Welcome to our latest quarterly round up. The staff of the Hong Kong History Centre are based in the complex of converted Victorian-era villas on Woodland Road, just northwest of Bristol’s historic city centre. It’s where our various events are usually held, but last October we moved some of our activities across to the other side of the city, to the Paintworks ‘creative quarter’, a relatively recent development on the road to Bath. If you didn’t manage to join us there, you can find out more below, and through the links provided. As well as this exciting and stimulating venture, we have continued to host a fascinating and thought-provoking series of talks, online and in-person, that attract a diverse audience from within and importantly from outside the university.
On 17 Oct, the Exhibition ‘Realms of Memory’ opened, a collaboration with The Royal Photographic Society and Hong Kong’s WMA, a non-profit organization dedicated to facilitating greater understanding of Hong Kong through lens-based art. The exhibition ran from 17th Oct – 22nd Dec, at RPS, Paintworks, as part of Bristol Photo Festival 2024 (‘The World a Wave’), the second time this event has been held.
The exhibition unveiled evocative narratives commissioned from Hong Kong artists Billy H.C. Kwok, Jay Lau, and Lau Wai which delved into the intricate tapestries of two historical photographic archives, namely Historical Photographs of China (University of Bristol) and the Frank Fischbeck Collection (University of Hong Kong). Through their lens, viewers were able to experience a city steeped in duality—where reality meets imagination, fact intertwines with fiction, and the private whispers of the past echo in the public domain.
On 22 October, as part of the programme, we hosted a panel discussion, where our Centre co-director Robert Bickers, joined Alejandro Acín, Director of the Bristol Photo Festival, Lisa Graves, Curator World Cultures at Bristol City Council, and Pete Insole, Head of Urban Design and Principal Historic Environment Officer at Bristol City Council, to discuss their experiences of challenges in the heritage, museum, university and creative sectors.
This was a particularly fruitful discussion, as our Centre is starting to build up a new set of Hong Kong Collections within the University Library’s Special Collections, which will focus on encouraging donations of privately-held archives. We encourage people and organisations with historic ties to Hong Kong to consider donating privately-held records for long term preservation in the collection. The aim is to provide different perspectives to those found in government records. This is a pioneering initiative in the UK: no other British institution prioritises the collection of records like this relating to Hong Kong’s history. For more details on how to donate material please view this page.
Our team in Special Collections have been cataloguing material that has deposited with us including wonderful photographs of Hong Kong in the 1950s taken by the late David Arnold, when he served there as a flight engineer in the Royal Air Force.
On 26 Oct Dr. Vivian Kong presented on her new book project at the International Committee of Historical Sciences conference, ‘Crossings and Connections: East Asia and the World, c. 1800-1945’, at Teikyo University, Tokyo. There she reunited with two of the Hong Kong History Project alumni, Dr. Catherine Chan and Dr. Katon Lee, also presenters at the conference.
On the same day, here in Bristol, we had the History Salon, a Cantonese community event, on ‘Overseas Chinese Merchants: Aw Boon Haw and the Tiger Balm Mansion’ over at the Royal Photographic Society. Hong Kong has been a crucial site for connecting overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia with China, and the Salon focused on the story of Aw Boon Haw, the founder of Tiger Balm and Singdao Daily. He began his medical business in Singapore and shifted its headquarters to Hong Kong in the 1930s, becoming one of the most successful overseas Chinese merchants by investing in philanthropy, architecture, and media. So, why did he come to Hong Kong? How did overseas investment shape the history of Hong Kong and modern China? Dr. Kelvin Chan, our research associate, discussed the patterns of Chinese migration, explored the connections between China, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia, and highlighted Aw’s lasting legacies through the Tiger-Balm Mansion. In addition, photographer Billy H.C. Kwok shared the ways he employed AI generation software to contest the memories and imaginations of the Tiger Balm Mansion, and how the derivative memories from these AI-generated images traversed between reality and illusion.
On 28 Oct, in our Speakers’ Series, Prof. Nadine Attewell from Simon Fraser University, Canada, spoke about ‘A Matter of Life and Death: Relation Work in Wartime Hong Kong‘. In this talk, Prof. Attewell reflected on the complicated affordances of the colonial archive as a starting point from which to map the cross-class and multiracial networks of relation through which mixed-race and other Chinese women from lower-class (including sex-working) backgrounds struggled to survive the occupation, both within and across the lines dividing the camps from the city.
On 6th November 2024, we had our fourth meeting of Network of Early Career Scholars on Hong Kong History. Ryan Iu (University of Bristol) explored the Hong Kong Chinese and elite network within both local and trans-colonial contexts during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; Matthew Hurst (University of York) explored the ways in which Hong Kong people tried to influence the Joint Declaration negotiations by examining the informal means of political participation they adopted, comparing the extent of access enjoyed by different individuals and groups, and evaluating the effectiveness of these efforts; Hoyee Tse (London Metropolitan University) examined the demolitions of public buildings in Hong Kong as challenges to the destructions of Hong Kong ‘s collective memory and cultural identity; and Lamia Lung (University of Bristol) studied how the Hong Kong migrants to Britain negotiated transnational connections and identities in 1950 – 1997. You can find the abstract of presentation here.
On 12 Nov, Dr. Christopher Cowell from London South Bank University gave the next in the talks in this Series. Dr. Cowell’s talk drew on his new book ,Form Follows Fever: Malaria and the Construction of Hong Kong, 1841–1849 (Chinese University of Hong Kong Press). Using a wide range of visual evidence—from maps and hydrographic charts to architects’ studies and China trade paintings— Dr. Cowell demonstrated the impact of the reality and fears of ‘malaria’ (as originating in ‘bad air’, believed to be a gaseous emanation from the land) compelled the young Hong Kong city then to be conceived of in ‘sections’ as a divided community living at differing heights and in (perceptually) different atmospheres. This stubborn morphology of status has continued to the present day.
On 22 Nov Speakers’ Series talk, Dr. Jessica Siu-yin Yeung from Lingnan University, Hong Kong, gave us a talk on ‘Her Fatal Ways ‘(表姐，你好嘢！), a crime comedy that narrativises Hongkonger’s fearful response to the Tiananmen massacre (1989) towards the end of British colonial rule (1997). Dr. Yeung’s talk contextualised the movie in the Hong Kong screwball comedic tradition of the 1960s, which pokes fun at the northern/ southern cultural differences. Adopting the lens of cultural translation and remake, she argued that the director’s political romance-comedies aimed not to undermine the political regimes in question, but emphasised the individual agency to make humane choices during political upheavals.
On 23 Nov, our History Salon invited Dr. Chor-yung Cheung to talk on ‘Towards an era of political development—District administration and political reform in the 1980s: observation from a junior administrative officer’. The 1980s started the era of limited district administration and political reforms in colonial Hong Kong. It was also from this time that we witnessed the emergence of territory-wide electoral politics in the colony. He reviewed and analysed these political developments, and based on his working experience in the colonial government, shared his observations on these reforms and on the characteristics of colonial governance.
On 25 Nov, Corrine Fu, a visiting PhD student from Lingnan University, presented on her PhD project on the development of Hong Kong identity in the postwar era.
On 27 Nov, our Research Director Prof. Ray Yep gave a book talk for the Nomad Reading Group in Cardiff on his new book ‘Man in a Hurry: Murray MacLehose and Colonial Autonomy in Hong Kong’. He examined MacLechose’s a decade (1971-82) of governorship, deemed as the “golden years” of Hong Kong, by exploring the latest available archival materials. He touched on the uneasiness in the relationship between Hong Kong and London and explained how interest of the colony could be asserted, defended, and negotiated.
Ten years earlier, in the autumn of 2014, discussions were being finalised about the launch of what would be the Centre’s precursor, the Hong Kong History Project. More about this, and how we have marked this important anniversary next time!
Robert Bickers
Professor History, Centre Co-Director