[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-153894-en":3,"doc-seo-153894-105":30,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":90},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":4,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":20,"is_downloadable":20,"audit_status":20,"page_count":21,"language":22,"language_code":23,"site_id":24,"html_lang":23,"table_of_contents":25,"faqs":26,"seo_title":27,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":28,"read_time":29},153894,13056703020460,"Valentina","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/be000253dac470eee5d?_k=1778207105932848923",2,"Literature","Henry Tsang - Wuxia Makes Me Nervous","Henry Tsang reflects on his lifelong exposure to wuxia and how these sword-and-heroism stories surface an unsettling anxiety about his own Chineseness. Tracing his Hong Kong childhood in the 1960s and later immigration to a WASP-dominant Vancouver, he links cultural distance to bodily and social alienation. He situates these feelings within transnational histories of racism and exclusion affecting Asians in Canada, and shows how community life in Chinatown both comforts and highlights difference.","Henry Tsang  \nWuxia Makes Me Nervous  \nsusan pui san lok, Trailers, 2015, single-channel video with sound, 4 mins., and Roch Fan, concertina artist book in vitrine, 10.2 x 18.7 x 841.5 cm. Photo: Bevis Bowden. Courtesy of the artist.  \nI  \nhave been aware of wuxia since my early childhood, and I loosely followed a televised series of this genre (I can’t remember which one) when traveling in Guangdong in the mid-1990s. I am an admirer of  \nCrouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Lee Ang’s breathtaking crossover ﬁlm that introduced wuxia to Western audiences, Zhang Yimou’s heroic Hero (2002), and even Wong Kar-wai’s enigmatic and arguably post-wuxia ﬁlm Ashes of Time (1994)—all part of this genre. But I did not know who Jin Yong was until I became familiar with susan pui san lok’s RoCH Fans and Legends project, and I was only marginally aware of his inﬂuence on wuxia as a transnational cultural phenomenon. The fantastical stories of swordsmanship and heroism in these ﬁlms and projects stir up a sense of unease, a self-consciousness that reﬂects a discomfort with depictions of a classical China that I know so little about.  \nWuxia exposes an anxiety about my own Chineseness. I feel vulnerable to being called out as ignorant of the history that these books, comics, television, and ﬁlms are at times loosely based upon but that nevertheless represent a culture I have a presumed yet unrequited relationship with.  \nHaving been born in Hong Kong in the 1960s, I had a claim on an identity that was not yet the norm, as the majority of the population there in the 1960s had been born elsewhere. We identiﬁed as part ofthe dominant culture even if we were second-class citizens next to the British.  \nMy family moved away a year after the 1967 riots and in most ways left Hong Kong behind. Canada had just opened its immigration to the larger world. This was a country where, since its founding in 1867 as a nation, the White Canada movement in British Columbia had fomented racism and inﬂuenced government policies to disenfranchise and shut out Asians. We arrived only two decades after the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which had a lineage dating back to 1885 that began with the Chinese Head Taxes designed to discourage and then eventually prohibit Chinese immigration to Canada.  \nThe Vancouver I grew up in was dominantly WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant), and the ruling class was not dissimilar to that of Hong  \nKong. But the most signiﬁcant difference was corporeal; I remember the rupture that my body experienced after moving to this part ofthe world. I felt physically different, with a visceral sense of loss. Perhaps it was the confrontation with a dominant culture that we could no longer identify with. In Vancouver we had become racialized. Our bodies were no longer normal; they had become different, Sinicized, Chinese-iﬁed. Certainly we knew we were Chinese, but in Hong Kong that was seen as “natural”—it was the “foreigners,” the gwai lo, who were not. However, like all presumptions based on ethnicity, this perception was inadequate and overly simplistic, sometimes making invisible those who were neither Chinese nor colonizers, such as the many Indians and Filipinos who also called Hong Kong home.  \nWe were part of the ﬁrst wavespeciﬁcally of Hong Kongers migrating to Canada—previous migrants came from Taishan and Zhongshan counties years before—and now there are about 500,000 of us, mostly in Vancouver and Toronto. The second and much larger wave took place after the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration that sealed the eventual return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty. Conversely, Hong Kong has the highest concentration of Canadian citizens in Asia, with approximately 300,000 Canadian citizens of all ethnicities living there.  \nOur new world was big, exciting, and full of strangeness. It both expanded and contracted, resulting in our stretching and molding to the new environment and unfolding culture while ﬁnding commonalit","cbCaikgYUiv0M6Aw","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaikgYUiv0M6Aw","pdf",489720,1,5,"English","en",105,"# Wuxia and Unease\n## Western exposure and transnational influence\n## Anxiety about cultural belonging\n# Hong Kong Origins and Shifting Identity\n## Hong Kong as a minority position\n## Family migration after 1967 riots\n# Vancouver Racialization and Bodily Difference\n## Dominant culture and embodied loss\n## Invisible others beyond simple ethnicity\n# Chinatown, Community, and Ongoing Distance\n## Negotiating older overseas Chinese ties\n## Maintaining Hong Kong customs\n## News stories and renewed embarrassment","[{\"question\":\"How does wuxia affect Henry Tsang’s sense of self?\",\"answer\":\"Wuxia stirs unease that reveals discomfort with a classical China he feels distanced from, exposing anxiety about his own Chineseness.\"},{\"question\":\"What role did immigration to Vancouver play in Tsang’s feelings?\",\"answer\":\"After moving, he describes experiencing bodily and social rupture—becoming racialized in a dominant culture where his body no longer felt “normal.”\"},{\"question\":\"How does Tsang connect Canadian racial history to his experience?\",\"answer\":\"He outlines exclusionary immigration policies and racism shaped in Canada, framing his family’s arrival as occurring soon after major Chinese exclusion measures were repealed.\"}]","Henry Tsang - Wuxia Makes Me Nervous | PDF",1787883907,8,{"code":4,"msg":31,"data":32},"ok",{"site_id":24,"language":23,"slug":33,"title":13,"keywords":34,"description":14,"schema_data":35,"social_meta":85,"head_meta":87,"extra_data":89,"updated_unix":28},"henry-tsang-wuxia-makes-me-nervous","",{"@graph":36,"@context":84},[37,53,67],{"@type":38,"itemListElement":39},"BreadcrumbList",[40,44,47,50],{"item":41,"name":42,"@type":43,"position":20},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":45,"name":46,"@type":43,"position":11},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",{"item":48,"name":12,"@type":43,"position":49},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/literature/",3,{"item":51,"name":13,"@type":43,"position":52},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/henry-tsang-wuxia-makes-me-nervous/153894/",4,{"url":51,"name":13,"@type":54,"author":55,"headline":13,"publisher":57,"fileFormat":60,"inLanguage":23,"description":14,"dateModified":61,"datePublished":61,"encodingFormat":60,"isAccessibleForFree":62,"interactionStatistic":63},"DigitalDocument",{"name":9,"@type":56},"Person",{"url":41,"name":58,"@type":59},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-08-28",true,{"@type":64,"interactionType":65,"userInteractionCount":4},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":66},"ViewAction",{"@type":68,"mainEntity":69},"FAQPage",[70,76,80],{"name":71,"@type":72,"acceptedAnswer":73},"How does wuxia affect Henry Tsang’s sense of self?","Question",{"text":74,"@type":75},"Wuxia stirs unease that reveals discomfort with a classical China he feels distanced from, exposing anxiety about his own Chineseness.","Answer",{"name":77,"@type":72,"acceptedAnswer":78},"What role did immigration to Vancouver play in Tsang’s feelings?",{"text":79,"@type":75},"After moving, he describes experiencing bodily and social rupture—becoming racialized in a dominant culture where his body no longer felt “normal.”",{"name":81,"@type":72,"acceptedAnswer":82},"How does Tsang connect Canadian racial history to his experience?",{"text":83,"@type":75},"He outlines exclusionary immigration policies and racism shaped in Canada, framing his family’s arrival as occurring soon after major Chinese exclusion measures were repealed.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":51,"og:type":86,"og:title":13,"og:site_name":58,"og:description":14},"article",{"robots":88,"canonical":51},"index,follow",{"doc_id":7,"site_id":24},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":91},[92,96,99,103,107,112,117,121,126,129,133],{"id":20,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":93,"show_sort_weight":94,"slug":95},"Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":11,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":12,"show_sort_weight":97,"slug":98},80,"literature",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":100,"show_sort_weight":101,"slug":102},"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":21,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":104,"show_sort_weight":105,"slug":106},"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":108,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":109,"show_sort_weight":110,"slug":111},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":113,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":114,"show_sort_weight":115,"slug":116},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":29,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":118,"show_sort_weight":119,"slug":120},"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":122,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":123,"show_sort_weight":124,"slug":125},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":124,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":127,"show_sort_weight":124,"slug":128},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":130,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":131,"show_sort_weight":130,"slug":132},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":134,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":46,"category_name":135,"show_sort_weight":21,"slug":136},19,"General","general"]