Hong Kong

What's your understanding of Hong Kong? What has been your explore to it? Food? Language? Movies? Is it China? Is it NOT China?

I don't have much experience of Hong Kong, though when I think of this, I actually do - more specifically regarding media. My first love (maybe bang it down a few notches after writing, video games and my partner) is movies. I've always loved the stories that movies can tell, and if you want my top 5 movies, well let me know (Snowpiercer, The Winter Soldier, I Killed My Mother, Big Hero 6 and Train to Busan - not in that order). Looking at Wikipedia's article "List of films set in Hong Kong", I realise how many films I've seen that are set in Hong Kong. Of course, these films are made by foreign markets but somehow relate to Hong Kong. They all are: 

• Rush Hour series (a childhood favourite) (1998 - 2007)
• Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life (2003)
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
• The Dark Knight  (2008)
• Push (2009)
• Fast & Furious 6 (2013)
• Pacific Rim (2013)

This list, obviously, is very much Americanised, I knew of Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Donnie Yen, three men who are known for their martial arts prowess. Lee, while born in America, his Hong Kong Martial Arts films skyrocketed him to fame, his famous yellow suit coming to mind. Chan, I would say is the Lee of my generation, he grew up learning martial arts and in his movie showcases those skills, Rush Hour was my first films seeing Chan for the first time and it was awesome, and funny, with myself and my family still referencing many of the lines from the films. Lastly, Yen, unlike the other two, Yen brought MMA to the forefront of Chinese media, though he has a skill in martial arts and I knew of him from Rouge One, the Star Wars story before the first movie (the fourth movie if we're being specific in canon). 

I knew of Hong Kong as a country but I don't really know much about it, before the class I subscribe to a YouTuber Clahrah, a writer and artist who lives in Hong Kong and who goes to The Chinese University of Hong Kong, she films much of her life but also does a lot of studying videos, a phenomenon within many students where people study, get good grades, etc. She studies English. 

Just as class began, Vox, an American news and opinion website, began uploading a series of videos called Borders, they've done many videos before about certain countries and the problems in that country. For season two they uploaded five episodes about Hong Kong, and these topics are things that I would never even have thought about. 

Episode One is about the 156 year rule England had over Hong Kong, the history of Hong Kong and what it's like now, which had me thinking about it, in many of the media I engross of HK culture it's all very 'Chinese', Johnny Harris (the guy making this video) showcases everything England brought over to HK, the use of their high-class tea and cake buildings, their ferry system, their tram system, their bus system (to the point where HK busses are double-decker), etc. etc. etc. While the many citizens of Hong Kong aren't English, they not only have similar architecture, travel systems and street names but even the same sports. Harris mention's the trading China and England did, and mentioning everything England wanted which was Silk, porcelain, etc. but what they wanted was tea, and when you think of it, tea isn't an English creation, tea plants are native to East Asia, with the Chinese character for tea is 茶 and if you add a stroke at bottom it would roughly pronounce as tú or it's literal translation as bitter herb (which let's be real... it is). Though, when we think of England we think of 'tea, crumpets, Queen Elizabeth, Big Ben, Doctor Who', you know the drill. Harris goes into the Opium wars. 

Episode Two is about the way that China is trying to erase the borders between China and ... China. The border between China and Hong Kong, and the way that China is trying to bring the small island country back into Chinese culture. Harris talks about the Tiananmen Square protest that happened in the Spring of 1989, the island has vigils towards the protest - whereas China doesn't allow anyone to talk about. He also talks about the economy of Hong Kong compared to other cities in China. One of the people talking in this episode is Claudia Mo, a Hong Kong journalist and politician, a current member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, she mentions at 8 minutes 45 seconds "Don't they say if you want to kill a city you kill its language first." I feel like I can relate this to Indigenous Australians, the English people killed off so many of the first nations here when stealing the land, and thus from that, they killed off the many languages that the ancestors of the land had to offer. Around the late 1700 hundreds, there were 250 distinct languages (Walsh 1991, p. 27) compared to the 150 languages found at the start of the 21st century (Dalby 2015, p. 43). The original boat people invaded this country and slaughtered the languages that these people could've offered. 

The other three episodes are about different things, the skyline of Hong Kong and the Feng Shui of the skyline, the neon signs you would find in Hong Kong (and thus many other forms of media like Ghost in the Shell and Bladerunner, the type of lighting in futuristic cyberpunk movies and games), and lastly Hong Kong's cage homes, where there's limited renting and due to the amount it costs to rent, people live in areas the size of a large cage in an apartment. 

That's been my influence of Hong Kong, as a Westerner I don't get exposed to Hong Kong like I would've if I hadn't have watched the Borders videos or even signedup for this class. It's definently helped shape my habitus, where coming to RMIT I've learned to read more Australian and First Nation writers, and coming into this course has got me reading more pieces from Hong Kong writers or writers who aren't white, or white writers who expose themsevles to an idea that's foreign. Because in the end, everything is foreign, even this blog post was foreign to you or I moments ago. While I certainly don't know everything about the culture, the politics, the people, I certainly would love to know more.