Category: Early Career Scholars Network

One of the Centre’s missions is to nurture a new generation of Hong Kong historians.

An Early Career Scholar Network was created under the Hong Kong History Centre in June 2023. It is intended to help create a community of Hong Kong historians and offer a platform for face-to-face interaction and academic exchange among young scholars. Research students and fresh doctoral graduates working on socioeconomic, political and cultural history of Hong Kong and its global relevance are welcomed. We usually meet thrice a year (February, June and October) with participants taking turn to present their works in each meeting. Financial support is provided for our network members attending these sessions.

Please write to Prof. Ray Yep, Research Director of Hong Kong History Centre, at rekmy@bristol.ac.uk, if you are interested in joining this Network.

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In this post, we would like to introduce Tommy Lo, a member of the Network.

Tommy Lo is a Lo is a departmental lecturer in the History Faculty at the University of Oxford. In the note written by him below, he shares with us his reflections on his academic journey.

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I have enjoyed reading since I was a child, perhaps because stories past and present are intriguing. As time went by, I realised these stories were written in the margins of a big book. That book is called life; most of its chapters, history. I then had an impulse to add a question mark to the margins of history while reading it.

One trigger for adding a question mark was perhaps a course in the final year of my undergraduate history degree. The course would fund students to do research; I was fortunate to be part of it. Initially I was just browsing the margins of history however I wished. Only later did I realise I like international and transnational history, preferring not to be bound by one city or place. The international networks of Hong Kong would be an exemplar. That was the mid-2010s, many of the documents of The National Archives would be declassified twenty to thirty years after creation, so I wanted to look at the documents of the Sino-British negotiations over Hong Kong’s future in the early 1980s. This would also be an opportunity to collect sources for my BA thesis.

My thesis examined the roles of the Unofficial Members of the Executive and Legislative Councils (UMELCO) in the negotiations. The Executive Council advised the Governor, the Legislative Council passed laws. Both councils consisted of Official Members, who were senior officials in the Hong Kong government, and Unofficial Members appointed by the Governor. UMELCO were mostly leaders of Hong Kong society such as Sze-yuen Chung and Lydia Dunn. They were the Hong Kong people closest to the negotiation table. Their actual influence was limited, but many of them inherited the tradition of Hong Kong Chinese elites after the late nineteenth century that historian John Carroll observes in his book. These people often considered themselves a ‘special group of Chinese’ different from those in mainland China; they would co-operate with the British colonists to foster the prosperity of Hong Kong. From the perspective of the history of decolonisation, most colonies became independent once they broke away from the metropoles, while Britain handed Hong Kong to China. UMELCO intended to try something different – extending British rule – but to no avail.

While consulting these documents, I had to write a research essay for a Chinese course as well. My supervisor specialised in the literature of Ming and Qing dynasties, and I wondered if I had to venture into pre-modern Chinese literature. Unexpectedly, she encouraged me to start with the literary works I was more familiar with, so I picked ‘Can Do Cha Chaan Teng’ by Chan Koonchung. Chan co-founded City Magazine, helped produce films and found a television channel, and has penned numerous essays on politics and culture. He is now primarily a novelist. ‘Can Do Cha Chaan Teng’ was Chan’s short story written in 2003. I used the concept of ‘hybridity’, which Chan commonly discusses, and analysed how the piece reflects grassroots Hong Kong culture. For Chan, ‘hybridity’ means a ‘deep cultural mingling’. More than a showcase of separate, multiple cultures, it integrates local elements and ‘begins a tradition of its own’. The short story’s protagonist recalls that ‘my dad is a fat, white Brit, my mum a thin, short Cantonese’. He himself has a ‘skin colour as dark as chocolate as if born by my mum and a Gurkha mercenary’; ‘moreover, my mum later switched partners and married a Gurkha soldier whom she had known for decades’. The protagonist assumes Can Do, the cha chaan teng, has few dishes. He comes across by coincidence, however, the nineteen series of dishes in the menu and remarks that ‘globalisation is in my Can Do, Can Do’s kitchen is truly can do’. Yet he has overlooked its financial difficulties. Literature is not simply a mirror of reality, but readers two decades ago would have no problem grasping the meanings of the piece.

After completing my BA, I began my master’s degree. The topic of my master’s thesis was late-colonial Hong Kong and the Commonwealth. Although the topic emerged out of discussions between my supervisor and me, I was a bit puzzled in the beginning: Hong Kong has never been a member of the Commonwealth and had few connections with the Commonwealth organisation. Reading the sources more closely, I had something of an epiphany: far more than an organisation, the Commonwealth was a world which originated from the British empire. Taking human movements, education and the economy as examples, I explored the many connections between Hong Kong and the Commonwealth. I pointed out that the Commonwealth was often overlooked but important in Hong Kong history. The benefit of turning to the Commonwealth world is to move beyond a bilateral history between Britain and Hong Kong and appreciate that Hong Kong was part of wider multilateral networks.

Then my interest has shifted again – I examine modern China and Asia through the perspective of global history, and my themes become among others Asianism and world-making. Hong Kong might not be at the heart of these themes. Yet what is fascinating about Hong Kong is that, lying on the ‘periphery’, it enlivens the blank space in the margins of history and refreshes that big book. Perhaps what we should do in the future is to search for Hong Kong’s imprints in the margins of history and write our question marks. If we are lucky, we might put a comma, and add more question marks.

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小時候，我開始喜歡閱讀，或許覺得古往今來的故事有趣。之後漸漸發現這些故事原來都寫在一部大書邊上，那部大書叫人生，裏面多數章節叫歷史。我便有了衝動，想趁閱讀時在歷史邊上寫個問號。

寫問號的契機之一，也許是歷史系本科課程最後一年的一門課，會資助學生做研究，而我有幸參與其中。我本隨意在歷史邊上瀏覽，後來明白自己著迷國際史、跨國史，不限於一城一地，香港的國際網絡正是一例。時維2010年代中期，英國國家檔案館的檔案多在立案二、三十年後解密，便想看看80年代初前途談判的檔案，亦趁機收集畢業論文所需的資料。

我的論文切入點是兩局非官守議員在談判的角色。兩局是行政局（現稱行政會議）和立法局（現稱立法會）。當時兩局既有港府高級官員兼任的官守議員，也有由港督任命的非官守議員，多為社會領袖，如鍾士元、鄧蓮如等。兩局非官守議員是最接近談判桌的香港人。他們的實際影響不大，但他們大多繼承了歷史學家高馬可書中指出的十九世紀末以降香港華人精英的傳統。這些人往往自視為「特殊的華人群體」，與中國大陸的中國人不同；他們會和英國殖民者合作，促進香港繁榮。從去殖民化歷史的角度看，大部份殖民地脫離宗主國後即告獨立，英國將香港交給中國，兩局非官守議員則打算另闢蹊徑，設法延續英國統治，但事與願違。

研讀這些歷史檔案之時，我也要寫一篇中文科論文。我的指導老師長於明清文學，我曾躊躇要否涉足前現代文學。沒想到她鼓勵我由熟悉的作品入手，我便選了陳冠中的〈金都茶餐廳〉。陳早年創辦《號外》，曾任電影、電視製作人，擅政治、文化評論，近年專注長篇小說。〈金都茶餐廳〉是陳在2003年寫的短篇小說。我以陳經常提及的「雜種」概念，分析該小說如何反映香港市井文化。「雜種」指「深層的文化混合」，不限於多文化並列，還加入當地人的心思，「開始了自己的傳承」。小說主角自道「我爸係肥白英國鬼，我媽瘦矮廣東人」，他自己「膚色似發毛朱古力，似係我媽同尼泊爾籍倨喀僱傭兵生」，「而且我媽臨老改嫁相識幾十年尼泊爾籍倨喀兵」。主角以為金都菜式少，偶然看到餐單的十九個菜式系列，才歎服「全球化在我金都，金都廚房真 can do」，卻不知茶餐廳面臨財政困難。文學不是現實的倒影，但作品的含意，二十年前的讀者當能意會。

本科畢業後，我開始了碩士課程，碩士論文題目是殖民晚期的香港和英聯邦。這題目雖是我和指導老師討論所得，但起初我略有不解，因為香港不是英聯邦的成員，與英聯邦組織關係不深。細讀史料，方知別有洞天：英聯邦不僅是組織，更是一個世界，這個世界源於英國的帝國版圖。我以人口移動、教育、經濟為例，探索香港與英聯邦之間的千絲萬縷，指出英聯邦在香港歷史中常被忽略但佔一席位。看英聯邦世界的好處，在於超越英國和香港的雙邊史，明白香港身處更廣闊的多邊網絡之中。

之後，我的興趣又一轉，以全球史的角度看現代中國及亞洲，主題也變成亞洲主義、世界塑造等。香港未必是這些主題的關鍵，但香港有趣之處正因其位處「邊緣」，令歷史邊上的空白變得熱鬧，令大書讀來耳目一新。我們以後要做的，大概是追尋香港在歷史邊上的印記，然後加上我們的問號。幸運的話，補個逗號，然後再寫問號。

One of the Centre’s missions is to nurture a new generation of Hong Kong historians.

An Early Career Scholar Network was created under the Hong Kong History Centre in June 2023. It is intended to help create a community of Hong Kong historians and offer a platform for face-to-face interaction and academic exchange among young scholars. Research students and fresh doctoral graduates working on socioeconomic, political and cultural history of Hong Kong and its global relevance are welcomed. We usually meet thrice a year (February, June and October) with participants taking turn to present their works in each meeting. Financial support is provided for our network members attending these sessions.

Please write to Prof. Ray Yep, Research Director of Hong Kong History Centre, at rekmy@bristol.ac.uk, if you are interested in joining this Network.

——

In this post, we would like to introduce Tracy Leung, a member of the Network.

Tracy Leung is a PhD student in University of Bristol. In the note written by her below, she shares with us her reflections on her academic journey and current project on how ‘youth’ were understood and managed in Hong Kong from 1945 to the 1970s, under the context and decolonization and the Cold War.

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Like many historians in this Early Career Scholars network, my interest in history began with some history books for kids. Today, my collection, which ranges from the Three Kingdoms to the six wives of Henry the Eighth, still occupies a large portion of my bookshelf. I am curious about how people lived in the past, why they fought with each other, and more importantly, what were the juicy scandals in courts. My mum explains my curiosity about history as the fact that I love gossiping. Well, she is not wrong.

Educated and trained as a history student, I gradually realised history is not only about gossiping. Instead, tracing the past changes my understanding of ordinary things around us. Back in my undergraduate years at the Hong Kong Baptist University, I was exposed to different fields of historical research, which inspired me to reconsider the past through various historical actors. One field that interests me the most is the history of childhood and youth. I wonder how historians could uncover children and youth experiences and how their experiences would give us a new lens to better understand some historical contexts, like colonialism.

To pursue more knowledge in history, I embarked on my research journey at the University of Hong Kong in 2021. Working with Professor David Pomfret for my MPhil project, I looked into the Girl Guide movement in Hong Kong throughout the twentieth century. (Though I am not a Girl Guide as I failed their admission interview.) In our daily life, it is common for us to see girls wearing brown or blue uniforms in the city, attending ceremonial events or selling flags for fund-raising. The public usually associated them as ‘good girls’ or girls with good behaviours. Yet, when I dig deep into its development in Hong Kong, this so-called apolitical youth activity had its imperial origins. My thesis showed that the Girl Guide movement facilitated colonial governance by providing a platform for interracial and intergenerational colonial collaboration. Its response to local and international politics shaped how it is in contemporary Hong Kong. The lived experiences of girls were also important to my project. I read girls’ oral testimonies, published writings, and memoirs, so as to find out how girls perceived themselves as a Girl Guide and how their narratives compared to adults’ expectations. It was interesting to find out that the Girl Guide uniform is an important drive to attract different generations of girls to join the Girl Guide movement.

While researching on the Hong Kong Girl Guides, I found that we actually knew very little about ‘youth’ in post-WWII Hong Kong. Indeed, Hong Kong was a very young city after the Second World War, nearly half of its population was under the age of fifteen by the 1960s.

Same as other places around the globe, the 1960s was also an era that ‘youth problems’ often appeared on Hong Kong news headline. ‘Youth’ therefore became a significant concern to the colonial government. However, the existing scholarship has not fully examined the topic of governance of youth and youth experience in post-WWII Hong Kong. Seeing the potential for further research, I plan to expand my scope of investigation from ‘good girls’ to ‘delinquent’ youth, from a uniformed youth organization to colonial welfare policies for youth. My PhD project will explore how ‘youth’ were understood and managed in Hong Kong from 1945 to the 1970s, under the context and decolonization and the Cold War. In doing so, I will examine different aspects of youth policies, including the management of ‘juvenile delinquency,’ regulations of youth leisure, and the representations of Hong Kong youth on various international occasions. More specifically, my project will include case studies on remand homes, the Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups, the Duke of Edinburgh Award, and youth festivals to uncover adults’ expectation on youth and youth experience. As such, I aim to provide an alternative angle to the understanding of state-society relations in post-WWII Hong Kong.

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和其他Early Career Scholars Network 的歷史學者一樣，我對歷史的興趣也是源自於小時候看的歷史書。到了今天，那些給小朋友看的歷史書依然佔了我的書櫃大部分位置。我很好奇人們在過去是如何生活，為什麼他們會互相打來打去，更重要的是，以前的宮廷有什麼有趣的傳聞。我的媽媽嘗試解釋我對歷史的喜愛。她說是因為我的性格比較「八卦」。嗯，她是對的。

後來在歷史學的訓練下，我慢慢意識到歷史學不只是「八卦」前人的生活。反而，追朔過去改變了很多我對身邊日常事物的看法。 在香港浸會大學修讀學士課程期間，我接觸到多種歷史研究方法，啟發了我用不同的角度來重新審視過去。其中我最感興趣的是兒童和青年史。我想知道歷史學家如何發掘兒童和青少年的歷史，以及他們如何透過兒童和青少年的視野來更深入了解一些歷史概念和場景，例如：殖民主義。

為了追求更多的歷史知識，我於二零二一年在香港大學展開了我的歷史研究之旅。我的哲學碩士論文研究了二十世紀的香港女童軍運動 （但我不是女童軍，因為很可惜地我沒通過面試。）在日常生活中，我們經常看到這些女孩穿著棕色或藍色的制服在城市中遊走，參加公眾活動或賣旗籌款。公眾通常將她們視為「好女孩」。然而，當我深入探討女童軍運動在香港的發展時，這種所謂非政治性青年活動卻有著帝國主義的根源。我的論文提出，女童軍運動促進了跨種族和世代間的合作，推動了殖民治理。女孩們的實際生活經驗對我的研究也很重要。我閱讀了她們的口述歷史紀錄、出版著作和回憶錄，以了解她們如何看待自己作為「女童軍」的身分。我也嘗試去分析她們的自我論述與成年人對她們的期望究竟有何不同。有趣的是，女童軍制服原來是吸引不同世代女孩加入女童軍運動的重要動力。

在研究香港女童軍時，我發現我們對二戰後的香港青少年也所知甚少。事實上，香港在第二次世界大戰後是一個非常年輕的城市。到一九六零年代，近一半的人口年齡都是在十五歲以下。與此同時，和世界其他地方一樣，香港新聞頭條也經常出現所謂的「青少年問題」。「青少年」因此成為了殖民政府關注的重點。然而，現時的研究卻還未有充分探討二戰後香港的青年治理這個主題。

因此，我計劃把我的研究範圍從「好女孩」擴大到「不良」青年，從單一制服青少年團體擴大到殖民地青少年福利政策。我的博士論文將探討 一九四五年至一九七零年代香港在非殖民化和冷戰背景下如何理解和管理「青少年」。我將會檢視青少年政策的不同面向，包括殖民政府如何看待和管理「青少年犯罪」的問題、如何推動和設計青少年的休閒活動，以及香港青少年如何在各種國際場合代表香港。更具體地說，我的研究將包括對懲教所、香港青年協會、愛丁堡公爵獎和青年節的案例研究，以揭示當時成年人對青少年的期望和青少年政策對他們實際上的影響。

時至今天，「青少年問題」以及如何將青少年變成「好公民」仍然是當代香港的重要課題。 「青少年」作為一個社會群體，經常受到社會的關注，因為他們往往象徵著國家的未來。同時，從十九世紀末期開始，「青少年」時期就被認為是一個需要成年人「指導」的人生階段。透過檢視「青少年」和「青少年問題」的概念在過去是如何被建構，我希望我的研究能對我們了解殖民與後殖民時期當權者與年輕一代之間的關係帶來一些新的反思。

 

One of the Centre’s missions is to nurture a new generation of Hong Kong historians.

An Early Career Scholar Network was created under the Hong Kong History Centre in June 2023. It is intended to help create a community of Hong Kong historians and offer a platform for face-to-face interaction and academic exchange among young scholars. Research students and fresh doctoral graduates working on socioeconomic, political and cultural history of Hong Kong and its global relevance are welcomed. We usually meet thrice a year (February, June and October) with participants taking turn to present their works in each meeting. Financial support is provided for our network members attending these sessions.

Please write to Prof. Ray Yep, Research Director of Hong Kong History Centre, at rekmy@bristol.ac.uk, if you are interested in joining this Network.

——

In this post, we would like to introduce Matthew Hurst, a member of the Network.

Matthew Hurst is a PhD student in University of York. In the note written by him below, he shares with us his reflections on his academic journey and current project.

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On many occasions over the past ten years, when I have sought to study Hong Kong I have ended up sidetracked looking at British colonial officials or mainland China instead. I have been disappointed to find that Hong Kong is rarely at the centre of enquiry for itself. This is why Bristol’s Hong Kong History Centre – and a handful of other Hong Kong-focused initiatives that have sprung up in recent years – is timely and crucial: it makes Hong Kong its firm focus. My PhD research shares this aim. In this post, I describe how my PhD research is the culmination of a decade-long growing interest in Hong Kong.

My interest in Hong Kong began in 2014, which was also the start of my final year of undergraduate studies in Philosophy at the University of Manchester. It was then that I came to understand the direct thread between the British Empire, which ended its colonial administration in 1997, and contemporary Hong Kong. The British school curriculum is thin on the British Empire and I wondered: As a Brit, why did I know so little about the Empire’s global legacy? How did the legacy of the Empire continue to reverberate across the world today? And how much of Hong Kong’s present was a consequence of its colonial past?

My graduation from undergraduate studies in 2015 coincided with the heralded ‘Golden Era of UK-China Relations’. The British government (and other governments across the world) were determined to grow their links with China. Company after company I worked for felt there was opportunity in China and often pursued the Hong Kong market thinking it an entryway to the mainland. In the years that followed, my interactions with Hong Kong and China grew through work as well as travel and language classes which I took in the evenings. However, after several years I felt no closer to addressing the questions that had come to mind in 2014.

In 2019, I was briefly in Hong Kong for work. This was a galvanising experience. It was then that I felt an ever more pressing need to explore my festering questions further. I resolved then to try to understand the present by looking to the past.

With no Hong Kong Studies course in the UK, I began a Master’s in Chinese Studies at the University of Oxford in 2020. In my thesis, I examined how British and mainland Chinese officials launched the negotiations over the future of Hong Kong in the 1980s. I later developed this thesis into two papers: one is an account of the impact of Margaret Thatcher’s agency as a leader upon the British opening position and is firmly rooted in the discipline of history (doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2021.2024588, winner of the PSA Conservatism Studies Group 2022 Research Prize); the other adopts concepts and frameworks borrowed from the social sciences to analyse Beijing’s negotiation tactics (doi.org/10.1007/s12140-023-09422-8).

But something was still missing. My Master’s was in Chinese Studies; my thesis examined UK-China relations; one of my publications focused on British officials and the other on mainland Chinese officials. Despite seeking to understand Hong Kong, I had somehow left Hong Kong out of the picture.

Seeking to redress this, in my PhD research I am exploring how Hong Kong people were involved in the negotiations over the city’s future during the 1980s. I unearth this overlooked perspective by accessing a large number of archival materials in a wide range of archives, looking for documents that attest to Hong Kong people’s actions during the period (meeting records, letters, position papers, petitions, etc.). From this, I reconstruct the many visions for Hong Kong’s future that Hong Kong people put to officials and evaluate the extent of their influence upon the handover.

With this research, I aim to put Hong Kong people into the narrative of this most pivotal period which has only ever been seen as a bilateral negotiation between British and Beijing officials. I also explore the agency of local actors and their interactions with colonial officials, contributing to this growing theme within colonial and imperial history. Moreover, outside of academia, I engage with contemporary colonial nostalgia, the ongoing re-examination of the legacy of British colonialism, and local, regional and international tensions that are largely a consequence of these events in the 1980s.

My path towards researching Hong Kong for a PhD in History has been far from straightforward. It began ten years ago and has taken a strangled route: from Philosophy to film, Chinese Studies to History. Yet with my PhD research, I am – finally – addressing some of the questions that have persisted as a common thread for an entire decade.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (grant number AH/R012733/1) through the White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities. This research has also benefitted from the James Jarvis Memorial Bursary (twice), The Universities’ China Committee in London Travel and Study Grant, and the British Postgraduate Network for Chinese Studies (BPCS) Postgraduate Research Scholarship.

On 22th March, we had our third meeting of Network of Early Career Scholars on Hong Kong History. An enjoyable afternoon with Sze Hong Lam (Leiden University) examining at the international legal implications of the United Nations General Assembly in Resolution 1514(XV) and 1541(XV), and how they have a lasting impact on Hong Kong’s autonomy even today; Alex Cheung (University of Bristol) reconstructing daily life experience of living in Chinese tenements and Hong Kong, and how housing condition in port cities displaced migrant workers; Phyllis Chan (University of Bristol) examining how officials investigated claims that Hong Kong residents made to British nationality; and Adrian Kwong (University of Oxford) arguing the socialisation experiences of education and work created by Hong Kong’s development challenges the authoritarian stability of Hong Kong, but the high-income and wealthy stratum benefitting from the current political economy supports it.

You can find the abstract of the presentation here.

It is always great to meet new friends and exchange ideas. We intend to meet regularly and if you are scholar based in the UK and want to be part of this network, Please write to Prof. Ray Yep, Research Director of Hong Kong History Centre, at rekmy@bristol.ac.uk. 

One of the Centre’s missions is to nurture a new generation of Hong Kong historians.

An Early Career Scholar Network was created under the Hong Kong History Centre in June 2023. It is intended to help create a community of Hong Kong historians and offer a platform for face-to-face interaction and academic exchange among young scholars. Research students and fresh doctoral graduates working on socioeconomic, political and cultural history of Hong Kong and its global relevance are welcomed. We usually meet thrice a year (February, June and October) with participants taking turn to present their works in each meeting. Financial support is provided for our network members attending these sessions.

Please write to Prof. Ray Yep, Research Director of Hong Kong History Centre, at rekmy@bristol.ac.uk, if you are interested in joining this Network.

——

In this post, we would like to introduce Ryan Iu, a member of the Network.

Ryan Iu is a PhD student in Bristol. In the note written by him below, he shares with us his reflections on his academic journey and current project on ‘Imperial Graduates: Mapping Hong Kong’s Elites’ Networks across the British Empire, 1862-1941’.

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Ite ad fontes, a Latin phrase that could be translated to ‘Go back to the origins’.

It was the summer of 2021, and I am knee-deep in archival research at the University of Hong Kong Special Collection. This wasn’t just any old summer break – no, I was on a research trip in the midst of my master’s program at the University of British Columbia, digging out useful materials for my master’s thesis. And then it happened, as I was flipping through pages of The Anglo Chinese Commercial Directory from 1915, I stumbled upon a name that caught my eye. Without hesitation, I messaged my father.

“Hey Dad, I found someone in some old Hong Kong directories from 1915 who shares the same romanization of our last name ‘Iu’ (姚 in Chinese). His name is ‘Iu Nim Yu’, and he worked as a clerk at the International Banking Corporation. I can’t believe I found this in some old directories!”

My father responded. “Yes, it is quite interesting. You know, our family has deep roots in Hong Kong, going back generations. I’ve heard that our unique romanization of ‘Iu’ instead of the more common ‘Yiu’ stems from our ancestor’s desire to differentiate themselves from other ‘Yius’.”

Fast forward to the summer of 2023. After acquiring the genealogy book from a distant relative in Hong Kong, I dove into its pages, eager to trace my family’s roots. What I discovered left me utterly stunned, mouth agape in disbelief. ‘Iu Nim Yu’ was not just a random name from the past – he was my great-grandfather, operating under a pseudonym. None of my immediate family members had any clue of this discovery; after all, my great-grandfather had passed away when my grandfather was just a toddler, and my grandfather himself had long left this world before I came into it. Further research revealed that the Iu family had wielded significant influence within the comprador networks of the International Banking Corporation (now Citibank) in Hong Kong during the early twentieth century.

Well, of course, my passion for studying the past extends beyond being an ancestry detective. Vice versa, thanks to my obsession with history, it pays to go back to my origins – you never know what fascinating secrets you might uncover along the way. My interest in history started when I was a child – it was diverse, ranging from ancient Chinese history (thanks to the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms) to modern European history (courtesy of the movie The Sound of Music). This passion led me to major in history at the University of British Columbia. After earning my BA, I hungered for more knowledge and initially planned to research the populace’s opinion in Germany towards the Treaty of Versailles. However, due to a language barrier in German, I shifted my focus to my hometown – Hong Kong – and ended up writing a master’s thesis titled ‘The Government Central School and the Elite Networks in Early Colonial Hong Kong’. Initially, I intended to study the multi-ethnic body of students in the Central School, but as I delved into my research, I became fascinated by the interconnected networks among the elite alumni, who formed such networks through marriage, political and commercial collaborations, civic partnerships, etc. I argued that the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Central School was a conducive site for building networks and fostering a conflicting ‘Westernized Chineseness’ mentality among these elites. Besides, I have built a Digital Humanities side project to visually represent the intricate networks of key bureaucratic figures in early colonial Hong Kong, revealing insights that may have been overlooked using traditional research method.

I saw potential in my research upon completing my master’s studies. What if I expand my investigation on the Hong Kong-based elite networks and reconsider them in a local, transregional, and intra-imperial context beyond Hong Kong and within the British Empire? In my proposed Ph.D. project tentatively titled ‘Imperial Graduates: Mapping Hong Kong’s Elites’ Networks across the British Empire, 1862-1941’, I aim to further investigate deeper into how these individuals have structured transpacific, maritime, and intra-imperial connections. By tracing their biographical experiences and extensive networks – beyond textual sources like newspapers and archival documents – I hope to recruit family members or descendants of these elites in oral history interviews, gathering insights into life stories and involvements of their elite ancestors while tracing their ancestry, origins, and familial networks.

Hong Kong was – and still is – a transnational hub. My research aims to reflect on the historical experiences and mechanism of empire and place Hong Kong within the framework of transnational (or transregional) and global history. It allows me to reimagine Hong Kong – through the Hong Kong-based elite network – as one dimension of the interconnected circulation of assets, ideas, institutions, objects, and social and cultural capital, and more.

Looking ahead, I hope the case studies in my research will inspire people to ponder their origins and ancestry, enriching the understanding of family histories. After all, everyone is connected through various types of networks. I am grateful to have been a student associate at the University of British Columbia’s Hong Kong Studies Initiative. Now, I am honoured and excited to be part of the University of Bristol’s Hong Kong History Centre family – with a vibrant network of young scholars – allowing me to contribute to the history of Hong Kong by pursuing my passion for uncovering the past and exploring origins.

Ite ad fontes, everyone.

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Ite ad fontes ——一個拉丁詞語，可以翻譯為「回到起源」。

2021年的夏天，我在香港大學特藏部埋首檔案研究。不，這不僅是個普通的暑假，當時我在攻讀卑詩大學碩士學位的途中開展了研究旅程，到香港挖掘出有用的史料來撰寫我的碩士論文。正當我的指尖翻閱著1915年《香港中華商業交通人名指南錄》，一個名字引起我注意。我毫不猶豫，立即傳訊息給我父親。

「爸，我在一些1915年的香港企業名錄裏，找到一個人與我們姓氏有著相同英文拼音IU（中文為姚）。他名字是『姚念愈』，曾在萬國寶通銀行擔任文員。我真不敢相信我在這些古老企業名錄中發現這個！」

我的父親回覆道：「是的，這確實有趣。你知道嗎？我們家族在香港紮根甚深，能回溯到好幾代以前。我曾聽說我們獨特的『IU』拼音，而非更常見的『YIU』，是源於我們祖先想要區別於其他『YIU』的姚氏。」

快轉到2023年的夏天。我從一位香港遠房親戚那裡得到族譜後，潛進字裏行間，渴望追溯我的家族根源。而當中的發現使我震驚，目瞪口呆，難以置信：「姚念愈」不是一個普通名字——他是我的太爺，而企業名錄記載的是他的字號。我的家人中沒有人知道他的字號；畢竟，我的太爺在我爺爺還是嬰兒的時候就去世了，而我爺爺也在我出生之前就過身了。在進一步研究後，我發現姚（IU） 氏家族在二十世紀初香港萬國寶通銀行（現為花旗銀行）的商業聯繫網中擁有重要影響力。

當然，我對於研究歷史的熱情不止於追溯我的家族根源。反過來說，我對歷史的著迷引領我「回到起源」——你永不知道在過程裏有甚麼等待你去發挖。我對歷史的興趣始於童年時期——從中國古代歷史（多虧《三國演義》這部小說）到現代歐洲歷史（嗚謝電影《仙樂飄飄處處聞》）。這份對歷史的「愛」引導我在卑詩大學主修歷史。取得學士學位後，我渴求更多歷史知識而修讀碩士，最初計劃研究德國民眾對凡爾賽條約的輿論和民意。然而，由於我不諳德文，我把焦點轉移向我的家鄉——香港——並最終寫了名為《中央書院與香港早期殖民時期的精英網絡》的碩士論文。寫作論文初期，我本打算研究中央書院的多元種族學生群體，但隨著深入研究，我著迷於精英校友之間相互關聯的網絡，這些精英透過婚姻、政治和商業合作、公民合作等形式建立起這樣的網絡。我認為，多元種族和多文化的中央書院有助於精英們建立人際網絡和培養出矛盾的『西方化華人特質』心態。另外，我還建立了一個數位人文的副項目，以視覺方式呈現早期殖民時期香港重要官僚人員的複雜網絡，揭示可能被傳統研究方法忽略的見解。

完成碩士學業後，我看到了這個題目的研究潛力。如果我將我的研究擴展到香港的精英網絡，並將其置於超越香港、跨地區和大英帝國內部的脈絡裏呢？在我暫定為《帝國畢業生：繪製香港精英網絡在大英帝國內的地圖，1862-1941》的博士研究項目中，我希望進一步研究這些個體如何構建跨太平洋、南洋和帝國內部的聯繫。通過追蹤他們的生平和廣泛網絡——在報紙和檔案等文字資料外——我打算招募這些精英的家人或後代作口述歷史訪談，收集有關他們精英祖先的生活故事和見解，同時追溯他們的起源和家族網絡。

香港曾經——且仍是——跨國樞紐。我的研究希望反映帝國的歷史經驗和機制，並將香港置於跨國（或跨地區）和全球歷史的框架之內。透過香港的精英網絡，這使我重新想像香港作為資產、思想、機構、物品、社會資本及文化資本等相互關聯流通的面向。

未來，我希望我研究中的案例研究能夠激發人們思考自己的起源和家族血脈，豐富對家族歷史的理解。畢竟，每個人都通過各種類型的網絡相互聯繫。我很感恩在修讀碩士時能成為卑詩大學共研香江的學生成員。現在，我很榮幸能夠成為布里斯托大學香港史研究中心這個家庭的一員，與一群充滿活力的年輕學者共事，追求對過去的挖掘和探索起源的熱情，為香港歷史做出微小的貢獻。

各位，Ite ad fontes。

One of the Centre’s mission is to nurture a new generation of Hong Kong historians.

A Early Career Scholar Network was created under the Hong Kong History Centre in June 2023. It intends to help create a community of Hong Kong historians and offer a platform for face-to-face interaction and academic exchange among young scholars. Research students and fresh doctoral graduates working on socioeconomic, political and cultural history of Hong Kong and its global relevance are welcomed. We usually meet thrice a year (February, June and October) with participants taking turn to present their works in each meeting. Financial support is provided for attending these sessions.

Please write to Prof. Ray Yep, Research Director of Hong Kong History Centre, at rekmy@bristol.ac.uk, if you are interested in joining this Network.

——

In this post, we would like to introduce Doris Chan, a member of the Network.

Doris Chan is a PhD Candidate in Nanyang Technological University. In the note written by her below, she shares with us her reflections on her academic journey and current project on ‘Controlling Mobility: Post-WWII British Empire and the Chinese Population, c. 1945-1963’, focuses on the Chinese skilled and professional migration between Hong Kong, Singapore and North Borneo.

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I used to be more interested in modern Chinese and European histories in my undergraduate years and loved to read Cold War diplomatic history. However, my research interests began to change when I relocated to the UK for my master’s degree in 2020. While I was excited to live in a new environment and continue to pursue my research interest, the feeling of being a minority and alienated in the community during the pandemic was immense. My very distant tie with the new home had thus prompted me to start wondering about my and my family’s past and present (dis-)connections with this foreign land. I wondered why my grandparents and parents decided to settle and stay in Hong Kong but not elsewhere when many of their generations at different points would have considered emigration. How did the broader development of immigration control and geopolitics restrict their mobility? I began to read more about Hong Kong history, migration history, colonial history, etc. My MA thesis, therefore, revisited the influx of Chinese immigrants from China to Hong Kong after the Second World War. I asked: how did the Hong Kong and London governments manage the immigration crisis on an imperial level? How did they attempt to channel the immigrants to other parts of the empire? I looked into the case of North Borneo (today’s state of Sabah in East Malaysia) and the UK and how these two spaces emerged as potential resettlement destinations for Chinese in Hong Kong.

That was my first time working on Hong Kong, Southeast Asian and colonial histories. I was deeply fascinated by the strong historical connections between Hong Kong and the region, besides the long-studied comparison of Hong Kong and Singapore, the so-called ‘a tale of two cities’. I decided to work further in this direction. My PhD thesis, tentatively titled ‘Controlling Mobility: Post-WWII British Empire and the Chinese Population, c. 1945-1963’, focuses on the Chinese skilled and professional migration between Hong Kong, Singapore and North Borneo. Chinese migration after the war was significantly scaled down due to strict colonial immigration regulations in the region. However, a smaller scale of temporary and permanent migration was still possible due to developmental plans and the shortage for various types of labourers. Besides exploring and comparing the official arrangements of skilled labour and professional migration, I also examine the coordination and tensions between the colonial governments in formulating immigration policies and implementing controls over the Chinese population in this period, when each territory faced different economic, social, political and security concerns. Last but not least, I seek to study the transfers of information and knowledge between colonial officials in Hong Kong, Southeast Asia and the UK regarding their (re-)understanding of the Chinese population residing outside China after the war.

Predominantly, I use primary materials from government archives in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and the UK. I study government correspondences and reports to understand how policies were negotiated and decisions were made regionally and how authorities tried to take unified actions to respond to the ‘Chinese problem’. As labour migration was also closely related to the economic development of a territory, I use company files to understand the responses from British businesses towards the changing local labour supply and the changing immigration and labour regulations in the region. I also rely on Chinese- and English-language newspapers circulated in Hong Kong, Singapore and North Borneo, to look into how people perceived and received information and knowledge of, and available working and economic opportunities in, different British colonies in the region. These materials help to understand the intra-empire control of immigration and connections in the age of decolonization. I hope this research will contribute to not only understanding Chinese migration after the Second World War but also the connections between Hong Kong and other parts of the British Empire.

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在就讀大學本科期間，我一直對現代中國和歐洲史較感興趣，也很喜歡閱讀有關冷戰史的著作。2020年，我到英國修讀碩士學位。本來我是十分期待在一個新環境生活並繼續我的研究，但人在異鄉難免有一種疏離的感覺，而正直疫情期間更加劇了這一種孤立感。在我父母及其上一輩有許多人都會考慮移民，正因為我與新「家」的疏遠關係，我開始反思過去和現在我（以及我的家庭）與這片陌生國度的關係。我想知道為何他們會選擇在香港落地生根，到底歷史上的移民政策和地緣政治又如何影響他們的流動性（mobility）和決擇？我開始閱讀香港史、移民史、殖民史等的書籍。在我的碩士論文中，我重新探討二次世界大戰後由中國到香港的移民歷史：當時殖民政府是如何從帝國層面上應對移民危機？香港和英國政府是怎樣將移民從香港輸出到英殖帝國的其他角落？我集中討論英屬北婆羅州（British North Borneo）——即今天馬來西亞的沙巴州——和英國，並探討兩地如何逐步成為香港移民的潛在目的地。

這是我第一次研究香港、東南亞和殖民史。除了大家耳熟能詳的「雙城記」——香港和新加坡的比較之外，我對歷史上香港和東南亞之間的深厚聯繫感到著迷，因此決定繼續向這個方向研究。我的博士論文暫命題為「操控流動：二次世界大戰後英殖帝國與華人（1945-1963）」（Controlling Mobility: Post-WWII British Empire and the Chinese Population, c. 1945-1963），集中研究香港、新加坡和北婆羅州三地熟練勞工和專業人士的移民歷史。華人移民潮在二戰後大幅減少，但因為戰後世界各地都加速發展經濟，導致熟練勞工和專業人士出現短缺，所以在此期間仍有一少部分短期和永久移民的例子。研究課題中我會首先探索和比較政府處理熟練勞工和專業人士移民的手法，再探討面對不同的經濟、社會、政治、國家安全的情況下，三地殖民政府在推出移民政策及控制華人措施時所作出的協調和面對的衝突。最後，我會分析在移民政策收緊後，三地政府以及英國官員之間對居住在中國以外的華人群體的新認知，以及新認知的知識轉移（transfer of knowledge）。

我主要利用香港、新加坡、馬來西亞和英國的政府檔案。其中，官員之間的通訊和報告都有助理解制定政策時的談判過程和決定，以及三地政府在面對所謂「華人問題」時如何達成或嘗試達成一致的行動和回應。亦因為勞工移民對每個地方的經濟發展息息相關，我也會運用一些公司檔案去理解英資商人如何回應當時多變的勞工供應及勞工和移民條例。我也依靠當時在香港、新加坡和北婆羅州流通的中、英文報紙，去探索三地人們是如何接收、認識其他殖民地的資訊，各地的經濟及就業機會。這些資料能幫助了解英殖帝國內部的移民控制，和去殖化期間帝國內部的聯繫。我希望這項研究可以進一步了解二戰後華人移民的歷史，以及了解除了新加坡之外，香港和位於亞洲的英屬殖民地的關係。

 

One of the Centre’s mission is to nurture a new generation of Hong Kong historians.

A Early Career Scholar Network was created under the Hong Kong History Centre in June 2023. It intends to help create a community of Hong Kong historians and offer a platform for face-to-face interaction and academic exchange among young scholars. Research students and fresh doctoral graduates working on socioeconomic, political and cultural history of Hong Kong and its global relevance are welcomed. We usually meet thrice a year (February, June and October) with participants taking turn to present their works in each meeting. Financial support is provided for attending these sessions.

Please write to Prof. Ray Yep, Research Director of Hong Kong History Centre, at rekmy@bristol.ac.uk, if you are interested in joining this Network.

——

In this post, we would like to introduce Nathanael Lai, a member of the Network.

Nathanael Lai is a PhD student in University of Cambridge. In the note written by him below, he shares with us his reflections on his academic journey and current project on popular politics and Hong Kong’s regional connections.

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I was – I still am – struck by what I first read in December 2020. I was two months into graduate studies, starting to feel inundated by the sea of materials I must consume daily. But I could not put down Tim Harper’s then freshly published magnum opus. Underground Asia traces a connected arc of anti-colonial struggles across early-twentieth-century Asia. Hong Kong was a key site of connections, as revolutionaries banded together, sharing resources and drawing strength from a “sense of co-presence.” The book ends with Hong Kong. There, in a cell, Indonesian anti-colonialist Tan Malaka once said, hauntingly, to his British interrogators: “Remember this. My voice will be louder from the grave than ever it was while I walked the earth.”

My research to date embraces two themes of the book: popular politics and Hong Kong’s regional connections. My undergraduate thesis at HKU centred around the so-called 1956 riots in Hong Kong, a spillover from disputes in today’s Li Cheng Uk Estate on 10 October, the national day of the Republic of China. I was engrossed in the way the disturbances were narrated – not just by the state but by governor Alexander Grantham himself. His official report on the incident, published in English and Chinese, holds a special place in my intellectual journey. It introduced me to questions surrounding colonial statecraft, mass resistance, and the politics of translation. It opened up for me the world of historical research.

October 1956 was no less turbulent for Singapore. Clashes ensued from student protests in Chinese middle schools. I forayed into tracing Hong Kong’s Southeast Asian connections in my MPhil research at Cambridge. It was an experiment in writing “entangled histories” of Hong Kong and Singapore at a time when disturbances swept almost simultaneously across both colonies. British officials learnt from one another in quelling upheavals, while itinerant triads and intellectuals, “yellow culture,” and human rights discourses underpinned these episodes of dissent. Hong Kong’s history – I tasted and did for the first time – stretches well beyond Hong Kong.

The politics of the Cold War coursed through Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. My previous research crystallised into my PhD study. It scrutinises how historical actors articulated politics beyond “binaries” of the Cold War era: pro-communist versus anti-communist, left versus right, pro-Beijing versus pro-Taipei. I am invested in the Chinese capitalists, educationalists, journalists, and athletes travelling across 1950s Hong Kong and Southeast Asia – along what was effectively a Hong Kong-Singapore-Thailand corridor. Hong Kong’s history is part of Southeast Asia’s and vice versa. Indeed, my project afforded me the fortune of travelling, like my subjects, to different places, collecting pieces of Hong Kong’s past in far-flung archives and libraries: Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Taipei.

Hong Kong was at the heart of Bangkok. The colony figured in the 1950s and 60s as a de facto “centre of cultural China” for Thailand’s Chinese communities. From newspapers to Teochew-dialect operas, from films to wuxia (martial arts) novels, Hong Kong’s cultural productions filled Bangkok’s Chinatown and beyond. Part of my research has delved into Chinese-language textbooks used in Thailand’s Chinese schools. Designed with a view to promoting the Kuomintang, they were edited by educationalists from across Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Taiwan, and published in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong was at the heart of Southeast Asia. Another part of my research centres on Sing Tao Daily. This well-known Hong Kong newspaper was once the cornerstone of a media empire spanning Hong Kong and Southeast Asia: tycoon Aw Boon Haw’s “Star” newspapers. One journalist by the name of Jimmy Wu – branded by many as “leftist,” whose life I am still trailing in earnest – started off as Sing Tao’s chief reporter. But he later became the women’s column editor of Singapore’s Sin Chew Jit Poh and then chief editor of Bangkok’s Sing Sian Yer Pao. He drew on his Hong Kong contacts as he moved through this constellation of “Star” newspapers. He pieced together ideas about gender and politics at the same time as he revealed his own in Southeast Asia.

Hong Kong is at the heart of the world. My research has taught me Hong Kong’s role in the making of Southeast Asia. But the city was and is embedded in the region and beyond. I don’t take for granted the privilege to research the history of Hong Kong alongside other historians committed to the city’s regional and global connections. Nor do I take as given the chance here to contribute, however slightly, to the University of Bristol’s Hong Kong History Centre, one of the institutes flourishing outside Hong Kong that is dedicated to the city’s past. Hong Kong history promises to be part and parcel of the world, and I am grateful there is one part I could play in this.

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我曾經­ —— 現在仍然 —— 被幾年前第一次讀到的一本著作所震撼。當時我開始攻讀碩士兩個月，對每天需要閲讀海量的學術著作開始感到不知所措。但對於Tim Harper當時出版不久的一本鉅作，我卻毫不厭倦。《地下亞洲（Underground Asia）》追溯二十世紀初亞洲各地反殖民鬥爭的互聯關係。香港是革命家聚集、共享情報，並從彼此資取力量的一個重要樞紐。該著作以香港作結。印尼反殖民主義者Tan Malaka曾在當地的一個牢房裡，對審問他的英國官員說：「記住，我在墳墓裡的呼聲，將比我在世時的更為響亮。」

我目前為止的研究涵蓋書中兩大主題：「大眾政治」（popular politics）和香港的區域性聯繫。我在港大的學士論文追溯1956年10 月 10 日（中華民國國慶日）在香港發生、由李鄭屋村居民糾紛引發的一場騷亂（所謂五六或雙十暴動）。我對英國殖民政府­ —— 尤其是港督葛量洪（Alexander Grantham）本人 —— 如何敘述當時的情況非常感興趣。葛量洪就事件所撰寫，並以中英文出版的官方報告，對我的學術旅程具有特別意義。這份報告讓我更加了解殖民統治手法、群眾抵抗，以至翻譯的政治等議題。更重要的是，它帶我走進歷史研究的世界。

1956 年 10 月對新加坡來說同樣動盪不安。當地華校學生的示威行動觸發了大規模警民衝突。在英國劍橋攻讀碩士期間，我開始探索香港與東南亞的連結。我以當時在香港和新加坡幾乎同時發生的騷動為中心，嘗試剖析兩地歷史如何「交織」（entangle）起來。我發現當時兩地英國官員就如何平息動亂互相學習。同時，遊走香港以及東南亞的黑社會和知識分子、猖獗的「黃色文化」，以及有關人權之思潮貫穿港星兩地的反抗事件。我第一次意識到香港歷史原來遠遠超出香港的地域界限。

冷戰政治席捲香港和東南亞。過往的研究塑造了我的博士論文題目。我的研究審視歷史人物如何表達冷戰時期不同「二元框架」（binaries）以外的政治思維，嘗試進一步打破當年不同所謂對立的意識形態：親共與反共、左派與右派、親中與親台。我特別關注在五十年代穿梭香港、新加坡和泰國三地（可謂「港星泰」走廊）的華人資本家、教育家、記者以及運動員，他們如何遊走冷戰時代的政治版圖。我認為，香港史是東南亞史的一部分，反之亦然。我的研究正正讓我有幸可以跟我關注的歷史人物一樣，遊走曼谷、清邁、吉隆坡、新加坡、台北等地，在不同檔案庫與圖書館收集與香港歷史相關的珍貴資料。

香港曾在曼谷扮演關鍵角色。上世紀五六十年代，香港對泰國華人社群而言是「中國文化」的源頭。香港的文化出品 —— 無論是報紙、潮州戲劇、電影或武俠小說 —— 均遍佈曼谷唐人街及其他社區。我的研究其中一部分正正探討泰國華校當年使用的中文教科書。部分教材以宣傳國民黨為目標，由香港、曼谷及台灣的教育家編輯，在香港出版。

香港曾在東南亞扮演關鍵角色。我的研究另一部分聚焦港人熟悉的《星島日報》。該報曾經是大亨胡文虎橫跨香港及東南亞的報紙帝國 —— 「星系報業」 —— 之重要基石。我現時仍在努力追蹤一位當年被標籤為「左派」的記者吳占美。四十至五十年代初，他是《星島》的採訪主任；一九五八年，他到新加坡擔任《星洲日報》的婦女版主編，及後成為曼谷《星暹日報》主編。吳氏在穿梭各「星系」報紙的同時，不忘善用他在香港建立的人脈；在東南亞編織有關性別等議題的報導同時，亦表露了自己的觀點與政治。

香港在世界扮演關鍵角色。我的研究使我了解到香港在東南亞發展史中的地位。但香港的影響，不論以前抑或現在，均超越其自身以至東南亞這區域。我慶幸能夠與其他歷史學家共同研究香港歷史與其他區域以至世界的聯繫。我亦高興能夠在此 —— 英國布里斯托大學香港史研究中心（現時香港以外其中一所發展旺盛、聚焦香港史的研究中心）—— 分享自己的研究和願景。我深信香港史會成為世界重要的一部分，而我為自己可以為此出一分力感到榮幸。

One of the Centre’s mission is to nurture a new generation of Hong Kong historians.

A Early Career Scholar Network was created under the Hong Kong History Centre in June 2023. It intends to help create a community of Hong Kong historians and offer a platform for face-to-face interaction and academic exchange among young scholars. Research students and fresh doctoral graduates working on socioeconomic, political and cultural history of Hong Kong and its global relevance are welcomed. We usually meet thrice a year (February, June and October) with participants taking turn to present their works in each meeting. Financial support is provided for attending these sessions.

Please write to Prof. Ray Yep, Research Director of Hong Kong History Centre, at rekmy@bristol.ac.uk, if you are interested in joining this Network.

——

In this post, we would like to introduce Alex Cheung, a member of the Network.

Alex Cheung is a PhD student in Bristol. In the note written by him below, he shares with us his reflections on his academic journey and current project on experience of migration.

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It is not easy to trace the exact moment I developed an interest in history, but I still remember the younger me always getting fascinated by history stories on TV, in books and video games. When I was studying history at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, I was first introduced to the field of Hong Kong history. I also realised history is not just about remarkable events; it is closely relevant to ordinary life. Back then, I ​was particularly​ interested in urban history and planning history – whereas Hong Kong is described as a laissez faire city, the government and merchants had always been shaping the landscape of the city. During my MPhil study, I wrote a thesis ‘Town Planning of New Kowloon and Colonial Governance in Hong Kong, 1898-1941’ and explored how the colonial government planned and developed part of the New Territories (the government named it as ‘New Kowloon’) after the lease of the New Territories in 1898. I argued that the Hong Kong government did not simply copy the model of urban planning from Britain and other colonies. It negotiated with property developers over issues including public health, property speculation and terms of New Territories leases. Through this process, it introduced into the colony various practices of urban planning.

​​Having​ completed my MPhil thesis, I started rethinking whether the people merely passively lived in urban space as designated by the government and merchants. I developed greater interest in understanding the lived experience of urban dwellers and individual agency in history. When I drafted my PhD research proposal, I once conceived of studying the daily life of Chinese tenement dwellers in the early twentieth century. However, I gradually noticed the mobility of lower-class population of Hong Kong – they came from different places to Hong Kong and they stayed or left for different reasons. Living in Hong Kong was only part of their life. As I sought to explain the relationship between urban life in Hong Kong and experience of migration, I formulated my current research project, which is tentatively titled as ‘Seeking Home in the Colonial Port: Migration and Settlement of Chinese Workers in Hong Kong, c. 1900-1941’. In this research, I examine everyday experience of the working classes in dwelling and working in the port city and moving across borders. I also analyse how the colonial government and public discussed and dealt with associated problems. Apart from notions like race and class divisions, perceived differences between local residents and outsiders also complicated these discussions. Encountering these discursive and practical differentiations, lower-class migrants lived in an unsettled condition and resorted to migration as their tactic. 

In search of the experiences of lower-class migrants and attitudes of the government and local society towards them, I will examine ​a​ variet​y​​ ​of sources. Apart from understanding officials’ perception and decision-making process through the colonial archive, I will also utilise newspapers and magazines to reconstruct how ordinary life was like. I will particularly pay attention to reports on police and court cases. In these cases, ordinary people were arrested and prosecuted for all sorts of crimes and offences. At the same time, they also left written records of their ideas and actions through interrogations of the police and the court (despite these records were usually written from the perspective of the interrogators). Apart from textual sources, I will also study the urban environment and details of life in old photos.

Highlighting labour mobility can help us understand the complicated relationship of the working class and Hong Kong. Like port cities all over the world, Hong Kong emerged amidst the growth of global trade. People from different places came to seek fortunes, rendering the boundary between locals and outsiders constantly in flux. We usually stereotyped the workers in Hong Kong before the Second World War as passer-by. They saw mainland China as home (or to be more precise, saw villages in southern China as home), temporarily stayed in Hong Kong for work and would return to their native villages for retirement and death. Such a narrative emphasised that they were bound to return to their home villages and downplayed how their experiences in Hong Kong affected their decisions of leaving or staying. Enduring inequalities in the colonial power relations, people living in Hong Kong once adopted different tactics to struggle for existence. 

Returning to the present, many Hongkongers are migrating overseas and moving between different places more frequently. Despite the historical context varies through time, the mobility of Hong Kong residents is common in past and present. I hope my research can facilitate understanding of the experience of migration and stimulate thinking about opportunities and restraints inherent in it. 

Chinese tenements, the typical type of accommodation for working-class population in colonial Hong Kong (photo from the National Archives, London, CO 129/450, p. 381H (16th December 1918).

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回溯甚麼時候開始對歷史產生興趣並不容易，但還記得小時的我總​對​電視、書本、電子遊戲等各種媒介接觸到的歷史故事着迷不已。直至我在香港中文大學修讀歷史本科時，開始接觸到香港史，同時認識到歷史不只是各種重大的事件，更是與大眾的日常生活切身相關。當時我對城市史、城市規劃史尤其感興趣——香港常被形容為一個自由放任（laissez faire）的城市，但政府、商人卻一直在形塑這個城市的景觀。為此，我在碩士時期撰寫了論文〈新九龍城市規劃與香港殖民管治，1898-1941年〉，探討殖民政府租借新界後，將其中一部份（政府將之命名為「新九龍」）規劃和開發為市區的過程。香港政府並非直接套用英國及其地殖民地的城市規劃模式，而是​就​本地的公共衛生、房地產投機、新界地契條款等問題與地產商協商，在這過程中引入各種城市規劃的實踐。 

完成了碩士論文後，我開始反思，大眾只是被動地按照政府、商人設定的方式在城市空間中生活嗎？我更加希望了解城市居民的生活經驗、個體在歷史中的角色。我在草擬博士研究計劃初時，曾構想研究二十世紀初唐樓住客的生活史，但逐漸注意到當時香港底層居民的流動性——他們從不同地方前來香港謀生，又因各種原因而留下或離去，在香港居住只佔他們生命的一部份。我希望闡明香港的城市生活與移民經驗的關係，因此逐漸訂定目前的研究計劃，暫名為〈在殖民地港口尋覓家園：香港華工的遷移與定居，約1900-1941年〉。在這研究中，我會關注勞工階層移民在港口城市居住、工作、跨境遷移等日常生活的經驗，以及殖民政府及公眾如何討論或處理相關的問題。除了種族、階級之分以外，分別本地人與暫居者的觀念，都使這些討論更形複雜；面對這些話語和實踐上的區分，底層移民處於一種無法安頓下來的狀態，亦以遷移為他們的生存策略。 

為了追尋底層移民的經歷、政府和本地社會如何看待他們，我會考察多種不同的資料。除了透過殖民地檔案了解官員的想法和決策過程、政府和平民的互動之外，我亦會運用報紙雜誌重構普通人的生活，其中特別留意各種案件的報導。在這些案件中，普通人因犯大小罪行而被捕、檢控，同時亦在警察或法庭的審訊下留下了有關他們的思想、行動的文字記錄（儘管這些記錄多以審訊者的觀點記載）。文字記載以外，我亦會考察​​舊照片中的城市環境及生活細節。 

關注工人的流動性有助我們理解工人階層與香港這座城市的複雜關係。像世界各地的港口城市，香港因全球貿易增長而崛起，吸引不同地方的人前來尋找機會，使本地人與外來人的界線持續變動。對於二次世界大戰前來到香港的工人，我們一般認為他們只是過客，以中國大陸為家（更準確地說，以華南地區的農村為家），在香港暫居和工作後便回鄉老死。這樣的說法強調他們必然會回到家鄉，忽略了在香港的際遇如何影響他們的去留、他們如何作出選擇。面對殖民地的權力關係造成的種種不平等，在香港生活的人曾採取的不同策略掙扎求存。 

回到當下，不少香港人移居外地，更頻繁地往返不同地方。具體的歷史脈絡不盡相同，但香港居民的流動性卻是古今相通的。我希望我的研究能促進理解不同歷史時空移民的經驗，思考其中面對的機會和限制。 

On 26th October, we had our second meeting of Network of Early Career Scholars on Hong Kong History. An enjoyable afternoon with Nathanael Lai (University of Cambridge) investigating loans, textbooks, and the Cold War in 1950s Southeast Asia and Hong Kong; Clara Cheung (University of York) tracing the “cultural representations” of Hong Kong and Malaysia in the Commonwealth Institute in London in the 1960s-70s; Allan Pang (University of Cambridge) illustrating the flow of historical knowledge and the colonial response in Hong Kong, Malaya, and Singapore in the 1950s; and Doris Y. S. Chan (Nanyang Technological University) looking into the transfer of Chinese educational knowledge, teachers and students between Hong Kong and North Borneo from around 1950s to early 1960s.

You can find the abstract of the presentation here.

It is always great to meet new friends and exchange ideas. We intend to meet regularly and if you are based in the UK and want to be part of this network, Please write to Prof. Ray Yep, Research Director of Hong Kong History Centre, at rekmy@bristol.ac.uk. The next meeting will probably be in late February or March. 

One of the Centre’s mission is to nurture a new generation of Hong Kong historians.

A Early Career Scholar Network was created under the Hong Kong History Centre in June 2023. It intends to help create a community of Hong Kong historians and offer a platform for face-to-face interaction and academic exchange among young scholars. Research students and fresh doctoral graduates working on socioeconomic, political and cultural history of Hong Kong and its global relevance are welcomed. We usually meet thrice a year (February, June and October) with participants taking turn to present their works in each meeting. Financial support is provided for attending these sessions.

Please write to Prof. Ray Yep, Research Director of Hong Kong History Centre, at rekmy@bristol.ac.uk, if you are interested in joining this Network.

——

In this post, we would like to introduce Phyllis Chan, a member of the Network.

Phyllis Chan is a PhD student in Bristol. In the note written by her below, she shares with us her reflections on her academic journey and current project on nationality and identity. This Chinese version is translated by the Centre staff. 

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As cliché as it is, I have been interested in history as far as I can remember. The obsession started with mummification practices in Ancient Egypt (which was a bit too morbid for my grandparents) and continued through school, where it was always my favourite subject. I then went up to Cambridge to read history. I developed a real fascination of the construction of race, identity, and empire while earning my BA.

In my third year I intended to write my dissertation on the rehabilitation of concentration camp victims in Central Europe, but my Director of Studies rather bluntly told me I did not have the requisite languages required. It was then I started to look closer to home, and ended up writing on ‘The ‘Eurasian’ in the British Far East, 1930-1950’, comparing the historic communities of Eurasians in Hong Kong and in Singapore. I had initially become interested in this subject when attempting to write a novel. When researching my thesis I began to move away from an interest in writing fiction to writing history because I realised that the maxim ’truth is stranger than fiction’ had a lot of resonance. Uncovering and presenting the stories of real people is a different kind of challenge to inventing plausible ones, but it’s something that eventually attracted me more.

In looking at the lived experiences of being of mixed-race Eurasian descent, I found many instances of discrepancies between state perceptions, and people’s own views of themselves (whether by the British or the Japanese). As an example of how perceptions can vary wildly, I once found in a war crimes investigation in which three different statements described one woman as ‘European’, ‘Chinese’, and ‘Eurasian’. This one example really condensed the reality of race as a volatile, constructed category, and so dependent on the similarly unstable perception of what people look like, or are meant to look like. I further explored this pattern in my MPhil thesis on the colonial census in Hong Kong and the Straits Settlements between 1880 and 1941.

The experience of empire and cosmopolitanism in Hong Kong had a very real impact on the way people saw and presented themselves. While previously I focused on the former (i.e. self-identity), I am looking more closely at the latter for my doctoral studies. This is due to an issue I had previously ran into in my research. Ordinary people in Hong Kong around the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries rarely left accessible writing on the nuances of how they felt about their identities. What they did leave, however, are their imprints on surviving British colonial documents.

In my project, ‘Ambiguous Nationality: British Subjects of Chinese Descent, 1879-c.1960’, I investigate the reasons for and ways in which individuals from Hong Kong of Chinese descent claimed British nationality. While in theory English common law gave all subjects born within British territories equal legal footing and rights of mobility across the empire, this was not true in reality. Many such subjects had to assert their rights to sceptical colonial officials, and controversial cases often involved consular officials across China as well as the Colonial and Foreign Office in London.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The materials I will use in my project are predominantly colonial official correspondence referring to cases of ambiguous nationality. In the early part of the period (1880s to 1920s) these were usually to do with ethnic Chinese attempting to claim extraterritoriality in the treaty ports. Later, cases were more varied, as more people sought to apply for passports to travel abroad. The postwar period especially saw a range as border controls were instituted between Hong Kong and the mainland. I aim to analyse these cases in a way that uncovers the agency of the individuals concerned, and the ways they articulated their claims. I will contrast this with the official logic and biases of the government to unpack the tensions at hand. 

Today we live in the age of the nation-state, where most people live in a state in which the main criteria for membership is being part of a certain nation. This is so normalised that we forget that, as John Darwin has pointed out, this is a relatively short-term trend in human history. Before the Second World War many people lived in multiethnic empires, where their citizenship did not necessarily correspond to their nationality – even if they had a sense of what ’nation’ actually was. Today, nationality is rarely ambiguous, and many countries cooperate internationally to prevent what is known as ’statelessness’. This was not the case in the period I am looking at. 

With a growing number of Hong Kongers moving to the UK under the BNO visa, there has been an increase in interest in the history of Hong Kong, its people, and British nationality. I hope that my research will encourage people to think of nationality and citizenship as less binary and one-dimensional as they may seem.

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雖然有點陳詞濫調，但從我有記憶開始我就對歷史感興趣。這種情迷始於對古埃及木乃伊製作方法的探究（這對我的祖父母來說有點過於恐怖），並一直持續到上學，歷史總是我最喜歡的科目。後來我去了劍橋大學讀歷史。在獲得學士學位的過程，我對種族、身份和帝國建構的深深著迷。

在學士第三年，我原本打算寫關於中歐集中營受害者的康復，但我的研究指導相當直接地告訴我，我缺乏所需的語言能力。於是，我開始更仔細地研究自己的家鄉，最終寫了名為《英國遠東的「歐亞混血兒」，1930-1950》的論文，比較香港和新加坡歷史上的歐亞混血兒社區。我最初對這個主題感興趣是在嘗試寫小說的時候。在研究論文時，我開始從寫小說的興趣轉向寫歷史，因為「真實比虛構更奇幻」（Truth is stranger than fiction） 這句話對我來說太有共鳴。揭示和呈現真實人物的故事與創造合情理的故事，是截然不同的挑戰，但最終歷史更吸引我。

在研究混血歐亞裔生活經歷時，我發現許多時候國家視野與人們如何看待自己之間有不少差異（無論是英國還是日本政府的觀點）。舉一個國家視野大幅差異的例子，我曾在一份戰爭罪行的調查中找到三種不同的陳述，分別將一名女性描述為「歐洲人」、「中國人」和「歐亞混血兒」。這個例子真實地凝煉了種族作為一個不穩定、建構類別的現實，而且這取決於同樣不穩定，關於人們外貌如何，或外貌應該如何的觀念。我在我的碩士論文進一步探討這種模式，研究了1880年至1941年間香港和海峽殖民地的殖民地人口普查。

香港的帝國和國際經驗對人們看待和呈現自己的方式產生非常實在的影響。雖然之前我專注於前者（即自我認同），但在博士研究，我更仔細地研究後者。這源自於我在過往研究中遇到的問題。十九世紀末和二十世紀初的普羅香港人很少留下他們對自己身份微妙感受，而又可供查閱的文字記錄。他們留下的，是在流傳下來英國殖民地文件上的印記。 

在我的研究計劃——《模糊的國籍：中國裔的英籍人士，1879年至大約1960年》，我調查了來自香港的中國裔聲請英國國籍的原因和方法。儘管理論上英國普通法賦予在英國領土內出生的所有人民平等的法律地位和在帝國範圍內的流動權，但實際上並非如此。許多這樣的人民必須向懷疑他們的殖民官員主張自己的權利，而具爭議性的案例通常涉及中國各地的領事官員和倫敦的殖民地及外交部。

我的計劃將主要使用殖民地官方往來通信，這些通信涉及模糊國籍的案例。在這段時間早期（1880年代至1920年代），這些案例通常涉及中國族裔試圖在條約港口聲請治外法權。後來，案例變得多樣，因為更多人嘗試申請護照出國旅行。戰後時期明顯更多這些案例，因為香港和中國大陸之間實行邊境管制。我打算分析這些案例，揭示個體的能動性以及他們表達主張的方式，將其與政府的官方邏輯和偏見對照，去理解兩者的緊張關係。

今天我們活在民族國家的時代，大多數人生活在一個必須成為某個民族才得以被視為成員的國家裏。這已經成為常態，以至我們忘記了，正如John Darwin指出，這在人類歷史裏是個相當短暫的趨勢。在第二次世界大戰前，許多人生活在多民族帝國中，他們的公民身份不一定對應到他們的民族身份——即使他們大概也對「民族國家」有一定理解。今天，國籍很少會模稜兩可，只且許多國家也在國際間合作，以防止所謂的「無國籍狀態」。但在我研究的時期卻並非如此。

隨著越來越多香港人透過BNO簽證移居英國，人們對香港歷史、香港人以及英國國籍的興趣也愈來愈大。我希望我的研究能鼓勵人們減少以看起來理所當然的二元和單向角度視考國籍與公民身份的問題。