Chapter 8 - Revisiting Cold War Hong Kong : Chinese Tailors, American Servicemen, and Suit-Making Experiences, 1950-1980

Summary

Abstract

As the Vietnam War from the 1950s to the 1970s was a proxy war between the communist and capitalist allies in the Cold War era, Hong Kong in this period featured and revealed key issues of world politics and diplomacy and has thus been widely understood under a political framework. However, this chapter will show that Cold War Hong Kong brimmed with diverse cultural activities and cross-cultural exchange under the influence of American tourism, where suit-making functioned as one of the major tourist activities that helped generate cross-cultural experiences and exchange between the Americans and the local Chinese tailors. By problematising the historical phenomenon of suit tourism in Cold War Hong Kong, this chapter challenges the conventional political narrative of the colony and shows the non-political interplay between Chinese and Western subjects with a distinct picture of cross-cultural history of the Cold War. Drawing on personal accounts of oral history and memoirs and written materials on the colony's tourism industry, it argues that the cross-cultural experiences of suit-making contributed to a critical cultural foundation for the Chinese tailors and the American tourists to imagine and remember Cold War Hong Kong.

Keywords: experiences, oral history, memoirs, Chinese tailors, American servicemen, Cold War Hong Kong

Generally considered a proxy war, the Vietnam War from the 1950s to the 1970s was a major conflict between the communist and capitalist camps in the Cold War era. During this period, British Hong Kong served as a critical conduit that connected the West and China. While the West, especially America, used the colony as a window to monitor China, China saw it as an outlet to reach out and stay connected with the outside world. For Hong Kong's entanglement with world politics and diplomacy, the Cold War experience of the city has been widely understood from a political perspective. Scholars have, for instance, used Cold War Hong Kong as a point of access to explore the wider political tension and negotiation between the two ideological powers. My oral history interviewees also expressed that the Cold War left a strong impression of political tension.