21 February 2024 Hosted by the Department of Asian Studies, the Hong Kong Studies Initiative (HKSI) at the University of British Columbia is devoted to promoting the teaching and research of this most-improbable metropolis, both as an extraordinary Chinese city and as a spectacular international and transnational hub. |
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Dear Friends of HKSI, As we just celebrated the Lunar New Year, spring is (almost) in the air. As you will see below, we have a full lineup of events in the coming month. Please join us if interested and able. With all best wishes for the Year of the Dragon,
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Talk Join us for this in-person talk by Prof. Sebastian Veg, Professor of Intellectual History of 20th-Century China at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS), Paris, and author of Minjian: the Rise of China’s Grassroots Intellectuals (Columbia University Press, 2019), about his latest study on knowledge circles in Hong Kong between 1945 and 1997. In the talk, Prof. Veg will retrace how academics, journalists, writers, and students produced and circulated knowledge during the colonial era and how they engaged broader communities of readers. The talk will also present an attempt to disentangle the impact of various epistemic systems such as Cold War liberalism, Chinese cultural nationalism, and colonial ideology. This event is organized by the UBC Hong Kong Studies Initiative with the support of the Watt Family—Hong Kong Studies Initiative Fund, the Department of Asian Studies, and the Centre for Chinese Research. In-person event. All are welcome. Registration required. |
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Asian Independent Cinema Showcase & South Taiwan Film Festival Co-presented by the South Taiwan Film Festival and the Asian Independent Cinema Showcase, this selection of short films features TOH Tze Wei’s The Darkest Night, WU Yu-Fen’s There, and KWOK Zune’s Night is Young. With dialogues in Cantonese, Hokkien, Malay, Mandarin, Taiwanese, and Indonesian, the three award-winning short films tell stories of the underrepresented in different parts of Asia and the possibility of finding hope and home. The Darkest Night is the recipient of the Best Director Award (Student Category) at The European Film Award for Best Cinematographer. There received the Best Live Action Short (Student Category) at the Golden Harvest Awards. Night is Young was named the Best Live Action Short Film at the Golden Horse Awards. This is the first time the three award-wining short films will be shown in Canada and is the third program of the inaugural edition of the Asian Independent Cinema Showcase. The three directors will participate in a virtual conversation following the screening. English subtitles provided. In-person event. All are welcome. Registration required. |
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Community Hong Kong has experienced tremendous transformation since 2019 and 2020. On the one hand, many civil society organizations, political groups, and critical media outlets have disappeared. But on the other hand, the society has also witnessed the emergence of a new group of online media. Many civil society organizations are continuing their work. Citizens can be using various means to maintain their values, identities and lifestyle. How should we understand the public sentiments in contemporary Hong Kong? To what extent and in what ways is the Hong Kong society—particularly the institutions that embody the city’s “core values”—exhibiting resilience under the current adverse conditions? The speaker will discuss these issues based on his continual research in Hong Kong in the past three years. Dr. Francis L. F. Lee is a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, a Fellow of the International Communication Association, Editor of the Chinese Journal of Communication, and a founding co-chair of the Society for Hong Kong Studies. His latest book, Democracy Protests in Hong Kong: Relational Dynamics between the Umbrella Movement and the Anti-Extradition Uprising, is forthcoming from the State University of New York Press. This community talk is organized by the Vancouver Hong Kong Forum Society with the support of the UBC Hong Kong Studies Initiative, and the SFU Institute For Transpacific Cultural Research. In-person event in Cantonese. All are welcome. Registration required. |
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Seminar This talk is grounded in over two decades of fieldwork on the preservation of historical memory tabooed by the CCP regime. Drawing on contextualized personal accounts, Rowena He will illuminate the unequal contest between state-imposed interpretations of history and independent scholarship on China’s forbidden past, and their implications for nationalism, democratization, and the field of China studies. Highlighting her extensive interactions with local and mainland Chinese students during Hong Kong’s unprecedented social movement, she illustrates how memory becomes a form of resistance that embodies citizen autonomy and agency. The power of the powerless. Dr. Rowena He 何曉清 is author of Tiananmen Exiles: Voices of the Struggle for Democracy in China and a three-time recipient of Harvard University’s Certificate of Teaching Excellence. Her research has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, the National Humanities Center, and the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas, Austin. Her op-eds have appeared in the Washington Post, Nation, Guardian, Globe and Mail, and Wall Street Journal. Born and raised in China, she received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. This seminar is organized by the UBC Hong Kong Studies Initiative with the support of the Watt Family—Hong Kong Studies Initiative Fund and generously co-sponsored by: Department of Asian Studies, Department of History, Centre for Chinese Research, and St. John’s College. In-person event. All are welcome. Registration required. |
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20 January 2024: The North American premiere of Drifting Petals has received an overwhelming turnout and has successfully inaugurated the Asian Independent Cinema Showcase. The post-screening conversation with Director Clara Law and Producer-writer Eddie Fong was moderated by Dr. Helen Leung, Jimmy Lo, and Dr. Helena Wu (photos). |
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2 February 2024: As the second program of the Asian Independent Cinema Showcase, "Home and Away: Short Films Selection" was attended by a full house of audience. The three filmmakers shared their filmmaking journey and continuous pursuit of creativity in the post-screening conversation moderated by Jimmy Lo, and Dr. Helena Wu (photos). |
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Please kindly consider a tax-deductible donation to HKSI (hksi.ubc.ca/support-us). Thank you, as always, for your support of the UBC Hong Kong Studies Initiative. |
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