ICYMI: Anxiety in Vancouver over Hong Kong’s future

A different angle on diaspora politics:

Vancouver has long been intimately tied to this kind of soul-searching about the future of Hong Kong.

Hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong Chinese became Canadian citizens in the late 1980s and 1990s after the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing in 1989 and in the years leading up to 1997. But many later returned to work and live in Hong Kong as mainland China prospered economically.

At the same time, a generation of Chinese and non-Chinese Canadians from Vancouver also packed their bags and headed to Hong Kong seeking adventure, work and ties to their heritage as political fears gave way to the lure of interesting opportunities — often, again, tied to the rise of mainland China.

As such, both groups, especially those with more established business interests, are generally more constrained to speak up publicly for Hong Kong’s interests, though many will privately sigh.

“Concerns for Hong Kong go hand-in-hand with needing to also consider their beneficial relationship with China,” observes Helen Hok-Sze Leung, associate professor at Simon Fraser University, who grew up in Hong Kong.

Lam and others, however, are part of a younger generation in Vancouver who relate with peers in Hong Kong who have become more strident in identifying themselves as being part of a Hong Kong that is culturally separate from mainland China.

“It’s the city where I grew up so I have stronger ties and I naturally feel bad” about what is happening, says Lam.

“I go onto Twitter and Weibo and see Hong Kong young people writing (in the local dialect) of Cantonese and declaring themselves as Hong Kongers first,” says Leung. “This is a generation that was born under (mainland) Chinese rule and yet their sense of local (Hong Kong) identity and asserting that culture seems stronger than in my generation, and this percolates to migrants (who move to Vancouver).”

Lee, the lecturer, recently spoke about independent film Ten Years, which became an unexpected hit in Hong Kong when it was released in mid-December. The film consists of five ominous short stories hypothesizing what Hong Kong will be like 10 years from now. In one, cab drivers who speak Cantonese instead of Mandarin have their livelihoods clipped when they are prohibited from picking up certain passengers. In another, books are censored and banned ones are pulled off shelves.

According to Reuters, the film broke box office records in Hong Kong for attendance, but around a month later, after mainland Chinese state-controlled publication “denounced Ten Years in a January editorial,” the filmmakers were told by cinemas in Hong Kong they couldn’t continue showing it because of scheduling issues.

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