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Editorial

Editorial (English version)

Gregory Lee et Jennifer Wong

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1It has been an inspiring and humbling experience as well as real responsibility reading the submissions sent to us for this special issue. The project came about from a discussion between ourselves in October 2023 on the evolving nature of Hong Kong writing and the continuum between Hong Kong and its diaspora.

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In these peer-reviewed articles, translations and reflective writings, we can see how much Hong Kong means to the people who are residing there, as well as those who have left for their own different reasons. Also, we discover how the representation of Hong Kong in a diasporic context can generate rich and meaningful contents, questions, debates about one’s sense of belonging or contradictory forms of belonging. For example, in Martin Law’s article, the realism in the Cantopop lyrics by bands such as RubberBand and C Allstar, and singer Joey Sham, are discussed. How should we (re)evaluate the definition and necessity of diaspora that is unique to Hong Kong migration? Meanwhile, in the article co-written by Jacky Chan and Jason Kwok, we rediscover the imaginary spaces and complex emotions of Hong Kong people who have left their city in the Cantopop lyrics by Hins Cheung and Terence Lam.

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Indeed, much of what is created in Hong Kong is now performed, viewed or read beyond Hong Kong. The Hong Kong UK Film Festival is another prime example. Indeed, Siu and Wong’s article “(Re)presenting Diaspora: A Case Study of Hong Kong Film Festival UK” reveals how the Hong Kong Film Festival UK (HKFFUK) was founded against the backdrop of the repressive measures and leaden atmosphere of the early 2020s, but also how it has embraced the diaspora, chosen as the theme for the festival’s second edition. The authors see the film festival as a site for “the negotiation of diasporic Hong Kong identity”.

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In this special issue, we have extended the interpretation and dialogue with the topic of Hong Kong diaspora to include creative work, generating a rich range of thematic concerns and critical perspectives by diasporic writers in and beyond the UK whose personal histories are connected with Hong Kong in intricate ways. For example, refreshing imageries and metaphors are evident in capturing a city for migrants. Born to Hong Kong parents and now living in California, Ethan Yu’s ‘Paper Birds’, shows migration as captured in the form of a grandchild’s playing with origami, how ‘these birds / migrating-in-the-distance-of-my-memory’ and yet ‘[t]here is a child sitting alone / in the back / of the kitchen.’

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Straddling the distance between the aquatic animals of Hong Kong’s waters (‘Whale Fall: Night Never Fallsand Scotland’s North Sea (‘splitting ancient ghosts of heresy / into new ghosts of dissent’), Wendelin Law’s powerful, uncompromising vocabulary and imagery white tongues never lets us forget that the migrant’s memories of Hong Kong are ever present. Even the poems of the late Leung Ping-Kwan, a poet whose very being was grounded in Hong Kong. are now imbricated with the diaspora. The poems were written in response to visual artist Wessie Ling’s request for Leung Ping-kwan to react lyrically to her Hong Kong non-fashion show, Clothink. Ling now resides in the UK and is Professor of Transcultural Arts and Design at London Metropolitan University.

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H I Chung, whose work is represented here with an excerpt of her 愛妻 ‘My Dear Wife’ by Jennifer Wong, is a quintessentially diasporic writer. Born to a Chinese Indonesian father and a mother from north-east China, she was brought to Hong Kong when she was small, then studied in the United States before returning to Hong Kong. Then she migrated to Australia in the 1990s before returning to live in Hong Kong once again. Her story revolved around a troubled marriage stemming from unfulfilled love and the emotional struggles of the people involved, in the 1980s Hong Kong when the society was deeply rooted in traditional Chinese values even if the population embraced certain Westernised values.

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While Tung Kai-cheung’s novel Hong Kong Type at one level is focussed on the story movable typeface invented British missionaries in nineteenth-century Hong Kong, for Michael Tsang “the novel offers constructive ways for Hongkongers living abroad to think about the relationship between their diasporic locality and Hong Kong culture.” At another level it demonstrates how even in the production of Chinese-language publications British colonialism was at work. Indeed, there is no escaping the impact of Britain and the English language on Hong Kong’s langscape. Alfred Tsang’s article on the New Saam Kap Dai illustrates how even this ever so confidential Hong Kong intertwining of registers of Chinese has been impacted by English, with the old colonial language replacing pre-modern literary Chinese in a new postcolonial manifestation of this flexible, hybrid linguistic form.

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The use of Cantonese and one’s cultural sensitivity towards the many meanings in a single word can be a powerful indicator of one’s familiarity and sense of belonging with the home city, despite the geographical distance. In Michael Tsang’s ‘Uk Kei’, the various dimensions of ‘home’ are explored with humour and precision, as the poet points out one’s ambivalence towards the new home in the UK, where the telltale signs of one’s origin are constantly in play (“‘mate’ and ‘cheers’ pepper my daily speech / but ‘jolly’ and ‘bloody’ haven’t made the cut”).

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In Louise Law’s poem, translated by Jacqueline Leung, we are reminded of the visions of people looking to build a new homeland when leaving: ‘you can toil and build, share and bear a brand new self /give back to people you hold dear /that land will burn forever.’ At the same time, as poignantly captured in Wong Yi’s ‘Can We Say Our Hometown Is’ translated by Jennifer Feeley, there is no denying the necessity and creative power in nostalgia for the diasporic community to claim or reclaim their space, to keep alive those precious memories and family ties through evocative representation of the everyday spaces, sentimental objects (from Sanrio products to family photos or memorabilia), language, Hong Kong’s local food (from egg tarts to stir-fry eggs with roast pork), and other comforting rituals holding onto and affirming one’s dearest home or once-home.

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We are encouraged to see the fertile diverse and rapidly evolving body of contemporary diasporic literature emerging from a globally-inflected Hong Kong writing community, and the insightful criticisms that examine the historical, linguistic and cultural contexts for these works, where identity politics and notions of home straddle spaces that are both local and global, steeped in history and yet increasingly experimental, nostalgic but also forward-looking.

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Référence électronique

Gregory Lee et Jennifer Wong, « Editorial (English version) »Transtext(e)s Transcultures 跨文本跨文化 [En ligne], 18 | 2023, mis en ligne le 30 décembre 2023, consulté le 19 juillet 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/transtexts/2612 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/12u2c

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Auteurs

Gregory Lee

As an author, academic, broadcaster and podcaster, Gregory Lee has been writing and talking about China, Hong Kong and Chinatowns for the past forty years. He is Founding Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.  He has lived and worked in France, the USA, mainland China and Hong Kong. His most recent books are China Imagined: From European Fantasy to Spectacular Power (Hurst, 2018) and the dual-language (Cantonese/English) biographical fiction 第八位中國商人與消失嘅海員 /The Eighth Chinese Merchant and the Disappeared Seamen (Typesetter Press, Hong Kong, 2022). Over the past few years his research and writing has focussed on Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Chinese British diaspora.

En tant qu'auteur, universitaire, animateur radio et podcasteur, Gregory Lee écrit et parle de la Chine, de Hong Kong et des Chinatowns depuis quarante ans. Il est professeur fondateur d'études chinoises à l'université de St Andrews en Écosse. Il a vécu et travaillé en France, aux États-Unis, en Chine continentale et à Hong Kong. Ses ouvrages les plus récents sont China Imagined: From European Fantasy to Spectacular Power (Hurst, 2018) et la fiction biographique en deux langues (cantonais /anglais) 第八位中國商人與消失嘅海員 /The Eighth Chinese Merchant and the Disappeared Seamen (Typesetter Press, Hong Kong, 2022). Au cours des dernières années, ses recherches et ses écrits se sont concentrés sur Hong Kong et la diaspora britannique chinoise de Hong Kong.

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Jennifer Wong

Jennifer Wong is the author of three collections including Letters Home (Nine Arches Press) and co-editor of Where Else: An International Hong Kong Poetry Anthology (Verve, 2023). Her book, Identity, Home and Writing Elsewhere (Bloomsbury 2023), looks at the works by contemporary Anglophone Chinese diaspora poets including poets from the Hong Kong diaspora. Her pamphlet, time difference, is published by Verve Poetry Press (2024).

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