Critical cosmopolitanism in the emergence of cultural modernity: reflections on discursive imagination in Hong Kong and Shanghai

Abstract

One might ask, what are the colors of cosmopolitan hybridity, and to what extent does or can the totality of representation that frames cultural discourse take on a life of its own? This paper examines the pictorial history of City Magazine (haowai) and the underlying mentalite that made it a successful voice in the emergence of 1980s pop culture in Hong Kong. But was this success the product of its distinctive eclectic, critical ethos that underscored its content or the systematic end point of a sophisticated commoditization of its extrinsic social values?

Notes

1. Matthew Turner's ‘Made in Hong Kong’ exhibit is especially influential in this regard. See Matthew Turner and Irene Ngan (eds), Hong Kong Sixties—Designing Identity, Hong Kong: Hong Kong Arts Centre, 1995.

2. Allen Chun (1996), ‘Discourses of Identity in the Changing Spaces of Public Culture in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore’, Theory, Culture and Society 13(1), 1996, pp 51–75. My notion of geopolitics follows from the above.

3. See Kam Kin Hung, ‘A Retrospective of the Best of Haowai's Last 12 Years’, Haowai 147, 1988 (芩 建 勳 著1988,《 號 外 十 二 年 精 華 總 結 集 》, 《 號 外 》 第 226 期). In its early years, editors had ownership shares.

4. See Yau Sai Man, ‘On the Question of Haowai's Language Writing Style: A General Commentary’, Haowai 226, 1995 (丘 世 文 著1995,《 略 論《 號 外 》語 文 風 格 的 問 題 》,《 號 外 》 第 226 期).

5. One such in-house ad is reproduced in Lui Tai Lok (ed.), Thirty Years of Haowai: Internal Distribution, Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Co., Ltd, 2007 (呂 大 樂 主 編 2007,《 號 外 三 十 : 內 部 傳 閱, 香 港, 三 聯 書 店 》), p 188.

6. Chan Koon Chung, ‘Attitude and Style Manual’, Haowai 146, 1988 (陳 冠 中 著1988, ‘Attitude and Style Manual’,《 號 外 》 第 146 期). The Attitude and Style Manual served as an editorial preface in each issue.

7. Lui, Thirty Years of Haowai. This compendium was initiated by the publisher, not the magazine.

8. Cf. Lui, Thirty Years of Haowai, p 238.

9. Lui, Thirty Years of Haowai, p 238, orig. Haowai 225, 1995.

10. Leo Lee, in Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China 1930–45 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), argues that Shanghai served as a nostalgic ‘other’ for Hong Kong. Postwar Hong Kong was, in my opinion, largely a forward-looking entity; its cosmopolitanism transcended urban modernity.

11. Chan Koon Chung, ‘Chinese-Barbarian Half Breed Style’, Haowai 60, 1982 (陳 冠 中 著1982,《 半 唐 番 風 格 》,《號 外》第 60 期). He has recently focused more explicitly on urban hybridity and cosmopolitanism.

12. Lee, Shanghai Modern, p 328.