Cultural integration

Discourse about GBA integration tends to skirt around any overt explanation of how culturally discrete community groups are to integrate. Culture that is manifest in fine art productions and other intangible forms of artistic expression appears to be a safe domain of discussion, as public promotions in the news media frequently celebrate the sharing of creative expression between cultural groups.

Any suggestion of a requirement to shift small c culture is fraught, however, as how we personally embody our culture fundamentally contributes to our identity and a sense of how we belong.

These are the norms, unwritten rules, values and beliefs common to a group of people. They include the artifacts – both tangible and intangible, routines, community activities, modes of interaction and material symbolism through which culture is expressed.

It is not surprising therefore that it is unusual to find articles that raise the spectre of developing a “group identity” of the GBA.

How is belonging to this larger geographic entity going to shift residents from their core identities founded in family and community from different locales with all the political, material, educational, economic and other forms of history unique to that cultural ecosystem?

There is yet no ready answer on offer as to how we find psychological comfort and well-being in the move from one familiar “village” – whether it be of Zhongyuan, Lingnan, Guangfu, Chaoshan, British, Portuguese or Macanese cultures – into the broader human ecology of the GBA.

As James Chang, PwC China’s partner a couple of years ago stated, time will shift and integrate mindsets through ongoing mobility and human contact, which presents a laisse-faire approach and trust in the organic nature of human psychological evolution.

This is a faith-based reliance on the idea that cultural transmission will occur through the sharing of human experience and through frequent interaction. That process is not without its discomfort. In 2011, Si Ma Yun Jie warned that “cultural integration means that different cultures collide with each other, interact with each other, absorb and harmonize  with each other, and gradually merge into one body to give birth to a new cultural system.”

Fortunately, a moderating factor for the GBA in this process is the shared history of cultural absorption and adaptation that more homogeneous regions of China are not able to exploit.

Big C culture as a pathway forward

Reliance on Big C culture in the form of arts and film festivals, exhibitions, performance arts and craft workshops is expected to ease the cultural transition, as these activities bring people together in safe spaces to explore with curiosity the exhibit of focus, and at the same time build familiarity with the underlying cultural context that created them.

Such activities build those connections and understandings bit by bit over a period of time. What may at first be a laisse-faire approach to cultural integration might indeed end up being a strategic nudge of the organic process.

Big C cultural events that support integration are numerous.

The Macao International Fireworks Display Contest which this year will run from 6th September to 6th October is an international event with regional participants that can be understood from the context of Macau’s firecracker history and current unique regulatory status, a story now part of the GBA.

The current “From Healing Patients to Saving a Nation” exhibition at the Macao Museum about Dr Sun Yat-sen in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao epitomises the sorts of regional historical binds through one important historical personality.

This display marks the 100 years of the patriot’s death. Dragon Boat festivals also bring competing groups together: commencing as a modern international race in Hong Kong in 1976, it traces its routes to southern China, again exemplifying a shared cultural history.

The Leisure and Cultural Services Department in Hong Kong ran the “Art><Creativity” Exhibition Series in the GBA from 2021 through 2024. Held in nine cities across the GBA the aim was to bring artists together as creative collaborators. In a similar frame was the “Observations of the Four Seasons” exhibition in Jiangmen showing the work of eight young artists from Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao.

Concern has been raised in an academic paper earlier this year by Bei Hu from the School of Foreign Languages, Guangdong University of Science & Technology that these exchanges are “project-based and fragmented, lacking long-term and systemic planning…” making for piecemeal action and unsustainable momentum.

There remains hope, however, that the outcomes of even the early stages of cultural integration will produce better collaboration and substantial quality outcomes: we should not merely consider a single direction of causality.

In reality, growing collaboration and strength in skills, combined resources from multiple areas and maturing legal (such as intellectual property rights) and collaborative infrastructure will produce a positive feedback loop, a virtuous cycle: cultural and other forms of exchange will facilitate ease of collaboration which in turn facilitates both better cultural integration and cultural artifacts.

Momentum and tipping points are likely to be the ultimate tools in the cultural integration journey.

As with everything organic, cooperation and collaboration cannot be forced: It will take keen observation and a responsive nurturing approach, whether market-based cooperation (as is the relationship between Hong Kong and Shenzhen) or government-supported initiatives (as between Macau and Zhuhai), to develop a new cultural identity for people of the GBA. Let us not confuse small “c” and big “C” culture, but understand that the latter, where an innovative and create ecology is supported, is but one mechanism to build a shared culture of belonging and identity in the GBA. By Leanda Lee, MDT