Abstract The people of Hong Kong experienced their deepest sense of insecurity and anxiety after the handover of sovereignty to Beijing. Time and again, the incapacity and lack of credibility of the SAR government has been manifested in various new policies or incidents. Hong Kong people’s anger and discontent with the government have reached to the peak. On July 1, 2003, the sixth anniversary of the hand-over of Hong Kong to China, 500,000 demonstrators poured through the streets of Hong Kong to voice their concerns over the proposed legislation of Article 23 and their dissatisfaction to the SAR government. And the studies of politics and social movement are still dominated by accounts of open confrontations in the form of large scale and organized rebellions and protests. If we shift our focus on the terrain of everyday life, we can find that the youth voice out their discontents by different ways, such as various kinds of media. This research aims to fill the gap and explore the relationship between popular culture and politics of the youth in Hong Kong after 1997 by using one of the local bands KingLyChee as a case study. Politically, it aims at discovering the hidden voices of the youth and argues that the youth are not seen as passive victims of structural factors such as education system, market and family. Rather they are active and strategic actors who are capable of negotiating with and responding to the social change of Hong Kong society via employing popular culture like music by which the youth obtain their pleasure of producing their own meanings of social experience and the pleasure of avoiding the social discipline of the power-bloc. III Acknowledgments I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor and my friend, Dr. Ben, Hok Bun Ku, for his critical remarks on my early formulation of the research problem, valuable advice, and inspiring comments. Without his exceptional patience and tolerance, I can’t finish this thesis. I would also like to thank Dr. Ting Wai Fong for being my co-supervisor and her valuable advice, comments. Special thanks to my friend Josh who spent great effort in editing my English. Moreover, I have to thank my friends and RM 315 study fellows for their support and brainstorming. In particular to Gloria, Ho Leung, Louie, Ah Chung, Law Pak Ko, Albert, Sai, Carmen, Krebs and Denise. Lastly, I have to say “thank you” to my girl, Joyce, and my family members who have given great emotional support from the beginning of my postgraduate study until the submission of the thesis. IV Table of Contents Abstract Ⅲ Acknowledgments Ⅳ Table of Contents Ⅴ, Ⅵ List of Illustration Ⅶ Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Literature Review 23 1.1 Studies on Youth Culture 1.2 Popular Music Studies 1.3 Popular Music and Cultural Resistance of the Youth Chapter 2: Youth in Hong Kong’s Dominant 59 Discourse 2.1 Why Youth always At-Risk? 2.2 Young People as Future Hope 2.3 Youth Voices and Youth Subjectivities Chapter 3: Hong Kong Music Ecosphere 83 3.1 Development of Hong Kong Popular Music 3.2 Band Development in Hong Kong Chapter 4: The Emergence of Hong Kong Local Hardcore-Punk – King Ly Chee 116 4.1 The Rebirth of Hong Kong Hardcore—KingLyChee 4.2 Hardcore Ideology and the Roots of KingLyChee 4.3 “We are Who We are”—The Mission of KingLyChee V Chapter 5: Music as an Arena of Youth Resistance 142 5.1 Voices, Not Noise—the Lyric of KingLyChee 5.2 Resisting against the Mainstream Music Scene Chapter 6: Identity, Pleasure and 190 Sub-cultural Politics 6.1 Voice of discontent of Hong Kong youth in post-1997 era 6.2 Music as a separate space for the youth to search for identity 6.3 Pleasure-seeking and Pleasurable behaviors as subcultural ‘resistance’ Conclusion 218 Postscript 224 Bibliography 226 VI List of Illustrations 1. KingLyChee Members with DJ Inti 116 2. KingLyChee first album “We are Who We are” cover photo 126 3. KingLyChee second album “Stand Strong” cover photo 126 4. KingLyChee live performance in Taiwan 179 5. Scream from the audience in KingLyChee concert 180 6. Riz collide with the security guard 181 7. Two boys sing along with Riz on stage 182 8. Stage diving game 182 9. Circle pit 183 10. Riz dives from the stage 183 11. The poster of Hong Kong first 185 Punk-Hardcore-Metal festival organized by KingLyChee 12. A boy dive from the amplifier 214 VII INTRODUCTION For a long period of time, Hong Kong people, especially the Youth1, have been chastised for their political indifference and helplessness. It was often said that most of the people in Hong Kong were very passive as they grew up in a colony where civic education was absent. It was also said that in Hong Kong’s Chinese society, influenced by the utilitarianistic familism, people were only concerned with their families and their clans. Chinese kids were taught to take whatever that was given. They should stay away from social involvement, especially anything to do with government and politics (Lau, 1984). However, is it a “truth” or a “myth”? If we look at Hong Kong history closely, it would not be difficult for us to find that in fact Hong Kong people have spoken out, via different social movements and protests, that they are neither passive nor politically powerless (see, Chiu & Lui, 2000). After 1997, again, Hong Kong Chinese, including the youth, have impressed the outside world that they are no 1 Hong Kong Government define those people aged 15-24 as the target population in planning services for the youth. This definition has been adopted by the United Nations as well. In my opinion, youth classification by age is not so significant; youth definition is an identity issue rather than just an indicator of age groups. And I will go into details in chapter 2. 1 longer passive in politics. Rather, they actively participate in political movement and fight against the governmental actions which are threatening their right and freedom. This attitudinal change of the Hong Kong people is closely related to the context of the post-1997 political economy in the territory. Hong Kong people experienced their deepest sense of insecurity and anxiety after the handover of sovereignty to Beijing. As Lui Tai-lok (1999) states, the handover on 1 July 1997 must have marked the beginning of “a year of anxiety” for most of the residents in this former British colony. The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) was suffering from a legitimacy crisis in the post-1997 days. Things began to change as the local economy gradually felt the heat of the Asian financial crisis, with a drop of 1,438 points in the Hang Seng index on 28 October 1997. The fear was reinforced by the uncontrollable bird flu that followed and a rapid downturn in the Hong Kong economy at the beginning of 1998, with a drastic drop in property prices, a stock market rocked by economic flux and turmoil in the region, as well as rising unemployment rates (rising from 2.2% in 1997 to 8.7% in July, 2003, when there was an unemployed population of 309,000). Moreover, the airport fiasco also reflected the 2 powerlessness and inefficiency of the SAR government in response to challenges. It totally disappointed the Hong Kong populace. Time and again, the incapacity and lack of credibility of the SAR government manifested in various new policies or incidents, such as the issue of the right of abode, the 85,000-a-year flats target, the Aw Sian incident, the ineffective education reform, as well as the question on former financial secretary Antony Leung's integrity in the wake of his failure to declare his new car purchase before the budget day, as well as the SARS crisis. Hong Kong people’s dissatisfaction with the SAR government reached the highest level never seen before 1997. And the popularity of the Hong Kong government plunged to the lowest points according to several public opinion polls, as public dissatisfaction with the SAR administration reached its height since the Chinese take-over. A mood of "feeling bad" or "something must have gone wrong" was widespread at the time. People's dissatisfaction continued to accumulate and spread like an epidemic in the community. Hong Kong people’s anger and discontent with the government reached its peak when, on July 1, 2003, the sixth anniversary of the hand-over of Hong Kong to China, 500,000 demonstrators poured through 3 the streets of Hong Kong to voice their concerns over the proposed legislation of Article 23 and their dissatisfaction to the SAR government. Another protest, numbering 50,000 people, surrounded the Legislature on 9 July, 2003 to add further pressure on the government. The Chief Executive of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Tung Chee-hwa, decided to postpone the vote. The suspension awakened the dormant souls, the minds of the politically insensitive. And most important of all, it reminded 6.8 million of Hong Kong people that we had the courage and power to embrace democracy, and do it passionately. However, the most important thing was that in the 1 July Protest or through the article 23 incident, the Youth has turned into a focal point to a large extent; some secondary school students set up an organization voluntarily against the legislation of Article 23 and mobilized all of the secondary school students to come out and voice their opinion on this controversial issue.