Art in exile: (re)presenting Hong Kong culture and identity

The Hong Kong Studies Hub held an innovative event that combined a seminar discussion with a live performance on 13 May 2025. 

Three artists reflected on how Hong Kong identity is carried, reworked and contested in the UK diaspora. Phoebe Chan presented “From Old Bean Grows Bak Choy,” an autoethnographic solo performance that juxtaposes her migration to the UK with her father’s to Hong Kong decades earlier. She reflected on her friend's imprisonment and how she is using gardening and the planting of an apple tree as acts of remembrance and quiet defiance after the closure of the newspaper Apple Daily in Hong Kong. Indy Chun Leung Lee introduced his long-running solo performance “It Won’t Be Long Now”, which tells the stories of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong (from 1941 to 1945), portraying the lives of civilians outside the Sham Shui Po camp as they experience "liberation" and "modifications." He shows how monodrama and community theatre can recover district histories, war memories and “ordinary heroes” while speaking to audiences across Asia and the UK. Catherine Li discussed her trajectory as an “artivist,” from protest music and her banned cover of “Glory to Hong Kong” to a touring solo show and busking with 1980s–1990s Cantopop to question who counts as a Hongkonger in exile. Comments by Dr Terry Au-Yeung (Cardiff University) and animated audience discussion underscored how exile art navigates guilt, self‑censorship, representation and the ethics of speaking for a dispersed community.