Introduction: Mediating Borders: New Boundaries for Hong Kong Studies

Abstract

There are myriad methods and tactics to study and examine Hong Kong as a former crown colony and a current Chinese special administrative region. Using the idea of border as a critical tool as well as the subject of critique, this special issue highlights and addresses a political and historical fact that the bordering, debordering and transbordering of Hong Kong, as long taken-for-granted through the media, has never been a fixed and stable boundary. If political binarism and cultural parochialism have walled up Hong Kong cultures from national or transnational transformations, the essays in this special issue seek to initiate new discussions and revisit old discovery of Hong Kong amid the ebb and flow of nationality, transnationality and globality. They respond to cross-border ventures in various ways, offering different views and engaging with one another as to shed light on how the changing borderscape might have impacts on the future development of Hong Kong culture.