Heritage defined by migrant population : Shanghainese tailor shops in Hong Kong

Abstract

From the Shanghainese community depicted in Wong Kar-wai’s film, the signage with “Shanghai” as a selling point once common as part of Hong Kong’s streetscape, to the correspondence with a “Hong Kong nephew” in Shanghainese writer Jin Yucheng’s award-winning novel Blossoms, the nexus between Shanghai and Hong Kong has been a popular theme shadowed in various pieces of art where one can always find the image of one city mirrored in the other. After decades of rapid development and redevelopment in both cities, the remnants of the past that silently but truthfully tell the history of this special nexus gradually fade, and are even under the ultimate threat of disappearance. Tailoring of western clothing, an exotic culture brought by the growing western influence on China since late Qing, was developed into its peak with different sects (for example, the famous Red Gang) in the international city of Shanghai during the Republican time. Along with the post-war migration movement from Shanghai to Hong Kong, a whole generation of Shanghainese tailors relocated to the British colony with their expertise and craftsmanship, and thus have redefined the tailoring business in Hong Kong that already existed previously. The development history of the tailoring industry can be seen as a microscopic image of the Shanghainese population’s movement and the significance of which not only lies in the amount of human and capital transferred southward but also in the novel metropolitan culture, the so-called “Shanghai Modern” that has been revived in the soil far from its birthplace. This study hopes to provide a record of the Shanghai-Hong Kong nexus from the perspective of several surviving Shanghainese tailor shops in Hong Kong that have witnessed the tale of two cities over decades. In this dissertation, the historical development of tailoring in both Shanghai and Hong Kong as well as the mass demographic shift took place in the late-1940s were reviewed. Data from historic yellow pages were presented to show the quantitative developing trend of tailor shops in Hong Kong, including the Shanghainese ones, over the course of around 70 years. The historical locations of Shanghainese tailor shops in both Shanghai and Hong Kong were also represented in a series of maps, illustrating the common clusters and the corresponding targeted customer profiles of these shops. The on-site observation characterises the tangible elements that comprise a typical Shanghainese tailor shop in Hong Kong and shows the image represented by the Shanghainese shop’s site and targeted customers. The oral history from practitioners tells the most complete story of this profession from a personal perspective and brings up the current situation and prospectus of an “old” craft. Lastly, some recommendations for better conservation as well as potential future research area were given in the final chapter.