Global Hong Kong in Literature and Film
Charles A. Laughlin
University of Virginia
Overview
Hong Kong holds a unique place in contemporary world culture due to its hybrid
identity as part of an ancient, continuous civilization (China) while also being a
cosmopolitan, multicultural crossroads and a center of world trade and finance.
Because of this status, it has functioned symbolically as a portal to China for outside
cultures since the age of imperialism, while all the while it struggles internally to
define its own identity. Its diverse population embodies the postcolonial global
south.
This course examines Hong Kong’s evolving and many-faceted character through
the lens of literature and film, both looking from the outside (English-language
novels and films) and from the inside via local fiction, poetry, and film in English
translation. Instead of looking at external representations and internal expressions
separately, this course views the image of Hong Kong as a global conversation, in
which internal and external voices influence each other both through tension and
harmony. That is, what may often be dismissed as “Hollywood fantasy” or
commercial fiction are put on the same playing field as serious local culture and
viewed comparatively in their participation in an evolving global conversation about
what Hong Kong is.
Course assessment
Mid-term 20%
Written assignment 20%
Presentation 10%
Learning Portfolio 20%
Course Participation 20%
Peer Evaluation 10%
Requirements
There will be an examination on the basic facts of Hong Kong’s history and culture,
graded student reader/viewer response assignments on each reading and film, and
a final assignment that can take the form of an analytical essay on one or more
literary works or films, or an in-class presentation of at 10-20 minutes in length.
These final projects shall be based on individual or group research on any
contemporary form of cultural expression that creates or contributes to an
image of Hong Kong, preferably including field research within the city on
exhibitions, performances, architecture or entertainment and consumer culture that
can be interpreted in this manner.
I.
II.
III.
Historical Memory, Chinese Identity and Imperialism
a. Novella (and film) Eileen Chang, “Love in a Fallen City” (1942)
b. Somerset Maugham novel (1925) and Greta Garbo film (1934) “The
Painted Veil” (1934; 2006)
c. Film: Stanley Kwan, “Rouge” (1986) (based on a novel by the Hong
Kong author Lilian Lee, also author of “Farewell My Concubine”)
d. Novel and film: James Clavell, Tai-Pan
e. Esther M. K. Cheung, “THE HI/STORIES OF HONG KONG”
f. William Tay, “Colonialism, The Cold War Era, and Marginal Space: The
Existential Condition of Five Decades of Hong Kong Literature.”
Post-war Glamor, Love
a. “The World of Suzie Wong” (1960)
b. Han Suyin novel “A Many-Splendored Thing” (1952); Film “Love is a
Many-Splendored Thing,” dir (1955)
c. James Bond in Hong Kong: “You Only Live Twice” (1967) and “The
Man with the Golden Gun” (1974)
d. Rey Chow, Sentimental Fabulations: Contemporary Chinese Films
(2007)
e. Story: Xi Xi, “A Woman Like Me” (1984)
f. Film: Peter Chan, dir., “Comrades: Almost a Love Story” (1996)
Hong Kong as Exemplar of the Global Postmodern
a. Film: Wong Kar-wai, “Chungking Express” (1994)
b. Akbar Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
c. Poetry: Cheung, Esther M.K, City at the End of Time: Poems by Leung
Ping-kwan
d. Novels: Xi Xi My City: A Hongkong Story. HK: Renditions, 1993; Flying
Carpet: A Tale of Fertilla. Tr. Diana Yue. HK: Hong Kong University
Press, 2000
e. Chow, Rey "Things, common/places, passages of the port city: on
Hong Kong and Hong Kong author Leung Ping-kwan." differences: A
Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 5.3 (September 22, 1993): 179204.