Hong Kong

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Archival Hong Kong — cfp

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CFP—Archival Hong Kong: Places, Practices, and Public Culture
A Hong Kong Studies Symposium
Thursday 11 & Friday 12 December 2025 | Online

Organised by Hong Kong Studies, this two-day symposium invites papers from across the humanities and social sciences that examine the idea and function of the archive—understood in the broadest terms—in relation to Hong Kong’s cultural, historical, and spatial imaginaries. From official state repositories and institutional holdings to ephemeral, vernacular, or community-based practices of collecting and remembering, the archive has long figured as a site where power, identity, and cultural memory are
negotiated.

While Hong Kong has often been described through the lenses of displacement and erasure, it also remains a city of remarkable reinvention and creative resilience. In light of recent transformations—spatial, political, and epistemological—the archive emerges as a record of what has been lost and a generative site for imagining what may yet come. We ask: what roles do archives play in preserving or reframing Hong Kong’s pasts and futures? How do artists, writers, educators, curators, activists, and others engage with the archive as form, method, or provocation? And how might we understand “archiving” not solely as an institutional practice but also as an everyday, affective, and often hopeful negotiation with the present?

We welcome proposals that speak to these and related concerns, with a particular emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches and situated methodologies. Topics may include (but are not limited to): Continue reading Archival Hong Kong — cfp →

Backreading Hong Kong 2025 — cfp

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CFP – Backreading Hong Kong Symposium: Anglophone and Sinophone
November 17-18, 2025
University of Toronto
Call for Abstracts
Deadline: September 7, 2025

About the Symposium

The Backreading Hong Kong symposium brings together scholars, writers, translators, and artists to share their cross-disciplinary humanities research and findings on the city that we call home: Hong Kong, and to ignite stimulating and rigorous discussion. Building on the momentum of previous editions, the 2025 symposium explores the entangled, and at times antagonistic, relationship between the Anglophone and the Sinophone in the study of Hong Kong’s cultural and literary fields.

The Anglophone and the Sinophone are often understood as linguistic domains, geopolitical categories, or literary traditions. But in the context of Hong Kong, these labels are never stable or self-evident. They emerge from colonial legacies and Cold War formations, shape diasporic imaginaries and media ecologies, and constitute sites of aesthetic contestation, translation, and reinvention. This symposium aims to revisit these categories not as fixed binaries, but as historically situated and conceptually porous frameworks for rethinking identity, creativity, and resistance in and through Hong Kong. Continue reading Backreading Hong Kong 2025 — cfp →

Soft resistance

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Source: NYT (8/20/25)
Hong Kong Officials Harden Their Stance on ‘Soft Resistance’
With pro-democracy movements long squashed, the government is targeting any hint of subtler expressions of discontent. Even establishment figures say it may be too much.
By Joy Dong, Reporting from Hong Kong

A room crowded with people and stalls selling books.

An independent book fair in Hong Kong last month. A pro-Beijing newspaper said the fair was “full of soft-resistance intentions.”Credit…Peter Parks/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The Hong Kong authorities have a new favorite buzzword: “soft resistance.”

The phrase, which is used to describe anything seen as covertly subversive or insidiously defiant against the government, is showing up in news reports, speeches by top officials, and warnings from government departments. Officials and propaganda organs have warned of the threat of possible “soft resistance” in a book fair, music lyrics, a U.S. holiday celebration and environmental groups.

The term and its widespread official use reflect the political climate of a city that has been transformed since Beijing imposed a national security law in 2020, after quashing mass pro-democracy demonstrations in 2019.

Protests disappeared, and the political opposition was largely dismantled by the yearslong crackdown that followed. Now, with such “hard resistance” held at bay, the authorities appear to be targeting what they see as the next threat: subtler, inconspicuous expressions of discontent.

Officials have warned that Hong Kong continues to be threatened by foreign forces, led by the United States, that seek to destabilize Hong Kong in order to block China’s rise. To the authorities, “soft resistance” is nothing short of a national security threat, and at least a dozen senior officials have used the term in recent weeks. Warning signs include messaging that is deemed to be critical of the government or sympathetic to the opposition or to protesters, whom the authorities have described as rioters or terrorists. Continue reading Soft resistance →

Remembering the 7/21 Yuen Long Attack

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Remembering the 7/21 Yuen Long Attack: Preserving the Spark of Justice Through Memory
By Fu Chan

[中国民间档案馆 China Unofficial Archives is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber through the above link.]

Six years ago, on July 21, 2019, protests entered a second month against the Hong Kong government’s efforts to introduce a law making it easier to extradite people to Mainland China. That night and into the early hours of the next morning, gangs of men clad in white entered the Yuen Long MTR station in the city’s northwest and beat up civilians. The violent attacks were a stark awakening for many Hong Kongers, making it clear that the protests would no longer proceed peacefully—a turning point that imperiled Hong Kong’s existence as a free city.

讓香港人對警方徹底失望的元朗721事件，如今真相還被掩蓋，而努力追尋線索的新聞工作者，卻成了當局威嚇的目標。

The Yuen Long MTR Station. Image source: Shutterstock.

Lau Chun Kong was among those Hong Kongers deeply concerned about the extradition bill and a victim of the 7/21 Yuen Long attack. Born in 1981, Lau entered Hong Kong’s news industry at a young age. From 2002 to 2010, he worked as a reporter and anchor for Hong Kong’s TVB (Television Broadcasts Limited) network, with postings in Beijing and Guangzhou, covering numerous major news stories in Mainland China. Following the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, Lau and his Hong Kong journalist colleagues trekked for two days, becoming the first non-Mainland journalists to reach Yingxiu Town, the earthquake’s epicenter. Lau later left journalism to take up public relations duties with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and Kowloon Motor Bus.

But after being attacked on 7/21, Lau returned to his journalistic roots. He interviewed over forty witnesses and shared his own experiences, creating a historical testament: Dark Night in Yuen Long: My Memories and the Crowd’s Memories. Continue reading Remembering the 7/21 Yuen Long Attack →

Mending Bodies review

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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Tammy Lai-Ming Ho’s review of Mending Bodies, by Hon Lai Chu and translated by Jacqueline Leung. The review appears below and at its online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/tammy-ho/. My thanks to Michael Hill, our translations/translation studies book review editor, for ushering the review to publication.

Kirk Denton, MCLC

Mending Bodies 

By Hon Lai Chu

Translated by Jacqueline Leung

Reviewed by Tammy Lai-ming Ho

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright July, 2025)

Hon Lai Chu, Mending Bodies Tr. Jacqueline Leung. San Francisco: Two Lines Press, 2025. 240 pp. ISBN: 978-1949641769.

In Hon Lai Chu’s 韓麗珠 Mending Bodies, originally published in Chinese as Fengshen 縫身 (which translates literally to “Sewn Body”) fifteen years ago and newly translated into English by Jacqueline Leung, the Hong Kong author envisions a society where connection and loyalty are measured by literal bodily attachment. Under a new law known as the Conjoinment Act, young adults are incentivized—indeed pressured—to surgically “conjoin” with a partner for life. These partnerships may be arranged through state-run matching programs that assess bodily compatibility, but they can also arise from personal choice, including romantic inclination. Yet love is no guarantee of harmony. Whether selected voluntarily or bureaucratically, conjoinment is depicted as a fraught compromise with an increasingly coercive society.

Hon transforms this surreal premise into an unsettling fable of personal freedom under siege, one that resonates far beyond its vaguely defined setting. Through spare, haunting prose and disquieting imagery, Mending Bodies interrogates what it means to relinquish autonomy “for the good of another person and for the good of the country.”[1] It’s a dystopian tale deeply rooted in Hong Kong’s contemporary anxieties, yet its questions about bodily sovereignty and identity feel unnervingly universal.

The novel’s unnamed narrator is a university student writing her dissertation on the history of conjoined humans. She is critical of the Conjoinment Act, even as friends and family urge her to “settle down” and join the program. In Hon’s alternate Hong Kong—a thinly veiled version of the real city—public opinion has been swayed to see conjoinment as the only path to a better life. The narrator observes with unease as newly conjoined couples are celebrated like heroes, showered with champagne by friends and touted as symbols of hope. Meanwhile, unjoined individuals face growing stigma as incomplete or selfish. This Orwellian social pressure is epitomized by the narrator’s close college friend, May. Once a free-spirited roommate, May now boasts about her own conjoinment and pointedly wonders when the narrator will “sacrifice” herself too (134). Through such interactions, Hon paints a chilling portrait of conformity, where even those close to us become agents of state ideology. Continue reading Mending Bodies review →

China Labor Bulletin closes

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Source: NYT (6/12/25)
Chinese Labor Rights Group Led by Former Tiananmen Protest Leader Closes
The China Labor Bulletin, founded by Han Dongfang, tracked factory closures and worker protests in China. It cited financial difficulties for its dissolution.
By Alexandra Stevenson, Reporting from Hong Kong

Han Dongfang, wearing a blue polo shirt and jeans, sits at a cluttered desk in a small room.

Han Dongfang, the founder of China Labor Bulletin, in his Hong Kong office in 2024. The group, which tracked worker unrest in China, announced on Thursday that it was ceasing operation. Credit…Anthony Kwan for The New York Times

China Labor Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based group that tracked worker unrest in China and was started by a former pro-democracy protest leader, said on Thursday that it was shutting down because of financial difficulties. The group had also faced increased scrutiny in recent years amid a broader crackdown and silencing of civil society in Hong Kong.

The group said that because of “financial difficulties and debt issues,” it could no longer maintain operations and had “decided to dissolve.” It said it would stop updating content on its website and social media platforms.

The group was founded by Han Dongfang, one of the last remaining labor rights activists not in hiding in Chinese territory. The group continued to operate in Hong Kong, even as other China-focused civil society groups started closing or leaving from 2020, when Beijing imposed a national security law that has dismantled civil rights protections that gave the city its semiautonomous status.

China Labor Bulletin, a resource for journalists and academics about worker unrest in China, was founded in 1994 by Mr. Han, who had been one of the leaders of pro-democracy protests around Tiananmen Square in 1989. Over the years, the organization closely monitored some of China’s biggest labor disputes and secured compensation for workers with grievances against their companies. It regularly updated a map of labor strikes across the country, and published reports on companies and industries with known labor concerns. Continue reading China Labor Bulletin closes →

Periodising HK cinema

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New publication: Jessica Siu-yin Yeung, “Periodising early Hong Kong cinema (1914–41): Tianyi Hong Kong Studio, Cantonese resistance, and colonial paradox.” Early Popular Visual Culture (May 2025).

I hope this piece will help some listserv subscribers teach early Hong Kong film history. It is written with the intention of serving as reading for novice students who have no prior knowledge of early Hong Kong cinema, providing accurate information, many images, and minimal jargon. Here is the abstract:

This article asks, ‘What do we mean when we say “early Hong Kong screen culture and cinema?” It answers this question with a threefold response. Against the scholarship that has been focusing on Shanghai-Hong Kong connections, this article emphasises the overlooked Canton-Hong Kong connections. It highlights the separationist government Chen Jitang’s contribution to preventing Cantonese filmmaking from being banned by the Kuomintang government in the 1930s when the Nanking government promoted Mandarin as the national language. Also, existing studies have overemphasised ‘The Father of Hong Kong Cinema’, Lai Man-wai and his family as important personages in early Hong Kong cinema for making the first fiction film and some national defence films. Yet this article argues that it was the Shaw Brothers’ Tianyi Hong Kong Studio that inaugurated the era of quality Cantonese filmmaking. Lastly, this article periodises early Hong Kong cinema (1914–41) into three stages: the silent film and the partially-sound Cantonese film age (1914–32), the talkies, the boom, and the censorship of Cantonese filmmaking (1933–36); and the peak and decline of Cantonese filmmaking (1937–41). Hong Kong’s status as a colony paradoxically endowed it with the criteria to preserve Cantonese filmmaking, as this article shall explicate such serendipity with Barbara Ward’s framework of ‘colonial paradox’. In other words, it was the nonchalance of the British Hong Kong government towards Cantonese filmmaking that preserved this endangered indigenous art through the Kuomintang censorship and the wartime, so that Cantonese filmmaking could be continued in the post-war period.

Jessica Siu-yin Yeung <jessicayeung@LN.edu.hk>

A Shrine to Old HK

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Source: NYT (4/25/25)
Where Bruce Lee Practiced on the Roof, a Shrine to Old Hong Kong Rises
At a formerly grand hotel where the famed martial arts star once stayed, a group of collectors is trying to preserve vestiges of the city’s past as its political identity changes.
By Tiffany May; Photographs by Billy H.C. Kwok; Reporting from Hong Kong

A building with a faded sign in Chinese characters atop it, surrounded by trees on a slope.

Lung Wah Hotel in Hong Kong’s northern New Territories.

In its heyday in the 1950s and ’60s, the Lung Wah Hotel, a converted, Spanish revival villa, offered a leafy refuge from the bustle of city life, near a cove and surrounded by parks in Hong Kong’s New Territories.

Winding stairs, flanked by red lanterns, led to a sprawling Chinese-style garden. On summer weekends, people gathered for games of mahjong under a pavilion as children played nearby in sandboxes and swings. Movies were once shot there and Bruce Lee, its most famous patron, practiced martial arts on its roof.

In the decades since, the hotel stopped renting out rooms because new fire codes would require them to be upgraded. The surrounding rice fields were developed into middle-class housing. The restaurant is still turning out its famed roast pigeon, but it has struggled to fill its wood-trimmed dining rooms since its 500-spot parking lot was requisitioned for a new police station in the 1970s.

Now, the operation has been given a chance for a new lease on life — by leaning into the past. An unused teahouse on the property has been remade into Hong Kong Radiance, a hands-on museum that seeks to recreate slices of the vibrant life in the city as it transitioned from a postwar factory town producing clothes, electronics and plastics into a glittering financial center connecting East and West.

John Wu, a graphic designer and well-known local collector who curated the space, said he wanted it to resemble a film set, where each corner had a cohesive color palette.

His goal, he said, was to revive memories for older visitors while also inspiring younger generations. When giving tours, he often calls attention to unique details, encouraging visitors to feel the sturdiness of the wood, for example. “Only then can these objects get a second life,” he said in an interview. Continue reading A Shrine to Old HK →

HK Democratic Party to disband

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Source: NYT (4/13/25)
A Chapter Closes: Hong Kong’s Democratic Party to Disband
The party, once the city’s largest opposition force, long championed a moderate approach. It ended up squeezed between a discontented populace and a repressive Beijing.
By Tiffany May, Reporting from Hong Kong

A man in a hoodie stands near a table covered with microphones as journalists shoot pictures of him.

Lo Kin-hei, the chairman of Hong Kong’s Democratic Party, at a news conference on Sunday. Credit…Tyrone Siu/Reuters

The Democratic Party in Hong Kong was for decades the city’s largest opposition party. It led protests demanding universal suffrage. Its lawmakers sparred with officials in the legislature about China’s encroachment on the region.

It was born in the 1990s of an audacious hope: that opposition politicians and activists could pressure Hong Kong’s iron-fisted rulers in Beijing to fulfill their promise of expanding democratic freedoms for the city of several million people.

On a rising wave of demands for democracy, the party grew to more than 1,000 members at its height in 2008. Its effort to maintain a moderate stance drew criticism, including from within its own ranks, from those seeking to push harder against Beijing. Yet moderation could not save the party’s leaders from being caught in the dragnet as China tightened its control over Hong Kong.

Now it is disbanding, one more casualty in Beijing’s suppression of Hong Kong’s once-vibrant political opposition.

Its leaders have been arrested and imprisoned on national security charges. Its members are effectively barred from running for local office, and routinely face harassment and threats. Raising money is hard. Continue reading HK Democratic Party to disband →

Lingnan postdoc

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Applications are now invited for the following post:
Postdoctoral Fellow
The Advanced Institute for Global Chinese Studies
Lingnan University, HK

The Advanced Institute for Global Chinese Studies (The Institute) now invites applications for a postdoctoral fellowship in premodern Chinese literature.

The appointee’s job duties include publishing research output in venues of international standing, applying for external grants, assisting with the Institute’s projects on Chinese poetry and literary theory, and assuming teaching duties as required by the University. The appointee will have the opportunities to co-publish research articles with the Director. Abilities to apply digital humanities methods to literary studies will be a strong plus. The appointee will be provided funding for organizing up to two academic workshops on topics related to his/her research projects or co-organizing one international symposium.

General Requirements
Applicants should have a PhD in premodern Chinese literature or related fields. Applicants must be a good native or near-native writer of English, capable of translating classical Chinese literary texts.

Applicants should provide information about their qualifications, research interests and achievements along with evidence of quality teaching. Experiences with grant-funded research and grant applications are highly desirable. Candidates with less/more experience will also be considered for appointment at a relevant rank. Continue reading Lingnan postdoc →

HK’s last remaining activist

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Source: NYT (11/27/24)
Meet One of Hong Kong’s Last Remaining Pro-Democracy Activists
For Chan Po-ying, a labor rights leader, life is one of constant police surveillance, even on hikes. But she finds solace from tiny gestures of support.
By Tiffany May

Chan Po-ying posed for photographs in Hong Kong on Friday. Credit…Billy H.C. Kwok for The New York Times

When a court in Hong Kong sentenced 45 pro-democracy politicians and activists to prison sentences of up to 10 years, it took down the city’s once-vocal opposition in one fell swoop, making clear the risks of dissent.

But a handful still remain.

One of them is Chan Po-ying, the 68-year-old leader of the League of Social Democrats, a political party focused on labor and social welfare.

Hong Kong’s opposition was once a small but formidable presence. Lawmakers organized filibusters to block bills they saw as limiting freedoms. Street marches were common. Then, after anti-government protests engulfed Hong Kong in 2019, China imposed a sweeping crackdown on the city.

Ms. Chan took over as the party’s chairwoman in 2021 after the arrest of several members and leaders, including her husband, Leung Kwok-hung, a former lawmaker better known as Long Hair. Mr. Leung was among those sentenced last week. Continue reading HK’s last remaining activist →

HK pro-democracy leaders jailed

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Source: NYT (11/18/24)
Dozens of Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Leaders Are Jailed Up to 10 Years
阅读简体中文版 | 閱讀繁體中文版
The 45 defendants, including Joshua Wong, were at the forefront of the opposition movement crushed by Beijing. Many had already been in jail for years.
By Tiffany May, Reporting from Hong Kong

Ventus Lau is one of 45 activists and politicians who was sentenced in the city’s biggest national security trial. His girlfriend, Emilia Wong, a gender rights activist, talks about the impact his case has had on their relationship. Credit…Tyrone Siu/Reuters

Anywhere else, it wouldn’t have been controversial: a public vote by pro-democracy activists trying to strengthen their hand in legislative elections, to decide who should run. More than 600,000 people took part in the peaceful, unofficial poll.

But this was Hong Kong, just after the imposition of a national security law by Beijing, and officials had warned that even a straw poll would be taken as defiance.

On Tuesday, the price of defying Beijing was made clear. Forty-five former politicians and activists who had organized or taken part in the 2020 primary by the opposition camp were sentenced by a Hong Kong court to prison, including for as long as 10 years. Continue reading HK pro-democracy leaders jailed →

Sedition in Hong Kong

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Source: NYT (9/27/24)
This Is What Can Land You in Jail for Sedition in Hong Kong
Three men were the first to be convicted under the city’s recently expanded national security law, which has greatly curtailed political speech.
By David Pierson and Tiffany May

Visitors in a museum look at a screen where Xi Jinping is speaking in front of microphones.

Visitors watching a video of Xi Jinping at the National Security Exhibition in Hong Kong Museum of History in August. Credit…Anthony Kwan for The New York Times

Wearing a T-shirt with a protest slogan.

Scrawling pro-democracy graffiti on public bus seats.

Criticizing Xi Jinping on social media.

Three men in Hong Kong were sentenced to prison last week for these acts of protest, which in another era probably would have drawn little notice — showing the power of a newly expanded national security law aimed at muzzling dissent.

The rulings, rendered over two days by a judge whom Hong Kong’s leader handpicked, highlight the political transformation that has taken place here.

A financial center and a city accustomed to freedom of political expression, Hong Kong now more closely resembles mainland China, where criticism of the ruling Communist Party is rarely, if ever, tolerated. Continue reading Sedition in Hong Kong →

CUHK position

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The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Assistant Professor / Associate Professor (Substantiable-track) – (240002GQ)
Department/ Unit: Centre for China Studies
Closing Date: November 15, 2024

The Centre for China Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) seeks to appoint a faculty member to help further strengthen the study of modern and contemporary China in a global context. An interdisciplinary research and teaching unit that directly speaks to one of the University’s strategic areas for development, the Centre offers degree programmes at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Applicants trained in humanities disciplines with a focus on modern and contemporary China, especially those from the fields of anthropology, history, cultural and media studies, are encouraged to apply. The successful candidate should be able to teach courses in English to a diverse student body and is committed to interdisciplinary research and innovative pedagogy.

Applicants should have (i) a PhD degree in a relevant academic discipline; (ii) a clear research profile that contributes to and extends the existing strengths of the Centre; (iii) a strong record or potential of quality publications and grant applications; (iv) a strong dedication to teaching and student engagement. To be considered for appointment at the rank of Associate Professor, applicants should have achieved a high standing in the relevant research field and demonstrated academic and international professional leadership. Continue reading CUHK position →

HK editors convicted of sedition

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Source: NYT (8/28/24)
Hong Kong Editors Convicted of Sedition in Blow to Press Freedom
The editors said they published stories in the public interest. A judge ruled they were guilty of a crime against national security.
By Tiffany May, Reporting from Hong Kong

Two men stand outside a building as a group of journalists photograph them.

Patrick Lam, left, and Chung Pui-kuen of Stand News leaving court in Hong Kong last year. Credit…Louise Delmotte/Associated Press

The two veterans of Hong Kong’s long boisterous news media scene didn’t shy away from publishing pro-democracy voices on their Stand News site, even as China cranked up its national security clampdown to silence critics in the city.

Then the police came knocking and, more than two and a half years later, a judge Thursday convicted the two journalists — the former editor in chief of Stand News, Chung Pui-kuen, and his successor, Patrick Lam — of conspiring to publish seditious materials on the now-defunct liberal news outlet. Both face potential prison sentences.

The landmark ruling highlighted how far press freedom has shrunk in the city, where local news outlets already self censor to survive and some foreign news organizations have left or moved out staff amid increasing scrutiny from the authorities.

During the trial, prosecutors characterized news articles and opinion pieces published by the two as biased against the government and a threat to national security. The articles were similar to those Stand News had been publishing for years. But after the authorities crushed protests that rocked the city in 2019, China imposed a national security law, and tolerance for dissent in the city’s freewheeling media began to evaporate. Continue reading HK editors convicted of sedition →