“There’s No Place Like It”: Promoting Colonial Hong Kong as a Tourist Destination

From the early 1950s on, Hong Kong became a major tourist destination where visitors could have a taste of Chinese culture and catch a glimpse of the PRC beyond the “Bamboo Curtain.” This talk explores how the Hong Kong Tourist Association, established in 1957, promoted Hong Kong as a unique cultural and geopolitical space: Chinese but not quite China; a harmonious blending of East and West and of old and new; and a modern, bustling metropolis coexisting side-by-side with the rural, quaint New Territories. Especially within the contexts of the Cold War and the disintegration of the British Empire, tourism was more than about economics and the movement of people. It became a way for Hong Kong to position itself within Asia and across the globe.

John M. Carroll is Professor of History and Associate Dean (Global) in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Hong Kong. Raised in Hong Kong and Taipei, he is author of Edge of Empires: Chinese Elites and British Colonials in Hong Kong, A Concise History of Hong Kong, and the forthcoming Canton Days: British Life and Death in China. This talk draws from his current book project, Destination Hong Kong: Promoting Tourism in Britain's Chinese Colony.