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This lecture presents Hong Kong as a strategic site to re-examine colonial "encounters," to contribute to a collective "re-imagining of a new set of social relationships grounded in decoloniality, anti-racism, justice, and preservation of the earth." Nicole Huang, Professor of Comparative Literature of the University of Hong Kong, speaks as a comparatist who recently left North American academia, relocated to the oldest tertiary institution in a former British colony, and has been working on a project that would require in-depth research into Hong Kong’s colonial past. The key figure in her presentation is the canonical Chinese writer Eileen Chang (1920-1995), who began her literary journey as a college student at HKU in 1939-1941, majoring in English and History.

Eileen Chang belonged to a generation of global writers who treaded on the peripheries of the empires. A descendent of an aristocratic family from the fallen Qing empire, Chang was immersed in a college curriculum that underscored "Englishness," witnessed how the British military was defeated by the Japanese empire in the bloody Battle of Hong Kong in December 1941, and immigrated to a distant American continent. Piecing together these narratives of encounters, we will see that the colonial era’s layered legacies are very much present in today’s postcolonial/post-pandemic/post-National Security Law setting and Eileen Chang's insights remain timely and relevant. Hong Kong once again becomes a place that must generate its own theories and methods.