28 February 2018

Returning to No 'Home': Reflection on Migrant Children's Educational Remigration (回不了的「家」：農民工隨遷子女返鄉求學的困境與反思)

Prof. Ling Minhua was invited by the China Institute for Education Finance Research to deliver a talk at Peking University on February 28. In a talk entitled "Returning to No 'Home': Reflection on Migrant Children's Educational Remigration" (回不了的「家」：農民工隨遷子女返鄉求學的困境與反思), she discussed how the taken-for-granted "home" journeys undertaken by migrant students to their officially registered hometowns in preparation for the university entrance examination are often fraught with contradictions and frustrations. Institutional barriers, regional disparities, and sociocultural differences result in migrant youths' ill adjustment, psychological distress, and social alienation. She argued that while improving vocational education quality in cities is an immediate solution to help migrant youth enter the urban labor market, the gradual elimination of hukou-based school access and university enrolment should be the goal.

7 March 2018

'I Didn't Think We'd Be Like Them'; Or, Wong Kar Wai, Hong Konger　

Dr. Jason S. Polley, Associate Professor at Hong Kong Baptist University's Department of English Language and Literature, delivered a talk on March 7 on what the fractious identity marker 'Hongkonger' speaks to twenty years after the 1997 Handover. He treated Wong Kar Wai's 1960s trilogy – Days of Being Wild (1990), In the Mood of Love (2000), and 2046 (2004) – as an intersection to look at Hong Kong through population demographics, critical theory, vernacular criticism, the media, and autobiography. Polley treats his own intervention on the topic as building new knowledge about the culture war now defining Hong Kong. Delivered energetically and in an original format, his talk was followed by an animated discussion with the audience on Hong Kong identity and Wong Kar Wai's films.

22 March 2018

"We Come from the Underground": State Cultural Governance and Counter-Cultural Creativity in Contemporary China

Nevin Domer works as an executive producer of indie music in China, where he also helped found two of China's top indie labels, Maybe Mars and Genjing Records. On March 22, Mr. Domer and Nathanel Amar, a postdoctoral fellow at the Society of Fellows in the Humanities of The University of Hong Kong, came to CUHK for a discussion on the complex relationship between the Chinese state apparatus and the (counter-)cultural sphere. Drawing from their personal experiences and studies on the Chinese indie music scene, they showed how underground music creates its own institutions and communities and how it manages to survive censorship and state control.

28 March 2018

The Widening Gulf across the Taiwan Strait: Law, Criminal Justice, and Human Rights

Prof. Margaret K. Lewis of Seton Hall University Law School delivered a talk at the Centre on March 28 about the strained cross-strait relations between China and Taiwan, focusing in particular on the gulf between the legal systems in the two regions. Taiwan has transformed from martial law to a democratic system incorporating international human rights in the past 30 years, whereas mainland China maintains one-party rule and allows increasingly less space for civil society. Viewing the growing divergence, Prof. Lewis addressed what these trends could mean for each side as well as the relations between Beijing and Taipei.