Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T18:54:36.731Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Prologue: Horse Racing and Dancing as Usual

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2024

Yiu-Wai Chu
Affiliation:
The University of Hong Kong
Get access

Summary

Abstract

Deng Xiaoping, the chief engineer of the unprecedented “one country, two systems” framework, famously promised Hong Kong people horse racing and dancing would remain unchanged after Hong Kong's reversion to Mainland China in 1997. This chapter discusses how horse racing and dancing were used to symbolize Hong Kong's lifestyle and the smooth transfer of sovereignty. Throughout the 1980s, the upward mobility and vigorous development of Hong Kong pop culture enabled a distinctive cosmopolitan lifestyle between the East and the West to grow and mature, and Hong Kong people came to take pride in their cultural identities.

Keywords: personal belonging, one country two systems, horse racing, dancing, lifestyle

What Is Hong Kong?

To answer this question, it is usual to begin by explaining how Hong Kong came into being from a historical point of view. As succinctly noted by John Carroll, while the Chinese Government officially holds that ‘Hong Kong has been part of the territory of China since ancient times,’ until recently, British historians ‘generally dismissed the idea of Hong Kong as having any real history until the British arrived’. It was just a ‘barren island’, or to borrow Richard Hughes’ often-cited term, just a ‘borrowed place living on borrowed time’ – ‘Hong Kong did not exist, so it was necessary to invent it.’ Regarding this assessment, Carroll cited the example of James Hayes, historian and former colonial official, noting that ‘the island was certainly well-established in settler communities long before 1841’. That said, I would rather take up the question from a different perspective, which may seem out of the blue. Refuting Hughes’ concept of ‘borrowed time, borrowed place’, renowned Hong Kong author Kai-cheung Dung has argued that ‘space and time can never be borrowed’: ‘I and many others like me simply don't accept this description of the place where we live’ because ‘we belong to the space-time that is ours. Nobody lends it to us and we don't borrow it from anybody.’ Two years older than Dung and having grown up in Hong Kong with a similar background, I share his view completely. Hong Kong has been commonly known as a barren rock, a Chinese fishing village, an imperial outpost, a capitalist metropolis, a city between worlds and a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China under the unprecedented ‘one country, two systems’ framework.

Type
Chapter
Information
Hong Kong Pop Culture in the 1980s
A Decade of Splendour
, pp. 11 - 28
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×