Dear Friend of HKSI,

Hope the new year has gone off to a wonderful start!

As we begin to put together our program of academic and community events for the new year, it is our hope that we could continue to count on your generous support.

Wednesday, 16 January 2019, 5:30 pm
Joy Luck Club: A Retrospective Screening with Tamlyn Tomita
Frederic Wood Theatre, UBC
6354 Crescent Rd., Vancouver
Registration required

Beloved by audiences around the world, the Joy Luck Club (by Hong Kong-born director Wayne Wang) has provoked heated debates about race, gender, and representation. Twenty-five years after its release, and on the heels of the recent success of Crazy Rich Asians, please join us for an anniversary screening followed by a special audience Q&A with Tamlyn Tomita, who played Waverly Jong in the film, moderated by UBC Assistant Professor JP Catungal (Social Justice Institute).

This special screening is presented by the UBC Asian Canadian & Asian Migration Studies Program, Department of Theatre & Film, and Faculty of Arts.

26 January–23 March 2019 (8 Saturdays), 12:30–2:30 pm
Mon Keang School
3rd floor, Wong Benevolent Association
123A E. Pender St., Vancouver
Registration (fees required)

"Learn survival Cantonese and get oriented to the neighbourhood! Saturday School offers place-based Cantonese language learning in Vancouver Chinatown, a National Historic Site and living Cantonese community. The historic Mon Keang Chinese School will be our classroom, and the area's streets, shops and spaces will be our textbooks. Through guided field studies, we will hear stories about Chinatown history, community organizing, and historic and current relationships with the diverse cultural communities that share this space. Our final exam will be a grocery shopping expedition and shared meal.”

This popular Saturday School is organized by Youth Collaborative for Chinatown and led by HKSI Associate Dr. Zoe Lam.

(Interested instead in the UBC Cantonese Language Program? Check out these student projects.)

Hong Kong in Photographs: Mapping Daily Life in the 1950s and 1960s is a digital humanities project that plots a series of old photographs taken around Hong Kong onto a map of present-day Hong Kong. It visualizes the rapid industrialization and physical changes that made Hong Kong into a modern cosmopolitan city. From scenes of the iconic rickshaw pullers to the unchanging, ubiquitous street vendors, their actions, done in-the-moment, were recorded. Using photographs from the Hong Kong Heritage Project and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries, this project offers a glimpse of a slower-paced and oft-forgotten Hong Kong.

More

In case you missed the December events below, please follow the links for the webcast/photos:

HKSI Associate Dr. Clement Tong offered an illuminating talk on his new course “Cantonese Worlds” (ASIA 323/HIST 377) and on "Why 'Cantonese Worlds’ Matters."

Members from diverse communities came together to celebrate the launch of Journeys of Hope: Challenging Discrimination and Building on Vancouver Chinatown’s Legacies, written by Dr. Henry Yu and edited by Sarah Ling and Szu Shen.

The year 2018 was certainly a productive and busy time for us here at the UBC Hong Kong Studies Initiative. Here’s a look back at some of our events last year. Feel free also to visit the HKSI YouTube channel for recordings of our past lectures and events.

Finally, a note of warm welcome to Visiting Lecturer Dr. Su-Anne Yeo, who will be teaching our ever-popular course on “Hong Kong Cinema” (ASIA 325) this term.

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.