Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. Is Cantonese a “dialect” or a “language”? Is it a “culture” or a distinct “society”? Or is Cantonese something both more and less than all of these? The keynote for this workshop introduces how we might think about “Cantonese Worlds” both historically and in the present. Drawing upon the migration of peoples across the globe who spoke various forms of what we might consider “Cantonese,” we consider the “Cantonese Worlds” that have been made historically over the last 500 years, and their prospects in the present day. Over the last 50 years, migrations between Hong Kong and Canada have transformed cities such as Toronto and Vancouver. Significant changes in real estate, business, philanthropy, and education, as well as cultural transformations in language, popular media, and mass consumption have reshaped societies on both sides of the Pacific. Flows of people, goods, and ideas have been multidirectional–even as hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong Chinese became Canadian citizens, Canadians of both Chinese and non-Chinese heritage also migrated to Hong Kong for work and family. Counting the estimated 300,000 Canadian passport holders living in Hong Kong would rank it among the ten largest “Canadian” cities! The Hong Kong-Canada Crosscurrents Project looks back on the last half century in order to understand how the migration of people, goods, and ideas across the Pacific has created a complex crosscurrent of dense and sometimes surprising connections, including the transformation and re-animation of a Cantonese Pacific world that had spanned the ocean for centuries.
Relevant Books and Articles from UBC Library
Aijmer, G., & Ho, V. K. Y. (2000). Cantonese society in a time of change. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press.
Topley, M., & DeBernardi, J. E. (2011). Cantonese society in Hong Kong and Singapore: Gender, religion, medicine and money. Singapore: NUS Press.
Yu-Han, M., & Lee, H. Y. (2014). Strong and weak dialects of china: How Cantonese succeeded whereas Shaan’Xi failed with the help of media. Asian Social Science, 10(15), 23. [Link]
UBC Research Guides