Tropical Modernity: A Hybrid-Construct in South China

2020 ◽  
pp. 56-61
Author(s):  
Rui Leão ◽  
Charles Lai
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Middle East ◽  
East Africa ◽  
South China ◽  
Climate Adaptation ◽  
Preliminary Survey ◽  
Local Identity ◽  
Hybrid Construct ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Post War

Parallel to the discourse of Tropical Architecture and the work of UK architects in the British colonial territories in the Middle East, Africa, and India after the WWII, climate adaptation designs or devices such as brise-soleil, perforated cement bricks, sun shading screens, courtyards, etc., started to emerge in modernist buildings in Asia. This article is a preliminary survey of these cases in Hong Kong and Macau since the 1950s. It discusses how tropicality was used in response to the post-war revisionism of Modern Movement that placed emphasis on local identity and culture.

Policing the British Empire on the Bund: The Origin of the Sikh Police Unit in Shanghai

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-73
Author(s):  
Cao Yin
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
Police Force ◽  
Imperial History ◽  
Municipal Police ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
British Colonies ◽  
Modern Shanghai

Red-turbaned Sikh policemen have long been viewed as symbols of the cosmopolitan feature of modern Shanghai. However, the origin of the Sikh police unit in the Shanghai Municipal Police has not been seriously investigated. This article argues that the circulation of police officers, policing knowledge, and information in the British colonial network and the circulation of the idea of taking Hong Kong as the reference point amongst Shanghailanders from the 1850s to the 1880s played important role in the establishment of the Sikh police force in the International Settlement of Shanghai. Furthermore, by highlighting the translocal connections and interactions amongst British colonies and settlements, this study tries to break the metropole-colony binary in imperial history studies.

scholarly journals The Rise of “Localism” and Civic Identity in Post-handover Hong Kong: Questioning the Chinese Nation-state

2017 ◽  
Vol 230 ◽  
pp. 323-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Veg
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Civic Identity ◽  
Cultural Identification ◽  
Local Identity ◽  
National Education ◽  
Democratic Community ◽  
Chinese Nation ◽  
Identity Discourses ◽  
Definition Of

AbstractWhile it was traditionally accepted that Hongkongers shared a form of pan-Chinese cultural identification that did not contradict their local distinctiveness, over the last decade Hong Kong has seen the rise of new types of local identity discourses. Most recently, “localists” have been a vocal presence. Hong Kong has – quite unexpectedly – developed a strong claim for self-determination. But how new is “localism” with respect to the more traditional “Hong Kong identity” that appeared in the 1970s? The present study takes a two-dimensional approach to study these discourses, examining not only their framework of identification (local versus pan-Chinese) but also their mode of identification (ethno-cultural versus civic). Using three case studies, the June Fourth vigil, the 2012 anti-National Education protest and the 2014 Umbrella movement, it distinguishes between groups advocating civic identification with the local community (Scholarism, HKFS) and others highlighting ethnic identification (Chin Wan). It argues that while local and national identification were traditionally not incompatible, the civic-based identification with a local democratic community, as advocated by most participants in recent movements, is becoming increasingly incompatible with the ethnic and cultural definition of the Chinese nation that is now being promoted by the Beijing government.

Loyalist, Dissenter and Cosmopolite: The Sociocultural Origins of a Counter-public Sphere in Colonial Hong Kong

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Edmund W. Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Social Activism ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Hybrid Identity ◽  
Post War ◽  
City State ◽  
The City ◽  
And Diffusion

Abstract This paper surveys the process of discursive contestation by intellectual agents in Hong Kong that fostered a counter-public sphere in China's offshore. In the post-war era, Chinese exiled intellectuals leveraged the colony's geopolitical ambiguity and created a displaced community of loyalists/dissenters that supported independent publishing venues and engaged in the cultural front. By the 1970s, homegrown and left-wing intellectuals had constructed a hybrid identity to articulate their physical proximity to, yet social distance from, the Chinese nation-state, as well as to appropriate their sense of belonging to the city-state, through confronting social injustice. In examining periodicals and interviewing public intellectuals, I propose that this counter-public sphere was defined first by its alternative voice, which contested various official discourses, second by its multifaceted inclusiveness, which accommodated diverse worldviews and subjectivities, and third by its critical platform, which nurtured social activism in undemocratic Chinese societies. I differentiate the permissive conditions that loosened constraints on intellectual agencies from the productive conditions that account for their penetration and diffusion. Habermas's idealized public sphere framework is revisited by bringing in ideational contestation, social configuration and cultural identity.

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