Category: Quarterly Round-up

Welcome to the Hong Kong History Centre’s quarterly round-up.   

This winter the Centre team has been on the move, meeting new audiences, and building its global network of connections, while at the same time, developing its relationship with Bristol’s Hong Kong communities. This is in keeping with our aim to share the work of our established and emerging scholars, and to speak with a diverse range of audiences. We have new publications to report, such as Tom Larkin’s book, The China Firm: American Elites and the Making of Colonial Society, and have been publishing our new video series, a collaboration with the Society for Hong Kong Studies. As I write we are enjoying the company of the first of our visiting scholars, who have come to spend some time with us, and we have launched a call for a second cohort of visitors to join us in the coming academic year. 

We now have almost a full team: the latest arrivals are Muriel Yeung, who joins us as a Project Archivist, and Tom Heatley, who joins as Digitization Officer. This completes our team in the University of Bristol’s Special Collections. It’s just as well: even before we have fully set up our Hong Kong Archives Collection, we are receiving offers of material. We’ll tell you more about this in future. 

We look forward now to our conference in June, co-organised with the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong. The theme is, fittingly, ‘Journeys’. 

**** 

From 20th January, we have been releasing six episodes of “Hong Kong Documented” on an average bi-weekly schedule. This is a 10-episode series co-produced by Hong Kong History Centre and Society for Hong Kong Studies, which profiles a selection of influential experts and scholars of Hong Kong history inside and outside universities, and at different stages in their careers. From their various positions they adopt different approaches to preserving and promoting knowledge of Hong Kong’s history, covering a wide range of issues: fashion, military, economy, identity, heritage building and Hong Kong representation in Britain etc. Together, they uncover the resilience of the city and enrich our understanding of our past. Six episodes have now been released. You can view them on our Centre’s YouTube Channel. 

This January, we commenced our monthly History Salon, featuring different topics on Hong Kong History. We aim to introduce the Bristol based Hong Kong community the research of the Centre and its friends, offer a hub to this community, and the opportunity to reflect and discuss aspects of Hong Kong History. 

On 27th January, our Centre’s Co-director Dr. Vivian Kong shared with us the findings of her recently published book, ‘Multiracial Britishness: Global Networks in Hong Kong, 1910-45′ for the first History Salon. She took us to an under-explored site of Britishness – the former British colony of Hong Kong, where all those who were born and naturalised there had access to a British nationality status. Amidst rising nationalism and stark racism in the interwar years, residents of Hong Kong in fact understood Britishness not only as a racial category, but also as a means of social advancement, and a form of cultural and national belonging.  

—- 

In February we shared our work with colleagues in Japan. On the 20th our Co-directors Robert Bickers and Vivian Kong organised a roundtable at Kyoto University (where Robert has been a Visiting Professor these three months), introducing the Centre, its work and plans, and some of its major research outputs. 

On the 22nd-23rd, the team moved to Tokyo and presented on their research at the HK History Symposium at Rikkyo University. It was a fruitful week, and we thank our hosts in Kyoto and Tokyo for the opportunity to showcase and exchange with other HK Studies colleagues in Japan. 

On 24th on the Bristol side, our Research Director Prof. Ray Yep gave us a talk on MacLehose and the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) at the second History Salon. ICAC was created in 1974 after decades of debates and deliberation inside the government. Prof. Ray Yep shared with us his research on questions of why it took so long to be created, how it survived the police mutiny in 1977, and how we might look back at MacLehose’s role and legacy. 

Our PhD student Ryan Iu has compiled, with Eric H. C. Chow from HKBU Library, a post on The Digital Orientalist to introduce useful digital platforms for navigating the rich period of early colonial HK History. We have collated the contents that were introduced, you can check this on our Facebook post too. 

—- 

March was a busy and yet fruitful month. On 6-8th March, Prof. Ray Yep, attended the Annual Conference of Academy of Hong Kong Studies at Education University of Hong Kong. It was a great opportunity to introduce the development of the Centre to friends in Hong Kong and mainland China. He had a very engaging dialogue on the state of Hong Kong studies with Prof. Lui Tai Lok, Director of the Academy as well. 

On 7th March, Dr. Catherine S. Chan of Lingnan University, Hong Kong gave us a talk on ‘Remembering the Canine Bloodbath: The Dark Side of Hong Kong’s Progressive Seventies’ for the Speaker’s Series. 1970s’. The MacLehose administration in Hong Kong is usually remembered as a period of optimism, progress, and constructive reinvention. There was, however, a dark side to this narrative of ‘progress.’ The well-publicised ‘HongKong Clean Campaign’ resulted in the irrational mass slaughter of thousands of dogs and the restructuring of human-canine relations. Delving into the anti-dog movement, Catherine uncovered, from a more-than-human perspective, narratives of cruelty that helped underpin Hong Kong’s progressive seventies. 

On 14-17th, part of our team headed west to Seattle to attend the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference. Our student Tracy Leung presented a paper, “Guiding Youth of the Colony”: The Girl Guide Movement and Youth Concerns in Post-War Hong Kong’ at the ‘New Perspectives on State-Society Relations in Late Colonial Hong Kong’ panel on the evening of March 14th. Co-Director Vivian Kong participated in the ‘Teaching Hong Kong History during a Complex Time in Hong Kong History’ roundtable on March 15th. 

The team was delighted to see the strong interest in Hong Kong – marked by both the growing number of panels on Hong Kong at the AAS conference, and the great attendance at all Hong Kong panels and the Society for Hong Kong Studies reception. We enjoyed catching up with colleagues in the field, and having many inspiring conversations with our panelists and audiences on researching and teaching Hong Kong history. 

On 22nd March, we had our third meeting in Bristol of the Network of Early Career Scholars on Hong Kong History. We had an enjoyable afternoon with Sze Hong Lam (Leiden University) examining 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) on reconstructing the everyday experience of living in Chinese tenements in Hong Kong, and how housing conditions in port cities displaced migrant workers; Phyllis Chan (University of Bristol) examined how officials investigated claims that Hong Kong residents made to British nationality; and Adrian Kwong (University of Oxford) explored how  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 on our website.

On 23rd March, we had our third History Salon on the topic ‘Hong Kong and the Commonwealth, 1949-1997′ by Dr. Tommy Lo of University of Oxford. Hong Kong, as a British colony until 1997, was part of the Commonwealth. Dr Tommy Lo discussed with us the overlooked links between Hong Kong and the Commonwealth world. How did this shape Hong Kong education? Who was sojourning in and migrating between Hong Kong and the Commonwealth? And what did the Commonwealth have to do with the city’s remarkable economic growth? Numerous ties connected Hong Kong history with the world; those with the Commonwealth were unobvious but important. 

And of course, there’s more to come. As well as doing, we are planning. We are looking ahead to collaborating on an exhibition that will form part of the 2024 Bristol Photo Festival, developing a new series of history films, and we will soon be putting in place an initiative to showcase how we can provide a secure, accessible long-term home here in Bristol for records of Hong Kong’s history, broadly understood. Please continue to watch this space. 

 

Welcome to the Hong Kong History Centre’s quarterly round-up. 

As you will see as you read on, the autumn has seen a busy programme of talks and research events. We have also welcomed to Bristol two new holders of the Hong Kong History Centre PhD Scholarships, Tracy Leung who has joined us after studying at the Hong Kong Baptist University and University of Hong Kong, and Ryan Iu, after graduating from the University of British Columbia. We now have eight students working with us on PhDs, and a complement of seven staff across the Department of History and the Library’s Special Collections. We have been making quiet background progress on a planned new ‘Historical Photographs of Hong Kong’ online platform, as well as assessing and preparing to catalogue donations of archival material and books and journals.  

Plans for 2024 are also in train, and will include a conference, an exhibition of photographs, more academic talks and some new initiatives to engage with wider audiences. When we next write we hope to be able to share news about further appointments to our team in Special Collections, and to the Centre team in History. We have also launched a Visiting Scholars programme (and there’s still time to apply!) Perhaps the quarterly theme could be summed up as ‘connecting’: connecting with colleagues at Bristol, with scholars and audiences across the UK and internationally, and with new collaborators. 

As well as arrivals, we marked the departure of Dr Tom Larkin to the University of Prince Edward Island. Tom has worked with us since arriving from the University of York, Ontario in 2017 to start a PhD, then moving on to a very productive research fellowship. His book, The China Firm: American Elites and the Making of Colonial Society will be out in the spring from Columbia University Press. We will miss Tom’s generosity and digital flair, and we wish him well as he begins his new adventure in the Maritimes. Ray Yep’s new book, ‘The Long 1970s: MacLehose, London and Colonial Hong Kong’, is now in press with Hong Kong University Press, and the team gathered together with friends and colleagues on 1 December to toast Dr Vivian Kong’s new volume, Multiracial Britishness: Global Networks in Hong Kong, 1910–45.  

 **** 

On the 5th October, our Speaker’s Series had Dr. Florence Mok, Nanyang Technological University, giving a book talk on her recent book Covert Colonialism: Governance, Surveillance and Political Culture in British Hong Kong, c. 1966-97. She addressed a highly contested and timely agenda, one in which colonial historians have made major interventions: the nature of colonial governance and autonomy of the colonial polity. 

**** 

On the 11th of the same month, we met Vaudine England to celebrate her book ‘Fortune’s Bazaar: The Making of Hong Kong’. Her well-researched, and vibrant new history of Hong Kong that reveals the untold stories of the diverse peoples who have made it a multicultural world metropolis-and whose freedoms are endangered today. 

**** 

On the 24th, we have another talk of the Speaker’s Series by Dr. Cecilia Chu of Chinese University of Hong Kong on her award-winning book Building Colonial Hong Kong: Speculative Development and Segregation in the City. Tracing what she calls “speculative urbanism” where different constituencies–British developers, colonial officials, as well as property-owning and working-class Chinese–struggled over the politics of colonial difference and property rights in shaping the built environment, she explored the interplay between British colonial governance and the political practices of native propertied classes. 

**** 

On the 26th, we hosted the second workshop of Network of Early Career Scholars on Hong Kong History. It was 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 activities of 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. 

**** 

—- 

Turning into November, on the 7th we held our Hong Kong History Centre internal launch. The Centre Co-directors Robert Bickers and Vivian Kong, and Research Director, Ray Yep, spoke about the Centre’s activities since Sept 2022 and our future engagement plans. We thanked our sponsors, DARO, Faculty, School and the University for facilitating the establishment of the Centre. 

**** 

On the 17th November, Dr. Angelina Y. Chin of Pomona College gave us an online book talk for the Speaker’s Series on her book Unsettling Exiles: Chinese Migrants in Hong Kong and the Southern Periphery During the Cold War. She foregrounded the experiences of the many people who passed through Hong Kong without settling down or finding a sense of belonging, including refugees, deportees, “undesirable” residents, and members of boat communities. Emphasizing that flows of people did not stop at Hong Kong’s borders but also bled into neighboring territories such as Taiwan and Macau, she develops the concept of the “Southern Periphery”—the region along the southern frontier of the PRC, outside its administrative control yet closely tied to its political space. 

**** 

On the 28th November, Dr. Philip Thai of Northeastern University gave us a talk titled ‘A Hole in the Bamboo Curtain: Hong Kong in the Cold War’ for the Speaker’s Series. He examined the histories of “red capitalists” and Chinese Communist front companies which operated within the interstices of Cold War rivalries and fractured jurisdictions. 

—- 

On the 3rd December, we hosted a private screening of a documentary ‘尚未完場 To Be Continued’  in Watershed. This evocative documentary is a deep dive into the forgotten legend of Harry Odell, Hong Kong’s most notable post Second World War impresario. Nearly 100 guests enjoyed the film and also participated in a Q&A session with the film directors Dora Choi and Haider Kikabhoy to find out some behind-the-scenes stories. 

During the event, we also showcased a sneak preview of episode one of ‘Hong Kong Documented”, featuring Vivian. Dr Kong shared her story of being born and raised in Hong Kong and introducing a ‘Hong Kong and the World’ teaching unit in Bristol. She also provided some reflections about the long history of engagement that Hong Kongers have made with Britishness. The whole series, co-produced by Hong Kong History Centre and Society for Hong Kong Studies, will be officially released very soon. 

 

**** 

On the 6th December, our former HKHC Leverhulme Trust research fellow, Dr. Helena Lopes of Cardiff University, returned to visit us and introduced her book Neutrality and Collaboration in South China: Macau during the Second World War. Exploring the intersections of local, regional and global dynamics, she analysed the layers of collaboration that developed from neutrality in Macau during the Second World War, arguing that neutrality eased the movement of refugees of different nationalities who sought shelter in Macau during the war and that it helped to guarantee the maintenance of colonial rule in Macau and Hong Kong in the post-war period. 

On the 8th December, Prof. Ray Yep attended “Hong Kong Studies Go Global” Conference in Taipei. The Conference was organized by Institute of Sociology of Academia Sinica and there were more than 300 participants. Prof. Yep made a presentation on the operation and progress of Hong Kong History Centre. 

 

Prof Robert Bickers travelled to London on the 10th December to address the inaugural meeting of the Armed Forces Hong Kong Association, through which men and women with a personal connection to Hong Kong working across the UK Ministry of Defense come together to share experiences and views. In October Robert addressed a different gathering when he gave a talk about the Centre and its plans at the autumn lunch of the Gloucester Branch of the Hong Kong Society. 

—- 

Looking ahead we are finalising an exciting programme of talks to be held at the Speakers’ Series, as well as a workshop series for early career scholars on Hong Kong history.  

We are also developing new community engagement initiatives. First off will be a History Salon on the 27th January 2024. If you want to receive information and news from Hong Kong History Centre, please subscribe to our mailing list by filling out the form at the bottom of this page.  

We are grateful for the support and feedback we have received from our audiences and supporters, and we hope to see you again in the future, or if we have not seen you yet, we hope that this roundup gives you a flavour of the events we have been sponsoring. 

Welcome to the Hong Kong History Centre’s quarterly round-up.

We are thrilled to have more colleagues joining our Centre. We’re delighted to be able to welcome Maria Korea to the role of Centre Manager, with a Project Archivist in the Library Special Collections, and Sam Brenton who has joined as Digital Archives Assistant. We’ll be providing a fuller introduction to the archives team in a future issue, together with news about that strand of our work. And more appointments will be being made in the next few months. 

On 8 June, we celebrated the launch of our Network of Early Career Scholars on Hong Kong History, with the first meeting held in Bristol. We were well fed with great ideas from inspiring presentations by Patrick Hao (University of Oxford) delving into Sino-British relations and democratization in late colonial Hong Kong; Gary Wong (University of Leeds) introducing how Hong Kong was being exhibited at the British Empire Exhibition in Wembley, London, 1924-1925; and Gray Sergeant (London School of Economics and Political Science) who is investigating the Hong Kong Working Group and the Making of an Anglo-American Misunderstanding, 1957 – 1961. Florence Mok (Nanyang Technological University) zoomed in to share her experiences of developing her doctoral work into a book.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 contact us at hkhistory-centre@bristol.ac.uk. The next meeting will be in October. 

**** 

On 1 September, we are honoured to have Japanese scholars visiting our centre. The team, led by Professor Toru Kurata (Rikkyo University), included Masakazu Matsuoka (Ohtsuki City College), Akiko Kurata (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies), Shingo Kobori (Nagoya University of Foreign Studies), Kota Sasha Oguri (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies), and Airin Yamada (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies), and they shared with us the past, present and future of​ Hong Kong Studies in Japan. We exchanged fruitful thoughts on the current landscape of the subject, and explored the possibility of future collaborations. We hope to meet and learn from colleagues around the world, and together we thrive the research community. ​ 

 

 

 

 

 

**** 

In the same month our directors have started the trip in Hong Kong. On 16 September, our team organized the first Hong Kong History Day. With the help of Society for Hong Kong Studies (SHKS), we co-hosted the event, more than 150 participants showed up. It was a day or reconnection, networking, and most importantly having dialogues and discussion on Hong Kong History. The event featured four panels covering various topics of Hong Kong history: archives building, study of history of art and entertainment, history education and Hong Kong in the 1970s. With lots of great and passionate people concerning and being interested on Hong Kong History and Studies in general, there are rich and diverse things we can still do on Hong Kong. 

**** 

On 19 September, our directors attended a University of Bristol Hong Kong Alumni reception in the China Club Hong Kong. We were pleased to share the latest exciting updates of the establishment of Bristol’s Hong Kong History Centre, the world’s first research centre focusing on the study of Hong Kong History. This was a great opportunity to catch up with new and old friends in the Bristol family overseas. 

 

**** 

On the next day, 20 September, the Centre’s co-director, Vivian Kong had her first book talk for the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong at Cafe 8, Roof, Hong Kong Maritime Museum, on her upcoming book Multiracial Britishness: Global Networks in Hong Kong, 1910–45. Asking what does it mean to be British, Vivian provided some reflections through an under-explored site of Britishness – the former British colony of Hong Kong. 

**** 

We concluded our tour in Hong Kong with a full-house community film screening, co-organized with SHKS. On 24 September, 尚未完場 To Be Continued was screened and followed by a Q&A session with the directors. This evocative documentary is a deep dive into the forgotten legend of Harry Odell, Hong Kong’s first impresario.

We hope to see everyone next year! 

**** 

We have a lot more happening in this new academic year, so please stay tuned and follow us! If you want to receive information and news from Hong Kong History Centre, please subscribe to our mailing list by filling out the form at the bottom of this page.   

 

 

 

Welcome to the first of the Hong Kong History Centre’s quarterly round-ups. 

We have had a busy first quarter here in Bristol. First, and most importantly we have welcome to Bristol Professor Ray Yep, our new Centre Research Director, who has joined us from City University Hong Kong, and Yiuwa Chung, our Senior Research Administrator. We’ll have news of three further appointments to announce in our next newsletter. 

On 27 April, we launched our new speakers’ series to provide an open platform for scholars to share their research on Hong Kong history. Our inaugural speaker was Gina Anne Tam, Associate Professor of Chinese history and co-chair of the Women’s and Gender Studies programme at Trinity University, who talked on ‘Gender and Agency in Hong Kong’s History of Activism: The Case of the 1978 Golden Jubilee Secondary School Protest’. 

In May 1978, several hundred students and teachers from the all-girls Precious Blood Golden Jubilee Secondary School in Kowloon, Hong Kong, left their classrooms to stage a sit-in in front of the Governor’s Mansion and the Bishop’s House. Spurred by claims of financial malfeasance, lack of transparency, and the ill treatment of students by the school administration, the protests lasted for several days, attracting widespread attention throughout the colony. In response to these students’ calls for dialogue with both the Precious Blood Order and the Hong Kong government, the Education Department, instead, abruptly closed the school altogether, claiming that the protests had escalated so far out of control that the school itself could not be saved.

Gina set out the course of the protest, its origins and aftermath, and her plans for her new book project, which will include this protest as a case study to explain how gender affects the ways we assign agency and leadership in grassroots activism.

****

On 3 May we had our first in-person event, hosting John D. Wong, Associate Professor at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Hong Kong, for a talk on his latest book, Hong Kong Takes Flight: Commercial Aviation and the Making of a Global Hub,1930s–1998.

Commercial aviation took shape in Hong Kong as the city developed into a powerful economy. Rather than accepting air travel as an inevitability in the era of global mobility, John argues that Hong Kong’s development into a regional and global airline hub was not preordained.

****

 

On 17 May, the Centre hosted its first in-person public event, when Prof. Jeff Wasserstrom, Chancellor’s Professor of History, at the University of California, Irvine, joined Dr. Vivian Kong in conversation to discuss his experience of writing on Hong Kong and the potential for the Academy to connect with the Public. Jeff reflected on his intellectual journey, and how his long-standing interest in the history of student spurred him on to turn to research on Hong Kong’s history. The conversation ranged from discussion of George Orwell, the ‘Milk Tea Alliance’, activism in China, and the research and writing of his recent book Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink. He shared with us his thoughts on how historians can reach and engage public audiences, and what they can learn from journalists. 

****

In the same week, on 17 and 18 May, we also organised a workshop on ‘Global Histories of (Anti-)Colonialism‘ with colleagues who visited us from the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill). The workshop provided a forum for discussion on the ways in which we research the global history of colonial and anti-colonial thought and activism and drew together graduate students and staff in Bristol and UNC to share our work on the topic. 

We heard papers on the subjects of mobility, modernization, decolonization, and anti-colonialism, drawing from case studies in the histories of Hong Kong, but also those of Afghanistan, France, India, Japan, Shanghai, Singapore, and Southern Africa.

 

 

 

 

 

 

****

Looking ahead we are finalising an exciting programme of talks to be held at the Speakers’ Series, as well as a workshop series for early career scholars on Hong Kong history. If you want to receive information and news from Hong Kong History Centre, please subscribe to our mailing list by filling out the form at the bottom of this page. 

We hope to see you in the future.