ABSTRACT
Yumcha as a form of food consumption is popular in Sydney, Australia, among both Chinese and other ethnic groups. In particular Hong Kong Chinese immigrants who arrived in the last ten years are seen to be ardent supporters of the practice. They believe that authentic yumcha originated in Hong Kong, and are adamant that Hong Kong style yumcha is the best. Through patronage of restaurants that provide Hong Kong style yumcha, Hong Kong immigrants take part in the configuration of a Hong Kong outside Hong Kong and the construction of a heunggongyan (P: xiang gang ren, literally meaning ‘Hong Kong people’) identity. As yumcha epitomizes the Hong Kong lifestyle, heunggongyan’s participation in the activity helps to create and maintain a linkage with their place of origin. In the process a sense of a diasporic Hong Kong community in Sydney is constructed and reconfirmed, and a heunggongyan identity put into everyday praxis. As a result, heunggongyan as a local identity spreads from Hong Kong to Sydney, just as it has spread to other parts of the world where Hong Kong people immigrate. Such globalization of local identity centres around Hong Kong the parent culture which is characterized as inclusive, open to change, inventive, and sophisticated – in other words, a metropolitan culture that prizes diversity, syncretism and adaptability. Ironically, in the process of globalization, the metropolitan Hong Kong identity transforms into an exclusive and enduring tradition to be preserved and guarded by an immigrant community that seeks to dispel a sense of insecurity, alienation and displacement.
