎最佳電影提名】 《十年》 官方預告片 Ten Years Official      Trailer. Dir. Film Ten Years. Youtube.com. Youtube, 6 Nov. 2015. Web. 17 Apr. 2016.

Ten Years is a film locally produced and directed by Hong Kong artists. At the beginning, I wanted to look into television programs that had referenced Hong Kong’s self-identity or political situations. However, I realized that since all dramas are created by a single broadcaster, TVB, the perspective was too one-dimensional. In addition, since TVB was highly institutionalized, there was a mix of Hong Kong’s local perspective and mainland China’s perspective, making it harder to distinguish its messages. Therefore, I’ve looked into films produced by non-governmental and non-institutionalized artists. Ten Years is a film that is created by rising artists. Due to their novel creations, the film in fact was created from abnormally low budget. Yet, its result is a clear voice of current Hong Kong’s voice. A prediction of Hong Kong in ten years has clearly shown the fearful yet hopeful sentiments of many Hong Kong people facing increasing mainland China’s influence on educational and economical system. This film has received the Best Film Award at the 35th Hong Kong Film Festival due to its representation of Hong Kong people’s voice.

Hong Kong Voices Oral History Archives, Hong Kong Memory website.

One part of my project involves interviewing Hong Kong people on their histories in hope to create an oral history. However, I quickly realized that I have difficulty in recruiting the older generations as many of them are not technology savvy and I was located halfway across the globe. Therefore, I’ve utilized an online oral history archive to replace the interviewees of pre-war and at-war generations. Surprisingly, the Hong Kong government had actively created this archive. Since it was my first time creating an oral history, I was at first indecisive towards whether I should create an interview scripts. However, later, I realized that letting the conversation flows allow more explorative space for different themes such as community, workplace, and family too. In particular, I realized when interviewees freely narrated their histories, they would be more prone to reveal personal details such as family background and their current sentiments.

Zhang, Jing. Lost child or lost fatherhood?: Confucian structure of feeling reinterpreted in Contemporary Chinese Language Cinema. The U-M Confucius Institute and Modern Greek Program at the Department of Classical Studies. (2016).

Professor Zhang studies the themes of love and culture in China through Chinese literature. She talked about how films collaborated by China and Hong Kong depict the elite discourse and popular culture of father-and-son relationship in China. Particularly, these films focus on the lost of child during the Cultural Revolution and post-war period in China when child abduction was widespread. Therefore, there is a generational shift of losing parenthood or losing children in modern China. From this film, I was able to gain a glimpse on the cultural concepts of family in both traditional Chinese culture and historical circumstances. While my project did not emphasis on family concept in Hong Kong, I can tell that perhaps due to the one-child policy, mainland Chinese held a particularly strong emotional attachment and ownership towards their children. There was a strong sense of Chinese and regional root in the mainland Chinese family concept. In one scene, two Chinese parents found their son who was living in a rural area of Hong Kong and they emphasized on bringing the son not only back home, but also back to the land of mainland China.