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Baby Milk and Boundary Transgressions at the Hong Kong-Mainland China Interface

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Society for East Asian Anthropology
By Sara M. Bergstresser
November 7, 2022

The movement of and controversy around items as common as baby formula powder tell a story about the changing political relationship between Hong Kong and mainland China.

In Hong Kong’s New Territories, directly attached to the Sha Tin MTR subway station, there is an enormous indoor complex of continuous shopping malls. Products available to buy range from groceries and personal care products to luxury jewelry, watches, and clothing. In 2019, it was a commonplace experience for me to find clusters of people in front of the Mannings drugstore packing products into large suitcases, to the point that the entrance to the store was completely blocked. While these suitcases sometimes contained luxury products or tins of butter cookies, by far the most common sight were cans of baby formula powder, known colloquially as “baby milk.” The baby milk was not being bought by new parents; rather, it was being purchased by shoppers from mainland China to transport over the border and resell for profit. For many years, the movements of baby milk have signified changing relationships of trust between Hong Kong and China.

From 2017 to 2019, I studied changing configurations of medical ethics, public health, and regulatory governance in Hong Kong. Though my initial focus was on the workings of large institutions such as the Hong Kong Hospital Authority, I soon discovered that baby milk, a simple everyday product, was a substance that inhabited the interface of complex regulatory intersections—including food, medicine, commerce, and border control—at a time of immense change. Following mass protests, government crackdowns, and two years of a pandemic, a city that once prided itself on freedoms of speech and the press is now the subject of international criticism for its turn to authoritarianism. The commercial landscape has also shifted, with widespread concerns about erosions in economic freedom. In parallel, my reflections on this time shifted from ordinary research to an act of “witnessing” the radical politico-economic and social transformation of a city that I had known (see Wang 2021).

Image Description: A crowded hallway filled with people and their suitcases outside of Mannings drugstore.
Caption: Commodity shoppers outside Mannings at Sha Tin Centre, January 2019. Sara Bergstresser.

The “Chinese milk scandal”

In March 2008, consumers in mainland China began to complain that their children were sickened by Chinese brand Sanlu’s baby milk powder. Action was not taken by the government until months later, when international complaints prompted widespread scrutiny, leading to global recalls. These events became known as the “Chinese milk scandal.” Melamine is an industrial chemical that in large doses is toxic to kidneys, and at least six babies died from ingesting the contaminated infant milk powder, while at least 290,000 others became ill. It soon became clear that the melamine had been purposefully added to watered-down milk to make it falsely appear to have a high protein content. Chinese consumers became extremely distrustful of both the milk industry and China’s food regulatory systems. These scandals highlighted contradictions between China’s rapid economic development and its continuing political messages of Communist solidarity.

Hong Kong played a unique role in the crisis. During the 2003 SARS epidemic, the city had established extensive public health infrastructure, resuming the role of “public health defender” (see Keck 2009). Mistrust drove people from the mainland to Hong Kong to buy baby milk powder of imported European brands, which were not available in the mainland. Baby milk emerged as a cross-border commodity for the rising Chinese consumers to mitigate against their mistrust surrounding the government’s regulatory failure in the market in mainland China.

As more people travelled to purchase more baby milk up until the 2010s, baby milk came to mark the tension surrounding the increasing permeability of the border between Hong Kong and mainland China. There were formula shortages in Hong Kong, which contributed to a growing sense that Hong Kong was being turned into a “city-sized outlet mall” for shoppers from mainland China. Some regarded this as a threat to Hong Kong’s autonomy as an independent political, judicial, and regulatory entity under the “One Country Two Systems” principle.

Image Description: Two banners in orange and pink at the Kowloon side of the Bay, reading “Hong Kong Asia’s World City.”
Caption: In 2018, Hong Kong advertised itself with the slogan “Hong Kong, Asia’s World City.” Sara Bergstresser.

In Hong Kong, under these circumstances, baby milk powder tins became iconic components of artworks, often highlighting the fearful dissolution of the border between Hong Kong and the mainland. In 2013, artist Ai Weiwei released a gallery-wide map of China made out of tins of baby milk powder in an exhibit in Hong Kong. He described the piece as relevant to many problems, including the Chinese milk scandal, the failure of the Chinese food safety regulatory system, the subsequent bans of the mass internal importation of foreign formula, and the increasing tensions between Hong Kong and the mainland—which have only escalated since then. He stated, “Hong Kong people make profits from these problems, and are also victims,” pointing out both the embeddedness of the problem in systems of commerce as well as cross-border mistrust and tensions. The mistrust stemming from the 2008 milk scandal did not abate in the subsequent years; to the contrary, it only compounded focus on newer resentments.

New manifestations of mistrust

Since mid-2019, there have been dramatic changes in Hong Kong, including multiple periods of unrest, the arrival of COVID-19, selective border closures, vaccines, the enhancement of National Security Law, and major changes in Hong Kong-mainland relations. The Hong Kong administration’s attempt to allow legal extradition to mainland China sparked a series of public protests, involving millions of protesters and aggressive police intervention in the coming months. In this landscape, the situation surrounding the border has been substantially reconfigured once again; the current Hong Kong administration declared to politically prioritize reopening the border to the mainland while scaling down trade with the rest of the world.

The iconic images of baby milk appeared again. At a protest outside of the West Kowloon Rail Station, planned specifically for gaining support from mainland shoppers, artist Badiucao released a poster of a giant baby milk tin that read, “Formula Baby Safe.” According to Badiucao’s comment on his Instagram page, this meant: “The best message for mainlanders is ‘If Hong Kong’s gone, so is your baby formula.’” In another image, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, who once stated herself as Hong Kong’s “Mother,” appears with guns emerging from her breasts where nipples should be. In a final illustration, titled, “Instruction: Nursing a baby in Hong Kong,” the mother is instructed to be wearing gas masks while nursing to protect the baby against tear gas, which was widely used to suppress protests. Badiucao’s focus on the dual imagery of baby milk—first, as a salient symbol of cross-border commerce, and second, as a substance associated with food, health, babies, and motherhood—shows the ways in which the protests over Hong Kong’s independence were also interwoven with everyday family life and its emotional complexities.

Image Description: Shop at the Macau Ferry Terminal prominently displays tall stacks of baby formula cans in the front window.
Caption: Baby milk formula displayed in Macau to entice mainland shoppers. Ferries from this location travel to destinations including multiple locations in mainland China. Sara Bergstresser.

Regulatory failures in areas of food and medicine continue to occur in the mainland; new scandals continue to disrupt systems, putting the health of populations at risk. For example, cross-border births are another focus of tensions over perceived encroachment. Like baby milk, places of birth are bound with symbols motherhood and hope for the next generation. In 2012, a national controversy erupted in China when professionals in Hong Kong “took out a newspaper ad depicting incoming mainland Chinese as locusts and asking, ‘Are you willing to pay 1 million HK dollars every 18 minutes to take care of mainland children born in Hong Kong?’” After the 2014 “Umbrella Movement” protests, concerns about increasing border permeability were not assuaged; instead, the mainland engaged in clear messaging that it was taking more interest in Hong Kong’s political affairs. Other regulatory shortfalls, vaccine scandals, and shortages linked to medical tourism have further stoked existing resentments. In addition, Hong Kong has become a node of global distribution for counterfeit drugs and illegally imported medicines. Across different manifestations, baby milk imagery continued to be invoked to indicate growing discomfort with the Hong Kong-mainland China relationship.

As it struggles with new outbreaks and pressure from mainland China to adhere to the “Zero-Covid” strategy, the international character of Hong Kong continues to shift. The once permeable border between Hong Kong and the foreign world has intensified through the implementation of strict travel restrictions and long quarantines, and the internal border with the mainland has become the primary focus for reestablishing traffic. The Hong Kong Free Press, one of the few remaining independent news outlets in Hong Kong, recently published a picture of a workman squatting on the ground to roll up the “Hong Kong Asia’s World City” banner while looking back at three masked policemen walking by. Instagram user otaku_5354 commented: “in 20 years’ time whenever anyone wants a photo to summarize the fall of Hong Kong, they will refer to this!” Border flows and political relationships between Hong Kong and the mainland have been reconfigured in the past few years, are these shifts are both negotiated and presaged by controversies over materials as ordinary as baby milk.

Sara M. Bergstresser is currently lecturer in the Masters of Bioethics program at Columbia University. She works at the intersection of medical anthropology, health policy, and bioethics. From 2017 to 2019, Sara was lecturer and program coordinator for Bioethics Education in the Faculty of Medicine at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Bergstresser, Sara M. 2022. “Baby Milk and Boundary Transgressions at the Hong Kong-Mainland China Interface.” Anthropology News website, November 7, 2022.

Copyright [2022] American Anthropological Association

Cultivating the Ethical Self in the Way of the Sword

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Society for East Asian Anthropology
Jingyi Tian
February 26, 2020

For Hongkongers, kendo offers practice in the pursuit of self-cultivation and ethical work.

This piece is part of the SEAA series “An Anthropology of Ethics in East Asia.” The articles highlight different aspects of moral values and ethical practices in a range of Asian regions. They examine how individuals cope with societal changes such as environmental crises, nationalism, economic development, and mobility through lens of everyday ethics. 

“Many people can’t control their egos in kendo. They hit one after one—pong, pong, pong! It’s pointless. This is where kendo mirrors their inner characters,” said a senior Hong Kong practitioner who has been practicing kendo, a Japanese combative martial art, consistently for more than five years. The practitioner told me that kendo helps him to cultivate a strong mind. Many practitioners had similar ethical reflections, which led me to ask, How does kendo serve as a tool of self-cultivation?

Hong Kong fans of Japanese culture are often drawn to the sport by the iconic image of samurai fashion. Although kendo is not the most popular sport in Japan (the All Japan Kendo Federation counted 1.8 million practitioners in 2017), the martial art is noteworthy because its practitioners devote themselves to the practice for years, even decades, in pursuit of moral self-cultivation. Like the man quoted above, many kendo practitioners regard kendo as a life practice (Cantonese: sau hang; Mandarin: xiu xing, 修行). This term has a strong connotation of spiritual exercise in Chinese, and an association with ascetic practices. It accurately reflects a feature of kendo—practitioners engage in a highly intensive, exhausting, and challenging combative activity that forces them to endure hardship and injuries. Yet, many dedicated practitioners are more than willing to endure such rigors.

Photo of a practice room with numerous people in kendo gear.
Hong Kong kendo practitioners in their regular practice. Jingyi Tian

The ideal status and traits of the better person produced through kendo practice vary from individual to individual. Practitioners have similar physical experiences, but their own interpretations and goals. Kendo works as a tool for personal growth for some practitioners. Others find kendo helpful in learning how to cultivate social relationships. I will highlight three examples to showcase the range of practitioners’ ethical desires: a financial trader who wants to become a person who can make sharp and accurate decisions at work through better control of his ego; a Christian who aims to practice compassion and love through kendo, which helps him to do a better job as a manager; and a young practitioner who seeks self-empowerment to cope with the harsh yet routinized work. They all have a telos in a Foucauldian sense, namely, a goal of pursuing an “ethical self”—a status or a state of being that they wish to achieve.

A financial trader
Edward is a financial trader in his forties. Before he began learning kendo, he read the book Gorinsho (TheBook of Five Rings), which is filled with stories of a famous Japanese swordsman, Musashi Miyamoto. Edward told me that both kendo and his job require making the right decision at the right moment under pressure. In kendo, a combatant needs to practice how to manage their fear or anxiety, which helps to build up inner power. Edward insists that kendo helps him make good decisions. In that sense, he believes that kendoinstills self-control and a tranquil mindset, both of which benefit his career. Although the inner power that practitioners seek is unlikely to solve all their worldly problems, their dedication to developing such power reflects their keen ethical aspirations.

A Christian
Christopher is a pious Christian and entrepreneur who opened his own business when he was in his forties. He adopted kendo as a training regimen that helps him learn how to get along well with his coworkers. Christopher has found that kendo’s moral messages align with his Christian beliefs—especially the call to show love and care in practice. When he spars with less experienced opponents, he tries to help them improve their kendo skills through courtesy, which he sees as another kind of training that he applies in his work life as well.

A young practitioner
Melissa is in her mid-twenties and works as a legal clerk. She told me that her routinized job made her feel powerless for not being able to make a difference. She wants to be more energetic and positive toward life, and kendo offers her a scheme in which she can transform herself.

To reach their goals, kendo combatants seek self-improvement and self-advancement through exhausting bodily practices that challenge their limits. They often trace kendo’s moral codes to Inazo Nitobe’s famous 1905 book, Bushidō:The Soul of Japan, which offers a genealogy of kendo’s moral framework that various practitioners’ find useful. Practitioners regard the moment they are faced with an attack as the moment to transcend their fear like a warrior; when presented with opportunity to initiate an attack, they practice self-control to repress the impulse. They strive to refine their inner selves in combat with a diligent attitude, and such refinement will not happen unless they keep practicing over the long term. In this process, physical combat not only trains the body but also constitutes ethical work, as the moment when one faces a challenge in combat is a good time to train “heart” (心). The written character of the heart is the same in Japanese (kokoro) and Chinese (Mandarin: xin; Cantonese: sam). In kendo culture, the heart represents inner power that can be obtained through training.

Although the inner power that practitioners seek is unlikely to solve all their worldly problems, their dedication to developing such power reflects their keen ethical aspirations. Recalling Michel Foucault’s theoretical reflections on ethics and self-formation, practitioners adopt the moral framework of kendo practice as a “technology of the self” through which they hope to transform themselves and attain an ideal state of being. Practitioners hold that kendo practice helps them find the weaknesses in their own characters and become better people.

The demand for self-cultivation through kendo reflects a larger neoliberal social milieu in Hong Kong where individuals are left to individually cope with intense pressure from their jobs, including finances, harsh demands in the workplace, and routinized work life. Kendo’s moral framework provides a means for practitioners to build up a strong mindset to cope with their anxiety and suggests a culture of the body that emphasizes self-reliance, self-improvement, adaptability, and individualism. Their experiences resonate with similar patterns of self-cultivation among practitioners of yoga, judo, wingchun, and taichi.

Joseph Alter’s study on yoga in India shows that middle-class yoga practitioners adopted yoga practice as a spiritual antidote to the anxiety and pressure in their fast-paced capitalistic lifestyle.  This work has inspired other scholars to contextualize bodily practices within a larger socio-moral landscape. The case of Hong Kong kendo practitioners suggests that kendo’s moral framework is particularly appealing to middle-class practitioners who experience extraordinary pressures in daily work life and culture.

Cite as: Tian, Jingyi. 2020. “Cultivating the Ethical Self in the Way of the Sword.” Anthropology News website, February 26, 2020. DOI: 10.1111/AN.1356

Copyright [2020] American Anthropological Association

Exploring the Aesthetics of Nostalgia in Contemporary Hong Kong

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Society of East Asian Anthropology

Sonia Lam-Knott

February 15, 2019

Editor’s note: This piece is part of a SEAA column themed series “Cultural Consumption and Performance in Asia.” The articles highlight different aspects of consumption and performance in a range of Asian regions. They examine issues such as cultural curation, the uses of the past, material culture, power and market, as well as the enactment of lived experience.

Undeterred by the Hong Kong summer temperatures, large numbers of visitors entered the former colonial police force quarters now known as the PMQ (short for Police Married Quarters) heritage space, keen on catching a glimpse of the displays. As part of the government-initiated Heritage Vogue street carnival celebrating Hong Kong’s past, PMQ sought to transport visitors back in time to the mid-twentieth century. PMQ erected stalls resembling sidou, old-fashioned corner shops decorated with Chinese banners and European tiles, painted a shade of “grassroots green” that was introduced to the city during the colonial era. Stalls sold street foods such as curry fishballs and ice lollies, along with White Rabbit candies, Coca-Cola and Vitasoy beverages in glass bottles, staples in the city since the post-war years. Cantonese opera was broadcasted over the PMQ courtyard where wooden tables and plastic chairs were provided for visitors, making the space resemble daipaidong, traditional street eateries. Visitors enthusiastically interacted and took photos with the displays, claiming to remember such sights from their childhood, with some parents telling their young children that what they saw at the PMQ that day is what Hong Kong’s past looks like.

Since Hong Kong ceased to be a British colony (1841–1997) and became a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China, the city has been engulfed by nostalgia, broadly defined as a yearning for a past that is absent in the present. Hoping to study this phenomenon in 2017 and 2018, I visited a number of heritage sites in the city, and interviewed individuals from community organizations addressing heritage concerns, those producing and managing heritage sites, and those interested in heritage issues but not involved in the running of heritage spaces. This essay features the opinions and views from the third category of informants, whom are mostly in their 20s and 30s, to portray general Hong Kong public sentiments towards heritage.

Many of these informants celebrated—and many of the heritage spaces I visited sought to embody—representations of what is colloquially termed gauhoenggong (Old Hong Kong). This “Old Hong Kong” aesthetic references the period from after World War II until the mid-1980s, a time when the city experienced rapid demographic and economic growth, infrastructural redevelopment, and the emergence of a local Hong Kong identity and culture among ordinary inhabitants of the city. It is an aesthetic that informants believe to be disappearing due to urban redevelopment schemes and infrastructural projects in the city, thus exacerbating nostalgic attachments among the populace.

A crowd of people move through what seems to be the courtyard of a mall, with families sitting at tables in the foreground and throngs of people going in and out of stores in the background.
‘Old Hong Kong’ aesthetic on display at PMQ, part of the 2017 Heritage Vogue – Hollywood Road street carnival. Sonia Lam-Knott

 

The “Old Hong Kong” aesthetic

Although the “Old Hong Kong” aesthetic is situated within the colonial era, this nostalgia cannot be conflated with a yearning for the colonial. Colonial presence permeated multiple facets of post-war life, through government regulation of housing, business, healthcare, and schooling. Yet colonial institutions and figures have a marginal presence in the imaginings of “Old Hong Kong” espoused by most informants. In their narratives of “Old Hong Kong,” the “colonial” is rendered as little more than what one individual describes as “quirky” western stylistic and cultural elements leading to the production of syncretic practices and landscapes, fixtures that have since come to define the city. Examples include shop houses sporting a combination of Asian and European architectural features (such as Chinese-style tenements with French windows and balconies), English and Cantonese code-mixing in colloquial speech (now termed as Hong Kong English), and Hong Kong-style Western cuisine (such as macaroni served in broth with fried eggs).

Discourses of “Old Hong Kong” are presented as the heritage of the vernacular; certainly, the majority of informants accept this aesthetic as a reflection of their past.

Rather, informant understandings of “Old Hong Kong” emphasize neighborhood networks and conviviality among ordinary people that informats believe to have been prevalent in the post-war years. Informants reminisce about the grassroots resilience, adaptability, and industriousness that are components of the sizisan zingsan (Lion Rock Spirit), a set of values that have come to define the Hong Kong person. Discourses of “Old Hong Kong”are presented as the heritage of the vernacular; certainly, the majority of informants accept this aesthetic as a reflection of their past.

The “Old Hong Kong” aesthetic has become popular throughout society, as seen from the proliferation of literature and digital platforms exploring this period of the city’s history. Images and objects reflecting the syncretism of “Old Hong Kong” are now in-demand consumerist goods, with local and international businesses capitalizing on this by designing their premises and selling products adorned with mid-twentieth century motifs (see Starbucks HK 2018; TenTen 2017).

There are several reasons behind the popular appeal of the “Old Hong Kong” aesthetic. First, it reframes colonial presence in the city as an aesthetic category, obfuscating the problematic politics associated with colonialism. This accompanies an emphasis on positive emotions evoked through heart-warming narratives of community cooperation and care, dispelling negative feelings that conversely “suspend any aesthetic appreciation” within the individual (Ranciѐre 2007: 26). Lastly, the “Old Hong Kong” aesthetic is not so temporally distanced as to be alienated from present-day urban experiences. It is a period still within the living memory of the older generations, with relateability and verity. More importantly, its evident disappearance from the social and physical landscape as a result of urban development, enhances the societal urgency to value, embrace, and protect it.

The inside of a restaurant, with tall, round tables, an accletic set of stools, and a row of plates, each painted with different flowers hanging on the wall.
The Stone Houses café, styled as a traditional diner from the “Old Hong Kong” era. The Stone Houses were used as residential units throughout history, and never had a café on the premises. The sense of historicity embodied by the café has been deliberately constructed and imposed on this space. Sonia Lam-Knott

 

Nostalgia for “Old Hong Kong” in heritage

The popularity of the “Old Hong Kong” aesthetic has ramifications for heritage spaces, defined here as landmarks and sites that have been present on the urban landscape since the mid-twentieth century rather than museums constructed  to house historical artifacts in glass cases. Heritage in Hong Kong is a contested domain, with the government and civil society (comprising neighborhood community organizations and activists) diverging on what constitutes the city’s heritage. It is a city that desires to remember the past, yet what constitutes the city’s memory remains elusive. The question is not simply a matter of how to remember, but what to remember. There is no singular nostalgic narrative that prevails in Hong Kong, and heritage sites are where differing interpretations of the past are currently curated, produced, and presented to the public. Heritage spaces in Hong Kong strive to inculcate and reinforce their imaginings of the past—informed by their nationalist or localist agendas—within their visitors. Their ability to do so depends on whether they are able to reach out and engage with the public in the first place.

 The question is not simply a matter of how to remember, but what to remember.

Attuned to the current trends regarding societal consumption of the past, heritage spaces seek to attract potential visitors by incorporating the “Old Hong Kong” aesthetic, what visitors want to see in spaces representative of the past. Mei Ho House in Sham Shui Po, a remnant of an early public housing project managed by the Youth Hostel Association, established a store and a café infused with “old-time” elements for visitors to have “nostalgic fun”. Similarly, the Stone Houses in Kowloon City, historically a residential unit, opened a “themed café” resembling a bingsat (traditional diner). As mentioned earlier, PMQ erected temporary stalls styled as sidou selling retro goods and foods and filled the courtyard with old-fashioned games and furniture that proved popular with visitors.

Heritage sites must mediate between their role as the curators and educators of history, whilst meeting visitors’ preconceived expectations of what the city’s past looks like based on their exposure to aestheticized imaginings of “Old Hong Kong.” The “Old Hong Kong” aesthetic, however, is not immune from criticism. Several younger informants lament that the use of such nostalgic styles by heritage sites to attract and generate amusement among visitors, offers little more than visual gratification. Such “feel-good” displays omit the complex realities of the city’s historical experience. By incorporating the “Old Hong Kong” aesthetic, heritage sites become complicit in propagating overly-simplistic and sanitized visions of the past to the public. Conversely, by desiring and unquestioningly consuming these selective representations of history, the public has similarly become complicit in this process, denying heritage spaces the opportunity to espouse visions of history that deviates from this idealization of ‘Old Hong Kong.’

Sonia Lam-Knott is a postdoctoral fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. Her research examines vernacular experiences of socio-political and economic change in contemporary Asian cities. Of particular interest is the relationship between nostalgia and aesthetics, grassroots subjectivities and mobilizations, along with urban contestations and aspirations.

Please contact Shuang Frost (shuanglu@fas.harvard.edu) and Heidi Lam (heidi.lam@yale.edu) with your essay ideas and comments.

Cite as: Lam-Knott, Sonia. 2019. “Exploring the Aesthetics of Nostalgia in Contemporary Hong Kong.” Anthropology News website, February 15, 2019. DOI: 10.1111/AN.1093

Copyright [2019] American Anthropological Association

SEAA Conference – Hong Kong, June 2016

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preparing for June 2016 conference

preparing for June 2016 conference

SEAA has had great success in hosting meetings independent of AAA sessions at the Annual Meeting.
Come to Hong Kong to engage with colleagues from 19 to 22 June 2016, where the conference theme is “East Asia and Tomorrow’s Anthropology.”

Download proposal forms for paper or panel at the “Call for Papers” tab, http://arts.cuhk.edu.hk/~ant/SEAAconf/
Deadline for registration is Dec. 1. After the program is announced in January, the conference registration will begin and accommodations will be arranged.
Consider presentations you can make or panels to join in. Please, also invite colleagues near and far to participate.