Panel Statement

Panel: Sexually Explicit Imagery & Gender Politics in the Hong Kong Media Sphere

In Flower of Joy (1944), Hendrik De Leeuw described a “Chinese dinner” in Hong Kong as follows: “Since the female relations of the host were not invited, we had to soothe our hurt feelings to make up for their absence with some sing-song girls, seated on either side of us and who entertained us while we ate with music, small talk and I must confess with occasional flirtation.” My paper will begin by comparing this narrative with another sexualized intercultural depiction in Follow Your Dream (1941), one of the few pre-WWII Hong Kong films extant, made by leftist filmmaker Lu Dun. The film traces the conversion of a young “lady from a respectable family” (da jia gui xiu) to sex worker in supporting her patriotic/revolutionary boyfriend and his family. These will be further studied in the context of Hong Kong laws regulating sex work alongside popular media representation of prostitutes in early 20th century Hong Kong, ranging from major newspapers such as Wah Kiu Yat Po to “small” newspapers (aka xiaobao or tabloids) such as Hu Chiao Po (supplement of South China Daily News) and Gu Zi. This study seeks to further understanding of the intersections among and between class, ethnicity and sexuality vis-à-vis colonial structures of power in forming an early modern Hong Kong Chinese sexual culture.

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Video: Panel 1: Sexually Explicit Imagery & Gender Politics in the Hong Kong Media Sphere

• A graduate in Studio Art from the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York, USA, Yau Ching received her BA in English and Comparative Literature from University of Hong Kong, MA in Media Studies from The New School for Social Research in New York, PhD in Media Arts from Royal Holloway College, University of London, UK, and was awarded a Rockefeller Post-doctoral Humanities Fellowship in Women’s Studies from the University of Hawaii, USA. Currently she is a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Chinese Studies in Taiwan and also serves as Postgraduate Thesis Supervisor for Cultural Studies at Hong Kong Lingnan University and for Graduate Institute for Gender Studies at Shih Hsin University, Taiwan. She has authored and edited twelve books including Filming Margins: Tang Shu Shuen, a Forgotten Hong Kong Woman Director (2004), Sexing Shadows: a study of representation of gender and sexuality in Hong Kong cinema (2005), As Normal as Possible: Negotiating Sexuality and Gender In Mainland China and Hong Kong (2010) and Sexual Politics (2006). Her bilingual collection of poems, The Impossible Home (2000) won the Runner-Up Prize at the Chinese Literary Biennial while her award-winning film/video works have been invited to venues/festivals including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Robert Flaherty International Film Seminars, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, London International Film Festival, European Media Arts Festival in Germany, among others, and broadcast in North America, Europe and Japan.