Transcriber: Hannah Higa Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
Is anybody else cold in here?
So, today I’m going to tell you a story.
A story of East meets West.
Let’s rewind first.
So, I don’t belong here.
I was born in the US in 1985.
My parents met in Taiwan in the 70s
and then moved to the US, where they got married.
Then they had my older brother and I in the 80s.
And it was there, in the suburban Midwest of the USA.
where I met my first love.
Comic books.
I grew up and loved Marvel Comics.
All those films and stories that the world loves now today,
I experienced those firsthand from the source 30 years ago,
waiting anxiously every month for each month's issue.
These were my escape from the real world
and somewhere where I could feel safe.
Then in 1992, we moved from the suburban Midwest of America -
we moved to this giant international metropolis that is Hong Kong,
which was still a British colony at the time.
I won't go into the details of Hong Kong's history,
as many of you may know it,
but for those who are current students at CityU,
I imagine this is before you were born.
The dynamic of a British-colonized Hong Kong
was slightly different than the Hong Kong you know today.
And this is where our story starts.
I remember being with my mother,
as a small child, at a mall in Sha Tin,
and while talking to her,
someone looked at me with a very stern and disapproving reaction.
I could almost hear this anger from this person’s face,
watching me as I walked by my mother
and forever embedded in my memory was that disapproving look
that I had somehow done something wrong.
I remember feeling guilty and very upset,
but I didn’t understand what I’d done to a complete stranger to upset them.
My mother just calmly looked at me and said,
“Don’t worry, it’s probably just because you’re speaking English.”
She understood the bigger picture,
but as I was too young to fully understand,
she didn’t want to upset me.
His expression left an impression on me, and I remember feeling for the first time
that maybe I don’t belong here.
So my parents usually speak to me in Mandarin at home,
but I respond back in English, given that was my first language.
This was normal to me growing up.
For those who are Hong Kongers too,
it’s normal to be multilingual in this city.
However, at the time in the 90s,
it was strange for a small Chinese boy
to speak in a fluent American accent to his Chinese mother in public,
or at least it was very uncommon.
This is a class picture taken in 1997, the year of the handover,
when Hong Kong would no longer be a British colony, after 150 years.
If you look carefully,
I’m the little nerd in the second row.
I was your typical Hong Kong student.
I was shy, but I worked hard and got good grades.
As I was already shy and introverted,
when someone would scold, judge, or laugh at my spoken Cantonese,
it further fed into my insecurities.
But there’s always that one place that I could return to and felt safe to be in,
which were comic books - that familiar treasure from my upbringing,
where no one judged who I was.
By the way, for those who don’t know,
the X-Men, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the 60s,
was created as a metaphor for the civil rights movement.
Basically, it was a metaphor for racism.
So looking back, I find it quite interesting
that I was particularly drawn to this group of heroes,
a group of people who did not belong.
Of course, my love for comics inevitably led to a love for drawing.
Growing up Chinese, as many of you know,
it is not encouraged to pursue a career in creativity.
As my grades were good, the idea is that to be successful,
you should pursue and study medicine, law, business and accounting.
By the way, both my parents were professors in business and accounting.
But I had this fantasy that I wanted to be an artist.
I felt safest when I was drawing,
and I wanted to be a creative professional.
I also realized that to be successful in all of these other industries,
you needed to work hard.
That was fact.
So if I was going to survive as an artist,
as unlikely as it is,
it will be to work harder than everybody else.
So against everyone’s advice, I decided to apply to an art and design institution
For my undergraduate degree,
I applied to Hong Kong institutions like City University,
where we are here today, Polytechnic U.
And I was rejected.
(Laughter)
By all of them.
But somehow, I got into Parsons School of Design
in New York City, another giant metropolis like Hong Kong.
For those who don’t know,
Parsons is one of the most prestigious art and design schools in the world.
By the way, I also attended Central Saint Martins,
another top art and design school in the world.
So how was it that I could go to the top two design schools in the world
but get rejected from all of the ones that I applied to in Hong Kong,
in the city that I grew up in?
The message was clear,
the universe told me that I did not belong here.
But before I let it bother me,
I was too excited for the potential of a new career
that could take place in my future.
It was a dream come true.
I worked hard, I studied hard, trying to perfect my craft,
and of course, worried for my future,
taking on the unlikely possibility of becoming the professional working artist.
In my last year of my undergraduate studies,
that fear and possibility of not being able to survive dawned on me.
You see, up until then, everyone thought this was just a phase that would pass
and that one day I would wake up and get a real job.
So if this last year was the last time I could do what I loved,
I would create something meaningful and special to me.
So I created a comic book.
And to my surprise, it was about Hong Kong,
referencing all those old films that I loved to watch in my formative years.
I realized that I actually missed Hong Kong,
even if it didn’t miss me back.
So I took this comic book in school to Comic-Con.
See, back then, when you want to get into comics,
you have to show your portfolio at comic conventions.
And so I took it to an editor at Marvel,
and it actually got me a job with Marvel Comics.
I couldn't believe it.
I came back full circle and it reinforced my mission to be an artist.
I knew wouldn’t be an easy path,
but the universe gave me the message of a place that I could belong,
which is being the artist.
It was a really small project,
where they asked different artists to reinterpret Marvel characters,
and my editor asked me to do it about Hong Kong, so I did.
And I returned to Hong Kong after with the same work ethic
that was trained in me at Parsons,
and slowly but surely began to get more and more projects.
So 15 years later,
I’ve since had the pleasure of working over 100 different clients,
ranging from restaurants to banks, hotels, car brands, advertising agencies,
music labels, beer and liquor brands, shoe brands and the fashion industry,
private commissions and galleries.
And every project was successful, and many did not see the light of day.
But every once in a while,
I did see a bit of success pushing forward slowly, bit by bit.
One word that I hear a lot is the word “talent,”
that it somehow equates to any kind of success
that other people see of me.
In complete truth, I really dislike this word
because it undermines the actual quality it takes to get here, which is hard work.
Just like every doctor, lawyer, banker, or anyone who sees success,
they worked hard to get where they are, and so did I.
I also hear the terms “artist’s block” or “writer’s block”
from aspiring creatives, that somehow you need inspiration to make art.
This is not true.
These terms don’t exist in my vocabulary.
They’re excuses made by amateurs
because the real professionals get to work every single day,
even on bad days - especially on bad days.
I remember going to one of my professors at Parsons,
a professional illustrator, worried about my future, and I asked them,
“Can I survive as an artist?”
And he said something to me that I will never forget.
He said, “If you take care of the work, the work will take care of you.”
If you take care of the work, the work will take care of you.
So I still live by this motto to this day,
and it’s proven true more often than not.
One project I got was for a magazine.
Every month they wanted me to illustrate a different street of Hong Kong.
One of the challenges of illustration for me
is to capture the feeling in the viewer.
Because as illustration is a visual medium,
how do you capture all the senses from sights and landmarks to sounds,
to smells to temperatures and emotions of a place?
So Argyle Street in Mongkok, many of you know,
is one of the most densely populated streets in the world.
How do I capture the bustle of a crowd?
Maybe I will suggest movement with blur of the people at an intersection,
because things move fast.
Maybe I’ll use warm temperatures of color against the cool of the night sky
to suggest the heat and the noise coming from the people,
while taking into consideration, of course, a balanced composition.
Langhaofang is known for its happy hour drinks and partying nightlife.
Notice how the buildings are imperfectly drawn.
The ground suggests a slightly reflective quality
with blurred lighting here and there.
My intention as the artist was to suggest that you, the viewer,
maybe had a few drinks and was also a little bit drunk or tipsy.
Sai Kung is known as a weekend excursion for many in Hong Kong.
So of course we have sunny skies, but is also known as an old fishing town.
So if you look carefully at the clouds, they slowly turn into fish.
I rediscovered my love for Hong Kong, having lived outside of it,
relearning the culture and understanding from both an inside perspective
and outside looking in.
The wider perspective, relearning Hong Kong’s rich and extensive story,
as well as the darkest parts of its history.
I struggled as a young artist,
but reminded myself that if I continue to work hard, I will overcome.
And one of those struggles was this continuous feeling
that I still do not belong here.
So one day I came to this realization.
And that was, if you embrace your faults, they can't be used to hurt you.
So I accepted that my spoken Cantonese is imperfect,
and instead of shying away from it, I embraced it.
(Laughter)
So now, every time a taxi driver laughed at my Cantonese accent,
I laughed with him.
And we end up having a really fun conversation
where he interrogates me about my background and where I’m really from.
Every time an ah jie yells at me in a restaurant
for pronouncing something wrong,
I kind of just shrug and admitted,
“I can’t read Chinese very well.”
And she’d just say, “okay,”
she’d smile and then patiently walk me through the menu.
Suddenly, those experience that I had that it used to upset me,
now made me appreciate who I was.
After all, I am a product of my multicultural upbringing,
especially having grown up in Hong Kong.
I realized that those insecurities I had along were internal.
And it wasn’t that Hong Kong did not accept me as a Hong Konger,
it was that I hadn’t realized that I was all along.
And for the first time I thought to myself that I can belong here.
During my time living in New York City and outside of Hong Kong,
I noticed something, and it was how people thought of Hong Kong as a city.
I won’t tell you the impressions that people suggested,
but I will say I didn't like it.
Even if it wasn't a negative comment, it usually wasn't positive either.
So when the world talk about New York, Paris, London, Shanghai,
there’s a general perception these are beautiful and romantic cities,
which they are.
But why didn’t people think of Hong Kong that way?
Was it because of Hollywood representation?
Or how it’s portrayed in media?
I have lived and visited all of these cities
and for all their strengths, they also have their weaknesses.
New York is colorful with the multicultured population,
amazing creative scene, and a rich history, yes.
But you will encounter interesting smells in the subway,
and guaranteed you will see a rat
every single time in the subway on the train tracks.
Paris is beautifully romantic, with an undeniable taste for high culture,
but good luck getting around if you don't speak French.
London is friendly with amazing sites and museums,
but travel is incredibly inefficient compared to Hong Kong
And everything closes by 10 p.m.
Don’t get me wrong, I love all of these cities,
and they deserve their reputation for being the greatest in the world.
But I can give you 1,000 reasons why they’re amazing,
and I can give you another 1,000 reasons why Hong Kong is amazing too.
So suddenly I had another mission in my career,
a social responsibility, if you will,
that I wanted the world to see Hong Kong the way that I did
and that I felt it deserved.
Instead of creating work that suggests a perfect representation of Hong Kong
in hiding the ugly,
why don’t we embrace, celebrate, and acknowledge the imperfections instead?
So embracing the imperfect of the city, just like I did of myself.
So when I applied that to my work,
I realized that these imperfect qualities were actually quite charming.
And what makes Hong Kong such a romantic city, so embracing,
the charm of dripping air conditioners and peeling walls,
celebrating that people can be loud
and that the taxi drivers are passionately rude on occasions.
Acknowledging that we are an educated population,
conflicted by its own history,
divided by the changes taking place every day, today.
If there’s a message I’d like to leave you with today,
is that what makes you different, makes you unique.
So you celebrate imperfections because they’re what makes you, you.
Embracing it in your identity,
in your personality.
Celebrate the imperfections in the people that you love
and especially embrace it in the art that you create.
It is also important to acknowledge the faults both internally and externally,
hopefully working to improve it,
and making it better for future generations.
In conclusion,
I’d never be more confident than now to say that I am a product of this city.
It’s my home, and for all its qualities and imperfections,
I belong here.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)