Mutual Gazing and Self-Writing: Revisiting the Tale of Hong Kong and Shanghai as Global City-Regions

Juxtaposing Wang Anyi's and Wong Kar-wai's tales of the link between Hong Kong and Shanghai as global city-regions, we find the cities' gazes at different historic moments reveal the impact of capital reorganization. The narrative strategies in a sense legitimize geopolitical changes for the city-users. Wang Anyi's writings suggest that during Shanghai's period of drastic transformation, which began in the early 1990s, Hong Kong offers a vision of what a globalized Shanghai might look like and also gives the nod to urban development. On the other hand, going as it is through a political and economic crisis, post-1997 Hong Kong needs to assure itself of its importance as a global city like New York and London at this ”restless moment.” It is at this point that the history of the Hong Kong-Shanghai link looms large, becoming the ideal mirror image of Hong Kong's future. We could argue that what characterizes the contemporary narrative of Hong Kong and Shanghai as cities ”linked at birth” is that not only do they serve as one another's past, as one another's roots, but they also serve as the promised future in the mirror of globalization. In other words, the concepts of linkage and network provide a language in which users of global city-regions may articulate their fears and desires in the process of identity formation, in response to the geopolitical contingencies of our time.