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Transcription: [00:07:03]

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.

[00:07:16]

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.

[00:07:35]

Except, there are very Chinese messages.

[00:07:39]

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.

[00:08:02]

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.

[00:08:16]

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.

[00:08:29]

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.

[00:08:37]

But it's just enough freedom that we're not Communist China.

[00:08:40]

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.

[00:08:55]

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.

[00:09:08]

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?

[00:09:27]

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.

[00:09:39]

And that is: to agitate or to stir up so as to make turbid (as in water or wine)

[00:09:48]

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

[00:10:06]

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.

[00:10:20]

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

[00:10:38]

and there's transnational identities, as well as a specific American and/or Korean, Chinese identity as well.

[00:10:48]

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.

[00:11:12]

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.

[00:11:31]

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--

[00:11:48]

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.

[00:12:01]

And a lot of those people came here.

[00:12:04]

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.

[00:12:23]

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.

[00:12:37]

So in the media right now, there's a lot of discussion about China.

[00:12:42]

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

[00:12:54]

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.

[00:13:17]

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

[00:13:34]

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.

[00:13:47]

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.

[00:14:02] I wanted to read--um--one quote.

Transcription Notes:
[[?]] x4 in order: ? studio cultural?? ethos ? name of exhibit betty ? last name??