Globalization and Hong Kong Food Culture: Tradition vs. Change

Unlike many other cities, Hong Kong offers a unique case study in the effects of globalization on local economies and cultures due to its premier status as a nexus between China and the West. Over the years, and even through British rule, Hong Kong maintained its own distinctly Chinese culture in the face of relentless influence from other countries and explicit attempts to reshape Hong Kong culture. However, globalization has caught up with Hong Kong, greatly undermining traditional Chinese culture — a fact seen most clearly in the case of Hong Kong food culture. Nonetheless, Hong Kong retains its Chinese cultural importance, such that one examining the decline of Hong Kong food culture cannot help but also see areas in which the process has been inverted, with Hong Kong culture serving to integrate certain foods and drinks into Chinese society more broadly. Thus, as globalization has undoubtedly and irreversibly undermined traditional Chinese culture in Hong Kong, the resilience of that culture has allowed Hong Kong to become a kind of cultural laboratory in which global customs and products are vetted before gaining wider acceptance in mainland China.

For many years, one of Hong Kong's biggest draws for international businesses and travelers was the fact that "Hong Kong is almost universally lauded for hard work, flexibility and the rule of law, and its success has been largely attributed to its willingness to transform itself and its ability to harness rather than resist the forces of globalization" (Kwong & Miscevic, 2002, p. 323). Following the transition from British to Chinese rule, however, Hong Kong experienced a number of economic shocks which left "plenty of old-time hard-pressed residents still trapped in chicken coops of a bygone era" (Kwong & Miscevic, 2002, p. 325). This left large amounts of Hong Kong real estate unoccupied as the transfer of manufacturing jobs to mainland China, coupled with the surging importance of Shanghai, gutted the island of both a robust economy and its "indispensable role" in bridging the cultural and political gap between China and the West (Kwong & Miscevic, 2002, p. 326). Cheap real estate coupled with an overabundance of "younger unskilled workers" provided the ideal context for the importation of globalized food and culture, because "as U.S. firms [sought] to expand their presence in global markets, one of the primary areas of opportunity [was] providing services to the rapidly growing markets in Asia" (Kwong & Miscevic, 2002, p. 325; Keillor & Fields, 1996, p. 83). Thus, in a process beginning in the 1980s but accelerating rapidly in the 1990s and early 2000s, American fast food companies aggressively expanded into Asia, with Hong Kong representing one of the key entry points.

To see how Hong Kong has attempted to resist the undermining of its domestic cultural heritage through globalization, one need look no further than American attempts at marketing fast food on the island. A study investigating Hong Kong residents' perceptions of fast food found that "fast food is considered to be a convenience item rather than a special treat," and as such, attempts to sell fast food "as an opportunity to engage in an American cultural experience" fall flat, because they ignore the cultural differences between "staple versus 'treat' foods" (Keillor & Fields, 1996, p. 99; Furnham & Li, 2008, p. 299). This is not to suggest that American fast food has not successfully made its way into Hong Kong food culture — it has — but rather to point out that American fast food has ultimately served to undermine traditional Chinese culture specifically by adjusting the food offered to be more in line with regional tastes. The study found that "traditional elements are important both in the product offering (i.e., the inclusion of traditional fast food items on the fast food menu) as well as in the atmosphere in which the product offering is conveyed" (Keillor & Fields, 1996, pp. 99–100).

This does not represent an instance in which traditional culture has been retained, but rather an example of globalization taking traditional culture and commodifying it — reducing certain aspects of it to their most basic essence in order to better suture traditional food culture and globalized fast food together. American fast food companies may include traditional items on the menu in certain regions, but this is only a means of shoring up a customer base for the rest of the homogenized, globalized food menu. Thus, the convergence of American fast food and traditional Chinese food culture in Hong Kong is an interaction that ultimately subsumes the latter into a globalized cultural marketplace in which it is ill-equipped to successfully sustain itself.

The case of American fast food companies in Hong Kong is perhaps the most obvious example of globalization leading to a vast undermining of traditional Chinese food culture, but globalization has wrought other, more subtle changes as well. For example, "moon cakes are a traditional food eaten to celebrate Chinese festivals," and "for ages, they have been produced by master bakers using their own secret recipes" (Elsey & Tse, 2007, p. 511). As a result of globalization, however, the demand for moon cakes has challenged the traditional method of production. A look at one particular Hong Kong bakery offers a case study in the ways in which globalization gradually erodes traditional food culture even as it ostensibly expands the reach of that culture to international markets.

Like many other Hong Kong businesses in the 1980s, the bakery in question "grew and moon cakes and other products were exported to the international market … while continuing to serve a vibrant local Chinese market through a chain of retail outlets and restaurants" (Elsey & Tse, 2007, p. 512). At first glance, globalization would appear to be a boon for the traditional bakery, opening up new markets and sustaining it to the point that "the moon cake [could remain] the same kind of simple and single 'flagship' product, symbolic of the state of the company," which itself "remained deeply entrenched in a traditional Chinese business and management mindset … positioned to largely ignore 'the winds of change' in an increasingly technology-driven and more competitive market environment" (Elsey & Tse, 2007, p. 512). By offering an initial opportunity for expansion, globalization appears to provide businesses specializing in traditional food the chance to sustain that traditional culture through an influx of global revenue, and indeed this does occur for some time.

Soon, however, the true effects of globalization become clear. Just as the traditional bakery gains access to a global market, the market gains access to that bakery's product — such that it may be copied and reproduced for less money elsewhere. Like the inclusion of traditional menu items in American fast food restaurants in Hong Kong, the experience of this bakery demonstrates the way in which globalization takes traditional culture and commodifies it, severing any real connection between the product and the culture that produced it. Even those companies which manage to succeed following globalization are ultimately able to do so only by altering their traditional outputs to satisfy the trends of the global market. The Hong Kong bakery ultimately shifted from the production of traditional moon cakes "to [creating] a whole new range of upmarket moon cake products" including "an impressive array of variations for international travelers at the airport shop" (Elsey & Tse, 2007, p. 525).

It is worth noting that some of the scholarship on this subject itself works to minimize the importance of traditional culture. Beyond the glowing description of the expanded moon cake line — essentially a line of souvenirs for Western tourists — the analysis of the Hong Kong bakery in Elsey and Tse's essay tends to portray traditional modes of production, management, and food culture as hopelessly and provincially outdated, as if it is the fault of traditional businesses that the hegemony of global capitalism maintained by massive multinational corporations makes it difficult to continue turning a profit. In this way, the commodification and disintegration of traditional food culture is framed as the hopeful future for the traditional business.