Author: Benjamin Cheung

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Chinese or Canadian?

I’d rather be called a ‘banana’ without the laughter and mocking of my pronunciation

Creator:
Hailey Leung 梁嘉怡 (she/her)

People used to assume that one’s cultural identity is extremely simple: For bicultural individuals, their two cultural identities change like a hydraulic system – the stronger that one identity is, the weaker the other identity becomes. More recent work recognizes that cultural identity is complex, and numerous things contribute to one’s cultural identity – comfort with particular cultural values, preferences for cultural foods, proficiency with various languages, and others. It’s no surprise, then, that bicultural individuals, including Hong Kong Canadians, often find themselves to be at the crossroads of two cultural worlds – kind of fitting in both, but not really fully embodying either. Hailey’s comic does a great job of depicting her personal struggles with her bicultural identity – whether it was because of her accent, her family’s perception of her, or the discrimination that she faced. What other factors do you think can also impact someone’s cultural identity?


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Cantonese Through TikTok

“Proud of you girly. Cantonese is hard!”

Creator:
Deborah Wong (She/her)

Anyone who learns Cantonese as an adult will tell you how difficult it Cantonese is to learn. Just figuring out the different tones is enough to confuse even the most motivated of learners. This can get even more frustrating for heritage diasporic learners because they may feel the pressure to learn it, some shame in not knowing it, and numerous other feelings. Traditionally, learners have had to learn Cantonese either formally through classes (which have historically been difficult to come by due to the lack of offerings), or informally through friends and family. As Deborah details in this piece, TikTok has emerged as a key platform to provide relatable resources to help diasporic individuals learn and improve on Cantonese, replete with a comments section that, for better or for worse, connects millions of users together. In what ways do you think TikTok content differs from other types of content to help learners pick up Cantonese?

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Food is Life

Food physically represents beliefs and values that would otherwise be intangible and difficult to maintain morale with.

Creator:
Mandie Leung (She/her)

When one thinks of a diasporic community, it takes very little for us to get to the question of “What foods do they eat?” Afterall, food is one of humanity’s basic needs, and food varies dramatically across different cultural groups. This variation indexes the different geographical, geological, and climatic conditions from which these cultures emerged; the interplay with other political entities; and individual ingenuity. In this piece, Mandie traces how foodways for Hong Kong diaspora persist, and help Hong Kong diaspora preserve and maintain their connections to a distant home – real and imagined – whether it’s through Hong Kong style cafés, or dim sum restaurants. When you think of Hong Kong food, what other offerings can you think of?

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Hong Kong Diaspora in a Post-Unrest Era

“We cannot be prosecuted due to our lifestyle or expression of thoughts in other places…”

Creator:
Adrian Chan (He/him)

Migration is an immense undertaking because it entails that one is uprooting their entire life and existence, stepping away from an ecosystem within which they have become accustomed, to join an ecosystem in which they are strangers and novices. Such an immense undertaking must be predicated on an equally immense motivation; but that motivation varies drastically between individuals. Some do it for employment opportunities, others do it to avoid political persecution, among innumerable other reasons. Through interviews, Adrian uncovers the motivation behind two Hong Kongers’ migration to Canada, and how they relate to the current political situation in Hong Kong. What other kinds of motivations have you observed from Hong Kong diaspora migrating to Canada, or other destinations?

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Endless Waiting

I’ll see you all underneath the pot, in another life.

Creator:
Andie Lloyd 李安安 (Any pronouns)

Being “diapsora” means navigating complex feelings of maintaining one’s original identity and a sense of “foreignness” in a foreign land. For Hong Kongers who have either self-exiled or simply moved abroad in search of bigger and brighter futures, whether in Taiwan, the UK, Canada, or elsewhere, the search for familiarity and “being settled” is often an endless search. In Vancouver, this constant straddling of the two motivations has led to the proliferation of Hong Kong cultural amenities across the Lower Mainland, allowing fellow Hong Kongers to gather, reminisce, and complain how something doesn’t compare to what they’re like in Hong Kong. In this work, Andie highlights real-life experiences of Hong Kong diaspora both from their own perspective as well as others, accompanied by a playlist of quintessential Cantonese music. In what ways do you think diasporic individuals try to strike a balance between familiarity and settling in – or is there something wrong with this question in the first place?

(Note: There is a playlist that accompanies the following piece: Access playlist here

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Reflecting on Migration

The strum of cascading xylophones are my parents FaceTiming us 7pm our time, 10am their time.

Creators:
Agatha Chiu 趙倩怡 (She/her)

Migration is often seen as a pathway to a better life – a chance to leave behind troubles at home, difficulties in one’s current circumstance, and burdens from one’s family. Unfortunately, the realities of migration are often very different from those that people imagine. Loneliness. Homesickness. Missing family. Missing food. Acculturation. Many things. People engage in all kinds of artistic pursuits to express their migration experiences. In this series of poems, Agatha details her own experiences of migration – whether it’s about trying to connect with family back home, or finding her place in this new culture by navigating a lot of self-doubt and lack of belongingness. Do her experiences resonate with you as well if you have a migration history?

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“Ten Years” Later…

Seeing all this unfold, I feel guilty that I can’t fully participate in the protests.

Creators:
Amber Lee 李瑋翹 (she/her)
Stephy Tsang

One of the most memorable and monumental moments in Hong Kong in recent history were the Anti-Extraditional Law Amendment Bill protests in 2019-2020; but that is only the latest installment of a history of protests and demonstrations in what had been a healthy democratic society in Hong Kong. The previous protests in Hong Kong were in 2014, more popularly referred to as the Umbrella Movement, which pushed for more democratic electoral reforms in Hong Kong, which went against that which was decided by the Mainland Chinese government. Much like in the 2019 protests, the 2014 protests saw violence against protestors perpetrated by the police and other pro-Establishment (i.e. pro-Beijing) groups. All of this has been seen as the quiet encroachment of China’s political influence on Hong Kong’s politics and civics, leading to the film called Ten Years. In their piece, Amber and Stephy co-wrote a series of fictional diary entries of two youngsters who went through the 2019 protests, watched Ten Years, and are reflecting on how accurate the movie was in depicting the backward slide of Hong Kong’s political landscape over the ten years since the 2014 protests. If you’ve watched the film as well, how prescient do you feel the film to be? (Note: The video plays very rapidly. When watching it, please pause with each screen to fully read and appreciatge this work).

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A plea to Cantonese parents

beg of you to try your best to pass down the language to your kids.

Creator:
Tim (he/him)

Regardless of how people perceive the current and future status of Cantonese in Hong Kong, it has always been an important goal for Hong Kong diasporic parents to ensure that their children will be able to maintain some level of proficiency in terms of Cantonese. Despite this ideal, many diasporic children end up growing up losing the ability to communicate in Cantonese, potentially leading to an inability to connect with older members in the family who do not speak English, and also an inability to participate in relevant cultural experiences. Sometimes this is a response to experiences of racism, sometimes this is because of pragmatic concerns of not wanting to go to Cantonese school, and sometimes parents simply lack the time to teach their children Cantonese properly themselves. Timothy’s impassioned plea for Cantonese-speaking parents to pass on their language to their children based on his personal experience is worth considering. What are some effective methods for Cantonese-speaking parents to pass down their language?

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Frozen splinters

“I feel like I’m in the middle between [a HKer] and [a Canadian].”

Creator:
Joshua Liu (he/him)

When we think about any given diasporic group, there is often a tendency to homogenize people’s mental representation of that group, and the Hong Kong diaspora is no exception to this either. In reality, there can be much disagreement (and agreement) amongst the Hong Kong diaspora on various issues, including something as fundamental as cultural identity. Joshua’s interviewees and his analysis clearly point out the varied nature experiences amongst the diaspora, and also point out the intergenerational schisms that exist within the community. This is especially apparent within churches that have been a prominent safe haven for many newcomers from Hong Kong by providing community and spiritual support. The older waves of migrants interact with numerous political issues differently than the younger wave of migrants, and they also adopt different cultural identities as well. Do you think that intergenerational differences are qualitatively different for diasporic populations, or all intergenerational differences the same?

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Milk tea, pineapple buns, egg tarts, satay beef, BBQ pork rice, baked rice, macaroni soups

“If you’ve ever eaten at a HK cafe in HK, you’ll know what I mean” (Liang, 2023)

Creator:
Michelle Wong 黃嘉敏

Food “from home” is such an effective way for people to connect with their heritage culture because food is not just about the process of eating it. It entails the flavours of home, the smells of home, and even the sounds of home. Eating food “From home” may even transport people back to the very scenes in which they had eaten that food. For folks in the Hong Kong diaspora, they seek various types of cultural assets in Canada so they can still have moments where they feel like they’re home. Nostalgia “hits one right in the feels,” as they say, and it gets triggered by all sorts of things – by food, by people, and by sights and sounds, among others. Michelle focuses on how night markets (夜市) and HK-style cafés (茶餐廳) serve as the trigger point for nostalgia and cultural connection for Hong Kong diaspora in Canada. What other cultural assets serve as similar trigger points for you?

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