Heunggongyan Forever: Immigrant Life and Hong Kong Style Yumcha in Australia
Author(s)
Tam, Siumi Maria
Abstract
The belief that the best yumcha originated in Hong Kong and the subsequent patronage of restaurants providing yumcha practices seen in all lands where immigrants from Hong Kong have settled. This insistence on the yumcha lifestyle has allowed immigrants to build heunggongyan, or “Hong Kong People,” identity. In the process a sense of a diasporic Hong Kong community in Sydney is constructed, and globalization of local identity centers around Hong Kong. This identity is characterized by inclusive, open to change, inventive, and sophisticated sensibilities which seems comparable to the metropolitan adaptability and diversity that is seen in large cities around the world. This chapter examines the practice known as yumcha against the background of immigrant life for Hong Kong families in Sydney. It is the willingness to change and adapt that emphasizes the immigrant population’s resilience, and through dimsum (the most pronounced manifestation of yumcha) that immigrants were able to receive the emotional stability and networks that are needed in immigrant life in a big city. Yumcha, in short, provided the reassurance that one was still rooted in the great metropolis of Hong Kong.
