Bulletin No. 1, 2010

Chinese University Bulletin No. 1, 2010  Reading Cities, Reading Cultures Research Centre for Comparative City Cultures C ities enjoy civilization’s most extravagant luxuries, but also bear the brunt of its financial mishaps, crime waves, and climate crises. Cities are where the successes and failures of globalization are felt most acutely, because they are where most of humanity chooses to work and live in. Prof. Leung Yuen-sang also heads the Research Centre for Comparative City Cultures under the RIH. One of the centre’s projects, begun in 2000, was a collaborative venture with the Centre for Cultural Research in the Special Economic Zones of the Shenzhen Municipal Government. The project studied cultural relations and interactions between Hong Kong and Shenzhen. ‘Shenzhen was a fascinating story of growth. If you wanted to see how a newborn city took its first steps towards maturity, go to Shenzhen. There were migrant workers, you could see how policies were shaping the city....’ The Shenzhen centre has been very active in organizing seminars and in publishing journals and book s on Shenzhen culture. It has also held, jointly with the Department of History, an international conference on culture and the environment. An ongoing project of the centre is ‘A Tale of Two Cities: Shanghai and Hong Kong’, conducted in partnership with Fudan University under the auspices of the Hong Kong—Fudan Joint Institute for Research and Development. ‘When Hong Kong looks at Shanghai, she sees someone who’s familiar yet alien, same yet different. That’s what makes the research exciting,’ remarked Professor Leung.