Abstract

2005. (Siumi Maria Tam and Yip Hon Ming, editors). Tung Chung before and after the New Airport: An ethnographic and historical study of a community in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Antiquities and Monuments Office, HKSAR.

Abstract

This volume contrasts the simple, agricultural life in Tung Chung in 1992, before the new Chek Lap Kok International Airport was constructed, to the much varied lifestyle observed ten years later, when the New Town and the airport have forever changed the landscape, power relations, and social values in the community. Starting with an analysis of population change and Tung Chung's historical role in maritime defence, this volume presents a processual view of the various facets of community life, including political organisation, family, religion, and gender. Presenting records of the residents' behavior, individual choices, and their collective memories, this book fills an important niche in the community studies of Hong Kong's outlying islands, and is useful for readers interested in the history and ethnography of Hong Kong and South China.

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2005. Engendering Minnan Mobility: Women sojourners in a patriarchal world. In Southern Fujian: Reproduction of Traditions in Post-Mao China. Tan Chee Beng, ed. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press.

Abstract

Minnan (Southern Fujian, China) has been exporting male labor to Southeast Asia for centuries, and Minnan women have played a central role in the sustenance of patrilineal families left behind by the men. This chapter examines the interface of gender and migration, as Minnan women struggled to make a living for themselves and their children, as well as shouldering simultaneously the responsibility to support their husband’s patrilineal kin back home. As they lamented that “all Minnan women lead a bitter life” and resigned to a female fate, they found it appropriate to practice self-effacement and self-sacrifice, justifying gender inequality with traditionalism. Indeed they have helped to construct and maintain the Minnan patriarchal world in which female individuality has no place in face of the good of the patrilineal family. Paradoxically these same women became successful entrepreneurs, calculating mothers who command domestic resources across generations, managers of kinship networks—all of them tough survivors of a system of migration. Minnan women referred to this quality of theirs as a “strong life force”. This chapter focuses on the personal histories of women of the Jinjiang district in southern Fujian. They were Minnan women in migrant families, who have constructed a life of migrancy at the interface of 3 geographical-cultural areas: 1) the Jinjiang district in southern Fujian as their place of origin, 2) the Philippines as the destination of mobility, and 3) Hong Kong as the stepping stone between the two. Within this triangular circuit the women experienced mobility, first as the wives of emigrants in China (fankeshen), as ethnic Chinese in the Philippines (inchik), and finally as Minnan women immigrants in Hong Kong (minnanpo). These three categorical ascriptions formed the basis of their subjectivities as wives, mothers, and daughters-in-law, but seldom as women as individuals.

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2005. We-women and They-women: Imagining mistresses across the Hong Kong-China border. In Rethinking and Recasting Citizenship: Social Exclusion and Marginality in Chinese Societies. May Tam, Ku Hok-bun, and Travis Kong, eds. Hong Kong: Centre for Social Policy Studies, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Abstract

In Hong Kong, the so-called baau yih naaih phenomenon refers to the extramarital behavior of married Hong Kong men who keep mistresses in mainland China. Conventional wisdom believes that the phenomenon is precipitated by the peculiar economic and geopolitical relationship between Hong Kong and the mainland, and as long as male mobility across the Hong Kong-China border is an integral part of this relationship, it is a problem that cannot be resolved. This paper argues that to fully understand the complexity and the factors that contribute to the construction and reproduction of baau yih naaih behavior, it is necessary to go beyond economic explanations and moral condemnation, and to explore the phenomenon as a cultural phenomenon. An integral part of this issue is the collective imagination of the mistress as them—the daaih luhk yahn across the border, vis-à-vis the wife as us—the heung gong yahn on this side of the border. A diametric opposition of Hong Kong women as “we” the victim and mainland women as “they” the culprit is thus constructed. This has resulted in the reinforcement of the patriarchal family system and in the peripheralization of women in the tripartite relationship, and ironically has helped to normalize the husband’s infidelity through a male-centered, stereotypified discourse. This paper seeks to put in the center of discussion the views of wives and mistresses, and argues that women are very much active agents in the imagination of the mistress-keeping phenomenon. By exploring cultural meanings of the mistress-keeping phenomenon, this paper seeks to understand contemporary concepts of marriage and family in Hong Kong.

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2005. A Bibliography of Gender Studies in Hong Kong 1998-2003. (compiled by Siumi Maria Tam and Trisha Leahy). Hong Kong: Gender Research Centre, CUHK.

Abstract

This is the fifth bibliography of Gender Studies in Hong Kong published by the Gender Research Centre, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. This recent compilation includes publications released between 1998 and 2003, and offers a timely collection of over 500 titles of books, journal articles, edited volumes, research reports, and postgraduate theses. The titles cover a wide spectrum of topics in relation to gender studies in Hong Kong, which are divided into the following sections: Economic Activities, Education, Ethnicity and Identity, Health and Medicine, Household/ Partnership, Media/ Communication / the Arts, Migration, Politics/ Legal System, Religion, Sexualities, and Violence. Anyone interested in examining gender issues and gender relations in Hong Kong society will find this bibliography a very handy reference.

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2003. Empowering Mobility: ‘Astronaut’ Women in Australia. In Gender and Change in Hong Kong: Globalization, Post-Colonialism and Chinese Patriarchy. Eliza Wing Yee Lee, ed. Pp.177-199. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.

Abstract

This chapter examines the subjectivities of middle class Hong Kong women who immigrated to Australia between 1989 and 1997 as part of “astronaut families”. As heads of a new household, the women found themselves thrown into a totally different life-world in the process of migration. They needed to communicate in English and drive a car to go anywhere; they found their children gradually losing the ability to read and write in Chinese, and their husbands unavailable at home to make decisions; and worse still, their personal safety was at risk as they lived in a free-standing house surrounded by “foreign” neighbors. This author argues, however, that to the Hong Kong women, after having recovered from an initial stage of adjustment, the removal away from the husband-centered household in Hong Kong actually initiated an empowering process for their personal development. Rather than defining them as pitiable, isolated individuals who lamented a “reluctant exile”, this study finds that they were able to overcome or avoid the language barrier, breakthrough the social isolation, and contain the sense of insecurity through both individual and group channels. These channels include establishing and/or participating in new circles of friends and former colleagues, religious groups, neighborhood organizations, and community classes. All of these channels are distinct from traditional associations such as chambers of commerce and tuhng heung wui (P: tong xiang hui, associations based on same place of origin), which are mainly utilized by earlier waves of male immigrants. Notwithstanding the fact that there were predominantly more male immigrants than female historically, ethnographic studies of Chinese women in immigrant communities show that they have made use of a very different set of resources from their male counterparts in adapting to a new and sometimes hostile environment. These resources typically belong to the private sphere, in particular matrilineal relatives and networks of fellow women immigrants. The patterns of action and interpretations of experiences point to the genderedness of the immigration process, and seek to depart from studies of migration that have been criticized as taking a gender-blind approach to migrants.

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2003. Eating Metropolitaneity: Hong Kong Identity in yumcha. In Hong Kong: Legacies and Prospects of Development. Benjamin K.P. Leung, ed. In the series The International Library of Social Change in Asia Pacific - Hong Kong. Pp.459-468. Ashgate. (reprint from The Australian Journal of Anthropology 8(3): 291-306 first published in 1997)

Abstract

In Hong Kong, yumcha as a pervasive form of eating in the public has become an institution with epitomizes the diversity and inclusiveness that Hong Kong people think are quintessential to the civility and economic achievement of the metropolis. It stands out particularly as a practice that has come to represent both locally and overseas a Hong Kong culture which has previously been characterized as residual of “Chinese tradition” and “Western customs”, and hence is virtually non-existent. This paper looks at the consumption of metropolitaneity and the culturalization of the heunggongyahn or Hong Kong personal identity in the form, content, and social relations involved in yumcha. It points to the significance of yumcha as a key to understanding a collective identity which has become more and more apparent as Hong Kong people vehemently try to establish a city with its own culture, first against the colonial grip and then the return of sovereignty to China in 1997.

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2003. 編《性別觀察》[Observing Gender]. 香港: 麥穗.

Abstract

性別是先天的？還是後天的？很多人看性別是生理現象、自然現象－－小孩一出生就被加上「女性」或「男性」的標籤，然後大家就按著這品牌扮演各種社會角色。但我們有否想過：為甚麼不同的性別在社會上會受到不同的待遇呢？在不同的社會，有不同的性別制度，有三性、四性，甚至五性的。性別又如何成為社會生活的基礎？當既定的性別觀念受到挑戰，我們又會怎辦呢？

本書提出性別是文化產物的看法，以平易的筆觸述說性別對年輕人成長的影響，指出性別與普及文化、家庭、教育、工作和移民經驗之間的互動關係；讓我們思考：性別是可以不這樣的。

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1997. Hong Kong: the Anthropology of a Chinese Metropolis. Grant Evans and Siumi Maria Tam, eds. London: Curzon Press, and Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Abstract

Hong Kong has become a by-word for all that is modern and sparkling in Asia today.

Yet tourist brochures still play with the old cliche of Hong Kong as a place where 'East meets West'. Images of so-called 'traditional' China, junks sailing Victoria Harbour or old women praying to gods in smoky temples, mingle with those portraying Hong Kong as a consumer and business paradise.

This collection of essays attempts to transcend the old polarities. It looks at modern Hong Kong in all its splendour and diversity in the run-up to its re-absorption into Greater China through the mediums of film, food, architecture, rumours and slang.

It explores the question of a distinct, modern Chinese identity in Hong Kong, and even when it explores the traditional stamping ground of the older anthropology in the New Territories it finds a dramatically changed context, in particular for women.

This collection presents an intriguing insight into the process of transition from 'tradition' to 'modernity' in this Modern Chinese Metropolis.

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