Queer Hong Kong as a Sinophone Method

Abstract

Sinophone studies, according to the inaugural definition by Shu-mei Shih, refers to “a network of places of cultural production outside China and on the margins of China and Chineseness[.] In a keynote entitled “Empires of the Sinophone” delivered at Harvard University in 2016, Shih places Hong Kong in relational comparison with countries and sites that have always existed between inter-imperial rivalry and power relationships, such as Burma, Vietnam, and others. Indeed, Hong Kong served as an important colonial entrepot and inter-imperial middleman during the apex of the British empire in the 19th century. During the Asia-Pacific War, it entered into inter-imperial rivalry again with the co-existence of KMT, Communist, Japanese, and British colonial power bases there. How can we examine this inter-imperial formation of Hong Kong through Shih’s invocation of “empires of the Sinophone”? Furthermore, how might queer theory and Sinophone studies intersect under the inter-imperial condition? In my talk, I turn to Ma Ka Fai’s 2016 novel Once Upon a Time in Hong Kong《龍頭鳳尾》to examine Hong Kong as a place where queer desire and inter-imperiality between the British, the KMT, the Communist, the Japanese, and the local mafia gangs all converge. Specifically, the novel recounts the queer protagonist Luk Naam Choi (陸南才)’s illicit affair with the British colonial intelligence officer David Morrison. Their relationship turns geopolitical when Luk becomes the head of a local triad society. As a story of queer sexuality, multiple geopolitical alliances, colonial complicity, and betrayal, it exemplifies queer desire as the literary archive of Hong Kong itself. In so doing, Ma’s novel demonstrates how a queering of Hong Kong modernity through a multidirectional critique provides a method for theorizing Hong Kong as a dense site of queer Sinophone articulation.