How can one of the world's most free-wheeling cities transition from a vibrant global center of culture and finance into a subject of authoritarian control?As Beijing's anxious interference has grown, the "one country, two systems" model China promised Hong Kong has slowly drained away in the yearssince the 1997 handover. As "one country" seemed set to gobble up "two systems," the people of Hong Kong riveted the world's attention in 2019 by defiantly demanding the autonomy, rule of law and basic freedoms they were promised. In 2020, the new National Security Law imposed by Beijing aimed to snuff out such resistance. Will the Hong Kong so deeply held in the people's identity and the world's imagination be lost? Professor Michael Davis, who has taught human rights and constitutional law in this city for over three decades, and has been one of its closest observers, takes us on this constitutional journey.
This insightful book provides a comprehensive survey of urban development in Hong Kong since 1841. Pui-yin Ho explores the ways in which the social, economic and political environments of different eras have influenced the city's development. From colonial governance, wartime experiences, high density development and adjustments before and after 1997 through contemporary challenges, this book explores forward-looking ideas that urban planning can offer to lead the city in the future. Evaluating the relationship between town planning and social change, this book looks at how a local Hong Kong identity emerged in the face of conflict and compromise between Chinese and European cultures. In doing so, it brings a fresh perspective to urban research, providing historical context and direction for the future development of the city. Hong Kong's urban development experience offers not only a model for other Chinese cities but also a better understanding of Asian cities more broadly. Urban studies scholars will find this an exemplary case study of a developing urban landscape. Town planners and architects will also benefit from reading this comprehensive book as it shows how Hong Kong can be taken to the next stage of urban development and modernisation.
Between 1949 and 1997, Hong Kong transformed from a struggling British colonial outpost into a global financial capital. Made in Hong Kong delivers a new narrative of this metamorphosis, revealing Hong Kong both as a critical engine in the expansion and remaking of postwar global capitalism and as the linchpin of Sino-U.S. trade since the 1970s. Peter E. Hamilton explores the role of an overlooked transnational Chinese elite who fled to Hong Kong amid war and revolution. Despite losing material possessions, these industrialists, bankers, academics, and other professionals retained crucial connections to the United States. They used these relationships to enmesh themselves and Hong Kong with the U.S. through commercial ties and higher education. By the 1960s, Hong Kong had become a manufacturing powerhouse supplying American consumers, and by the 1970s it was the world’s largest sender of foreign students to American colleges and universities. Hong Kong’s reorientation toward U.S. international leadership enabled its transplanted Chinese elites to benefit from expanding American influence in Asia and positioned them to act as shepherds to China’s reengagement with global capitalism. After China’s reforms accelerated under Deng Xiaoping, Hong Kong became a crucial node for China’s export-driven development, connecting Chinese labor with the U.S. market. Analyzing untapped archival sources from around the world, this book demonstrates why we cannot understand postwar globalization, China’s economic rise, or today’s Sino-U.S. trade relationship without centering Hong Kong.
This book investigates what the history of Hong Kong’s urban development has to teach other cities as they face environmental challenges, social and demographic change and the need for new models of dense urbanism. The authors describe how the high-rise intensity of Hong Kong came about; how the forest of towers are in fact vertical culs de sac; and how the city might become truly ‘volumetric’ with mixed activities through multiple levels and 3D movement networks incorporating ‘town cubes’ rather than town squares. For more information, visit the authors' website: http://www.makingofhk.com/makingofhk.swf
During the nineteenth century tens of thousands of Chinese men and women crossed the Pacific to work, trade, and settle in California. Drawn initially by the gold rush, they took with them skills and goods and a view of the world which, though still Chinese, was transformed by their long journeys back and forth. They in turn transformed Hong Kong, their main point of embarkation, from a struggling infant colony into a prosperous international port and the cultural center of a far-ranging Chinese diaspora. Making use of extensive research in archives around the world, Pacific Crossing charts the rise of Chinese Gold Mountain firms engaged in all kinds of transpacific trade, especially the lucrative export of prepared opium and other luxury goods. Challenging the traditional view that the migration was primarily a "coolie trade," Elizabeth Sinn uncovers leadership and agency among the many Chinese who made the crossing. In presenting Hong Kong as an "in-between place" of repeated journeys and continuous movement, Sinn also offers a fresh view of the British colony and a new paradigm for migration studies.
Law Wing Sang provides an alternative lens for looking into Hong Kong's history by breaking away for the usual colonial and nationalist interpretations. Drawing on both English and Chinese sources, he argues that, from the early colonial era, colonial power has been extensively shared between colonizers and the Chinese who chose to work with them. This exploration of the form of colonial power includes critical discussions of various cultural and institutional aspects, looking into such issues as education, language use, political ideologies and other cultural and political concerns. These considerations permit the author to shed new light from a historical perspective on the complex and hotly debated question of Hong Kong identity. But it is not written just out of an interest in things of the past. Rather, the arguments of this book shed new light on some current issues of major relevance to post-colonial Hong Kong. In making critical use of post-colonial approaches, this book not only makes an original and important contribution to Hong Kong studies, but also makes evident that Hong Kong is an important case for all interested in examining the colonial experience in East Asia. This book is of interest to all with an interest in Hong Kong's history and current issues, but also more widely to those who study the phenomenon of colonialism in the Asian region.
A timely, well-researched, and vibrant new history of Hong Kong that reveals the untold stories of the diverse peoples who have made it a multicultural world metropolis--and whose freedoms are endangered today. Hong Kong has always been many cities to many people: a seaport, a gateway to an empire, a place where fortunes can be dramatically made or lost, a place to disappear and reinvent oneself, and a mixing pot of diverse populations from literally everywhere around the globe. A British Crown Colony for 155 years, Hong Kong is now ruled by the Chinese Communist Party. Here, renowned journalist Vaudine England delves into Hong Kong's complex history and its people--diverse, multi-cultural, cosmopolitan--who have made this one-time fishing village into the world port city it is today. Rather than a traditional history describing a town led by British Governors or a mere offshoot of a collapsing Chinese empire, Fortune's Bazaar is the first thorough examination of the varied peoples who made Hong Kong. While British traders and Asian merchants had long been busy in the Indian and South East Asian seas, there were many from different cultures and ethnic backgrounds who arrived in Hong Kong, met and married--despite all taboos--and created a distinct community. Many of Hong Kong's most influential figures during its first century as a city were neither British nor Chinese--they were Malay or Indian, Jewish or Armenian, Parsi or Portuguese, Eurasian or Chindian--or simply, Hong Kongers. England describes those overlooked in history including the opium-traders who built synagogues or churches, ship-owners carrying gold-rush migrants, property tycoons, and more. Here, too, is the visionary who plumbed Hong Kong's harbor depths to spur reclamation, the half-Dutch Chinese gentleman with two wives who was knighted by Queen Victoria, and the landscape gardeners who settled Kowloon and became millionaires. A story of empire, race, and sex, Fortune's Bazaar combines deep archival research and oral history to present a vivid history of a special place--a unique city made by diverse people of the world, whose part in its creation has never been properly told until now.
Fractured Scenes is the first extensive academic account of music and sound art practices that fall outside of the scope of ‘mainstream music’ in Hong Kong. It combines academic essays with original interviews conducted with prominent Hong Kong underground/independent musicians and sound artists as well as first hand-accounts by key local scene actors in order to survey genres such as experimental/noise music, deconstructed electronic music, indie-pop, punk, garage rock, sound art and DIY ‘computer’ music (among others). It examines these Hong Kong underground music practices in relief with specific case studies in Mainland China and Japan to begin re-defining the notion of a ‘musical underground’ in the context of contemporary Hong Kong.
The best recipes from Hong Kong, a city obsessed with food. Hong Kong is an explorer's dream and a food-lover's paradise. It's the bowl of beef sa cha noodles washed down with a hot cup of signature Hong Kong milk tea at one of the city's countless cha chaan teng. It's the bamboo baskets filled with delicate dumplings placed onto pristine white tablecloths at a Michelin-starred dim sum restaurant. It's the cocktail-fused table of friends hungrily dipping crab claws and wagyu beef into aromatic hotpot at midnight. Like the city itself, Hong Kong Local celebrates the traditional and contemporary Cantonese cuisine that is cherished by locals and fervently adored by visitors, while embracing the extraordinary influences that continue to shape Hong Kong's unrivalled food scene. Hong Kong Local is packed with delicious yet approachable recipes, so you can recreate the magic of Hong Kong at home.
