Like Venice in the Renaissance, where North African culture flourished; like Shanghai at the turn of the century, where foreigners ruled; like the splendors of the Dunhuang Caves, created in a region of China then under the control of a Tibetan regime-fin-de-siecle Hong Kong will be remembered as a place half-Chinese, half-barbarian.

1.

If I hadn't grown up in Hong Kong, I would think it all some bad joke; but in fact it seems natural. If I hadn't spent my youth in Hong Kong, I wouldn't have the confidence to say that this is our life, it is real, not some stage scenery and props.

Old Cantonese say Hong Kong is "half-Tang, half-barbarian"-half-Chinese, half-foreign, half-human, half-devil. Let's call it "Sino-barian."

What was originally meant to deceive the foreign devils has become our pride. What was originally for expediency has become our style, our contribution to mankind. Like Venice, Shanghai, and Dunhuang, late-20th century Hong Kong will be remembered for its hybrid nature.

Every great culture needs "barbarians" to rekindle its imagination. Contemporary Europe has Africa, the US has the American West, and China has Hong Kong, with its half-barbarian culture.

Jane Austin wrote of how the gentlefolk in their luxurious country homes always thought of London as backward and uncivilized. I lived in Beijing for nearly three years, and met some writers who, after 50 years under communist rule, still considered themselves the "source" of culture and Hong Kong as merely a "downstream" offshoot. Indeed, some didn't even deign to consider Hong Kong as "downstream," but saw it as a barren cultural desert.

It's time to change the way we think about Hong Kong culture.

2.

I call this the "hybrid stage theory": At first, foreign things entered through borrowing, fadism, or curiosity. But when millions of hybrid ingredients exist in the cultural stew, that is a qualitative change to a new stage. Now that this hybrid culture has its own heritage, and concrete products, it has become "neo-local," and has achieved the status of a culture in its own right.

Take for example milk tea. Ceylon tea became popular in Britain, and colonialists going to Hong Kong kept their old traditions. The ruled copied them, but Hong Kong people use stronger and sweeter condensed milk, and they buy their milk tea on the run, from roadside vendors, rather than sipping it in genteel parlors. Now when Hong Kongers move to Vancouver, they miss their milk tea, and have a cup now and then, just like Americans abroad go to McDonald's for a touch of home.

With the eyes of a contemporary Hong Konger, it is easy to distinguish such things as being hybrid. Yet, Hong Kong has much more that is hybrid, but has already become accepted as fully natural.

The Lingnan school of painting adopted Western perspective and paints, and was unequivocally "hybrid" to the 1920s generation. Today the Lingnan school is seen as refined culture inherent to Hong Kong.

Cantonese Opera was a relative latecomer among forms of Chinese Opera, and adapted some Western instrumentation and modes. After the Communists came to power in China, Cantonese Opera was carried on mainly in Hong Kong. In recent years, it has come to be seen as "traditional," an element of "heritage" to be preserved.

The iron law of "Sino-barian" things is that, when they gain elevated status, it is forgotten that they are hybrid. The best example of this is Hong Kong films.

Naturally the technology for films was shipped in. In terms of aesthetics, the situation is different from that of Japan, which experienced a rather long period of separation from American films; Hong Kong's body of film work has produced few antibodies against Hollywood. And Hong Kongers don't sweat about copying whatever is trendy. Nonetheless, Hong Kong films still have ended up with a different rhythm from those of Hollywood.

Moreover, even though remakes of Hollywood plots are still common, the important point is that hybridization has not by any means, despite Hong Kong's improved economic circumstances and modernized status, "evolved" to increasingly resemble the foreign originals. Instead, the Sino-barian culture, with great staying power, has carried on. There has been a qualitative change to a unique "Hong Kong style."

3.

You can see this clearly from the lineage of the martial arts sequences in Hong Kong films: In old Cantonese martial arts films fight scenes were shot as a whole, without close-ups. But in the 1960s, beginning with the film The Sand Pebbles, which was set in Hong Kong, Western directors introduced American-style fight-filming techniques to Hong Kong. There was a great leap in the ability to make the audience believe that what they are watching is real.

But Hong Kong films did not stop at the American style, but produced a new variation. Along one line were the "new wave" action films, like those of Hu Chin-chuan. Meanwhile, Cantonese martial arts masters like Yuan Hsiao-tien improved the design of fight scenes from the micro perspective.

In the 1970s, along came Bruce Lee, who learned martial arts in Hong Kong and succeeded on his own in the West. He made Hong Kong martial arts films into a global phenomenon. In the 1980s, new martial arts stars and the "baby boomer" directors, coming from film academies or TV, brought realism, fight choreography, and filming designs to new levels. With these, the decades of development of Hong Kong martial arts films have come to fruition.

You may say I am a combination of Chinese and Western; I admit it. But don't forget that I have invested my own sweat and blood as well. And that is precisely the point of this essay: There is labor value and cultural re-production. This "sweat-and-blood theory" contradicts any ivory tower ideas that Hong Kong has no culture of its own.

4.

The mix of Chinese and barbarian was at first a matter of necessity. But since it has continually renewed and reproduced itself, with the efforts of each new generation, there has been a qualitative change. If individual cells in the primordial soup can come together to form a new organism, this organism is not just a mechanical combination of the original cells, but is an organic "creation." It is a hybrid. A hybrid is the uniting of genetic factors, so that the new form cannot again be separated out into the two original organisms. To try to do so would mean destruction.

The successful Sino-barian combination has created new manifestations that cannot return to their original forms. They are wonderful hybrids. After the retreat of the British empire, will the culture of the people's ancestral country, China, flourish in Hong Kong? Sorry, but don't bet on it. The clock cannot be turned back. Hong Kong is a hybrid, and "Sino-barian" culture is our point of departure and our fountainhead.

The "blood and sweat" and "hybrid" theories both respect the labor and production of the local people, and therefore are "liberated" cultural perspectives.

Why repeatedly stress the value of Hong Kong's hybrid culture? Because many erroneous (allegedly "great") ways of thinking are still alive, such as theories of ethnic purity and national chauvinism; theories that say that Hong Kong is a cultural desert; claims that Hong Kong culture is nothing but a by-product of "great" sources, or that Hong Kong is only an international arena where cultures compete, but without culture of its own.

The "Sino-barian" theory affirms Hong Kong's "specialness." It establishes a common ground. The vast majority of cultures, to some degree, are all hybrid. But hybrids may become "breeds," and what is "marginal" to one may be orthodox to another.

5.

I once tried to be "well-bred." Like a typical colonized elite, my cultural capital lay in the West. Twenty years ago, I spent 15 months in Boston. When I came back to Hong Kong, I was shocked at how Lilliputian the land, things, and people seemed. And I couldn't adjust to Hong Kong's urban aesthetic, with gaudy shop signs everywhere.

At that time I had nearly been transformed into an American East Coast intellectual. Then one day a foreigner, an admirer of things Chinese, said to me that he found Hong Kong's street signs exciting. I was dumbstruck. Could it be there is no absolute aesthetic standard?

Today, I recognize the achievements of the Sino-barian culture in Hong Kong. I finally understand that wherever you are is its own cultural fountainhead. I interact with the world, and must see the world from my own subjective perspective.

With different eyes one sees different things. By adjusting your vision, you can easily see Hong Kong's flourishing hybrid culture as a system in itself. The point of this essay is to bring this system into the discourse, to establish a dignified cultural body, to pay respect to the sweat and blood of the local people.

6.

Don't get me wrong. I am not saying Hong Kong only has, or only should have, this "Sino-barian" culture. In fact, two cultural mechanisms make Hong Kong what it is.

One is the hybrid Sino-barian culture reproduced through the labor of Hong Kong people, but the other is cultural pluralism. In Hong Kong, different-even incompatible-cultures coexist, without obstruction. It is just as a virus, after entering a body, may stabilize and coexist with the body. The British colonial authorities adopted a policy of economic laissez-faire and cultural toleration. Thus different cultural sources have been able to coexist without interfering with each other.

I once helped manage an organic farm in Hong Kong. As all organic farm managers will tell you, mixing different crops in the same field makes for fewer pests, is better for the soil, and is more sustainable than one crop alone. So we can say cultural pluralism is like mixed-crop planting-it can minimize harm.

Its pluralized culture will keep Hong Kong an international city, and must be maintained. We cannot let any imperialistic monolithic culture dominate.

But pluralism can lead to "tribalism." Consensus, identity, and self-respect depend on the vibrant hybrid culture produced through our own efforts. This is the beauty of Hong Kong's "one place, two systems" in culture; the hybrid culture is the source most suitable for building a local cultural identity amidst Hong Kong's cultural pluralism.

7.

Though you won't find crass imitation of English imperialism like you would have in, say, the faculty lounge at Hong Kong Chinese University 20 years ago, the marks of colonialism remain everywhere at a deeper level. For example, though Hong Kong's judiciary and administration are "Sinified" in personnel, their foundations were built by the British (and everyone hopes they will remain intact).

Internationalism permeates Hong Kong, even more than Taipei, Beijing, or Shanghai. Just check out the subtle joining of Ming furniture and Western ambience in the shops on Hollywood Street.

And there is traditional Chinese culture, though you have to go search for it-neo-Confucianism at the Chinese University, guqin teachers in Mongkok. Chinese culture in Hong Kong is not, as it is in the imaginations of many Westerners, just fishing junks, which are actually part of a marginal southern Chinese sub-culture.

There are also two groups of "Chinese" (as opposed to Hong Kong's Sino-barians). One is the original dwellers of the New Territories area, who now claim special rights. The other is the Hong Kong "left wing," who have worked for the Communist Party in Hong Kong. They have lived in a shadow society for decades; now we will see how they fit into the larger society.

When you walk on the streets and look around, what you see is Hong Kong people living their "Sino-barian" hybrid lives.