Moving forward: From the construction of Hong
Kong Cultural Identity in post-colonial context
to the north going
imagination
The starting of the Second European colonization wave in 19
th
century has brought the European thought and influence over the world. With the
western imperialism and colonialism influence, the legacy of these “-ism” still
have influence in the 21
st century, namely post-colonialism.
Many cultural critics, scholars and social scientists have worked on the study
of post-colonialism in various “colonized” places, paying attention on
economic, political, geographical ownership ramification and cultural aspects. Scholars
have found theories and meta-narrative worked well on many places after being
colonized, like African and Indo-European countries. However, when these
theories came to describe the post-colonial situation in East Asia, these
theories could not be easily generalized in describing the circumstances of China
and Taiwan,
etc. Short period of occupation, retaining original languages, influence of
communism and east-Asian imperialism were the main reasons
[1]
account for the difference from some other countries in Africa.
Among those examples in East-Asia, two easily forgot places: Hong Kong and Macau, have been founded as a particular important and
abnormal place. The abnormality came from the returning of the territorial
sovereignty to the motherland- China,
instead of becoming an independent country or place. This abnormality added the
impotency and value of Hong Kong (this essay, I will only focus on Hong Kong
according to her global influence) in her special position between Britain’s colonialism and China’s up coming partial
totalitarianism governance. According Rey Chow’ s saying: “Between
Britain and China, Hong Kong’ s postcoloniality is marked by a double
impossibility—it will be impossible to submit to Chinese nationalist/ nativist
repossession as it has been impossible to submit to British colonialism.”
[2]
However, when we compare the pre-handover period for Chow's essay,
and the period after handing over of Hong Kong to China
in 1997, her description on the emergent Hong Kong Identity and Hong Kong
culture can not simply meet current Hong Kong
situation on identity and culture. What I am going to do is to tease out the
ways and the ambivalence in constructing Hong Kong Identity and then to figure
out what is and what
lead to the current situation. In doing this, the two
main aspects coined in Chow’s essay: root searching and post-modern hybridities
will also be my starting
way in interpreting the current situation. Hence, I
will try to come up with a description for the current situation.
