{"id":12541,"date":"2023-06-21T06:30:14","date_gmt":"2023-06-21T06:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focus.cbbc.org\/?p=12541"},"modified":"2025-04-23T09:30:23","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T09:30:23","slug":"is-hong-kong-still-a-thriving-multicultural-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focus.cbbc.org\/is-hong-kong-still-a-thriving-multicultural-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Hong Kong still a thriving multicultural city?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As she releases her new book, Fortune\u2019s Bazaar<\/em>, author Vaudine England meets up with Paul French\u00a0in Hong Kong\u2019s famous Foreign Correspondents\u2019 Club to discuss two centuries of Hong Kong history \u2013 from \u201cbarren rock\u201d to colony, from handover to today<\/h2>\n

With such uncertainty at present, perhaps it\u2019s a good time to look back on the history of Hong Kong. There have certainly been books about the city’s history before \u2013 but long-time Hong Kong resident and prolific author Vaudine England\u2019s Fortune\u2019s Bazaar: The Making of Hong Kong <\/em>(Corsair Books), is different.<\/p>\n

Not the long list of former Governors and colonial officials, but a peoples\u2019 history of Hong Kong, England engagingly rediscovers and accentuates the multi-cultural history of the former colony, including, of course, the Chinese and British, but also the major contributions of the Portuguese, French, Armenians, Russian \u00e9migr\u00e9s, Parsis, Indians and a host of other nationalities that have added to the city\u2019s once legendary vibrancy. It is also a history of the entrepreneurs, those looking to get on through hard work, the refugees, exiles, the women and the long-forgotten who trudged across the border to make their lives anew …<\/p>\n

\"launchpad<\/a><\/p>\n

Your history of Hong Kong is quite radically different to most previous attempts, emphasising ordinary working and entrepreneurial people over a long list of governors and officials. How long had this way of thinking about Hong Kong been bubbling away in your head?<\/h4>\n

This subject has probably been in gestation for about four decades, but the actual hard work took place alongside other research projects over the past decade. It all goes back, weirdly, to my parents\u2019 friendship with the late great social historian Revd Carl T. Smith when they lived in Hong Kong in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Smith had this amazing and ever-growing collection of index cards in a pre-computer age, referring to just about any individual that ever entered any kind of record in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n

Carl scoured newspaper birth\/death\/marriage notices, but he also spent years in Land Registry offices, legal offices, and public records offices compiling his mini-biographies of the real Hong Kong people. My work owes a huge debt to his work. In fact, any Hong Kong historian owes a debt to Carl Smith. His focus was on finding out who were actually the people of Hong Kong, where did they come from, how did they live, who did they marry and build families and homes with. It marked the beginning of what you might call a Hong Kong school of history \u2013 one led not by the narratives of Britain or of China, but by Hong Kong itself.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Your analysis is also far more multicultural than previous histories. But do you think that that early diversity in the former colony you describe \u2013 Parsis, Armenians, Portuguese, English, Chinese \u2013 is still an integral part of 21st century Hong Kong, or has that aspect been lost?<\/h4>\n

Descendants of those early families of such diverse origins do still live in Hong Kong. In particular, there are significant communities of Nepalese families (dating back to their forebears\u2019 roles in the Gurkha regiments), as well as Muslim and Hindu groups. They remain marginalised, and perhaps more so than ever before, as Hong Kong becomes more populated and governed by mainland Chinese interests.<\/p>\n

Many of Hong Kong\u2019s diverse peoples have left over recent decades, primarily in search of a place of safety regarding passports and education. Some of them first realised the need for this when British Nationality laws separated out British nationality (a passport) from citizenship (the right to live in Britain). Others have since discovered, as one Indian tycoon put it: we were second-class citizens under the British, and now we are third-class.<\/p>\n

You also stress the internal diaspora nature of Hong Kong \u2013 that it has always been a magnet for Chinese talent and entrepreneurs from southern China. Is Hong Kong still such a magnet of attraction now mainland China\u2019s economy has grown so significantly? Does Hong Kong still offer opportunities to mainland Chinese?<\/h4>\n

Current Hong Kong government policies, strongly led by Beijing, stress the need for Hong Kong to integrate with what they now call the Greater Bay Area<\/a>. At the same time, the Hong Kong government is openly struggling to attract talent in a wide range of fields, from medicine to law to education and construction. Some rules are being loosened to enable mainland Chinese and other providers of such skills to enter the labour force in Hong Kong more easily.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an open question whether Hong Kong represents the same route to a wider world once aspired to by young mainlanders, but it seems safe to assume that people will go where there are jobs and money to be made. Behind this policy puzzle is, of course, the fact that hundreds of thousands of educated and professional Hong Kong people have left in recent years in search of a better home abroad.<\/p>\n