Introducing Asia’s Touchy-Feely Hub

The SCMP reports on the HK Tourism Bored Board’s new exciting promotional campaign. Because apparently we don’t have enough tourists yet…

Hong Kong is seeking to promote itself as a city that visitors “feel” rather than merely see under a new global tourism campaign highlighting experiences ranging from mahjong games and tram rides to hidden beaches and Kai Tak Stadium.

…The campaign presents Hong Kong through contrasts, pairing its dense urban landscape with secluded natural escapes…

…The board said the campaign deliberately drew on real street scenes and everyday encounters rather than relying solely on polished destination imagery.

Not that we have room for any more visitors, but there are worse ways of promoting Hong Kong as a destination. At least they’re not pushing lame stereotypes like Cantonese opera and junks. (Well – they are, but not too much.) 

I can’t help wondering: how real are the street scenes and everyday encounters? A tram trundling along a street with no other traffic to be seen? A pristine turquoise sea at a deserted beach with no Mainland tourists plundering the shellfish? Someone riding a bicycle without fear of being rammed by a truck or pulled over by the cops? Where are the illegally parked cars, and the overcrowded sidewalks? One pic shows a dai pai dong – even though the government’s policy seems to be to eradicate them.

The different colours used in the promos are deep and meaningful…

These include “Dukling Red”, referencing traditional junk boats, “Ding Ding Green”, representing the city’s more than 120 years of tram history, and “Kai Tak Stadium Lavender”. Black and white were chosen to celebrate Hong Kong’s locally born giant panda twins. 

Or do black and white represent the bookstore-employee T-shirt?

Some weekend reading for history fans…

The (probably paywalled) Economist on the CCP’s Qing problem…

Dredging up all this history is uncomfortable for the party. The territorial boundaries claimed by modern China—including Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Taiwan—were brought into the Chinese empire by the Qing, not the Ming. Grievances about the Manchus also cut against the ideal of ethnic harmony advanced by the party.  

…Sensitivity over how to interpret all this illustrates how hard it is for the party to examine its own history. Never mind serious debates about Mao’s rule; even century-old dynasties are too hot to touch. The party commissioned an official history of the Qing and was close to completing it as a mammoth 106-volume project. But now it seems to have been scuppered by leaders because of disagreements about “new Qing” contamination. “It is very clear that the state was ruled by people who were not identical to the bulk of the population, so it’s hard to fit it into the kind of Chinese nationalism that the party wants,” says David Porter, a scholar of imperial China at McGill University in Montreal. “It’s easier to criticise Western historians for going the wrong way.” 

I love that ‘people who were not identical to the bulk of the population’. You mean ‘foreigners’.

Domino Theory on the apparent cancellation of a new Chinese film, The Belief, about the Qing invasion of Taiwan…

The film was approved for production in 2021 and shot in 2024. It dramatizes the 1683 campaign in which Shi Lang (施琅), an admiral in the Qing dynasty, led a naval assault on Penghu that ended the Kingdom of Tungning. This polity was established by Koxinga in Taiwan after he defeated the Dutch in 1662. 

The film’s use of a historical military campaign to comment on China’s contemporary approach to Taiwan may have triggered censorship concerns. Liu Hsing-jen (劉性仁), an associate professor at Chinese Culture University’s Institute for National Development and Cross-Strait Studies in Taiwan, pointed out that because the trailer depicts cross-strait relations as a life-or-death struggle, it may actually run counter to Beijing’s current strategy, which combines a push for peaceful reunification with escalating grey zone pressure. 

Some critics argue that the film puts forward an anti Han message, with the depiction of a Manchurian-led Qing force attacking a Han Chinese regime. They also say that it would be better framed as a story about Koxinga restoring Taiwan by defeating the Dutch, who colonized Taiwan at the time.