王向華與日本文化研究：跨國的慾望與企業

王向華博士 (Dr. Dixon Heung-wah Wong) 為香港大學現代語言及文化學院全球創意產業課程主任。其研究領域為流行文化、東亞創意產業及企業研究等，主要著作包括Japanese Bosses, Chinese Workers: Power and Control in a Hong Kong Megastore 及《友情と私利－香港一日系スーパーの人類學的研究》。亦曾出版多篇相關日本的跨國公司與其經營模式、日本流行文化的全球化與國際關係等書籍文章及期刊論文。

王向華博士與邱愷欣博士合著的《當日本A片遇上華人慾望: 性別、性相、色情品的文化理論》(When Japanese Adult Videos Meet the Chinese Sexual Desires: the cultural theories of gender, sexuality and pornography) 2015年於台灣Airiti Press出版。本著作為研究日本成人A 片在臺灣及香港社會的再生產、流通及消費的學術論文。通過對華人慾望遇上日本A片的人類學研究，作者希望能夠對華人社會的性別、性相及色情品做出更精闢的理解。 全書分為四個部分，第一部分為文化符號，探討性在中、日兩個社會中的文化涵義；第二部分則關於臺灣個體對日本成人A 片的消費以及再生產；第三部分集中討論個人如何消費日本成人A 片，從而探討「個人」與「社會」的辯證關係；第四部分則通過探討日本成人A 片的全球化去反思有關跨越國境的文化產品理論的缺失。

王向華博士亦於2015年出版了對其早年一部有關在香港的日資百貨公司的民族誌之自我批判——《友情與私利：一個在香港的日資百貨公司之民族誌》（早年著作為《友情と私利―香港一日系スーパーの人類学的研究》）。作者在本書中誠實地表白了，自己作為一位研究者，並不是一個絕對的客觀者。反之，作者在搜集和詮釋資料以及撰寫民族誌時，都不時被自己的階級背景、家庭狀況、成長的遭遇及自己處於學術界的邊緣位置等因素所左右。作者認為，真正的客觀性並不是企圖去掩飾研究者的主觀看法，而是如實地展示研究者的主觀立場，及影響其主觀立場的因素。

瀏覽更多《當日本A片遇上華人慾望》資訊：http://www.airitipress.com/bookedm.aspx?PublicationID=201502120004

瀏覽更多《友情與私利》資訊：http://www.books.com.tw/products/0010694623?loc=P_003_010

Kam Louie and Chinese Masculinities in a Globalizing World

Chinese Masculinities in a Globalizing World
Kam Louie
2015, Routledge, 168 pp

This book explores how the traditional ideal of Chinese manhood – the "wen" (cultural attainment) and "wu" (martial prowess) dyad – has been transformed by the increasing integration of China in the international scene. It discusses how increased travel and contact between China and the West are having a profound impact; showing how increased interchange with Western men, for whom "wu" is a more significant ideal, has shifted the balance in the classic Chinese dichotomy; and how the huge emphasis on wealth creation in contemporary China has changed the notion of "wen" itself to include business management skills and monetary power. The book also considers the implications of Chinese "soft power" outside China for the reconfigurations in masculinity ideals in the global setting. The rising significance of Chinese culture enables Chinese cultural norms, including ideals of manhood, to be increasingly integrated in the international sphere and to become hybridised. The book also examines the impact of the Japanese and Korean waves on popular conceptions of desirable manhood in China. Overall, it demonstrates that social constructions of Chinese masculinity have changed more fundamentally and become more global in the last three decades than any other time in the last three thousand years.

Please click on the link below for more information from the publisher: https://www.routledge.com/products/9780415711289

Max Deutsch and The Myth of the Intuitive

The Myth of the Intuitive
Max Deutsch
Apr 2015, MIT Press, 216 pp.

In The Myth of the Intuitive, Max Deutsch defends the methods of analytic philosophy against a recent empirical challenge mounted by the practitioners of experimental philosophy (xphi). This challenge concerns the extent to which analytic philosophy relies on intuition—in particular, the extent to which analytic philosophers treat intuitions as evidence in arguing for philosophical conclusions. Experimental philosophers say that analytic philosophers place a great deal of evidential weight on people’s intuitions about hypothetical cases and thought experiments. Deutsch argues forcefully that this view of traditional philosophical method is a myth, part of “metaphilosophical folklore,” and he supports his argument with close examinations of results from xphi and of a number of influential arguments in analytic philosophy.

Please click on the following link for more information on the publisher's page: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/myth-intuitive

A Path Less Travelled: Cross-cultural Background of Sociolinguistic Postgraduate Aaron Anfinson

PhD candidate Aaron Anfinson has come to Hong Kong and HKU via an unusual path that has crossed countries, cultures and religions, and is informing his research.

Mr Anfinson is the son of gospel singers and grew up in the sparsely-populated American Midwest, often traveling from town to town with his parents’ group.

At 17, wanting a university education, he enrolled in the US National Guard, which paid his tuition fees provided he stayed with the military for six years. He was to be assigned to water purification services for humanitarian missions, but then the Iraq war began and he was grounded in the US, where he completed an English literature degree at North Dakota State University and taught in lower-income schools.

During this time, he also met his partner whose father was from Saudi Arabia and who grew up in a Muslim household. The cross of cultures and experiences left both with a desire to travel. In 2008, with his military commitment completed, they set off.

They first spent 18 months teaching English in Vietnam, then two years in Hong Kong where Mr Anfinson earned a Master of Education at HKU. In late 2011, following the “Arab Spring,” they were inspired to travel to the region of his wife’s family. They taught in Oman for a year, but Mr Anfinson, inspired by his experiences and the changing world, was keen to reflect on all that from a more academic perspective.

In 2013 he arrived at HKU to pursue a PhD on the sociolinguistics of legitimacy, attracted in part by the opportunity to have Professor Adam Jaworski as his supervisor.

He is looking at the branding of the nation and how entities such as the Islamic State use branding, language and nation-state frameworks to define a collective identity. The Islamic State, for instance, produces slick publications in English aimed at Muslims in Western countries.

“What makes IS different from al-Qaeda is this willingness to grab onto things like the English language and social media, simultaneously promoting sectarian violence and intolerance on the ground,” he said.

“They have been using contemporary branding techniques, attempting to construct and market an identity to the outside world. They are attempting legitimacy through the mediatisation of violence and through constructing their own ‘state’ institutions. I’m interested in the language of that.”

He is still sifting through his research, grateful for the receptiveness to multi-disciplinary research in the Faculty and for the open environment in Hong Kong, where he has the freedom to pursue a potentially contentious topic.

“I’m lucky to be in the Faculty of Arts and the School of English, studying under Adam. I’m able to witness and take in such amazing, multidisciplinary research. I’m also able to receive feedback on my own work from various perspectives. This has been rewarding. Everybody has been very supportive. They are as curious as I am to see how my research will turn out.”

See the original article in Arts Faculty Newsletter Winter 2015.

School at the Crossroads: New Head of the School of Chinese and Her Visions

The School of Chinese has always occupied a special and somewhat separate place at HKU. It is the only unit where Chinese is the medium of instruction and, largely, of research output. And there is the challenge.

The School’s achievements have tended to be overlooked because of the language barrier and also because of a natural reticence of the minority to speak out. It is often mistaken as a “quiet” unit compared with others in the Faculty and the University.

Now, the new Head of the School, Dr Wu Cuncun, hopes to reach out to the university community and beyond.

“Many colleagues have a very strong Chinese education which makes us a little different from other schools in the Faculty. Part of my job is to get people to understand that,” she said. “I also hope colleagues can actively engage and keep in touch with the rest of the Faculty. We should feel comfortable to speak out and say what we think.”

One thing on Dr Wu’s mind is that the School’s research reputation has not been given its due recognition. While the School has a strong recent record in securing GRF grants, it did not do so well in last year’s research assessment exercise.

“I think one of the reasons is that more than 50 per cent of our publications are in Chinese-language journals. Theoretically, they are supposed to be treated equally [to English-language publications] but there are problems. I would like to see that change,” she said.

Recent recruits will help the cause because most have overseas qualifications from the West and are comfortable in English. (Dr Wu, after teaching at Nankai University in China for 10 years, spent 12 years teaching at Australian universities.) This should help the School to achieve her bigger ambitions.

“HKU is the leading university in Hong Kong and our School should play the leading role in Chinese studies. I hope we can consolidate the School’s international profile,” she said.

Dr Wu also wants to bring teaching more to the forefront and provide additional support for those teaching in the Chinese Language Enhancement Programme and Chinese Language Centre, which employ more than half of the School’s academic staff.

Her deep and infectious enthusiasm for HKU will undoubtedly be a help in her new position. She came here in 2010 because of the proximity to China, the research environment and the extensive networks with overseas universities – connections that have enabled her to spend 10 months at Harvard University as a Harvard-Yenching Visiting Scholar and two months at both Cambridge University and King’s College London.

“I love HKU and I think it’s a great place to do research. Most School members would agree there are lots of opportunities here,” she said.

“People have been really nice to me, so when my colleagues approached me to take up the headship, I felt I should do something to repay the School.”

The one trade-off is having to reduce her research activities, which focus on a topic that fascinates whatever the language and culture: sexuality in the late Ming and Qing dynasties, including homoeroticism, prostitution and pornography. “I really love my research, but I also like having the opportunity to support my colleagues and strengthen the School’s position,” she said.

See the original article in Arts Faculty Newsletter Winter 2015.

A Dean Who Means Business: Derek Collins as the New Dean of Arts

Professor Derek Collins, the new Dean of Arts, is bursting with the possibilities for a Faculty that he praises to the skies, but also would like to see more engaged with the broader world.

The Faculty (and HKU) is a “hidden gem”, he said, maybe not as well-known in some places but with students and staff of very high quality.

“I have been literally blown away first and foremost by the students, who are stronger than they realise – many are functioning well in their third language and they are almost intrinsically international. And also by the staff and how international and diverse the University is in general.”

Having said that, he would like to bring some things to the table.

For students, he hopes to encourage them to pursue language training beyond Cantonese, English and Mandarin, and take up something like Arabic or Portuguese so they can communicate across more cultures.

Leadership and entrepreneurship should also be part of their training and goals, because Arts students have the communication, critical thinking and analytical skills that are assets in the business and non-profit worlds. Such capabilities are best put to use when students collaborate.

These skills are also important in building bridges between disciplines. He imagines co-curricular projects being initiated between computer science and music, or history and architecture. While some of this happens in the Common Core, he would like to see it revved up. “There are silos between the faculties and missed opportunities for students to collaborate. We have to work together to break them down,” he said.

Interdisciplinary connections are important for research, too, and he hopes to see more initiatives like the Centre for the Humanities and Medicine. He especially wants the Faculty to work at raising its international research profile, by looking beyond the constraints of government funding to international and private funding sources.

All these things will be important to take HKU and the Faculty to a status well within its reach: “You want anyone who thinks about China and Asia to think of HKU as the crucial place for furthering those ideas. It’s about situating HKU as the unique ‘must’ stop for trying to understand how Asia deals with the rest of the world.”

In case you think he is all business, Professor Collins, who previously was associate dean of humanities at the University of Michigan, likes to point out he has applied broad thinking and multidisciplinarity in his own life. His scholarship in Classical Studies combines literature and anthropology (he authored Magic in the Ancient Greek World), and his interests range from travel, music and art to car racing.

He hopes students will similarly find several passions through their Arts studies. In contrast, he cites the example of lottery winners who win and squander a lot of money, and then become depressed because they do not know what else to do. “Their imagination is limited and they don’t know what to appreciate. It’s the limitation of the imagination that you want to lift” – which is where Arts comes in, as a place to stir the mind and hopefully create some magical connections.

See the original article in Arts Faculty Newsletter Issue 12 Winter 2015.

Jessica Valdez Discusses Why Victorian Novelists Gave Newspapers a Bad Press

Authors and journalists may both be engaged in the act of writing, but in the 19th century authors waged, if you can excuse the expression, a little war of words against newspapers.

Journalists and newspapers were portrayed negatively by the likes of Anthony Trollope, whose self-serving editor-characters tended to be more interested in disrupting society to serve their own ends than the public interest.

To Dr Jessica Valdez of the School of English, this phenomenon is an opportunity for considering how 19th century novelists conveyed ideas about the literary value of the novel. A one-time aspiring journalist herself – she interned at the Baltimore Sun and Washington Post – she is investigating the depiction of news and newspapers in Victorian England and how this related to not only novels but also national identity, for a RGC Early Career Scheme-funded project.

Both the novel and the newspaper were fairly new phenomena at this time and had each been vilified as corrupting influences on society. Novelists like Trollope responded through unflattering portrayals of newspapermen, while Charles Dickens took a different tack, portraying a writer-character like David Copperfield sympathetically but “hiding the labour of writing as part of the effort to elevate the novel as a literary form,” Dr Valdez said.

“I’m also looking at what these attitudes tell us about their idea of the nation and the relationship of literature to the nation. Obviously the newspaper is essential to creating a sense of a national community through the perception that many other readers are also reading the same newspaper every morning. At the same time, though, many of these novelists were concerned about the effect that a mass media might have on the morality of the nation – how it sought to titillate readers and often jumped to conclusions.”

For someone like Dickens, the novel itself represented unity. It brought together different forms of writing (such as serialisation) into a single whole, while at the same time containing characters from different classes and opening up their eyes to each other, she said. In the political sense of unity, it competed with the newspaper.

In contrast, the sensation novel, which appeared in the 1860s and 1870s and offered fictionalised accounts of lurid newspaper stories, challenged such unity. Dr Valdez is also looking at the writer Wilkie Collins whose female characters were bigamists, poisoners and the like who sometimes looked to newspaper headlines for guidance “almost like a horoscope”.

“Wilkie Collins asks the reader to enter into the interiority of a character who we might otherwise write off. In a way he is challenging the idea of nation and the way that the national community is built on exclusion.”

Dr Valdez hopes her project will contribute to a better understanding of the novel, which continues to be subjected to debate about when it began and where the line of “fiction” can or should be drawn. “I hope, with my analysis of the depiction of another form of writing within the novel, to see if this gives us an understanding of how Victorians understood novel-ness.”

See the original article in Arts Faculty Newsletter Winter 2015.

New System, New Language, New School: Chee Wai-chi on Hong Kong's Teenage Migrants

Every year in Hong Kong about 5,000 newly-arrived children enter local primary and secondary schools. The majority are from mainland China and South Asia and they are often disadvantaged from the outset in a system based on knowledge of Cantonese and English, and teaching to the norm.

That situation concerns Dr Chee Wai-chi of the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, who recently received a GRF grant to investigate the academic trajectory and social integration of teenage migrants in Hong Kong’s school system.

“My research interest has always been young people and education,” she said. “I think migrant students deserve our attention because they are in a difficult situation where they have to adjust to a new life on the one hand, and a very unfamiliar education system on the other.”

Migrant students have long been known to have disproportionately lower academic achievement in local schools. While Mainland students have a somewhat easier time because of the similarity of Cantonese and Putonghua, they struggle with English. Indian and to a certain extent Nepali students cope with English but struggle with Chinese. Pakistani students tend to struggle with both.

Dr Chee saw some of this in an earlier project on the initial experiences of migrant students that ran from 2008 to 2012. She interviewed 87 students aged 12 to 18 during their first year in Hong Kong and found many were optimistic – not necessarily for the best reasons.

“They compared their Hong Kong school with their hometown school and talked about the schools here being well-equipped with things like computers, air-conditioners and sports facilities, and the teaching quality being higher. Most of them said the teachers here were more professional than the teachers back home.

“I called this misguided optimism because their comparisons were based on their hometown rather than the Hong Kong context and other local peers,” she said.

Dr Chee will now go back to the same group for a comparative longitudinal study to see how they view things now that they are older and have gone further through the school system. Did they catch up in the curriculum and if so when, or did they drop out and if so why? Did they feel they belonged to Hong Kong and if so, at what point did that happen? For mainland students, did anti-mainland sentiment affect their educational decisions? These are some of the issues she will explore.

“I’m trying to see this from their perspective and reveal their experiences. If we understand what these students are going through, then we will be in a better position to provide effective support to them,” she said.

She hopes the results will contribute to better practices and policies based on equity and the integration of migrant students, so they do not flounder in Hong Kong’s educational system. Hong Kong itself could even benefit. “Ironically, Hong Kong claims to be a world city and inclusive,” she said. “If that is really so, then we should be helping these students to do better.”

See the original article in Arts Faculty Newsletter Winter 2015.

A Place for Making Magic: HKU Blackbox Theatre

HKU Blackbox Theatre

When Aarti Hemnani, the manager of the new HKU Blackbox Theatre (HKUBB), was an Arts student at HKU in the early 2000s, she was desperate to do theatre. But apart from a drama programme with Dr Page Richards, which held robust springtime performances around the Main Building fountain, often in the late-day heat, there were few opportunities. She had to look off-campus for her theatre fix.

That memory made a lasting impression on Ms Hemnani, who jumped at the chance to take on the HKUBB after years working in non-profit art education in Singapore and commercial theatre in Hong Kong.

“During the interview process, I was asked why I wanted to leave what I was doing and come and do this. Immediately I said when I was a student, I would have been over the moon to have a theatre at HKU,” she said.

Befittingly, Dr Richards, who oversees drama and creative writing at HKU, is the driving force behind the theatre, which opened earlier this year. She made a bid for the space when the new Centennial Campus was in early development, determined to have a theatre that could support not only performances but also writing and experimentation.

“I know how important space is to the kind of studio practices that go along with research practices in drama and creative writing. The more you feel connection to a space, the more it inspires generatively new ideas and work in writers,” she said.

The theatre’s design also promotes focus and contemplation, collaborative work across disciplines at the university, and engagement with the wider Hong Kong community. It features black walls and windows, which offer a protected space for fresh ideas and invention. It has a flexible stage, the flexible seating of an intimate space, as well as a giant screen and projector.

For Ms Hemnani, one of the key advantages of the HKUBB is that it is unlike commercial theatre where “you go in, make magic for a week and leave.” Here, the focus is on experimenting and developing works over longer periods of time. Creative writers see their work move from the page to the stage, while theatre specialists play with how to convey stories.

The first full-scale production in the theatre was a play written by MFA graduate Wilson Chik. There have also been workshops, symposia, film screenings, community outreach and other such events, although Ms Hemnani said they were careful to leave time for creation. “We need to have space within to allow for interesting things to come up,” she said. Some recent examples: an upcoming collaboration in 2016 with the “Island Cities and Urban Archipelagos” conference and with the HKU Landscape Architecture programme to explore scale and space; and plans for a new puppet opera.

Dr Richards said these explorations gave breadth to the theatre, but as a university they were also concerned about depth. Quality matters too, and she and Ms Hemnani are seeking to curate something that is both a community resource and a source of creativity. “We want to convey the idea that anything is possible, but along with experimentation, we need to keep the bar raised high,” she said.

Added Ms Hemnani: “It’s time for the Hong Kong story to be developed and for local writers to have a platform. Isn’t it wonderful to have a home for them!”

See the original article in Arts Faculty Newsletter Winter 2015.

The Politics of Art, with John Sham

From left: Mr Derek Yee, Dr Mirana Szeto, Mr John Sham

As a visiting University Artist, renowned actor, producer and businessman John Sham Kin-fun has one thing in mind: “I’m happy to talk about anything, but since this is an artist thing, let’s stick to art.” Given his other background as a one-time political activist, and the current times, it is an almost impossible agenda to follow.

The art is certainly covered. Mr Sham has a simple goal in agreeing to be a University Artist: “I want to discuss with the students where the Hong Kong film industry is going and the future of the industry.” At his first talk at HKU in November last year, he brought along director Derek Yee and screened his film The Lunatics to open up discussion about the social responsibility of the filmmaker.

But as much as he tries to heed an artistic agenda, politics inevitably creeps into the conversation – not surprising since Mr Sham has strong personal connections with the pro-democracy camp, Umbrella Movement and government and was involved in Operation Yellow Bird to assist Chinese dissidents after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.

For instance, at one talk he asked students why they did not like Hong Kong-China co-productions, which open the door to the China market for Hong Kong filmmakers. These films typically flop at the local box office, but are a big success in China.

“The students will say they don’t know why they don’t want to see these films, but when you grill them, they start to think. Quite a lot of them will say, ‘Nobody told me the film was good’ – of course, because nobody saw it in the first place!

“I know the answer, it’s very simple. They don’t trust the films made in China, they think they are phony, they think they are censored.

“You hear moviegoers say these filmmakers don’t care about their feelings, they only care about the market. I say, well, as a businessman you can’t blame them. But as a creative person, do I agree with them? Now that’s another story.”

As a businessman, Mr Sham knows a great deal about cinema in China. He owns the country’s second largest cinema chain, having decided this was a better way to engage in the China market than navigating around censorship. It also lets him indulge romantic notions about the power of cinemas.

“When I grew up, the cinema was a place for dreams. I think China needs a lot of dreams. You can limit what people see by censoring movies, but going into a movie in a dark place you share with other people, your minds are full, it’s a different experience already. And of course it is a business opportunity – I have to make money for the company.”

People in Hong Kong, on the other hand, need confidence in the future – and many students are looking for answers in the Umbrella Movement. Mr Sham, who was also a student activist in his youth, sees another way. A former freelance investigative journalist for the Sunday Times and Granada Television, he is preparing to launch his own media outlet, HK01, which will include a news website and hefty print weekly that are heavy in investigative reporting. He is pushing his staff to turn the media and Hong Kong establishment on its head.

“I want Hong Kong people to be less helpless, be more confident, gain back our own good values – to stop being defeatist,” he said. “We will be daring. The world progresses by saying no, not by saying yes. Our motto is ‘solutions’. Hong Kong has to get back on its feet.”

The University Artists Scheme is hosted by the Faculty of Arts and is supported by Dr Alice Lam.

Upcoming events to be held under the University Artists Scheme in 2016 include a one-month residency by Glenn Davidson and Ann Hayes of Artstation in February, a concert by Trey Lee in the Grand Hall of the Lee Shau Kee Lecture Centre in May, and two major public talks featuring filmmaker Fruit Chan and film industry pioneer John Sham.

http://arts.hku.hk/knowledge-exchange/university-artists-scheme.

See the original article in Arts Faculty Newsletter Winter 2015.

Honoured Film’s Poignant Take on Native America: Tim Gruenewald's Film on Mount Rushmore and Wounded Knee

Mount Rushmore is an iconic American monument, its surface carved with the faces of four presidents who were instrumental in the country’s founding and expansion. More than two million people visit every year, guided to its remote location by elaborate signage, roads, carparks and visitor amenities.

Just 160 kilometres away, down an unlit road through poverty-stricken Native American land, a small, rusted, graffiti-covered sign marks another iconic American site. Wounded Knee is where more than 200 Lakota people were massacred in 1890. Following the publication of Dee Brown’s book “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” in 1970, the site became a symbol for the history of the government’s aggression against Native Americans, an aggression that was driven in large part by the westward expansion of Rushmore’s leaders.

Dr Tim Gruenewald, head of American Studies, encountered these contrasting memorials almost accidentally in 2001. He was driving from Atlanta, where he did his MA, to Seattle to begin his PhD studies, when he decided to take a detour to Wounded Knee. He literally got stuck in the mud at the isolated site.

“I was surprised I was the only visitor, but what was really against expectations was the lack of any remembrance infrastructure,” he said. “Most people in America have probably heard of Wounded Knee, but that rusty sign was the only historical marker. It was in such a sorry state.”

He then drove on to Mount Rushmore and was so struck by the contrast that he was inspired, on the spot, to make a documentary about these two places.

It took a few years. First he had to complete his PhD and get his career underway. But in the summer of 2009, just before moving to Hong Kong, he returned to the area with visual artist and photographer Ludwig Schmidtpeter. They spent a month filming and interviewing about 50 people. Dr Gruenewald then spent five years in post-production in between his academic duties at HKU.

The end result, Sacred Ground, was released late last year. It touches on the complex relationship between modern-day America and its native population and explores contrasting approaches to remembering the history of the United States. In fact, Mount Rushmore is located in the Black Hills, which are sacred to the Lakota people.

“Part of this film is asking, what is America about? Is it Mount Rushmore or Wounded Knee, or do they belong together? They are two sides of the same coin, you wouldn’t have one without the other. Many would say that’s a given, but when you go to Wounded Knee, nobody is there,” he said. “Is this not worth remembering? There are national memorials for Jefferson, Washington, Lincoln, the Vietnam War, World War II, 9/11 and so on. Why is this part of U.S. history excluded from the national remembrance discourse?”

The film played at several film festivals in the U.S. and won an “Independent Spirit” award at the Idyllwild International Festival of Cinema in California in January. It connects to Dr Gruenewald’s current research project on memorials and memory museums in Washington, DC, and New York City, which also investigates the intersection between remembrance sites and the national imagination.

For more information about Sacred Ground, visit http://sacredgroundfilm.com/.

See the original article in Arts Faculty Newsletter Winter 2015.

What’s the Chinese For ‘Grexit’? Eva Ng's Bilingual Glossary Website

A new website launched under the School of Chinese is providing interpreters, students and the public with a bilingual repository for translating terms from the news and other everyday sources that have not yet made it to the dictionary.

The “Resources for Interpreting” website has received more than 5,000 visits since its launch in July, as well as positive feedback and endorsements from scholars and professional interpreters in Hong Kong and abroad.

Dr Eva Ng instigated the website after spending more than a decade asking students to submit Chinese-English bilingual terms from the news on a weekly basis, which she compiled into a list and kept on her personal website. That list became the basis for the website’s searchable glossary database.

“I’m a former court interpreter and I know glossary compilation is an indispensable part of the practice of interpreting. Students in my interpreting class often come across terms that they don’t know the equivalent of in the target language, so it’s very important for them to have an extensive vocabulary in both languages and to build up that vocabulary from daily life,” Dr Ng said, citing buzzwords such as “Grexit” and “smartphone addicts.”

The bilingual glossary is turning out to be useful to more than students and teachers. Even professional interpreters use it as a handy toolkit.

The website also contains information on the practice, learning, teaching and research of interpreting, developed in collaboration with scholars from the University of New South Wales and Hong Kong Baptist University. “I wanted to create a website where all the information about interpreting is a click away,” Dr Ng added.

Dr Ng received two Knowledge Exchange Fund grants, one to set up the website in the 2014-15 academic year and the other to sustain and expand it during the current academic year. “It’s meaningless if we stop here, especially for bilingual terminology. You have to update it regularly to make it useful, so this continued support from the KE office is important,” she said.

Apart from news sources, Dr Ng and her research assistants have also drawn terminology from court proceedings that she obtained through her other projects. In 2009 she was given rare permission by the High Court to access the audio recordings of nine trials for teaching and research purposes. She received a grant from the Leung Kau Kui Research and Teaching Endowment Fund in 2009 and a Teaching Development Grant in 2014 to transcribe and develop the materials.

The recordings contain terms relating to such things as triad slang and sexual offences, which have been added to the website. The transcripts have been used in class to let students test themselves against the court interpreters and critique the professionals’ work, and in a mock trial with the Faculty of Law. Students have also visited the High Court to see interpreters live in action.

“I try to bring in authentic materials and give students a chance to learn from real people rather than just listening to a tape,” said Dr Ng, who hopes to further develop these court-based tools, as well as the website, to bridge the ever-evolving complexities of English and Chinese.

Resources for Interpreting is at http://www.interpreting.hku.hk/.

See the original article in Arts Faculty Newsletter Winter 2015.

One Century On, The Arts Association Keeps Evolving

Arts Association H.K.U.S.U. High Table Dinner 2015

The Arts Association is 100 years old this year and stronger than ever. Both membership and energy are up, driven by students’ enthusiastic involvement in the Umbrella Movement. But while this all sounds promising, it may not have been what the early founders of the association had in mind.

The Arts Association was set up by professors and, until the 1970s, it was a loosely academic body with membership of both staff and students. Activities were internally focused, consisting largely of dramas, debates and sports competitions.

Frederick Yip, a second-year student in History and Politics and Public Administration and Vice-Chair of the association, has been compiling its history for a commemorative book that will also include interviews with famous alumni and writings by members past and present.

“We’ve been trying to trace the activities that were organised by the association. For example, before World War II, there were drama shows in the Grand Hall [now Loke Yew Hall]. In the 1950s and 1960s, debating competitions were popular – the motions were quite general and academic, on topics like literature and women’s rights.

“They also had events like interfaculty soccer competitions and our team won several times. They had social dinners in the 1950s and 1960s, too, where they usually invited professors and deans to come.”

The tone of things started to change from the 1970s when the association became a strictly student organisation. This was a time of growing social and political awareness among HKU students over such issues as the Diaoyu Islands dispute and corruption. In the 1980s, when discussions about Hong Kong’s future began to dominate, a current affairs standing committee was formed and it sets the tone for today.

“It’s one of our most prominent standing committees because we all want Arts students to be aware of current affairs and to be active, especially after the Umbrella Movement,” the Chairman, Becky Wong, a second-year English Studies and Translation student, said.

“In terms of engagement in current affairs and politics, we are getting better and better. Students are more involved, especially from last year. So it’s a very encouraging result and we all feel very optimistic about it. At our high table dinner, we had hundreds of participants, which was good to see.”

There are nonetheless complications with that uptick in interest, Frederick said. “We now have to serve more than 2,200 members and communicate with them. That will be the challenge for the association in future,” he said.

Moreover, the move from the Main Building has made it more difficult to reach students. Arts students used to spend a lot of time there and would often drop by the Arts Association office. Now, they are more scattered across the campus. “Bonding is a big issue, although it’s compensated for by the increase in participation,” Becky said.

Their commemorative publication will offer a timely context to all of these changes. Alumni have been invited to share both memories and photos, and the book will be released early next year.

See the original article in Arts Faculty Newsletter Winter 2015.

Hong Kong Film Course Taps A Global Audience

From left: Dr Staci Ford, Professor Gina Marchetti, 

Dr Aaron Han Joon Magnan-Park

“When people think about Hong Kong, a lot of them think about Hong Kong films,” says Professor Gina Marchetti of the Department of Comparative Literature. So what better way to showcase both this art form and HKU’s scholarship than by launching a MOOC on the subject?

MOOCs – which stand for “massive open online courses” offered usually by universities – have mushroomed around the world. HKU has four MOOCs, all free of charge, including “Humanity and Nature in Chinese Thought” by Chad Hansen, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, as well as courses developed by the Faculties of Architecture and Medicine and the Journalism and Media Studies Centre. When it was decided this year to add more such courses, Professor Marchetti did not hesitate.

“I begged to do it,” she said. “One of the things we do extraordinarily well here at HKU is Hong Kong film, another is cultural globalisation from an Asian perspective, particularly taking into account Chinese culture. I feel this MOOC really showcases that about HKU and we have an obligation as an institution to share it with the rest of the world.”

The MOOC, which will be launched next autumn, is building on a Common Core course called “Hong Kong Cinema through a Global Lens,” which invites guest speakers from the industry to class and includes live demonstrations of swordplay by the Department of Comparative Literature’s Dr Aaron Han Joon Magnan-Park so students can analyse the quality of fight scenes in films.

These things are all being filmed for the MOOC, which will be a joint offering by Professor Marchetti, Dr Magnan-Park and Dr Stacilee Ford of the Department of History and the American Studies Programme. They are still preparing the course and assessment materials and plan to have a strong element of feedback mechanisms so students can seek clarification and learn from each other.

“There can be an impression of dumbing-down with MOOCs,” Dr Ford said. “I signed on because of the professionalism of the HKU E-learning Pedagogical Support Unit, which coordinates the development of the University’s MOOCs, and the determination by Gina and Aaron to keep the intellectual engagement at a good level.”

The MOOC is not Professor Marchetti’s only online project. Earlier this year she launched the Hong Kong Women Filmmakers website, which was developed from her GRF-funded project on Hong Kong women filmmakers from 1997 to the present day.

“The website wasn’t part of the grant but I thought it would be a good way to display all the material that had been collected,” she said. The website contains detailed profiles of more than 45 Hong Kong women filmmakers, a special section on women filmmakers of the Umbrella Movement, a select (but extensive) bibliography and other materials.

Professor Marchetti said some of the filmmakers told her they were looking at their own work in new ways after seeing it in relation to other women filmmakers in Hong Kong. “They don’t get the recognition they deserve and I hope this will be a place where they can network and contact other women in the industry,” she said. “I also hope it will inspire younger filmmakers to see there are opportunities for women in Hong Kong film culture.”

Hong Kong Women Filmmakers is at https://hkwomenfilmmakers.wordpress.com/
HKUx (HKU MOOCs) is at http://tl.hku.hk/hkuxonline/

See the original article in Arts Faculty Newsletter Winter 2015.

Hard-core Teaching: Miranda Legg of CAES Won Teaching Excellence Award

Miranda Legg, Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Applied English Studies (CAES), this year received a Teaching Excellence Award from the University, an honour that recognises not only her teaching ability but also the considerable challenge she took on in designing the Core University English programme for the new four-year undergraduate curriculum.

Language proficiency is one of the key goals of the new curriculum, under which students have to complete double the number of English-language learning hours as before. Students need to spend 120 learning hours studying the first-year Core University English, and another 120 hours in their second or third year studying English in their discipline.

However, because students now enter HKU with one less year at secondary school and are also required to take Common Core courses alongside students from different disciplines, Ms Legg had her work cut out for her. She not only had to increase the quantity of material to be taught but also had to adapt the content to the needs of students studying the new curriculum.

“The students have diverse abilities and interests and we have to make sure they can function in both writing and speaking in the Common Core,” said Ms Legg, who believes the variety in ability is the result of the University admitting more students from beyond the elite schools and not a fall in standards (an oft-heard complaint).

“You can’t approach it as a deficit model because it’s not possible to identify everybody’s individual weaknesses. So we set standards that we want students to achieve and teach to those.”

The programme covers such things as academic writing and speaking skills, citation and referencing skills and avoiding plagiarism. Ms Legg said some students did question why they needed to study a subject they thought they had seen the last of. As a result, the Centre’s teachers had to spend a lot of time explaining how the course would help students develop essential skills, all while giving them as many writing and speaking opportunities as possible.

“For the most part the students understand and value what we do. So long as they understand the rationale of the course, we get very good feedback from students,” she said.

Ms Legg began planning the Core University English programme nearly a decade ago, soon after the new curriculum was announced, and has also produced a textbook to support it (now in its second edition following feedback from staff and students). The programme is the focus of her PhD at Macquarie University, which she is close to finishing. She has also recently been promoted to chair of CAES’ Programme Co-ordinators’ Committee.

“What we do well at the centre is tailor our courses to the needs of the students. I was lucky because I had an opportunity to create something new and meaningful, with impacts into the wider curriculum,” she said. “A lot of the work we do is not very visible to the academic community at HKU, so it was nice to get recognised. There is a lot of hard work that goes on by all teachers at the Centre.”

See the original article in Arts Faculty Newsletter Winter 2015.

Faculty of Arts in the Media: Julia Kuehn Discusses Somerset Maugham’s China Connections

Dr Julia Kuehn from the School of English was recently interviewed by the SCMP for an article on Somerset Maugham’s visits to and writings on Hong Kong and China.

December 16 marks the 50th anniversary of Maugham’s death. He remains one of Britain’s most famous and celebrated writers and he was greatly influenced by his travels in China and Southeast Asia. Although Maugham was born and died in France, and his ashes were scattered in England, some of his most admired work was inspired much closer to these shores...

“He is looking for human encounters not places,” says Kuehn, who does not think there is much substance about China in his work. Instead Maugham is quite brutal in his quest to find people and stories to collect, like an etymologist gathering insects, and it caused a great deal of resentment at the time. Hospitable colonial types divulged their secrets late in the night over one too many whisky and sodas, only to find themselves the subject in a work of bestselling literature.

Please click on the following link for the complete article:
http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1886347/how-somerset-maughams-china-connection-gave-him-wealth-stories

Faculty of Arts in the Media: John Carroll Comments on President Xi Jinping's Recent Visit to Britain

Source: SCMP 

President Xi Jinping's much lauded state visit to Britain showed the host country has learned the lessons of Lord Macartney's failed trade mission 220 years ago - perhaps too well, in the eyes of some of David Cameron's critics.

An "ultra royal welcome" was afforded President Xi Jinping during his state visit to Britain last month. The considerable attention to etiquette and protocol paid by the hosts doubtless contributed to the success of the trip, and the heralding of a new "golden era" in Sino-British trade relations.

The positive impact of the lavish pageantry and obsequious attention heaped on the visiting Chinese delegation could not have contrasted more acutely with Britain's first diplomatic attempt to establish Sino-British trade relations, in 1793.

Professor John Carroll, of the University of Hong Kong's history department, is researching the Macartney and Amherst missions for his book "Canton Trade", which looks at commercial affairs in Guangzhou before the first opium war (1839-42). He seeks to demonstrate that more than a century of successful Sino-British trading relations with no serious altercations has been overlooked.

Please click on the following link for the complete article: http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1877753/kowtow-or-not-no-longer-question-when-britain-and-china-deal

Faculty of Arts in the Media: Jon Orman and Brook Bolander Commented on "word of the year" emoji of Oxford Dictionaries

Jon Orman and Brook Bolander, assistant professors in the School of English of the Factulty of Arts, were interviewed by South China Morning Post on Oxford Dictionaries' pick of "word of the year", namely the "face with tears of joy" emoji. By quoting the two scholars, SCMP writes that "[Oxford Dictionaries'] decision is a recognition that the definition of language and the way we communicate is changing and expanding."

"People are not using fewer words, it's a matter that pictures are now integrated smoothly and creatively into the text language we use," said Dr Jon Orman, an assistant professor of English linguistics at the University of Hong Kong.

"It's a really good example of how language expands as different communication technology makes more things possible."

Dr Brook Bolander, an assistant professor in the university's school of English, suggested that the "face with tears of joy" emoji was chosen because it reflected the idea of "laughing out loud" or "lol", and has a strong emotional intensity.

Please click on the following link for the full article: http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1879981/lol-war-words-erupts-over-whether-oxford-dictionaries-should-name

Faculty of Arts in the Media: Time Out Interview with Dr Lisa Lim, Founder of LinguisticMinorities.hk

Time Out Hong Kong
Hong Kong Profiles

Dr Lisa Lim
Founder of LinguisticMinorities.hk
http://www.english.hku.hk/linguisticminorities-hk

It’s quite a statement for a twenty-something Hongkonger to ‘not have ever engaged with anyone from an ethnic minority background’. But that’s exactly what associate professor of English and coordinator of the Language and Communication Programme at HKU, Dr Lisa Lim, says is true of many students she encounters. We may be living in ‘Asia’s World City’, but there are persistent fears that Hong Kong’s language and culture continues to homogenise – alienating and denigrating the very thing that gives us our national identity.

Please click on the following link for the complete article:
http://www.timeout.com.hk/big-smog/features/74790/hk-profile-dr-lisa-lim-founder-of-linguisticminoritieshk.html

文學院傳媒報道：何家珩主持鄭欣宜講座 探討身體、性別和性取向關係

Stand News reported on the panel talk about body and gender politics given by Joyce Cheng, local artist and celebrity, and moderated by Dr. Jason Ho, assistant professor in the Department of Comparative Literature. Joyce is one of the very few local celebrities who openly supports gay rights and embraces homosexuality. She shared and discussed with Dr. Ho her viewpoints on femininity, sexuality, body consciousness, and the Hong Kong showbiz in relation to these issues.

立場新聞報道，香港藝人鄭欣宜應香港大學比較文學系講師何家珩所邀，到港大與學生對談身體與性別政治，並細訴自己逾十年來的轉變。

「由細到大， 肥 = 我」是鄭欣宜17個月前在Facebook撰寫的〈不再減肥宣言〉的首句，也許亦道出了很多香港人對欣宜的集體回憶。少女時期體重曾經達235磅，最輕時減到115磅，其間她流過很多淚水，經歷了很多傷害，最後她在〈不再減肥宣言〉結語：「請不要將自己快樂放在你的身形上。」

Source: Stand News

這篇文章至今已累積超過11萬讚好、近9,500分享，及後再推出歌曲《你瘦夠了嗎？》，在MV中以200磅體態做出直立式一字馬，讓更多人看到她的才華和努力，得到更多人的祝福和支持。

眼前的她不再和別人分享減肥心得，她分享的是幸福的心得，說幸福不等於亢奮，也非不斷地笑，而是得到「內在的和平」（peace with myself）……

何家珩在言談間，對欣宜如今所發放的幸福、正面氣場表示極之欣賞，更指她有潛質成為香港的Adele，「就係嗰種排除萬難、只唱好我嘅歌（的感覺）」，他又指，這種氣場是欣宜在瘦的時候所沒有的。

何家珩形容，欣宜的做法和作品有種「出櫃」意味……何認為，肥人和性小眾，所爭取的是殊途同歸，就是宣揚那種面對旁人冷語，仍然擁抱「關你咩事啫？」的態度，「gay、lesbian、肥人，都冇做錯事，但枷鎖同壓力係社會無形地加落嚟。」

瀏覽全文：https://thestandnews.com/personal/%E9%97%9C%E4%BD%A0%E5%92%A9%E4%BA%8B%E5%95%AB-%E4%B8%8D%E5%86%8D%E6%B8%9B%E8%82%A5%E7%9A%84%E9%84%AD%E6%AC%A3%E5%AE%9C/

文學院傳媒報道：蘋果日報訪問王向華博士 探討日本色情工業

兩大色情王國：美國及日本，業界在種類方面各走極端。著名社會學博士Gail Dines調查歐美色情工業，認為競爭日趨激烈，為吸引觀眾點擊，電影內容越見大膽激烈。香港大學講師王向華博士主力研究日本色情工業，發現近十年電影種類越來越多，因受到口味分眾化（demassification）影響，觀眾喜歡的類型變得分散，單靠一兩部電影難以吸引全部觀眾。但開拍多部電影成本高昂，近年電影公司亦愛玩噱頭來吸引觀眾，如「AKB48女星下海」、「某政壇要員或大學教授女兒擔正」等，亦有以虛擬實景作賣點的成人電影。

瀏覽全文：http://hk.apple.nextmedia.com/supplement/special/art/20151104/19358433

Faculty of Arts in the Media: Frank Dikötter Discusses Historical Link to Shanghai Office's Deletion of Titles

Professor Frank Dikötter of the Department of History was interviewed by The Globe and Mail with regard to the new business practice of a Shanghai office.

In the Shanghai office of China’s biggest builder of homes and condominiums, the boss is no longer “boss.” Employees have instead been told to refer to their superiors by their names, or perhaps their nicknames, as Shanghai Vanke does battle on stifling bureaucracy and stultifying hierarchy...

The idea of striking titles is not new in China, where the lead-up to the Cultural Revolution saw the military under Mao Zedong delete all trappings of hierarchy. In their place was a mandate that everyone in uniform be called “comrade.”

“In June, 1965, all formal saluting, epaulettes, hard-peaked caps, medals, insignia of rank, tailored uniforms for officers and other privileges in the People’s Liberation Army were abolished. From a general all the way down to a soldier, every fighter had to wear a single red star on an identical cap,” said Frank Dikotter, professor at the University of Hong Kong whose books on China include a history of the Cultural Revolution.

But if the idea was to impose egalitarianism, it didn’t work. No one forgot who the generals were. “It’s an extraordinarily hierarchy-conscious society,” Prof. Dikotter said. And by 1968, China had become even more hierarchical than before, effectively transforming into a military dictatorship.

Please click on the following link for the full article: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/in-one-shanghai-office-tearing-down-hierarchy-means-never-saying-boss/article27024090/

文學院傳媒報道：傅榮朗博士探討陸港政治文化與全球性難民議題

Source: SCMP

南華早報中文網就亞洲富國應如何協助紓解敘難民危機採訪港大文學院歐洲研究學者傅榮朗博士（Roland Vogt）。

傅榮朗表示亞洲國家應付出更多，例如捐款或接收難民。國家主席習近平早前承諾成立維和部隊，或反映中國將在全球事務方面發揮更大作用，不過傅榮朗認為，中國能否實踐承諾，仍然有待觀察。

他指出，這種人道援助文化一般彰顯於西方民主國家，在陸港政治文化中並不存在。如果陸港政府協助難民，很可能會引起人民批評。

他續說，亞洲國家的政治議程中，人權和全球責任的重要性都很低，因此這些國家都未有加入緩解敘利亞危機。

傅榮朗說：“我認為中國在調解工作方面也未有發揮更大作用，我想知道為什麼不這麼做。個別亞洲國家非常慷慨，積極投入援助工作，但即便如此，也仍未形成一種政治文化。”

自2012年以來，香港人合共向聯合國難民署捐贈了約720萬港元。

傅榮朗表示，內地所知的難民人數僅為25萬，當中大部份來自朝鮮。而中國的法律體系並未為這個國家做好應對難民的準備。

瀏覽全文：http://www.nanzao.com/tc/international/150ae72da20abed/ou-meng-zhu-gang-ban-shi-chu-zhu-ren-ya-zhou-fu-guo-ying-xie-zhu-shu-jie-xu-nan-min-wei-ji

Getting in the Festival Spirit: Studying and Organising Film Festivals

Film festivals have proliferated in recent years. A quick check with Wikipedia shows there are now more than 400 major film festivals around the world, from heavyweights like Cannes, Sundance and Toronto to more obscure gatherings such as the Camp Cult Classics Film Festival and Pyongyang International Film Festival. This year, HKU pitched in.

Professor Gina Marchetti organised a credit-bearing course in which students not only studied film festivals, but organised their own. There was much academic insight to be gained from the exercise, she said.

“Film festivals are important not only because they focus attention on a neglected aspect of film or highlight the need for a particular community to see itself on the screen, but also because they provide a discourse beyond the screen. That discourse is sometimes lost as more and more people watch films at home or on portable devices – they don’t have that big screen experience and so they lose the community experience, too.

“At film festival screenings, you are forced to recreate the communal screening and extend it to engage in discussion and interaction. There’s also this idea of levelling the playing field between audience and filmmaker by allowing the audience to question the filmmaker, which they normally cannot do.”

The whole shebang

The students were required to curate their own festival – to decide on a theme, select films, contact filmmakers to negotiate permission to screen the films for free (they had no budget), find a venue, advertise the festival, prepare questions for Q&A sessions after the screening, and survey audiences on their response to the festival.

They worked in small groups and organised five festivals that were screened around HKU campus on the themes of the Umbrella Movement, the immigrant experience, animated documentaries, horror documentaries and road movies. The first two in particular generated a lot of discussion because the audiences had direct experience of the topics.

Nora Lam Tze-wing, now a third-year student majoring in Comparative Literature and French, was in the group that organised the Umbrella Movement festival, to which students and independent filmmakers contributed films. She learned much from the process.

“We received a lot of short films, more than we had time to screen, and choices had to be made. My groupmates and I spent a lot of time discussing what directions and styles to screen – journalistic versus theatrical, clearly-narrated versus experimental, documentary versus drama and so on. I had thought that for such a political topic, only documentaries could fully present the themes, but I was surprised by the diverse genres and the broad styles that could be used to present one single topic,” she said.

A student-curated screening on the Umbrella Movement

Film culture beyond the screen

The students were also exposed to the organisation and wheeling and dealing that go on around professional film festivals. Professor Marchetti arranged for them to attend the Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF) and the trade fair Hong Kong Filmart, using funding support from HKU’s Experiential Learning Fund. She also brought in such guest speakers as Roger Garcia, HKIFF Executive Director, and the organisers of several smaller, specialised local film festivals.

“It’s really important for students who want to go into film in some sort of professional capacity as programmers, critics, policymakers, as well as people working in the industry, to have some idea of how film festivals work in this kind of climate,” she said.

“It’s taught them that there’s more to film culture than what you simply see on the screen. And that what you see is very much dependent on what happens off-screen in terms of not only production but what comes after that – exhibitions, distribution, critical reception, audience reception, the way in which festivals and other special events shape the screening environment and screening context.”

The festival project follows on from the well-received student work last year under Dr Esther Yau to create films about Pokfulam village and screen them in the village.

“I wanted to do something a bit different than the creative end,” Professor Marchetti said. “What do you do when you’ve got a lot of creative material and viewers hungry for something that they cannot normally get in the Cineplex? We came at it from that angle.”

The AniDox Animated Documentaries Festival can be viewed at
http://anidox2015.tumblr.com/

Horror Animation Festival at
http://hkuanimationfestival.weebly.com/

Road Movie Festival at
http://theroadstakenff.weebly.com/

Umbrella through Lens at
http://utl.mylife.hk/

United Cinemas – Hong Kong International Film Festival for Immigrants at
https://hkiffimmigrants.wordpress.com/

See original article at: http://www4.hku.hk/pubunit/Bulletin/2015_Oct_Vol.17_No.1/teaching_learning/

Cultural Musings on the Dinner Table: Isaac Yue on Chinese Food Culture

Dr Isaac Yue uses food as a vehicle to travel to the past and bring ancient times back to life. Ironically, it would have been difficult for him to openly pursue this interest in times past because of the Confucian precept that men of virtue should steer clear of the kitchen.

“That saying was misinterpreted over time [it originally applied only to the slaughterhouse], but it became so widely accepted, that if men wrote down recipes they did it in private, in secret, because they didn’t want people to know,” Dr Yue said.

Fortunately for Dr Yue, enough Chinese sages were secretly interested in food that there are written recipes dating back to the Tang Dynasty. Recipes have even crept into classical literary texts. Taken together, these snippets provide insights into the status and preparation of food over time.

For example, pork was shunned at one point during the Song Dynasty, despite its centrality to Chinese cuisine before and after. Lamb had come into favour instead under the influence of the north and because it was more difficult and costly to obtain.

“In one particular menu from that period, we know the emperor was a guest at a general’s household. Pork was not served on the emperor’s table, but it was served on the other tables. They were ranking food,” he said.

“Anywhere in the world you will notice this pattern in which people don’t eat specific foods not because of the taste, but because of the ideas associated with them.”

The Night Revels of Han Xizai by 10th-century Chinese artist Gu Hongzhong

Tastes of long ago

Dr Yue is also interested in the elaborate preparations of certain dishes. In The Golden Lotus there is a detailed description about a pig’s head cooked using one log to control the fire and keep it at a low temperature, and in Dream of the Red Chamber of fetching mountain snow to make tea.

Dr Yue’s interest in food is not confined to ancient China. He has also been studying the first Western recipe book written in China, by the missionary Martha Crawford of Alabama in the mid-19th century. It instructed servants how to make beef stew, carrot cake and other foods for their Western employers, and also found an audience among Chinese readers interested in these new foods.

“Usually when we study history, we look at dead people. But food is something that can be brought back to life. I am asking, is what we eat today the same as what we ate 100 years ago?” said Dr Yue. Apart from reading about food, he has also tested some of the recipes in his modern kitchen and found they stand up. Men can cook.

See the original article at: http://www4.hku.hk/pubunit/bulletin/cover_story/page5.html

Robert Peckham on Epidemics, Panic and History

Hong Kong is more familiar with epidemics than most cities, having lived through SARS and avian influenza in recent years. What better place, then, to consider the far-reaching impacts of epidemics on society.

Dr Robert Peckham, Founder and Co-Director of HKU’s Centre for the Humanities and Medicine which recently marked its fifth anniversary, is applying a fresh approach to epidemics and their effects. His new edited book, Empires of Panic: Epidemics and Colonial Anxieties, explores the different kinds of panic produced by outbreaks of infectious disease.

“Managing panic is integral to disease control,” he said. “An epidemic poses a multi-faceted security challenge: Health concerns can easily become entangled with anxieties about social order and economic stability. There is a loop-back effect as epidemics produce panic, triggering an emergency response that induces further panic that may drive infection.”

Outbreaks of bubonic plague in late 19th-century India and Hong Kong caused widespread panic. Draconian measures imposed by the panicky colonial state – such as enforced isolation and quarantine – served to exacerbate panic in the local population, which then spilled over into violent protest that called forth even harsher interventions by the state.

“In Hong Kong, the colonial administration was forced to back down. In the end, it couldn’t control cross-border movements,” Dr Peckham said.

An agent of change

The experience of epidemics led Europeans to rethink how they organised their colonies. Initially, they had sought to distance themselves from the threat of disease at large by establishing enclaves. Legislation was passed in Hong Kong at the beginning of the 20th century, for example, that reserved the Peak District exclusively for colonials. It soon became apparent, however, that exclusionary policies would not work.

Epidemics provided a stimulus for infrastructural projects designed to sanitise the city, including the construction of waterworks and a system of reservoirs, as well as new types of housing. More recently, SARS resulted in far-reaching institutional changes, from the provision of hand-sanitizers at the entrances of many public buildings, to the arrangement of the city’s public services, including hospital operations and morgue facilities.

“In this sense,” Dr Peckham said, “panic can be harnessed by the government to effect change. It can serve, often inadvertently, as a tool for pushing through policies that might have been difficult or impossible to implement at a time of non-crisis.”

Curiously, some diseases have sparked panic while others have not. In India, the plague is estimated to have killed about as many people as the influenza of 1918–1919, but there was no widespread panic with the latter. Dr Peckham pointed out that responses can be shaped by the nature of the disease and its particular cultural associations in a given community, as well as government action (or inaction). Panic may also be produced by the spectre of disease, even when there are no cases of infection.

“Last year’s Ebola outbreak in West Africa provides useful insights into why history matters,” he said. Political, social and cultural contexts were crucial in determining how the epidemic played out. Moreover, Ebola erupted at a moment when Europe was dealing with two other concurrent crises: one economic, the other over mass migration from Sub-Sahara Africa. Fears about the spread of disease coalesced with these other anxieties, each fuelling the other.

Panics not panic

Dr Peckham suggested that it would be more helpful if ‘panics’ were referred to in the plural, rather than a singular panic. Epidemics are compounded events that involve many different kinds of panic that pivot on fears about health, the economy, political stability, and social coherence.

“MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) in Korea provides the latest example of a situation where an epidemic became intertwined with anxieties about a faltering economy and public concerns about political transparency and government accountability. Our research focusses on the entanglement of these panics and their consequences,” he said. He explores these themes further in his forthcoming book, Epidemics in Modern Asia, to be published next year.

On a related note, Dr Peckham is also interested in how military surveillance technologies have been co-opted for epidemic control. While unmanned aerial vehicles or drones are being used for combat, they are also being deployed for monitoring potential epidemics. Viral activity in emerging disease ‘hot-spots’ is increasingly tracked using military-style intelligence-gathering techniques that aim to anticipate spill-over events.

“What happens,” he asked, “when we import a military operational modality into public health and implicitly equate biological phenomena with an insurgent terror?” Microorganisms responsible for infectious disease exist as part of complex and little understood ecologies. The military model, he argued, diminished this complexity and created a false expectation that pathogenic threats could be blitzed.

Meanwhile, Dr Peckham and the members of the Centre will continue to build a bridge between the humanities and medicine. “Our aim is to develop a novel transdisciplinary approach to infectious disease, in order to better understand how biological and social ecologies interact,” he said. He suggested the humanities could provide critical insights into the social, cultural and political dimensions of epidemics and in so doing, help to forge a more integrated response to future threats.

Empires of Panic: Epidemics and Colonial Anxieties is published by Hong Kong University Press. Epidemics in Modern Asia will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2016.

See original article at: http://www4.hku.hk/pubunit/Bulletin/2015_Oct_Vol.17_No.1/books/page1.html

For the publisher's page: http://www.hkupress.org/Common/Reader/Products/ShowProduct.jsp?Pid=1&Version=0&Cid=16&Charset=iso-8859-1&page=-1&key=9789888208449

A Saucy Take on History: John Wong on Bottled Sauces and Drinks in Hong Kong

Dr John Wong has an unusual background for an historian. He spent more than a decade working in investment banking and hedge funds before deciding he wanted a more intellectually stimulating career – something that would help people see relevance in the past. What better topic to filter history through than food?

He has brought the business angle into this research, too, starting with his PhD at Harvard on Wu Bingjian (Houqua), who leveraged China’s geopolitical situation in the early 19th century to become the world’s foremost tea supplier. Houqua’s achievements challenged the notion that China was not engaged in international trade and finance at the time.

Now, Dr Wong is launching a project on bottled sauces and drinks, inspired by the way in which food in general is a distinguishing aspect of Hong Kong’s identity as a result of the Cold War divide and subsequent material prosperity compared to Mainland China.

“We could fly lobster in from Vancouver or abalone from Australia and develop Cantonese cuisine in a way that to this day would be considered quite distinct from what you see in Guangzhou,” he said. “The availability of foodstuffs here versus across the border was one of the ways that we constructed our identity and I think it is worth investigating these food products and the recipes they inspired.”

He is particularly interested in bottled products because their portability and long shelf life meant that ‘Hong Kong’ flavours could be packaged for local and overseas consumption. Lee Kum Kee, for example, has successfully produced and marketed sauces to Hong Kong and Chinese communities around the world.

“If you go to Toronto and lose your Filipina maid or Chinese amah, you can buy a bottle of Lee Kum Kee soy sauce chicken or curry chicken Hong Kong-style, put it in a pot, and produce that dish,” he said. “That situation reflects the configuration of Hong Kong families not just in the city, but beyond.”

Reflecting the economic life of the city
Sauce companies also reflect the city’s economic development. The Amoy brand was started by a manufacturing company that later moved into property and was bought out by the French company Danone, then Ajinomoto of Japan.

“You can see how the company started with a certain sales proposition of modernity, food, taste, and then evolved into real estate and other aspects that would be different representations of the economic life of Hong Kong in the later decades.”

Dr Wong is also investigating Sriracha hot sauce, which has a Hong Kong connection because it was developed by Vietnamese boat people who reached the US via Hong Kong– making it truly a product of the Cold War.

Similar to sauces, bottled drinks from Vitasoy and Dairy Farm were more than ‘protein-in-a-bottle’ – their very consumption was a mirror of society.

“When I was a primary school student in Hong Kong, you could go to the canteen for a cold bottle of Vitasoy in the summer and a warm bottle in winter. That’s a different articulation of class compared to people who had bottled milk delivered to their doorsteps every morning from Dairy Farm. So the delivery process, the form you consumed it in, the price you paid, the different venues where you had it I think tell an interesting story of Hong Kong,” Dr Wong said.

Dr Wong said he hopes to uncover other examples that will deepen his understanding of Hong Kong-linked sauces and beverage companies, and their interplay with the city’s post-war development.

See original article at: http://www4.hku.hk/pubunit/bulletin/cover_story/page4.html