Author Talk: Stacilee Ford
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I'm actually going to come out from behind the table for a bit. Thank you all so much for being here, most of you I'm related to. Those of you that I'm not, you get extra points for being here, as well.
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I always say that the book in some respects is a bit of an exercise of narcissism. It's sort of that dinner party joke - enough about you let's talk about - or enough about me let's talk about you, what do you think of me?
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In some respects, what started me down the road of writing the book was listening to what my students had to say about me and other American women that they were interacting with in Hong Kong.
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And as I started listening more and more it wasn't just my students that were talking to me about American women, it was other people as well.
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So, I started - I'm in American studies, and in U.S. history, so this became a way for me to enliven my teaching, but then really listen
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and any of you, if you live in Washington D.C., you have cross cultural encounters every day.
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We've all had the experience of living in or being in a place where you are different, and you are changed by that encounter.
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So the book is about several women who had cross cultural encounters in Hong Kong and were changed, by first growing up in the U.S. and coming to Hong Kong and thinking about what it meant to be American in a different context.
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It's also about women, when you get to the later part of the book, it's about women who grow up in Hong Kong and then are educated in the U.S. and come back to Hong Kong, and they are seen by their families, honestly, as damaged goods, a little bit.
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They've been Americanized and although there is a desire for them to be educated and take advantage of certain aspects of the US educational system,
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for women particularly, when they return to Hong Kong, there is a bit of concern that they have been too Americanized.
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And so there are some very positive messages that go with being an American woman in Hong Kong, but there are some negative messages, as well.
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And then there is also the whole question of virtual American women. A lot of my students will say to me, "I'm assuming that American women are a lot like those women that we see in Desperate Housewives or on Friends"
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Those were the pop culture text that were sort of the go-to text during the time that I wrote the book.
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So as I started going back and looking at, where did these stereotypes of American women come from? They start really early.
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They're accentuated in our time by popular culture, by the fact that there's travel and education back and forth, but from a very early period, there was this idea that there is something special and unique, and not always good, about being an American woman, so I look at both sides of that.
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I want to say something about the title, "Troubling American Women." We joke about, there are many types of troubling, and the first type of troubling is actually, bossy.
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So, I am a troubling American woman in the bossy way, I'm not gonna lie. When I first arrived there, I found myself being a bit demanding, or having expectations of the way people should treat me.
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So one example of that is, my husband and I were shopping in a mall in Hong Kong, and I paid for the item, and the gentleman who was the cashier handed my husband the change.
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And he got a lecture on, "why are you giving him the change, that's my money?!" and you know, the poor guy, he looked at me like, "really? I didn't want to hurt anybody, I just wanted to give you your change back and your husband is part of this unit and I gave the money to him."
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But I, for me, the American feminist in me had to preach at him a little bit. Turns out I'm not alone. Other people do that as well and they've been doing it for a while.
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So version number 1 of troubling is preaching, maybe a little bit bossy, well intentioned, but not always tuned in to the cultural dynamics, or not always aware that there might be many ways to read a situation.
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And that's sort of troubling, I think, as Americans right now, we have to be aware. I mean there's this big debate between the GOP candidates and the Democrats about when we go abroad, when we talk about who we are as an American population abroad, how do we tell our story?
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And there's been criticism that perhaps our President has apologized for America abroad.
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I don't agree. I think we have to be careful about how we present ourselves abroad, but that's a debate for another day.
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What is relevant here is this notion of American exceptionalism, bubbles through all of these narratives.
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Women who go to Asia who take with them, this idea that there is something unique, or special, or different about an American ideology, U.S. culture, and then how that plays out in Hong Kong. So that's the first version of troubling.
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And that goes with the dictionary definition of "to annoy, vex or bother." [[laughs]] The second definition is "to disturb the mental calm and contentment of something."
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Now that version of troubling, for me, gets a little bit more interesting. There's a strong ethos of harmony in Hong Kong.
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And you can argue that this plays itself out in other Asian cultures as well, and we can spill into generalizations very easily, and I don't want to do that. But in Hong Kong, there's a strong cultural value placed on harmonizing, on getting along, on not making too much of yourself.
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So an American style, which can be more direct, or more assertive, is not as valued. And ethnically Chinese women who come back to Hong Kong after having some experience in the U.S. have to do their own negotiations in terms of how much they harmonize.
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They feel strongly that they've learned different sorts of stylistic techniques, and they have to live within families and workplaces and communities, but it's not always easy.
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So, to disturb the mental calm of the harmony ethos in Hong Kong, is something that I've seen ethnically Chinese women do and I write about that a little bit in the text
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and that is something also that links to pop culture, in the sense that, in the Cold War period, lots of Hong Kong films were made by local Hong Kong artists, movie starts, who were funded, partially, by the United States government.
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And you had a presentation of American women as being independent, and leading out, and being
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The only comparison I can make--those of you who are aware of the Gidget movies and--um--Annette Funicello's Beach Blanket Bingo, and 1950's movies that show spunky American women.
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Those movies have their counterpart in Hong Kong in the 1950s and 60s. And what you have in that period, is you have Hong Kong filmmakers working with American government officials showing spunky Hong Kong women that talk and act a lot like those American women we're seeing in Hollywood.
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Except, there are very Chinese messages.
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So a film like Mambo Girl, or a film like Air Hostess, or June Bride, these are films made by the local Hong Kong café studio, featuring a Woman named Grace Chang--who is a singer, she's a dancer, and she talks about how we can do the Mambo [[dance]] and we can do the Twist [[dance]] but we can do it in ways that still honor our Chinese Heritage.
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And so it's this most amazing mix of American Pop Culture and brassy, spunky American Womanhood, but toned down in a certain way to still honor--um--typical or traditional Chinese values.
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The message here is: Hong Kong is a place that it's not the mainland. It is not Communist. It is a place where we can promote American democracy, where we can promote a safe form of youth culture.
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It's not those kids who are going crazy in the U.S with Rock & Roll music and then later--civil rights, women's rights, anti-war movement.
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But it's just enough freedom that we're not Communist China.
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So it promotes--um--an increased commercial culture in China; it promotes burgeoning industrialization in Hong Kong--and it says you can be a little American, and still safe. And you don't have to be too American.
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So the second sort of troubling then, is it's not harmonious in the same way, it's troubling a little with the cultural ethos, but it's not--um--'Bull in the China Shop' sort of troubling like definition number one.
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Definition number three--I think--is the most important for our purposes here today, in this beautiful space where we have the Portraiture now Exhibit--where we see a range of Asian American identities and narratives being expressed. How many of you have had a chance to see the exhibits?
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Alright, if you haven't, please take time after and go look at it. It is the most extraordinary gathering of troubling American women in the best possible way, in the third way.
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And that is: to agitate or to stir up so as to make turbid (as in water or wine)
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and so, in terms of that definition, what we see is a collection of Asian American women--and there are men there as well--but an extraordinary number of the artists in this exhibit are women--and because my work focuses on women's narratives I was noticing the women's texts
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and what they're doing is what I call the 'cultural mash'. They're mashing things up all over the place. It's very hard to say "this is American", "this is Chinese", "this is Korean", "this is transnational"--it's just coming together in interesting ways.
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But they are troubling--or taking--they're blurring definitions of national identity and ethnicity. And so some of those texts, you will see a clear claiming of an American identity, as well as a claiming of Chinese or Asian identities, but the elements will be mixed up
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and there's transnational identities, as well as a specific American and/or Korean, Chinese identity as well.
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So for me, when you get to the end of the book, the book starts in the 19th century with merchants' daughters and missionary women. By the time you get to the end of the book, you have more missionaries but you also have a Chinese-American filmmaker who hosts a talk show about how to help women--Chinese women--be more bold about their sex lives.
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And you have--um--Betty Wey--a women who writes columns in the South China Morning Post--trying to help ex-patriot Americans get along with local Chinese. And helping different generations of Hong Kong Chinese come to terms with increasing Americanization of Hong Kong.
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By now in my classroom, I have what we call the children of the 'Brain Drain'. Between 1984, when the joint declaration was signed between the UK and between--basically between Margaret Thatcher and Deng Xiaoping in Beijing--
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saying that Hong Kong would go back under Chinese sovereignty in 1997. Beginning with that moment--right up until 1997-- 800,000 people left Hong Kong and went to various places outside of Hong Kong.
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And a lot of those people came here.
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83% of that 800,000 have now went back to Hong Kong. Obviously it's not the same 83%, but I think you get some sense of the cultural flows that are going back and forth between not just Hong Kong and the US, but between the greater China region and the Chinese diaspora.
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and that's just the Chinese diaspora. We're not talking about the Korean diaspora, and other groups that have moved as a result not only of economic change, but wars and political unrest throughout Asia.
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So in the media right now, there's a lot of discussion about China.
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There's a fair amount of China-bashing going on in the United States. There's [[hesitation]] discomfort and rightfully so, with the 2 year old girl who was run over twice--two times--in Guangdong
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and there are sensational stories about what China is. But at the same time--what I can't help but see as a result of my work--is how mixed up we are and we have always been--mixed up in good ways. That the 'cultural mash' that has gone on between the US and Hong Kong--and by, you know, by association China as well.
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So I think rather than 'bash, I think this exhibit reminds me that we're all part of a cultural mash. And Asian identities and Asian views and Asian people have been a part of the American experience literally from the beginning
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and as a result of my time in Hong Kong, and working on this book, I changed the way I teach U.S history. It's impossible to teach U.S history the same way once you really are aware of all the connections that do exist.
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Not just between individual Americans, who are moving from one place to another, but in terms of trade flows and labor flows and government programs, artistic exchanges--I could go on and on, you get the idea. I wanted to read--um--one quote.
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As I said, the book talks about
[SILENCE] positive and negative interactions and encounters,
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but as I was walking through the exhibit yesterday and looking, particularly at the portraits of Korean Americans that are on the walls outside.
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I thought of a woman that I quote in the book, Phoebe Eng,
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and Phoebe Eng has done a lot of work, working with self-esteem among Asian Americans.
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And for purposes of this talk, I'm not making as clear as I should, the distinction between people who are born in China or Asia and come here,
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verses people who have been in the United States for many many generations; there are important distinctions.
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There are not only generation dimensions between various families who deal with the immigrant experience,
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but native born verses Diaspora, there are all sorts of other nuances as well.
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But Phoebe Eng talks about her life in both the U.S. and in Hong Kong, she worked in both places.
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She says, "My American roots would earn me the dubious label of juxing, a foreign born, literally, a bamboo hallow brain;
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which by the was isn't a Chinese complement.
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"With a faltering American tongue that tried in vain to sound truly Chinese and a western swagger that hardly fit in the rules of how a good Chinese women ought to walk."
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And my students always tell me, I can always tell an American women because when she walks on the subway, she swaggers
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or she takes bigger strides, or she takes up more space on the Hong Kong subway.
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So, when I see the swagger, I can relate.
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She says," I fell through the crack of an east west divide, in fact it was more like a vast gaping [cravast?],
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I didn't belong in Asia so I came back to America, resolved to accept it as home.
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But, back in America I found that being an Asian American women means living behind layers of imagery,
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that of dutiful daughters and mothers; straight 'A' students and diligent workers; silent and exotic seductresses; tragic and self sacrificing madame butterfly's.
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With these images of marginality, Asian American women as a group have and until now, been excluded from the core of most American dialogues,
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even within a Women's movement that is striving to be inclusive, we are an afterthought, an embellishment; if we exist at all.
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We struggle with our invisibility and we share desires to be treated seriously, past stereotype.
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The exhibit hanging in the gallery here is a testament to the fact that we haven't in so many ways, managed to move past stereotype
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and yet you still see stereotypes remain and there's a lot of unfinished business, the um...
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Stacilee Ford: There's a woman named Deisel Kim Gibson out on the wall out there and I felt like with some respects she could be the troubling American woman for today.
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She, Phoebe Eng, talks about a time two decades ago and I think alot of the younger women that I see who are exchange students coming to Hongkong U from the U.S would say,
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"I don't relate completely to Eng's anger. I do feel like, you know, I can focus on what I wanna focus on.
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I don't necessarily have to negotiate with familial expectations in the way that she talks about. I don't feel exoticized in the same way.
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And- there- we have moved on a bit." But what I like Deisel Kim Gibson says, "I believe the idea that the place of our births, as the center of our universe, is being dismantled,
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especially in the century of mass migration. The only way we can claim home again is to make every corner of the earth our home, and to think of ourselves as human beings."
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So this is a phenomenal sentiment, and yet we live in a time where national identity is preserved as strongly as ever in some ways.
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And as Americans, we cling, and rightfully so at times, to our own identities, and wanted to hang on to something unique, or special, or exceptional,
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in a moment when we have to worry about economic competitiveness and real dangers in the world and we have strong beliefs about authoritarian societies.
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So how do we keep this, you know, this beautiful vision, intentioned with realities, of our day to day world?
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The women in this book managed to balance, sometimes more successfully than others, but I think what I learned is the best way to start thinking about how we move forward is to really move beyond those borders,
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and, really, you know, participate in as many cross-cultural encounters as we can.
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I think that I'm gonna stop here because I would love to take questions or see what's on your mind.
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I've thrown out all sorts of stuff, but let's find out what's relevant here.
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And. questions, comments.
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And if there are no questions or comments, I'm gonna make the people who are in involved with the exhibit talk just a little bit about the exhibit because it's fabulous.
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This is a troubling American movement by the way. In every good way! It seems... that's what it seems like to me. I'm- and I've- part of the reason I'm delighted to be here is to get feet on the ground on this side of the pond right now.
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Because from Asia, it does feel like the isolationist moment is not a moment, it's a phase.
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So, I don't know. I think... I think there is a concern on the Chinese side and in Hong Kong about the fiscal viability of the U.S. economy certainly and then that has a knock-on affect culturally.
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And so, I dwell mostly in the cultural realm but I think the two are related. There is no doubt about it. And so... I don't know. What do you think about it?
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In terms of women specifically? Hong Kong women or American women in Hong Kong?
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I think American women in Hong Kong- I think that label is troubling itself. I don't know who isn't American anymore. I think there's a stereotype of an American woman. And the book talks about it, I think in general; American women for the most part are seen in rather favorable terms.
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And...there is a certain--We're sporty, we're sure of ourselves--admiration for a certain direct style but there is a belief that American women go too far. They are too assertive. They don't know when to harmonize. And it's interesting because there are a group of very strong women politicians in Hong Kong who manage a very tough political environment and they would say--you know, for Hillary Clinton--we're not going to cut it here. And it's been interesting to watch Hillary Clinton sort-of change her style as she has dealt more with countries outside of the U.S.
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So sometimes I feel like Chinese women are very strategic. They learn to...Chinese women in politics live to fight another day. They will do the harmony bit and the Chinese translation for female politician is literally translated to handbag society. So these women carry designer handbags and they dress in very fashionable ways in order to not be threatening to the men.
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And as a result, they are respected. They are given a certain pride of place in the political sphere because they've seated a certain battle. They are not going to be troubling in way #1.
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They'll say, Look! And they'll actually celebrate the gender difference. They'll say (whether it's the Yin Yan dynamic or they'll say we are softer) and intentionally manage that dynamic.
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And that connects to younger women in the U.S. who have issues and anxieties; and women who conservative--on the conservative side--who have issues with feminism.
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So I think there is a critique of American feminism as well as stereotypes of American women embedded in Asian women's stories and Asian men's reactions to American women.
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But in terms of what's happening in Hong Kong right now; I think you have...what I see is my local Chinese women students performing American-ness in ways that many of my American students coming to Hong Kong don't.
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So... what is perceived to be American is influx all the time. It's changing and it's highly mobile. And those stereotypes...um...they can be a way to keep women in their place too.
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And that... that's something that is hard for me. In fact, I sometimes have to take a break. I laugh it out. I'm not very good at harmonizing. So I have to leave, and yeah...you know.
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Stacilee Ford: But I..I..think there is something to learning how to harmonize.
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{Male Speaker} Speaking of harmony, can you talk about the culture of harmony in Hong Kong? Is that pretty much the same as what these ladies experienced then? Is that a general cultural thing?
Stacilee Ford: Yes {Male Speaker} Is it primarily the women, or the men or is the whole culture like that? You [[coughing]] try to get along, you try, it's not just these ladies were sticking out in the fact that they're not harmonizing as a female.
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Stacilee Ford: Right [[Cross talk]] {Male speaker} As a society for example.
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Stacilee Ford: Right, right. I think there's definitely a whole societal ethos. I think the reason I focus on women, and by the way, there's a book to be written about troubling American men. And men can be troubling too in all sorts of other ways. And sometimes I think about writing about that, but I think there are men who are actually better qualified to do that.
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So you raise a really important point. I think there is a general expectation, first of all, that foreigners, and foreigners are given wide berth, particularly Caucasian foreigners, so my phenotypically Asian-American colleagues are expected to speak Cantonese and English and Mandarin at this point.
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If I make the slightest attempt to speak any Chinese, like, I'm literally applauded when I go to conferences in the mainland if I speak the slightest [[??]], so white girls get a lot of flexibility, and it's a very privileged world.
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Having said that, I think there is, there's, you know, harmony good, which is let's all get along, and then there's, there's a patriarchal ethos which says, women still, they may go to work, they may lead out, they may be in the political sphere, but they are responsible still for the home front.
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And what's happened in Hong Kong is you have, sort of the importation of domestic helpers, originally from the Philippines, but now from Indonesia and other places in Southeast Asia, so whereas in the United States men and women are arguing about who's going to take out the trash, that argument is over in Hong Kong.
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And not just in the elite levels, but I would say in a large swath of the middle class as well. Because you can bring in, mostly women, from poorer countries to do domestic labor. So the harmony, harmony is preserved, because we're not really having the friction around gender roles in Hong Kong that we had for a long time in the US, and that I still think we're having her to some extent.
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Stacilee Ford: For exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
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{Woman speaker} When you were talking about the Chinese women in Hong Kong, and the American women in Hong Kong, I wonder if you were including children of Chinese immigrants who were born and raised in the United States.
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Now if they went back to Hong Kong, would they be considered American women or Chinese women, and what, and how are they perceived? Is it kind of a third group, American, Chinese, and then Chinese-American?
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Stacilee Ford: There is a third group. And a lot of times its about self naming. And it's interesting to look at crisis periods. So for instance in World War II, you have women who were born in the US, or born in China, basically they have US passports.
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And they may have been literally days in one place before moving to another, but you have a lot of ethnically Chinese women, both Chinese-American, or Hong Kong born Chinese, or mainland Chinese women who have US passports, basically flushing passports, and passing as being ethnically Chinese.
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A woman in the book named Eleanor Tong is an interesting example. She is somebody, she's born in the US, and is educated truly bi-culturally in both in Hong Kong and the US. And she, she identifies as Chinese.
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In the Eurasian community, sort of clumps in different places. Eurasians in Macao, which is next door to Hong Kong, will tend to associate with Chinese identities much more than Western identities. It becomes more a mixed bag on the island and if you have, you know, British connections as opposed to American connections sometimes the identification is different, but I think we can say at this point is that local Chinese people see ABC's differently.
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I didn't even know what the term ABC was until I came to Hong Kong. And that is American Born Chinese, right? I knew Chinese-American, I knew Asian-American, but the way my local students look at Chinese-American women is, it's quite striking, it really is, and I went to Hong Kong thinking "Oh, I will be able to connect with my Hong Kong students around questions of migration and diaspora and hybrid identities", and my Hong Kong Chinese students said "No". [[laughs]]
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And when Eng talks about Jook-Sing, you know bamboo, or banana, there is still, that's starting to break down a little bit, because we have more and more students from all over the world in our classrooms, but there is still a very clear view of American born Chinese women as being different than Hong Kong born or mainland born who go for periods of time.
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And again, some of that is women get to identify, they get to speak their narrative to determine who they are, but only to a point, there's still a lot of labeling going on. Does that answer? {Woman speaker} Yeah
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Other question, you've been super quiet and super intense. What questions you have? Come on?
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Nooo.... I've said something that must have struck a cord somewhere, really.
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Okay well then, I'm going to ask you a question. Why are you here, you are the only person I haven't met, except I haven't met you, so.
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What bring you here today.
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Well, thank you for coming, really.
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No questions from Katie?
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Some people would say the fullride program at my university is that, I think it's much more subtle. And I think also, the commerical influence, defacto
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Stacilee Ford: --Even if you don't identify with that culture sometimes you're seen as identifying. Question?
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[Crowd member] If you already said, or answered my question you don't have to but —
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I was interested in knowing, how did you develop an interest in teaching in China? And how long have you been doing it and how do you feel about it? [[?]] the two cultures [[?]] in China sounds difficult.
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You know? And it's — Well and Hong Kong, Dan Rathers said at one point "Hong Kong is Asia for beginners".
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And I think he's not wrong about that. I think what you see on the surface is not what's really underneath. But I went there. Honestly, I followed my husband.
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I am the trailing spouse, in a certain way, and we moved originally — I finished my graduate work and we moved to Madrid and we were in Spain and he had a business trip to Hong Kong.
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And he called me on the phone and he said "You would really like Hong Kong. I think you would really like living here."
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Which is code for "I really really want to live here, now let's see if we can make this work for you."
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And so, he did. And his company actually helped me get an interview with Hong Kong U and so I started out teaching one class. And honestly we were there for two years and then I was back here.
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And I am part of a lovely extended family network who comprises a lot of the audience today.
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And so, I went kicking and screaming in a certain way. And over time, what I think happens is, if Hong Kong can grab me, it can grab anybody.
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Because I was really — I still am very U.S. identified. And I think what happens is, Hong Kong was an incredibly welcoming place and there were opportunities.
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I've had more opportunities as an academic in Hong Kong, than I would have had here, honestly. Because I did want to have a family life as well.
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And I think when I look at what people on the tenure-track here are having to deal with, I think it is a kinder, gentler life in some ways professionally for academics in Hong Kong.
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So I was able to combine. Caroline and Ellie have both had experience as academics in Hong Kong and they can speak to that as well.
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But actually, it became home. And it didn't happen naturally. And I actually felt at home for the first time after the SARS epidemic.
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This is — my oldest son Tyler will tell you, I've had a very ambivalent relationship with Hong Kong.
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But during the SARS epidemic, a lot of the ex-patriots left. And I went to my boss in the history department of Hong Kong U, and I said "Okay Keqing, I'm a little worried. There's all this discussion about maybe it's just a good thing to go."
00:34:34.000 --> 00:34:39.000
And my children's school had shut down, they were doing virtual school. Everything was online.
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And she looked at me square in the eye and she said "You're such a phony." [laughter]
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And I said "Excuse me?". She said "Well you talk all the time about this great experience and how we can all get along and the cross cultural encounter.
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Look at all these people that have no choice. They don't get to leave Hong Kong. Just because you can get on a plane and go, does that mean you really should?"
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And so, I thought about that and my husband and I decided that we would stay. And as a result, I got to see --
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Stacilee Ford: It was — it was the one time in my life in Hong Kong where it really didn't — it seemed to matter so much less who you were ethnically, what language you spoke.
00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:30.000
It was about coming together. It was, you know, doctors and nurses who ended up dying to take care of patients. It was about people being forthcoming about what was going on.
00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:39.000
And Hong Kong acted in a much different way than the mainland did. There's a lot of mainland bashing that goes on in Hong Kong so I — you know, I have to be careful there.
00:35:39.000 --> 00:35:49.000
But the way that Hong Kong was committed to transparency about the worst possible news about SARS, while still trying to be hopeful was really extraordinary.
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So I think there's something really quite special about Hong Kong. And for a little place, I — it doesn't get written about a lot.
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There was a lot of media around 1997, but it really does punch above its weight globally in terms of what it does. I don't think people appreciate that.
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So it's a long answer to your question but I think I didn't appreciate it for a long time and I was wound in, bit by bit.
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Husband was grabbed much more immediately. And there are people, there are China people. You know there are the "China hands".
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We talk about people who know, almost from the beginning that that's what they want. For me, I really was that troubling American woman. It took me a while, so.
00:36:31.000 --> 00:36:47.000
Unknown Audience Member: I wanted to know about the issue about being skillful at harmonizing. It's not so much of an issue if you're an academic. It is easier if you're not a harmonizer in the academic world or is it the same as in the business world?
00:36:47.000 --> 00:36:56.000
Stacilee Ford: I think it's harder in the business world. I think it's much harder. I think in academia you're allowed — you're supposed to be a little bit iconoclastic.
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I think it's hardest — my students will say "You taught us all these things in American studies and we go to work in Hong Kong and people don't really appreciate the critical thinking or the direct approach"
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So, I think what's harder are for folks who feel like they want to Americanize to a certain extent, but they also have to blend with the harmony ethos in Hong Kong.
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And you have a situation right now where you have a lot of Hong Kong-born students who were educated all the way up in the U.S. or the U.K. and they are coming back and taking jobs with multi-nationals.
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Not just Ameri- U.S. companies but multi-nationals. They are taking jobs away from Hong Kong U students and other students who have stayed in Hong Kong for their education.
00:37:48.000 --> 00:37:53.000
So it's sort of the reverse — we have all this anxiety in the U.S. about "They're taking our jobs". Right?
00:37:53.000 --> 00:38:02.730
Or "Our jobs are going offshore". I think there's an anxiety among localized students who are not so Americanized or not so westernized about how they will compete.
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Stacilee Ford: Not just in Hong Kong, but this is happening increasingly in Shanghai, and in Beijing, and in the Guangdong region as well.
00:38:12.000 --> 00:38:16.000
So. Thank you.
[SILENCE]
00:38:16.000 --> 00:38:19.000
Nicole, did you want to say anything about the exhibit as you wind up here?
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Nicole: Well, that's what I was gonna say, I was going to, one, thank you very much --
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Nicole: Thank you.
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Nicole: for coming today and joining us. Can we get a round of applause?
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[[Applause]]
Stacilee Ford: Thank You!
