Twenty cities across the UK joined hands to organize the Hong Kong March, a festival that aims to promote Hong Kong culture to people from different cultural backgrounds through various activities. Hongkongers are encouraged to send invitation cards to their local friends, so to achieve cultural understanding and community bonding. Bearing this in mind, when I was invited by Hong Kong Notts, the Nottingham organiser, to give a talk, I decided to talk about the cultural relationship between Hong Kong and Britain.
This is an important but long-forgotten topic. Global Americanization and Hongkongers’ particular fondness for Japanese culture served as the backdrop for the subsidence of British culture in the ex-colony. The vague reference to ‘foreign’ culture in Hong Kong in the local secondary-school History curriculum (the coexistence and interaction of Chinese and foreign cultures in the 20th century) downplays the cultural influence of the former colonial master. Most colonial-style buildings have been torn down. Take a look at contemporary Central in Hong Kong and the Bund in Shanghai, and beyond question, the latter looks more colonial.
As seen today, Britain’s cultural influence on Hong Kong is more intangible than tangible.
The English language is the most obvious. Compared to Taiwan and mainland China, Hong Kong is the only place where English is an official language, and only Hong Kong kids need to study English from toddlerhood onwards. After the Second World War, Hongkongers developed a belief – if not a faith – that a good career starts with a good school, and a good school needs to be an EMI (English as medium instruction) school. For political correctness, public examination result slips do not specify the exam language used, and the Education Bureau is stringent in controlling the number of EMI schools.
With the passage of the national security law, learning English has taken on a new meaning: read trustworthy books and stay away from brainwashing.
In other words, English education from toddlerhood onwards is not only a cultural heritage from British rule but also a means of resistance.
Even the pro-establishment camp, which predominantly speaks Putonghua and Cantonese, has a heavyweight, Jasper Tsang Yok-sing, highly appraising the importance of English education. “Mastering an additional language is a valuable asset. Of all the languages, English is the most important and is still the strongest language today. If you are good at English, you will be able to read a lot of good books.”
The principles of fair play and rationality were key to the success of the former colony. The rule of law forms the core of political stability and economic success. The political stance must not affect one exercising one’s human rights, and the government must not resort to struggling as a way to achieve political goals.
Regrettably, the situation in post-2019 Hong Kong contrasts with what is described by Chris Patten in the foreword for one of Tsang’s books, “One of the things that I learned at University, where I was taught history by an outstanding Marxist historian of the English Civil War and member of the Communist Party, was that it is possible in life to have disagreements with people without these differences of opinion turning into a quarrel.”
The exodus after the passing of the national security law is ostensibly due to the unbearable changes caused by the law. However, from the cultural perspective, as many Hongkongers value fair play far more than patriotism to communist China, they flee to places where this cultural value is still in place.
The British brand most well-known to Hong Kong families is probably Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce. John Lea and William Perrins were two chemists in the UK Midlands in the early 19th century. A local nobleman asked Lea & Perrin to make a sauce to recreate the taste he had so enjoyed during his travels in Bengal, but the recipe was not to his liking. Months later, the chemists accidentally found that the content in the barrel had matured and become the delicious sauce we love today.
Moral: every success takes time. Next time, when you use Lea & Perrin sauce as a dip for beef balls or spring rolls, think of the moral of this British story, which is more relevant than ever for we Hongkongers, within and without our dear hometown, both suffering from the hardship induced by the Chinese and Hong Kong governments after 2019.
