Citizen Hong Kong

After more than twenty years, filmmaker Ruby Yang returned to her native city Hong Kong from San Francisco. Many things have changed in this period, the highlight being the transfer of power to the Chinese People’s Republic by the British colonial government. The year following the transfer did not bring the expected political unrest. For her documentary, Yang concentrated on the daily life of the ‘transitional generation‘: young people trying to build a life in present-day Hong Kong. Five typical, but diverse representatives of this generation kept a video diary for one year.A dreamy comic book collector, born and bred in Hong Kong, is forced to accept that his parents only have the money to send one child to college in England. While his elder brother moves to London, he only moves down to the lower position in their bunk bed. A returning emigrant from Australia looks for her roots, but reaches the conclusion that being an outsider is a unique identity in itself. ‘We’re bananas’, a compeer says, ‘yellow on the outside, white on the inside.’ A new immigrant from China, on the other hand, tries to acquire the new, competitive identity at school as quickly as possible. Two deaf brothers, finally, have solved their version of the Hong Kong language problem by teaching themselves sign language. Now, they perform with a theatre company for the deaf. Yang alternates the extracts from the diaries with her personal thoughts about the city and with memories of her past.