Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Revised Abstract: Communist Nostalgia in Hong Kong

I want to use this paper to discuss how consumer products in specifically Hong Kong have reflected a sense of communist nostalgia. I'd like to focus on Hong Kong because it is the only major city in China who has been under capitalist regime for the past century. It is interesting that as Britain returned Hong Kong to China in 1997, more and more marketing and branding efforts have been directed to the imagery of communism instead of colonialism. Using this paper, I would like to justify that there is 1) a sense of disapproval of modernization and rapid change; 2) communist nostalgia has become a global imagery of China; and 3) communist nostalgia reinforces the cultural and historical identity that was lost in Hong Kong during British occupation. Seeing that products in Hong Kong have been using a lot of Shanghai-style images, I would also like to compare Hong Kong and Shanghai, and potentially refers Shanghai as what Frederic Jameson coins as the ‘lost object of desire.’ My main intention is to investigate why Hong Kong, as a capitalist society, chooses to relive communism through consumer products; Especially, I would like to find out, even though very few young Hong Kong-ers have experienced communist doctrines (except those immigrants from Mainland China), why they find communist imagery fascinating and what their views on communism are. In relation to increasing trading and exchanges between Hong Kong and China, I propose that Hong Kong, through the consumption of communist nostalgic, attempts to live through its imagination or memory that was lost during the colonial period.

In terms of structure, I am going to first introduce the socio-political structure of Hong Kong in comparison to Mainland China. Then I would provide some consumer products that try to build on communist nostalgia. Some of the examples I can think of right now are the clothing line “Shanghai Tang” (which mainly sells very oriental looking clothes and accessories to Hong Kong people as well as tourists) and one particular Starbucks coffee shop in Hong Kong (which is decorated to look like old “Bing Sutt” in China - see http://intransit.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/a-hong-kong-starbucks-goes-time-traveling/) By looking at these examples, I hope to find commonalities or clues as to why modern Hong Kong is going nostalgic in recent years, and hopefully this will draw to the three arguments I made earlier. Lastly, I would like to conclude on the prediction of Hong Kong’s future as of its relationship with China. As China is gaining more control over Hong Kong, would there be more or less communist nostalgia in the city?

I found an article called "Designer Nostalgia" by Danny Huppatz particularly useful and interesting because it talks about how designers of consumer products have successfully used the element of nostalgia as an investment to local as well as foreign consumers. Also, I would look at “Nostalgia for the Future: The Resurgence of An Alienated Culture in China by Hanchao Lu. In addition, I would research on some Chinese newspaper and magazine articles.

The big picture of this paper is to find out why younger generation has this sudden crave of nostalgia about the past, even though they have never experienced communism or socialism; and how the imagery of China exotica is capitalized by consumer products.

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