9 Things #ACAM350 Taught Me; 1 Thing It Didn’t


the pains of editing


  1. Editing sucks the life out of you.
  3. Translating is never really truly accurate.
  8. Audio consistency and levels makes a big difference.





A Stamp and A Soul

Because we were talking about oral history, I’ve decided this blog post will consist of my grandfather’s oral history. Maybe this will be the written record of his experiences in English. (:

Story time: My paternal grandfather was a young adult when he made his trek to HK from the outskirts of China. He was in HK when World War 2 happened. He was there at the time when the Japanese occupied the city, and was struggling to make a living after having followed in his brother’s footsteps. He tells stories of when he was young, starting out as a small business owner that sold ivory and the like, including chopsticks and name stamps. There was once when a Japanese soldier commissioned my grandfather to make him a name stamp, and he paid in advance for it too. My grandfather told him to come back in 2 weeks. He waited. The soldier never showed up.

I know of this because of a project I had to do in high school, where I had to interview a WWII survivor and listen and record their stories. I had to transcribe them and present it in a report to the teacher. The ones that wanted their works published in the HK Heritage archive could do so as well. There were many stories that were told, many that were recorded, but also many that was never heard. Having our discussion of oral history and the importance of it reminded me of the project. Through it, I got to know my grandpa and his struggles, his efforts, his toil and his fears (of the world wars, of the communists, of providing for his family). Oral history may be someone’s personal history, but it is history nonetheless. The underlying tensions between the Hong Kong people and the Japanese during its occupation, along with the stark realities of war can be easily understood with my grandpa’s story.

Of course, now that he is older, he constantly talks about the old days, of when the communists came. I always hear him talk about communists this, communists that, but the stories aren’t so clear. He doesn’t talk about it. He talks about other people’s experiences, where the communists come and take everything. According to my father, he was sent to America by my grandfather to start a business in order to have the whole family immigrate to the US. Dad worked hard, and the whole family moved.

I’m always confused at the timeline of everything, because I never know exactly when we were in the ivory business, and when it stopped. Grandpa apparently owned a restaurant too. Apparently lots of people went there. Apparently it was popular. I didn’t know that. It’s not there anymore. I ask my Dad about it too, but it’s not a really satisfying answer. Maybe I’ll ask more when I get back to HK (:

The Truth of a Lie

True or False: Mermaids have been proven to exist.







Because Chinese Movies Live in Fantasies

So I was scrolling through twitter, like I usually do, and an ad for an upcoming movie shows up on my feed. The title of the movie is called The Great Wall, starring Matt Damon, Pedro Pascal, Jing Tian, Willem Dafoe, Lu Han, and Andy Lau.

… Hello, Matt Damon! What are you doing in Song Dynasty China? Do you need to be rescued again? Also, Oberyn Martell is wielding an axe!

In all honesty though, I didn’t know what to feel when I saw this. After the representations chat in class, this trailer just rubbed me the wrong way. I didn’t even finish the whole trailer, actually, because I just thought “oh. Another film about a white guy in China that probably saves the world blah blah blah.”
Then I started to think about it. Am I offended?




So I watched the whole trailer, and it’s a fantasy movie about monsters on the other side of the Great Wall. Okay, sure. But it still doesn’t satisfy me. Why not, you ask? It’s a fantasy movie, which means everything is pretty much made up anyway, but I’m still not convinced. Even if Andy Lau is in it. Even if Zhang Yimou directed it. Because I feel like Chinese movies have been doing this kind of thing for ages already. Take Painted Skin for example, or A Chinese Ghost Story (omg. translations. why. The Chinese title 倩女幽魂  literally means beautiful girl ghost; if I had to translate the title it would probably be something like The Ephemeral Beauty). These movies are all historical fiction taking place in some ancient Chinese Dynasty, which to be fair, is pretty much the premise of The Great Wall. Perhaps I’m just desentisized to these now, because there have been so many in Chinese cinema and film that I really don’t care for another one, starring a white guy no less.

The question of representation and the insider/outsider status creates space for these types of discussion. Am I offended because an outsider is seemingly infiltrating into my supposed “insider” culture? The 3 out of 5 main cast and the director are Chinese, is this enough of a “representation” of culture? I don’t know. Also, question about subtitles or I guess movies in general: Hong Kong watches English films with subtitles all the time, because it’s “main stream”. What does it take for a foreign film to be shown in theatres here, in North America, or in any English speaking country, without being dubbed over? Do people here read subtitles?

the moral obligation of my human existence

Hello #ACAM350! In continuing the discussion about identity, though I don’t really call myself an Asian Canadian, I am… Let me explain. I was born in Canada then packed on a plane at 3 months old to be raised in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is not China. I have a Canadian passport. I also have a Hong Kong passport. Technically, yes, I’m a Chinese-Canadian, but:  Canadian identity  <<  Hong Kong identity. Complicated, as identity tends to be.

I feel like identity is something that’s fluid, as with all the facets that make up one identity, and that’s why it’s so hard to pinpoint. Anyway, that’s a little intro to me. Moving on!

While reading Voices Rising, I was intrigued by Tanaka’s idea of a moral obligation to community and that “the end of all art should be to bring about an understanding of the community’s being in the world”, while pitting it against the idea of “the artist in Western society” (Li 20). The two opposing concepts of individuality versus community is one that highlights the fundamental differences in Western societies and East Asian societies (cue epic music).

Confucian philosophy and ideologies shape community orient East Asian societies––a way of thinking that resurfaces as “moral obligation to community” in Tanaka’s argument. The difference between his proclamations and the “artist in Western society” then, becomes more than a simple opposition of perspective, but one rooted in the distinction of the differences in cultural perspectives. The argument to “develop a community consciousness” is invariably tied to the idea of an East Asian identity and culture, whether that is Japanese/Korean/Chinese (20).

Going back to the idea of an Asian Canadian identity, how do we reconcile the clashes in ideologies and cultures that make up who we are? What about the idea of “reconstructing” identities, where we unlearn cultural teachings and biases to create a new meaning for being Asian Canadian? I don’t know where I’m going with this but maybe I will at the end of this course (: