For a long time, Hong Kong has been a city that was China’s gateway to Western culture and trade, and also the West’s gateway to financial capital in China. This led the city to develop into a bustling metropolis, a sprawling international and cosmopolitan financial hub, and the manifestation of a particular type of East-meets-West cultural admixture. Throughout its history, it has been the home and refuge for countless people seeking safety from war, instability, and persecution. More recently, it has experienced more periods of net emigration than the opposite, with Canada being one of the most popular destinations for people looking for (real or imagined) greener pastures. Who are these people coming from Hong Kong? What about the second+ generation Hong Kong settlers in Canada? What are their experiences like in Canada, and how have all of them changed the face of Canada?
One particular question I hope we can all consider and begin to address also has to do with the positionality of Hong Kong settlers – especially first and second generation settlers: Hong Kong was (is? – let’s talk about this in class) a colonized place. “Canada,” situated on Turtle Island, also has been, and continues to be a colonized space for several centuries. For Hong Kongers settling from one colonized place to another, it is important to consider one’s complicity in the ongoing settler colonialism of Indigenous lands – lands that have belonged to, and been tended to by, Indigenous peoples who have been here since time immemorial. How might the colonialisms be different, but also similar? What are the Hong Kong settlers’ obligations, and how may decolonization be similar or different between the two spaces?
There is no way to “master” this course in the traditional sense – that isn’t the purpose of this course, and I am certainly not a “master” of this course either. This is a course about learning, sharing, and discovering.
I do hope, though, that when the course ends, students successfully meeting the course requirements will be able to:
- Compare and contrast the various ways in which identity, culture, and perspectives on social issues among Hong Kong diaspora in Canada
- Understand the intersections of various social issues in impacting Hong Kong diaspora in Canada
- Critically analyze published research on a range of topics impacting Hong Kong diaspora in Canada, including the historical contexts influencing migration from Hong Kong to Canada, cultural adjustment, and discrimination
- Engage in rigorous oral and written discussions about complex social and political academic topics that relate to how Hong Kong diaspora engage with, and are affected by, social issues in Canada
- Produce scholarly written work that effectively demonstrates understanding of complex social and political academic topics pertaining to the identities and cultural experiences of Hong Kong diaspora in Canada with academic rigour
All images on this page have been licensed under CC0 Creative Commmons license.