Between Colonizers: Hong Kong's Postcolonial Self-Writing in the 1990s

'Heritage' Language Learning and Ethnic Identity: Korean Americans' Struggle with Language Authorities

“…In this process, the students' diasporic life conditions are 'Heritage' Language Learning and Ethnic Identity captured and expressed through their own forms and contents of languages. Such language expressions, constructed while meandering through and struggling between different codes carrying different native language authorities (English and Korean), are paralleled with the identity formation processes of these students, thus constituting 'the third' or 'new' space emerged and hybridised from these different worlds (Chow, 1992). Rey Chow (1992:155) provides a good analogy for the self-expressions of people with hyphenated identities through her discussion of Hong Kong's self-writing and its vitalisation of the city's unique language.…”

“…By using Hong Kong as a symbol of the 'third space', which cannot simply be collapsed into the dominant culture (Chinese) nor that of the coloniser (British), Rey Chow (1992) elicits further thoughts on hybrid, creative language expressions developed through lived histories woven with different categories of language. Similarly, as a useful means of shedding light on the characteristics of Asian-American identity, Lisa Lowe (1996) refers hybridity to the formation of cultural objects and practices produced by the histories of uneven and unsynthetic power relations.…”

Home, Identity and Translation

“…They could not aspire to ownership of the territory; they could never be masters of their own home where they were born and grew up. Hong Kong would remain forever a colony, as scholars argue that the handover does not represent decolonisation but simply the replacement of British colonialism by Chinese colonialism (Scott 1995 : 189;Chow 1998 ).…”

A borderline case: ethnic politics and gangster films in post-1997 Hong Kong

“…25 Many considered that after the colony reverted to Chinese rule in 1997, all political freedoms would be stripped away and the western legal system would be dismantled. Almost ten years after the transfer of power, these things have not yet happened.…”