“Under the Umbrellas” Brandon Sward on Tracy Tsang
I
If you search for the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government (LOCPG) in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) on Google Maps, you will find it has a 1.3-star rating. Google translates the first review as “Disturbing the people, an evil place.”
The LOCPG is the official representative of the chief administrative authority of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in Hong Kong, one of that country’s two SARs, a status it assumed when the United Kingdom returned their former colony to the PRC. For 156 years, Hong Kong was ruled by the British, who gained the island “in perpetuity” after the First Opium War, which was precipitated by the Qing’s attempt to bar opium from China. Its failure to sufficiently improve trade and diplomatic relations, however, led to the Second Opium War, in which the British fought alongside the French. Another loss led to the cession of the Kowloon Peninsula.
By the end of the Opium Wars, Hong Kong had transitioned from colonial outpost to international port. After these losses, the Qing initiated a set of institutional reforms with a view to industrial and military modernization. While largely successful in reestablishing the imperial authority, another defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War revealed the insufficiencies of these efforts. Many villagers resented the expansion of foreign influence and increasing adoption of Christianity, which when combined with a drought and subsequent flooding led to violence across the country. This period was also one of changing ideas. Some intellectuals believed that strengthening the monarchy would be preferrable to abolishing it. But the monarchists’ Hundred Days’ Reform had limited success. In 1905, several leaders created a new group, which was unexpectedly thrust onto the world stage due to an accident that revealed the identities of several revolutionaries. Attempts to suppress the movement proved unsuccessful and the resultant Xinhai Revolution ended 2,132 years of imperial rule.
I
Tracy Tsang, Darkness (2018)
Tracy Tsang was born in Hong Kong in 1991, six years before the end of colonial period. The year previous she completed a Master of Arts in Fine Arts at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) in 2020, the University was the site of a pivotal event of the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement. From November 13 to 15 of 2019, protestors occupied CUHK in the wake of a general November 11 strike. Attempts by CUHK president Rocky Tuan to negotiate with the police proved unsuccessful, and at least 70 students were injured.
Perhaps in anticipation of these events, Tsang began Darkness. Over its course, a wall map of Hong Kong is covered with lines and circles until it is entirely blacked out, though with the notable exception of one small rectangle. Within this window, one can see Hong Kong University and Victoria Peak, the highest hill in Hong Kong. Not labeled but present is the LOCPG, which has become a frequent target for pro-democracy protestors, who surrounded it and defaced its national emblem on July 21, 2019.
The pencil used is a Chung Hwa, a brand owned by Lao Feng Xiang, a jewelry store that opened their first shop toward the end of the rule of the Daoguang Emperor in 1848. The seventh Emperor of the Qing dynasty, the Daoguang Emperor whose reign was destabilized by the First Opium War and Taiping Rebellion. In Darkness, Tsang has almost comically used this pencil down to a small nub, shavings enclosed in a small case. The smallness of the gesture seems to mirror the efforts of an individual to confront vast politico-historical forces, driven to respond even when response seems futile.
III
The second period of Hong Kong expansion to include the “New Territories” occurred in the aftermath of the Juye Incident, in which two missionaries were murdered near the town of Juya, which the German Empire used as a pretext to seize the nearby Jiaozhou Bay. Following negotiations with the Chinese government, the German Empire backed down from cession, instead agreeing to a 99-year lease. The move produced a “scramble for China,” and before long Russia was leasing Port Arthur and Dalian. Shortly thereafter, the French forced Qing China into a 99-year lease of Kwang-Chou-Wan. Anxious of the competition, the United Kingdom pressured the Qing for a 200-mile expansion of Hong Kong. In 1898, the British assumed full jurisdiction of the lands deemed necessary for its proper defense. These “New Territories” were leased to the UK. By this time, foreign powers had agreed they couldn’t have outright sovereignty over Chinese territories, resulting instead in a 99-year lease, which MacDonald reasoned was “as good as forever" (1.) When Britain took the territories, there was no expectation they would be returned.
Hong Kong again changed hands during WWII. In 1941, the Japanese effectively destroyed British air power in a single attack and within ten days, they had crossed Victoria Harbor. Chinese troops were planning an attack when the Japanese broke Hong Kong’s defenses. By the war’s end, Hong Kong’s population had halved. The Japanese imprisoned the British and sought to win over locals through appointments to advisory councils and neighborhood watch groups. But the Japanese had difficulties supplying food and overlords became increasingly brutal. Japan unconditionally surrendered in August 1945. When former governor Mark Young returned to the Hong Kong governorship he had vacated in May 1946, he instituted the “Young Plan.” As it became clear that the Chinese government intended to recover Hong Kong, Young attempted to curry favor with inhabitants, but these measures proved insufficient and the United Kingdom and People’s Republic of China began a series of talks that resulted in an agreement that set July 1, 1997 as the formal transfer of sovereignty date. The handover occurred on June 30, where Prince Charles read a farewell speech on behalf of the Queen.
IV
Tracy Tsang, The North Wind (2021)
Boreas is the Greek god of the north wind and bringer of winter, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. In his Histories, Herodotus describes a race of mythical people who lived in the far northern region of the known world, called the Hyperboreans (from either ὑπέρ Βορέᾱ, “beyond Boreas,” or ὑπερφέρω, “to carry over”). Some classicists have suggested the Dzungarian Gate, a mountain pass on the China–Kazakhstan border, as the home of Boreas, thus identifying the Hyperboreans as the Chinese.
More recently, the north wind also surfaces in “The Song of the North Wind” from The East Is Red, which dramatizes the history of the Chinese Revolution and CCP under Mao Zedong. Its lyrics read:
The wind of revolution blows from the north and awakens our suffering brothers.
Workers arise!
Unite with the peasants and attack!
Raise the red flag, let its light shine afar.
Raise the iron hammer, mountains and rivers will shake.
The communist Party is born in China
A spark sets the prairie afire, the whole sky is red.
Here, we can still see the association of wind with change, though in this case of political rather than seasonal. It is these constant shifts that characterize much of Hong Kong history and which are on display in Tsang’s The North Wind, a mixed media installation from 2021. Of its components, two reproduce pivotal moments from Hong Kong’s recent past: a receipt printer the official proceedings of its handover on July 1, 1997, and a TV the official proceedings of the Sixth Legislative Council, the current meeting of the Hong Kong SAR’s legislative branch, in which six pro-democracy and localist members-elect were disqualified in 2016 and 2017 due to controversies stemming from their oaths of office.
Hanging from a line across the top of the space are rows of “Good Morning” towels (GMTs), which are the sole brand of towels visitors are allowed to bring those convicted or remanded in Hong Kong (with a limit of one towel per month). The design of the GMT is believed to stretch back to the late 19th century, and its bilingual greeting to appeal to British expatriates. The towels are now made in state factories in Guangdong, the province bordering Hong Kong to the north. In their evenly spaced rows, they recall the tradition of Tibetan prayer flags strung between Himalayan peaks, which were discouraged but not outright forbidden during the Cultural Revolution. Like Hong Kong, Tibet has long struggled against Chinese rule. Ruled by Buddhist lamas since the 7th century, Tibet was first conquered by the Mongols in the 13th century, and then the Manchus in the 18th. China annexed the region in 1951 but didn’t gain full control until crushing a revolt eight years later. During this period, the Dalai Lama fled the country, and continues to represent the erstwhile country in exile. The region continues to experience unrest to this day.
V
As is reflected in these changing titles of the Chinese state, there was much going on in Hong Kong’s backyard. The First Sino-Japanese War failed to exhaust animosities between the two powers, due to Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in pursuit of oil and metal after being crippled by US sanctions. It was an opportune time to push into China, which was deep in a civil war. The death of President Yuan Shikai created a vacuum in which nationalist political party Kuomintang (KMT) founder Sun Yat-sen returned from exile in Japan to form a rival government. Largely ignored by Western powers, Sun turned to the Soviet Union for assistance. With their support, Sun and his lieutenant Chiang Kai-shek reunified the country in 1928. But Chiang soon grew suspicious of the Soviet-backed Chinese Communist Party (CCP), with which Sun had struck a fragile alliance. Sun’s decision to violently suppress the CCP on April 12, 1927, again dragged China into civil war.
While Chiang’s highest goal was the eradication of communism, he couldn’t afford to ignore the Japanese, who had captured Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanking. Although Chiang possessed several military advantages, his best troops had been killed during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and the CCP’s rural guerilla tactics proved difficult to counter. When coupled with Mao Zedong’s orders to respect the peasants, the CCP was able to win widespread support and turn back the KMT. In 1949, Mao proclaimed the founding the People’s Republic of China. Along with two million sympathetic refugees, KMT forces strategically retreated to the island of Taiwan, where Chiang proclaimed Taipei temporary capital of the Republic (2.) Both governments continue to assert exclusive sovereignty over all of China.
VI
Tracy Tsang, When departure becomes mountains (2021)
I’m first struck by its delicacy. Ivory ridges fan out from one another in a way that resembles a huge cloud, or perhaps a forest fungus, or even layers of spun sugar. They look like they would crumble beneath by touch, too fine for vulgar fingers. On closer inspection, the white is shot through with black veins, blurry like smudged ink. Fragments of text cling to the page, like stubborn leaves to an autumn tree. The form hovers between natural parasite and science experiment gone wrong.
Materially, the piece consists of a book edited by Chang Show-foong. Born in what was then a unified Republic of China in 1941, Chang relocated Taiwan in when she was only eight years old. She graduated from Soochow University in 1962 with a degree in Chinese literature and has since taught at Hong Kong Baptist Theological Seminary and National Yang-Ming University, in addition to her alma mater. Chang rose to prominence as a prominent voice against the clearing of wetlands to construct of a biotechnology park in the Nangang District of Taipei, a move she described as “stealing chickens from your neighbors.”(3) Chang argued that it would be possible to find another site for the park, but not “Taipei’s last plot of green land.”(4) Chang’s politics has at times shaded into her art, as when she wrote a poem to express the serenity she felt while walking the Alangyi Ancient Trail, which Aboriginal tribes have traveled along since the 1870s. In recent years, the trail has become popular among hikers as one of the last undeveloped sections of the island’s coast and has simultaneously been threatened by plans to use it to complete an island-wide highway circuit.
Like many activists, Chang has at times courted controversy with her comments, once comparing the mistreatment of trees to foot binding. Further afield from her environmentalism, she drew furor when she suggested that the government support women “who should have married, but have not,” lamenting that “they have been abandoned by Taiwanese men.”(5) Chang objected to transnational marriages, arguing that “it’s biologically more normal for people to choose their spouse within the country.”(6) It’s difficult to square these relatively radical and conservative moments, perhaps similar to the difficulty of seeing a work like When departure becomes mountains, which hovers between material and form, at once book and sculpture.
VII
Since its return, China has governed Hong Kong by the principle of “one country, two systems,” whereby it would handle its own economic and administrative affairs while the mainland pursued “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” (7) As stipulated in its agreement with the UK, a “mini-constitution” ensured that the “capitalist system and way of life shall remain unchanged for 50 years.”(8) China handles Hong Kong’s foreign affairs and the interpretation of its Basic Law, which some have argued violates its autonomy. A particular sticking point is an article stating that Hong Kong “shall enact laws on its own to prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition, [and] subversion.”(9) During its colonial period, Hong Kong attempted to limit these concepts to actual violence, but it failed due to Chinese opposition. Concerns over proposed amendments to its penal code led half a million to march. More recently, Hong Kong was unable to institute a new “moral and national education” curriculum due to concerns over bias. In 2014, the National People’s Congress (NPC) decreed that political candidates had to “love the country and love Hong Kong.”(10) The decision triggered an occupation which has become known as the “Umbrella Revolution,” a reference to the use of umbrellas to resist teargas. The government’s reliance on police and courts in response raised accusations that these institutions had become political weapons.
Tensions between Hong Kong and China have continued to escalate; for example, with an extradition bill proposed in 2019 that prompted a sit-in at the government’s headquarters and an occupation of its Legislative Council Complex (LegCo Complex), followed by a demonstration calling for the resignation of Chief Executive Carrie Lam attended by hundreds of thousands, and then a gathering outside the LegCo Complex to interrupt the bill’s second reading. Although Lam announced its suspension, there was an even larger action the next day to push for its withdrawal and protest the police’s use of excessive force. Anti-police sentiment was exacerbated by a tepid response to a mob and outright attack on protestors at a transit station. The bill was formally withdrawn that October. The victory, however, was soon interrupted when a student died after falling off a parking structure. Protestors accused police blockades of delaying the arrival of paramedics and called for a general strike. But when the protestors disrupted traffic, police responded with pepper bullets and tear gas. Students barricaded themselves within the Chinese University of Hong Kong. A similar situation unfolded at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where police showered protestors with dyes and irritants. The pro-democracy camp won a landslide victory in 2019, largely seen as a referendum on the protests.
In 2020, the NPC voted to establish the crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion. The resultant law allowed authorities to surveil, detain, and search suspected persons. The NPC then decided to “improve” Hong Kong’s electoral system by increasing the size of its legislature, with fewer seats directly elected and more appointed by China. The law also created a committee to vet political candidates.(11) Current developments have also been influenced by COVID-19, which Lam cited as her reason for postponing the 2020 election, though many suspected political motivations. Though Lam has denied these allegations, she arrested prominent opposition figures preparing for their primaries. When they were arraigned, a thousand protestors gathered outside. Activists hoped to win enough seats to veto all bills, which Lam warned “may fall into the category of subverting the state power.”(12)
VIII
Tracy Tsang, Merely an exchange of polarity (2018)
Merely an exchange of polarity consists of three materials: cement, water, paper. The water drips onto the small square of wet concrete at a rate of one drop per second, until it finally sets after 1922 seconds (about half an hour) leaving a shallow, moonlike crater. The paper has a similar indentation, which the artist created by transferring the same water to it with her index finger at the same speed until it’s gone, 1239 seconds later. In the piece, the body recreates a mechanical process, repeating a movement until it can be repeated no more—a self-exhausting sequence. It is a largely arbitrary set of constraints, though one freely chosen, which throws into relief those restraints within which we live so much of our lives, which press upon us like so many waves; just as powerful, impersonal, and overwhelming.
(1) Diana Preston, 2000, The Boxer Rebellion: The Dramatic Story of China’s War on Foreigners That Shook the World in the Summer of 1900 (New York: Walker & Company), 370.
(2) While the country has officially retained its original name (i.e., Republic of China), I refer to it as “Taiwan” here in the interest of clarity and concision.
(3) Shelley Shan, “Activists express doubts about impact of smaller biotech park on wetlands,” Taipei Times, September 29, 2010, 2.
(4) “Ma seeks expert views for biotech park,” Taipei Times, last modified May 11, 2010, http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2010/05/11/2003472691.
(5) Loa Iok-sin, “Chang’s marriage comments spark furor,” Taipei Times, March 23, 2012, 1.
(6) Ibid.
(7) From this point forward, I will refer to the People’s Republic of China as simply “China.”
(8) Yiu-chung Wong, 2004, One Country, Two Systems in Crisis: Hong Kong’s Transformation (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield), 54.
(9) Michael C. Davis and Victoria Tin-bor Hui, “China’s new national security law for Hong Kong will erode Hong Kong’s autonomy,” The Washington Post, May 27, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/26/chinas-new-national-security-law-hong-kong-will-erode-hong-kongs-autonomy/.
(10) “Hong Kong’s Future Leader Must ‘Love China,’” The Wall Street Journal, last modified March 26, 2013, https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-CJB-17475.
(11) “Xi Finalizes Hong Kong Election Changes, Cementing China Control,” Bloomberg News, last modified March 30, 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-30/china-to-form-small-group-to-vet-hong-kong-elections-scmp-says.
(12) Tony Cheung, Natalie Wong, and Lilian Cheng, “Hong Kong’s traditional opposition parties lose out to localist challengers in fierce weekend primary for coming Legislative Council election,” South China Morning Post, last updated July 13, 2020, https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3093015/hong-kongs-traditional-opposition-parties-lose-out-localist.
Tracy TSANG (b.1991, Hong Kong), a multi-disciplinary artist, obtained the Master of Arts in Fine Arts at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2020. Through her artistic practice she has particular interest in exploring the nature of objects and materials and how they influence human(self) behavior. Her works often invite herself and audience to rethink the relation of self to things and words –an approach of the “Philosophy of TRACY”.
