Foreword

It has been our great privilege to organise the ‘Hong Kong Week’ in the past two years with an array of cultural programmes for Taiwanese public to appreciate the vitality and the richness of Hong Kong’s heritage and our creative potential as a city. We are thrilled to have received such positive and enthusiastic feedback from arts practitioners and audiences in Taiwan. Within such a short period of time, ‘Hong Kong Week’ has made its mark and become an important platform for cultural exchange between Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Under the theme of ‘Hong Kong Folklore • Literary Footprints’, this year’s ‘Hong Kong Week’ features a wide and exciting range of programmes to lead Taiwanese audiences even closer to the essence and spirit of Hong Kong culture. Both folk traditions and literary works are important reflections of the character and culture of a place, and through these we hope to convey some of the collective hopes, memories and sentiment of the people of Hong Kong.

In one of the opening programmes, When Jingkun Met Cantonese Opera – A Chinese Opera Exchange Project, renowned Hong Kong Cantonese Opera veterans Lee Lung and Sun Kim-long lead a troupe of emerging performers to collaborate with GuoGuang Opera Company of Taiwan. Together, they will be exchanging directly on stage, introducing the indigenous local opera world of Hong Kong–the Cantonese Opera to the Taiwanese audience through their familiar Jingkun operas.

This year, the lively and energetic Huashan 1914 Creative Park will become home to a cluster of ‘Hong Kong Week’ events. To find out more about folk arts and traditions in Hong Kong, come to the Indigenous Hong Kong – An Exhibition on our Intangible Cultural Traditions, the Hong Kong Lantern Festival and the Creative Arts Market. Another exhibition commemorating the late Leung Ping-kwan, one of Hong Kong’s most important contemporary poets, writers and educators, offers an invaluable opportunity to understand how the uniqueness and variety of day-to-day life in Hong Kong feeds into the city’s larger literary currents and cultural trends.

As one of the world’s most exhilarating cities, Hong Kong is a place full of inspiration sources for local artists by whom contemporary Chinese literary giants such as Yu Kwang-chung, Xiao Hong and Cao Yu and their classical works are revitalized and reimagined creatively on stage. We will also be holding the 50 Years of Hong Kong and Taiwanese Animation and Hong Kong Contemporary Film Showcase to let audiences experience the charm of Hong Kong’s popular culture by revisiting the animations of Hong Kong and Taiwan in last 50 years, as well as by screening quality small to medium Hong Kong feature films and compilations of award winning short films.

We look forward to meeting you again at the ‘Hong Kong Week 2014’ and hope that, with your continued support, ‘Hong Kong Week’ will become one of the most anticipated annual cultural events for arts practitioners and audiences in Taiwan and Hong Kong.