Culture, Culture And Cultural Culture In Hong Kong

Lights up. What is culture, how can it be performed? Can two communities perform different culture but still define as same country? Is our identity mostly determined by culture or origin? As a Hong Kongese, these questions always bother me because there is no absolute statement to define who I am. Hong Kong (HK) is a unique region that mostly influences by two different countries: China and Britain. Interestingly, these countries hold a totally opposite social practice towards one another. From liberalism to communism, these political ideologies have a major impact on the foundation of a country, and how the world perceives them as a performer. With such a high contrast in cultural practice, Hong Kong finds its own balance and performs as

Through the examination in languages, education system and political circumstances, I will discuss about the ideas that encourage this island to be independent, and how the community performs these social beliefs. Like Schechner states: ‘performance is a restored behavior with previous experiences or references’ (Schechner,29). The term Hong Kong represents the previous history of British and Chinese, in which the identity of Hong Kongese are deeply influenced by these two cultures. Before we get into in-depth discussion regarding to the topic, I would like to briefly discuss about the term performance from a Theatre major perspective. Performance not only associates with physical actions, in which the term could be decoded as vary meanings. Performance could be showcase through behaviors, languages or any circumstances. In any performances, my primary concern is how the audiences react to it. Regarding to cultural performance, citizens are often promoting social beliefs through mass communication. For example, media like television has a significant impact on manipulating the viewer’s opinion, and those accepted beliefs will turn into mass practice. Culture is like the circumstances in a play, it has various effects on character’s development and the outcome of the story. For instance, Hong Kong is performing on stage where it is

Since there were possibly two to three generations being involved with this transformation, citizens were resulted with cultural disconnection towards China. Among all the aspects in cultural performance, the use of language is a major influence in defining the identity of Hong Kongese. Kenneth Burke once comments on language as performance: ‘Language and thoughts could be seen as situated modes of actions, in which every text serves as the tool to express one’s identity’ (Carlson,14). If language is the definition of who we are, then citizens in Hong Kong should be considered as British-Chinese. In the stage of national performance, Hong Kong introduces itself as a character who speaks both Chinese and English. This statement might confuse some audiences because of the dynamic between English and Asian appearance. How can a Chinese society associates themselves with a practice that belongs to British? Or is this island intellectually favors British over China? These questions always challenge my opinions toward the way I perceive mainland people. Are we intellectually related or just the appearances. As the later generation in Hong Kong, we’ve been living in a mixed environment of Cantonese and English since the day we were born. The first word that I ever spoke was probably “Daddy” or “Mammy” with the same pronunciation in English. Additionally, society also