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3 Tung Lo Wan: A Lesbian Haven or Everyday Life? Denise Tse Shang Tang Lesbian spaces as sites of resistance have been studied in the last decade with social geographer Gill Valentine urging geographers and urban sociologists to map lesbian neighbourhoods “from nowhere to everywhere” (Valentine 2000: 1). Notions of resistance have taken on multiple meanings within major theoretical strands such as postcolonialism, feminism, cultural geography, postmodernism, Marxism and queer theories. A mapping of resistance points to the interrelations and competing influences these theoretical strands have on each other. In this chapter, I will investigate how lesbian commercial spaces function as temporary sites of resistance for Hong Kong lesbians to validate their lesbian identities, to form social networks and to question their political subjectivities. I define lesbian commercial spaces as businesses that cater to lesbians through their marketing strategies such as posting on lesbian websites or passing out flyers at lesbian events. These spaces include lesbian bars, upstairs cafés catering to lesbian customers and a lesbian specialty store. Geographically, resistance can be charted at a particular place over a period of time in overt terms such as protests, marches, riots and candlelight vigils. But resistance is also present on cyberspace such as guerrilla websites and online petitions, or with other forms of new media as in film and video. Resistance can be practised through our daily decisions when lesbians choose to meet friends at a lesbian bar or log online to chat with other lesbians. Minute as they seem, these decisions signify a need to bond with other women who have same-sex desires. A space of resistance points to a critique of structural relations of power manifested through spatialities, being global or local places. To speak of resistance is to acknowledge the nature of power. Structural relations of power affect the way we live our daily lives as gendered bodies, social beings and political subjects. Steve Pile asserts that resistance is not as easily pinned down to “political subjectivities which are opposed to, or marginalized by, oppressive practices; whereby those who benefit from relations Denise Tse Shang Tang 52 of domination act to reproduce them, while the oppressed have a natural interest in over-turning the situation“ (3). In other words, marginalized groups have more vested interests in engaging themselves as political subjects fighting “over access, control and representation” (Tonkiss 59). It is not surprising that most informants have stressed the importance of lesbian businesses being lesbianowned and operated. When power is defined through the spaces it aims to occupy, architectural design of buildings or public spaces come quick to my thoughts. Government buildings, streets, housing, schools, prisons, parks and shopping malls, just to name a few, signify institutional power both in and out of the spaces. The city of Hong Kong is widely known for its density in spatial terms and in population figures.1 Yet it is important to understand such density in both historical and economic terms, more specifically, a British colonial history in conjunction with a dominant real estate market narrative. Shortly after the occupation of Hong Kong island by the British Empire on January 25, 1841, the British government declared all land to be British-owned Crown land. This declaration allowed the colonial government to immediately organize an auction of 34 pieces of land within six months in order to generate operational expenses for the colonial government. Land sales since then has been a primary source of revenue for the government. As the population of Hong Kong increases overtime, land was purposely left undeveloped in order to formulate an excessively high demand for land and hence, to create profitable businesses for landowners. As a result, only 22% of Hong Kong’s land has been developed for human inhabitation (Chen Cui’er et al. 2006: 14). It is widely understood that intense negotiation processes and structural planning were involved in making land sales viable, profitable and sustainable throughout the colonial era and in continuation for the current Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (17). In other words, geographical limitations may not be a sufficient answer to the high density of Hong Kong. Apart from the changes in government from a British colonial government to a Hong Kong SAR government under China, the stakeholders in land sales have also evolved from British merchants and a small community of Parsi merchants to a handful of land developers owned by Chinese tycoons (Feng 2001: 16). Land usage and urban development in Hong Kong has always been jointly regulated...

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