Hong Kong Culture: Word and Image

Acknowledgements

Preparations for this book began in 2007, when the Faculty of Arts at the University of Hong Kong convened a conference to look at Hong Kong culture a decade after the “return”. I must say that the exercise of acting as conference committee chair and then editor for this volume has been a humbling one for me. As a non-specialist of Hong Kong culture, I have not only learnt a great deal from the papers, but the innovative and penetrating manner with which the topics were explored was truly impressive. Although there were twenty excellent papers presented at the conference I was only able to select thirteen for inclusion in this book. I am sure that readers of this volume will discover, as I have, not only that the energy and variety of Hong Kong culture have engaged some very thoughtful and profound minds from across the globe, but also that the product of that engagement is a welcome addition to our understanding of cultures East and West. I am very grateful to the participants at the conference. Apart from those whose work is collected here, Li Siu Leung, Yu Siu Wah, Stephen Teo, Sheldon Lu, David Eng, Zhao Xifang and David Lung also enlightened the conference participants with their research papers. Comments and assistance from all the other conference participants made it a lively and productive event. We thank them all. In particular, we owe a huge debt to those whose support and advice helped turn a stimulating conference into an even more stimulating book. Among them, I am especially grateful to my research assistant Fiona Chung for her tremendous work on this project. I should also thank Tammy Ho, Paul Tam, K. W. Fung, Colin Day, Michael Duckworth, Dennis Cheung, Anne Platt, Crystal Ko, Louise Edwards, Chris Louie, Dawn Lau, Alan Walker and the two anonymous Hong Kong University Press readers for their advice and help. Financial support was received from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s General Research Fund, the University of Hong Kong’s “China-West Studies” Strategic Research Theme and the Faculty of Arts Louis Cha Fund. Acknowledgements ch00a(i-xi).indd 7 03/06/2010 12:52 PM ch00a(i-xi).indd 8 03/06/2010 12:52 PM ...