The so-called cultural identity is simply to answer a question about the identity of "who am I". This question may not be worth mentioning to us mainlanders, because our identity has long been defined within a limited range by a long series of fixed ID numbers and the type printed on the household registration book. What's more, they can even take out the family tree and claim that they are the descendants of a certain famous person in history thousands of years ago. This is not uncommon to us, but for Hong Kong people, the question of identity is a bit like the "Goldbach Conjecture" in mathematics. On the surface, it is just a "1+1" math problem. After that, all further research on it for more than 40 years was fruitless.
Jiang Enzhu, former director of the Liaison Office of the Central Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (Liaison Office), told the Hong Kong media when he left office: "Hong Kong is a very difficult book to read." Ten years later, on the tenth anniversary of Hong Kong's return, he still emphasized this sentence in an interview with reporters and said that he "is still reading the book of Hong Kong."
The complexity of Hong Kong culture not only makes it difficult for "outsiders" to chew, even Hong Kong people themselves feel confused. The reason is probably determined by the special nature of the immigrant society in Hong Kong.
The composition of Hong Kong society is dominated by immigrants. The immigrants here do not only refer to those Westerners with blue eyes and white skin, or the Indians and Pakistanis whose numbers have increased in recent years. Even the pure-bred Chinese are basically the ancestors who moved here from Guangdong, Fujian and other provinces to settle here. of. In the process of migration and the days of long-term departure from home, people will inevitably lose and forget many memories of the past. Especially after the signing of the "Nanjing Treaty" in 1842, Hong Kong was separated from China's territory by Western colonial forces. In more than one hundred years, the "City of Glass" was flooded by foreign cultures. Although the national self-esteem of the Chinese in Hong Kong makes them partly adhere to the "Chinese genes", there is no doubt that in the face of this ever-changing world, the "Noah's Ark" of Hong Kong people can no longer find a way home.
The 1998 Hong Kong director Chen Musheng's film "Who Am I" illustrates the problem. Jackie Chan, a Hong Kong resident, lost his memory in an operation in South Africa. He has six passports of different nationalities, but Jackie Chan didn't know who he was until the end of the film (maybe he would know about it, but the film stopped abruptly, and no answer was given). In the film, he shouted "Who am I" more than once in an attempt to regain his lost identity. But those natives in South Africa "accidentally" mistakenly believe that "who am I" is the real name of this Hong Kong citizen. "Lost memory can be compared to being robbed of identity or forced to be cleansed in a drama." Considering that the film's release coincides with the first anniversary of Hong Kong's return to China, it is difficult for us to simply understand it as a beautiful misunderstanding. Moreover, what is more interesting is that after eight years, even though there is no "amnesia", Jackie Chan still has to face "If General Meng died in battle, who are you?" The cross-examination shows that Hong Kong people still have doubts about their "roots".
According to telephone survey data from the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, from 1998 in Hong Kong, 56.5% identified themselves as Hong Kong people, 30% identified themselves as Chinese, and in 2007 52.4% identified themselves as Hong Kong people and 36.5% identified themselves as Chinese. From a human comparison, some people think that Hong Kong people’s awareness of Chinese identity has been greatly improved, but the actual situation may not be so optimistic.
In any case, for Hong Kong people, because it was a British colony and the special historical existence of being in a mixed east and west, they are often confused when answering the question of "who am I". Because of this, Hong Kong’s cultural identity often focuses on finding differences and positioning between Hong Kong’s “self” and the two “others” of the West and China.
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