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After the reunification, the absolute political power of the Chinese government, coupled with the rise of economically powerful capitalism, corruption in mainland China has intensified, sovereignty politics and corrupt economy has shaken Hong Kong's social foundation of original free rule of law, the inherent core values was on the verge of disintegration. In the early years of the reunification, Hong Kong people generally did not realize that China was not able to tolerate the rule of law in Hong Kong. Until 2003, the 23 legislation dispute made Hong Kong people awakened and 500,000 people marched to ask for returning the power of government to the hands of the people. While arousing the democratic consciousness of people’s in Hong Kong, it also awakened the totalitarian Chinese government and it felt that its absolute power was challenged, thus it changed its commitment of "Ruling Hong Kong by Hong Kong people and a high degree of autonomy". Since 2003, people in Hong Kong have wanted to establish a democratic system, which conflicted with the increasingly strengthened control of the Chinese government towards Hong Kong, the intensification of the contradictions between people in Hong Kong and the Chinese government has been superficialized.
One of the respondents of the interview, Allen, has comment about GEM Tang. GEM is a beginning singer debut at online platform. She then put out an album with high popularity at online platform. She is a singer-songwriter, coupled with her skillful piano background. So she has a lot of fans, and many people repute that she is the most influential new singer who can quickly open the first concert. After that, she participated in a singer contest with the identification of Hong Kong singer in mainland. Her performance aroused the mainlanders’ wide concern after this show. And Hong Kong people began to hate her because she became “Mainland – orientated” in those social networks of the mainland. She lost the debut of personal style and changed to the favorite of mainland – soprano style, kept shouting style. The costumes on the shows tend to be “Mainlanders”. In order to make money, completely lost the shadow of Hong Kong people, that is why Hong Kong people hate her so.
Another man respondent, Raymond, claimed that GEM Tang is a public figure who is able to demonstrate a majority of the people in Hong Kong who are identity-oriented and respect on their identity. And GEM can express their own sense of superiority and a certain degree of confidence of Hong Kong people.
Instead, GEM is the portrayal of most Hong Kong people, but the paradox is that the Hong Kong people on their own values and behavior was shameful. GEM is precisely as largest quotation of Hong Kong's Contradiction.
Another woman respondent, Cherry, claimed that Hong Kong people do not like GEM normally. Most Hong Kong people knew that she participated in the mainland TV show, I am a singer 2, and famous. After that, she stayed in Mainland and developed her career of singing. She starred in different television programs in Mainland. She even refused to participate in the awards ceremony in Hong Kong. She has publicly supported CY LEUNG, the Hong Kong Chief Executive. Hong Kong people will think that she is the “Hong Kong dog” who does not know about the political environment in Hong Kong and the public opinion of Hong Kong people. Cherry believes that if GEM did not support CY LEUNG in public, Hong Kong people would not hate her that much.
Combining with above comments of three interviewees about GEM Tang to present the characteristics of cultural identity and factors affecting constitution of cultural identity, this discussion is based on theories relating to cultural identity from Hall, Bauman, Frith (2011).
4.3 Cultural identity
Hall (2011) believes that cultural identity is not consistently maintained, he holds that cultural identity in a modern society tends to be more broken, it is the multiple construction containing many different (and often interlaced, opposite) discussion, practice and positions, it is in the course of change and transformation from time to time. Identity is the process of collecting a lot of history, language and cultural resources to make a person become people of a certain kind. Bauman notes that when people are in different places, at different times, according to the different social roles that they play, they will have different perceptions for cultural identity. Considering from the interviewees' views on GEM, the characteristics of their cultural identity are in line with what Hall describes. First interviewee thought that in the past, GEM was a very good singer-songwriter with a lot of fans in Hong Kong. After she participated in a program in mainland, in order to better meet the interest of fans in mainland, she changed her musical style, so Hong Kong people became to hate her. The interviewee's comments indicate that cultural identity is not fixed but dynamic, it will change as social context changes. Second interviewee mentioned that he appreciated GEM’s attitude of expressing their own sense of superiority and a certain degree of confidence of Hong Kong people. Third interviewee thought that she hated GEM because she publicly supported CY LEUNG, the Hong Kong Chief Executive. This shows that the formation of cultural identity is not only affected by race and origin, but affected by multi-dimensions, considering from the point of view of different dimensions, different people have different, even contradictory attitudes towards cultural identity.
Cultural identity answers the question of who we are. Zolfaghari et al. (2016) have pointed out that people of different nationalities often respond to "who we are" with what is the most meaningful to them, namely, using ancestry, religion , language, history, values, customs and institutions to define their own and take some kind of symbols, such as flags, crosses, crescent, and even head cover and so on as a symbol to express their cultural identity. Its core is the recognition of the basic value of a group; it is the spiritual bond of a group and the spiritual basis of continuing life of a group. Cultural identity has more profound connotation than political identity, social identity and ethnic identity. Compared with other identities, it has more "self-identify" character. Loss of cultural identity will cause more far-reaching impact of pathological anxiety (Zolfaghari et al., 2016)
In decoding GEM’s performance in the program of “I am a singer”, most of Hong Kong audience take a oppositional position. On the face of it, it is because they do not like her singing style and some inappropriate behavior of GEM, but it should be noted that fans in mainland China also notice GEM’s inappropriate behavior, she is still very popular in mainland China. Therefore, it is superficial to explain the unpopularity of GEM in Hong Kong simply with the reasons of GEM’s singing style and her disordered behavior. From a deeper level, this is a problem of cultural identity. Cultural identity is the common spiritual basis of a group. The performance of GEM in the program has a great conflict with the cultural identity of Hong Kong people, resulting in that most of Hong Kong audience has resented her.
Hong Kong audience’s antipathy towards GEM is actually Hong Kong people’s reduced degree of cultural identity with Chinese culture. In the current Hong Kong society, for the degree of cultural identity with Chinese culture is reduced increasingly, this is a strange phenomenon. Before 1997, Hong Kong was under the rule of the British government, people in Hong Kong did not have much antipathy towards Chinese culture or culture in mainland China, most Hong Kong people thought that they were Chinese people, Hong Kong culture was a part of Chinese culture, but after the return of Hong Kong in 1997, under the management of the Chinese government, Hong Kong people’s esteem for Chinese culture in reduced. The author will use the strong cultural identity and cultural nationalism to explain this strange phenomenon.
Strong cultural identity refers to that the degrees of social, economic, political, cultural development of a nation, a country or a region are higher than other nations, countries or regions, so they always want to disseminate their own culture, values, system successfully, thus forming acceptance and recognition with their own culture (Zolfaghari, Möllering, Clark and Dietz, 2016).
Cultural nationalism refers to the tendency that in a cultural field, it emphasizes the common cultural identity and maintains the independence and autonomy of the national culture (Hall and Gay, 2011). When a national culture is threatened by a foreign national culture, the deep feelings for the national culture in the inner of the ethnic group will be activated and turned into a strong sense of autonomy against foreign cultural influence to maintain the independence of local culture.
Although Hong Kong people can be regarded as Chinese from a blood line, the degrees of political, economic and cultural development of the Hong Kong community are much higher than that of Chinese mainland. Therefore, the Hong Kong culture should be a strong culture for Chinese mainland. Hong Kong people’s cultural identity is certainly higher than Chinese mainland culture. However, the reality is that the government in Chinese mainland makes use of its immense political, economic and cultural influence to have greatly affected Hong Kong's local culture. This has undoubtedly affected Hong Kong's cultural nationalism. The performance is to maintain local culture and increase antipathy towards culture in mainland China, the cultural identity for mainland China is decreased. |
