#Hong Kong diaspora

[lostinmac]

An Autumn’s Tale (1987)

Dir. Mabel Cheung

[panicinthestudio]

Former Hong Kong bookstore begins new chapter in upstate New York, July 30, 2024

From 2021 to 2022, Hong Kong experienced its biggest population drop since record-keeping began more than 60 years ago. Tens of thousands left because of strict COVID-19 policies and a crackdown on civil liberties by Beijing. Special correspondent Christopher Booker spent time with an American couple part of this exodus and reports on their journey for our arts and culture series, CANVAS. PBS NewsHour

[teafiend]

This ending to “Comrade: Almost a Love Story” (1996) hits as hard as it did more than two decades ago. Hopeful and poignant, it was the perfect ending 👏🏽

The movie is so, so fabulous ⭐️

An oldie favourite, I am struck anew by how stunning and accomplished Maggie Cheung is 🌸🤩👏🏽

#甜蜜蜜

[sixohsixoheightfourtwo]

just re the british chinese food discourse - the british library has this great audio clip and transcript from Woon Wing Yip who came to the UK from Hong Kong in the 1950s - he started out in restaurants & later started a chain of supermarkets. here's their transcript -

Wing Yip discusses Chinese restaurants:

The Chinese restaurant - we came the right time, in the right place and do it right. That's why so many Chinese. Up to the middle sixties, after nine o'clock or in the evening, you go out for a meal, there are two places you go - either you buy fish and chips which closes at ten o'clock, half past ten, or you go into a hotel where the last order is half past nine. Or you could go to Wimpey cafeteria. The Chinese came along, opened a restaurant and we put a carpet down, we put a tablecloth down. Before that restaurant, you only got a carpet and a tablecloth and a waiter service only in hotels, which were beyond ordinary means, ordinary people's means and they close half past nine. And other than that, Wimpey, cup of tea, a bun or fish and chips. The Chinese bring the tablecloth, carpet, lower it and bring the fish restaurant up above it, right hit the niche market. Open eleven o'clock - the pub close half past ten, eleven. The last order in the pub is eleven, we open half past eleven so we hit it. At the right time, doing the right thing and do it right. And for the first time, the British had more money to spend, from middle sixties on. Right hit it on the nail.

...

In Yorkshire bread and butter - everyone come in and wanted bread and butter as well. They wanted curry chicken and rice and with bread and butter. Curry, something, bread and butter, mixed grill bread and butter, everything bread and butter. We had a little department attached to the tea and coffee side, got two English ladies that every day for two, three hours, doing bread and butters. You know, for two hours for lunchtime - everybody bread and butter. When the menu, we say 'curry chicken and chips, or rice'. To begin with a lot of people were like 'curry chicken, and chips', not rice - and bread and butter. The chef made the curry sauce, the chef buy the curry powders, and with the other few powders, get together spices, put the onions, orange peel everything, they boiled it for hours, mixed them. Very good.

What other things were on the menu?

Half Chinese, half English. Mixed grill, fillet steak, pork chop, omelettes. No Chinese restaurant outside London would not have English menu because they're still in the process of changing. That's why the Chinese do it right - we can not say in 50s, 60s and 70s, say you had had Chinese food. Say 4 people come in, if 3 of them want Chinese, 1 do Chinese, the second has omelette or salad or something. We do it right, we don't insist to say you have to have Chinese. Food is a culture, food is a culture - you cannot change people in one year. In those days, in those days in the 50s, I think a lot of people never had Chinese food before. They go in the Chinese restaurant because the other English restaurant close at half past nine, their last order, so they came out after half past nine they go to Chinese restaurant and they ask for mixed grill - in Yorkshire mixed grill is very popular.

Did people ever make negative comments about Chinese food at that time?

Oh yes, they say a lot of things, they say a lot - the main thing, we're standing outside, there's a menu, they say 'sweet and sour pork', everybody think, 'sweet and sour pork? Sweet and sour?' They are very sarcastic. They couldn't understand how can a thing be sweet and sour at the same time. Until they taste it - it is.

[chubbygaysunite]

If anyone from Hong Kong or speaks Cantonese sees this I would love it if You could reply and give me some notes on names I’ve chosen, and also if the familial terms I’ve found are correct!

Yeung Jyun-Fa — using the characters for ‘poplar’, ‘to wish’, and ‘flower’, I wanted to make a name that meant ‘the poplar wishing for/awaiting flowers’ as a nod to the story’s themes.

Yeung Tai-Song — using the characters for ‘poplar’, ‘to weep aloud/cry’, and ‘to kowtow’, I’m trying to make a name that means ‘the poplar weeps and kowtows’ as foreshadowing to the character’s arc.

Sai loh — I have been told this is a colloquial terms for ‘little brother’.

Sai mui — the same for ‘little sister’.

Sing-si — the term for the family name’s Chinese character.

Is this all correct?? And further more would these romanizations be appropriate approximations for a story written in english?

[kaxen]

I keep getting Chinese spam texts and it's like joke's on you, I can't even read that!

[venus-light]

renaissance in the 21st century

[outragedtortilla]

So, I do not include any official pronunciation, but represent the Cantonese diaspora of imperfect, incorrect but widespread pronunciations, clownishly embarrassing noun replacements, for the Full Diaspora Experience.

Lucy dan

[floatyhands]

Hi! So I just felt the need to clarify the distinction between "Macanese" and "Macau person/native person from Macau", since the wording in the post might imply that those are interchangeable. (There were attempts to make them interchangeable by the government, but the wording of the post points otherwise.)

The Macanese (Cantonese: 土生葡人 or 麥境士) are a distinct multiracial ethnic group within Macau, which as the post said, have Portuguese and Chinese heritage (but also genetic traces such as Malay, Indian or even Japanese influences). They have their own (endangered) Portuguese-based creole called Patuá (which has Cantonese Malay and Sinhala influences), though almost all of them can speak Cantonese, and most know English and historically Portuguese. A lot of them are culturally Catholic. Here's a very short video about Patuá:

The average person in Macau on the other hand, is not Macanese, but instead a Macau person (澳門人). They speak Cantonese, usually consider themselves Cantonese, and typically do not culturally align themselves with Portugal.

There were attempts in 90s during the late Portuguese colonial years to redefine "Macanese" to refer to all people from Macau regardless of ethnicity, but that risks making people assume all people from Macau share the same Portuguese-Asian Creole ethnicity, or risks erasing the long cultural legacy of the Macanese ethnic group. So, I thought I'd chime in.

Day 205

Today’s Asian character is Lea Bing from Barbie!

She is Macanese.

(Thanks to the person who suggested her! In case ya’ll didn’t know, Macau is an administrative district in China, but is considered its own ethnicity due to Macanese being a mix of Portuguese and Chinese blood!)

[letsrevince]

an excellent read on 1000xRESIST (very spoiler heavy) about the Chinese diaspora, Hong Kong and generational trauma

[apas-95]

Have you heard of/played the game "1000xRESIST" ? Fitgirl has it. I am super curious about your take on it, the politics especially. Have a great day!

I haven't. From a cursory glance, 'game from Vancouver, Canada, about diaspora intergenerational trauma and the Hong Kong protests' doesn't sound like a good start, but again, I haven't played it.

[krownest]

@eusuchia i saw this and this post recently on arundhati roy's the god of small things and learned about the term mango lit and diaspora lit, went down the op's posts on diaspora (via search bar) and found this article that i just finished and it's very very interesting (and so many links to further reading!)

and my own long ass diaspora thoughts under the cut.

caveat that i have not read much on these topics, these are all just disjointed thoughts in my head on chinese diaspora politics:

re: politics and marxism (i use the latter word very lightly bc i have not started on the theory at all) in relation to hk and china, and going back to the whole yellow/blue dichotomy

like you have hk ppl immigrating to the uk, and of course ppl who are able to immigrate have a certain financial background but even then there are differences - e.g. a banker or lawyer working in hk immigrates to uk with their kids because they want to leave the current political climate + better education for their kids (see: national education controversy). they get an equivalent banker/lawyer job in the uk and it's all good and they visit hk twice a year. vs say a low/mid-tier government worker who moves w their family to uk (also for kids' education reasons) and cannot find a job or has to "settle" for a customer service/retail/f&b job. and you have the people back in hk who say re: the latter, "well they were better off staying in hk!" and of course some of these ppl are very "blue"/pro-gvt/ccp-aligned.

and then continuing that discourse you have ppl back in hk talking about how canada/uk are slowly failing (transit system, high grocery prices, monopolies, nhs) and how these countries + certain places in the us that have a lot of hk/cantonese/chinese (san francisco, seattle, new york, houston) are very dangerous bc of a decrease of public order (unhoused, crime levels, drug use). seriously the number of times i have heard ppl say "isn't the 治安 so bad in x/y/z“ in the past 2 years. (fun fact if you didn't know but marijuana is considered as dangerous as heroin in hk and the psas treat it as such which is very funny)

and yes i agree there are many issues in canada (can't speak for uk obviously) w housing, transit, high cost of living, monopolies, healthcare etc but the solution to that (imo) is shifting to the left, right? but the hk people who immigrate here (mostly yellow) or have been here for decades (mostly blue) all tend towards the conservative party because of money (less tax, better business) and "family values". i've been thinking about it recently and imo yellow encompasses the liberal and neoliberal pro-democracy pro-western values pro-free speech thinking (and yes lgbtq rights to some extent, like i think the majority of lgbtq ppl and ppl in artsy/film/creative fields (much overlap) consider themselves to be yellow) and leans younger (40s and below), while blue encompasses conservative pro-ccp pro-gvt (beijing though tbh it could mean hk) pro-police and leans older. at the same time the blue side is somewhat pro-business (despite ostensibly being pro-left) because a big thing about the 2019 protests is that it was bad for business (basically wtf are they stirring this shit up for. tourists are leaving and profits are down etc).

and so the blue side "won" and now the hk gvt has essentially gotten rid of most opposition (either arrested, jailed or left hk) and technically since beijing is communist (though of course has shifted to capitalism etc) they should be improving hk, which has many many issues (housing: least affordable in the world by far, many social welfare issues (underfunded and understaffed as per usual), massive income inequality, labour issues (see: recent spate of construction worker deaths), ppl extremely normalised to working 9 to 7).

however, hk is essentially run by real estate tycoons, and most of the government's money comes from land sales (there is no sales tax. there's salary tax but you know. tax evasion) so if property developers are Not Happy they can all decide not to buy said land (recent SCMP article about this). currently (as of the past year) the property market has been Bad (this is a good thing bc homes get more affordable and ppl can buy) and will probably not do too well in the next 2-3 years (the local/global economy is not doing too well etc. idk much really about economics). anyway i'm curious to see to what extent the new gvt with its minimal opposition can actually improve in hk esp since it the city is basically capitalism incarnate (south korea too tbh).

my dad also said something very interesting to me about hk: he thinks that since china has "taken back" hong kong, it cannot let hk "fail" /decline as a city because that would make them lose face. so he thinks that hong kong will tend towards prosperity in the future.

sorry i just realised this was supposed to be about diaspora. i've been thinking abt the pushback from non-diaspora (sorry i hate using the word """The Motherland""") towards them (see below:)

(haven't watched this film but it does look interesting)

and thinking about the political leanings of chinese diaspora in general. i feel a lot of chinese diaspora are diaspora bc their parents left china when the ccp came into power (1950s), or left hk in the 1970s (leftist riots), 1980s-90s (imminent handover to ccp), 2020s (national security law) etc so their parents' politics will tend to be anticommunist. (idk enough to speak about immigrants from taiwan). and i guess to some extent that's how you end up with ppl who are either conservative or boba liberals.

been also thinking about the qiao collective (i think they were mostly on twitter which i was not on, but are now relatively inactive) which was made up of leftist diaspora chinese against sinophobia and came up against accusations of being tankies and pro-ccp (skimmed this article but it gives an overview of the qiao collective).

i think there's a false but encouraged conflation of china, the ccp, and communism (e.g. why are you communist but not pro-ccp, if you don't love china you aren't a patriot (and by 愛國 the speaker means the ccp), if you criticise the ccp you are being sinophobic etc etc) from both china and the west and it is all deeply frustrating.

and then of course you also have the everlasting discourse on uyghur governance in xinjiang (repression depending on who you talk to) that has been so muddied by fanatical and unquestioning coverage by the west and unquestioningly held up as the pinnacle of sinophobia and stated to be utterly false by some ppl on this site. which imo the latter idea seems deeply naive (see this post, unsourced but i think it is a better idea of what is actually happening there.)

and also the paradox of ppl from mainland china who move to canada but are still deeply pro-ccp (i am thinking of when pro-china and pro-hk ppl clashed during overseas protests in 2019) but to be fair this is not a really good argument because it can be applied to basically everything...perhaps a similar parallel would be british muslims protesting lgbt and sex education outside uk schools.

sidenote recently i saw a pro-ccp chinese diaspora person on tumblr mention they wanted to move to taiwan. and i do wonder what the thinking is behind that (see: military exercises around the island, the spectre of imminent invasion of taiwan etc) even though i do understand the wanting to move to taiwan.

long ass reply. and of course all of these thoughts are open to criticism

having some thoughts abt chinese diaspora lately (i am not diaspora btw. i think). if anyone has recommended readings please share

[soapdish290]

I just played 1000xRESIST.

My first thought was "oh this has vaguely breathy voice acting with oodles of weight this is my shit" Shortly later I assumed "ooh I'm playing a smol gay girl from Hong Kong that's cool" This was followed by "oh no I'm actually playing a lightly terrible teen from Hong Kong, complex!" Then I began to understand "...I'm playing a clone who is witnessing the life of a lightly terrible teen?" "The teen has issues?" "There's a cycle of issues, oh no" "oh." "oh." "Oh!" Then it was "oh"s all the way down for about 12 more hours with a fair bit of weeping and sobbing and some very undignified noises

I'm trying to recommend this game but I'm fucking sucking at it because it's 10am and I've spent the last 16 straight hours playing the entirety of this game and every part of my body woke up during the credits and started screaming at me

And this is NOT a good state to be in as far as wording good enough to describe the themes in this fucking game. If you like:

Exploring the cycle of violence and abuse and the desolation caused therein

Exploring the end of the world

The last 2 episodes of Evangelion

Grief and Loss on scales personal and unimaginable

Explorations of immortality

What it means to experience Time and Memory non-linearly

Alternate ways of existing in a temporal space

Alien understandings of Life

Consequences

Love

Explorations of childhood

Coming of age stories

Stories about Asian Diaspora

or Sobbing and Crying

Then you should play this fucking game holy fucking balls I can't recommend it enough.

[mah-o-daryaa]

ATLA Modern AU: Avatar Edition

This is going to be a slightly different post. I don't think people ever consider the past Avatars in an AU set in a modern setting. Where do you think they would come from, if they had IRL nationalities?

For sake of simplicity, let's say the AU takes place in the United States, since most ATLA Modern AU fics I've read take place there, mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area. We could also use NYC as the setting, since Republic City is roughly based on 1920's Manhattan. I think this task would be much easier if we consider the real-life influences for each of the four nations. I'll be using this post as a reference for these influences.

For example, the Air Nomads are based off of Tibetan Buddhists with some Nepalese and Bhutanese influences, so it would be pretty obvious to make Aang Tibetan in a Modern AU. The same would also go for Yangchen, although I would personally prefer Bhutanese or Sikkimese Yangchen because the Western Air Temple (I'm not talking about the episode) is inspired by Bhutanese cliffside temples. Another option would be making both Aang and Yangchen part of a Tibetan diaspora living in India. Kyoshi, being half-Air Nomad, would also be of Tibetan ancestry.

The Fire Nation is inspired by a combination of Chinese and Japanese cultures, while Ember Island being inspired by Southeast Asian, mostly Thai and Cambodian culture. In a Modern AU, I can see Roku being Thai, while Wan and Szeto would most likely be Chinese, Szeto is from Hong Kong/Macau. I also have a particular desire for Korean Wan, for no other reason than the fact that his VA, Steven Yeun, is Korean. I also wouldn't mind Wan being part of a Chinese diaspora from Malaysia or Singapore.

The Earth Kingdom, being the largest and most diverse of the four nations, is inspired by many Chinese dynasties, various ethnic minority groups in China, and even other Asian cultures altogether. However, we'll be paying attention to one specific cultural influence in Kyoshi's appearance: Heian/Edo Japan. She wears samurai gear and kabuki makeup. How in the name of the Moon Spirit am I not supposed to make Kyoshi Japanese (half-Japanese, anyway)? Kyoshi Island, formerly known as Yokoya, is literally ATLA's equivalent to Japan in the real world. There are even Ainu influences in Kyoshi Island, what with the clothing of the people in Suki's village.

The last nation is the Water Tribes, and the last two Avatars left are Kuruk and Korra. Now, the Water Tribes actually have a more diverse range of cultural influences than what we might expect. According to both @atlaculture and @kkachi95, the SWT is based on Inuit, Yupik and other First Nation peoples, with some Polynesian influences as well. The NWT, in addition to these influences, is also influenced by Mongolian and Siberian peoples. Since Kuruk is from the NWT, in a Modern AU, he would probably be Siberian, mostly Yakut, but I wouldn't mind Mongolian Kuruk either. For Korra, since she is half-NWT and half-SWT, I think she would be mixed like Kyoshi, except Korra would probably be half-Inuit, half-Yupik. I also want Kuruk and Korra to be part of a Mongolian or Central Asian diaspora living in Russia (I'll admit, I'm only saying this because I really want them to speak Russian), but that probably wouldn't work due to the differences in their cultures in-universe.

I have an idea for a Modern AU involving the Avatars, as well as their backstories for said AU, but that's for another time. For now, I turn this question over to you guys, and I want to know your thoughts on my nationality headcanons.