Disengagement and Urbanism: The Case of Gangpiaoquan and "Hong Kong Drifter" (gangpiao)

Chinese migrations and the development of overseas Chinese communities have aroused scholarly concerns over the past two decades. Its scale, scope and varied features stun and perplex many scholars. One of the issues is about the seemingly contradictory tendencies of the migrants’ political and cultural identities in an increasingly transnational age. While they grow up in a world of online media that binds them strongly with peers in China virtually and even consolidates their identification with Chinese political nation, they continuously pursue their transnational dream and cosmopolitan identity. Their local sense of place, if any, is seen as ephemeral and incidental. My article, with the case study of educated mainland youth in Hong Kong, attempts to interrogate this ephemerality by proposing the idea of "translocality". I argue that the making of translocality is crucial to understanding the cultural logic of migration in contemporary China. The exodus of educated youth is one of the examples.