Hong Kong Culture: Word and Image
Kam Louie
Abstract
Hong Kong as a world city draws on a rich variety of foundational “texts” in film, fiction, architecture, and other forms of visual culture. The city has been a cultural fault-line for centuries—a translation space where Chinese-ness is interpreted for “Westerners” and Western-ness is translated for Chinese. Though constantly refreshed by its Chinese roots and global influences, this hub of Cantonese culture has flourished along cosmopolitan lines to build a modern, outward-looking character. Successfully managing this perpetual instability helps make Hong Kong a postmodern stepping-stone city ... More
Hong Kong as a world city draws on a rich variety of foundational “texts” in film, fiction, architecture, and other forms of visual culture. The city has been a cultural fault-line for centuries—a translation space where Chinese-ness is interpreted for “Westerners” and Western-ness is translated for Chinese. Though constantly refreshed by its Chinese roots and global influences, this hub of Cantonese culture has flourished along cosmopolitan lines to build a modern, outward-looking character. Successfully managing this perpetual instability helps make Hong Kong a postmodern stepping-stone city, and helps make its citizens such prosperous and durable survivors in the modern world. Many of the chapters in this volume discuss the tensions of English, closely associated with a colonial past, yet undeniably the key to Hong Kong's future. Hong Kong provides a vital point of contact, where cultures truly meet and a cosmopolitan traveler can feel at home and leave a sturdy mark.
Keywords:
Hong Kong,
city,
culture,
Westerners,
Chinese,
Cantonese,
cosmopolitan,
film,
fiction,
architecture
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2010 |
Print ISBN-13: 9789888028412 |
| Published to Hong Kong Scholarship Online: September 2011 |
DOI:10.5790/hongkong/9789888028412.001.0001 |
