A native Cantonese speaker, Assistant Professor of Global Chinese Studies Ka Lee Wong’s research examines how media networks across Hong Kong and Southeast Asia have made Cantonese familiar beyond Cantonese-speaking communities, how language policies restricted its audibility, and how older sonic traditions have survived in unexpected forms.
What interests you about the Cantonese language and identity?
I’m interested in the sound of Cantonese and how it is circulated and how listening can sustain a sense of cultural connection. I mostly focus on this idea of sound and listening: even when younger generations do not fully understand the language their elders speak, its sounds can remain familiar and meaningful. This way, sound is like an atmosphere. You don’t necessarily have to speak the language fluently to feel connected to its culture through listening.
In the three places that my research focuses on—Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia—different language policies and social pressures shape where and how Cantonese and other Chinese regional languages or dialects can be heard.
For example, in Singapore, the government under Lee Kuan Yew promoted Mandarin as the common language of Chinese Singaporeans, even though many spoke languages such as Hokkien, Teochew, and Cantonese at home. Overnight, a lot of people stopped understanding what was broadcast on the radio, because they didn’t speak Mandarin. The “dialect ban” in the late 1970s did not ban Hong Kong television dramas themselves, but restricted their Cantonese soundtracks, requiring them to be dubbed into Mandarin. The images and stories of Cantonese dramas could circulate, but their original voices could not. This is one way a modern state takes shape through language: by determining which voices can be heard in public. I’m interested in how people sustain their attachments to Cantonese within and beyond these restrictions.
What inspired your research?
As a Cantonese speaker, I grew up with a difference between the language I spoke and the standard written Chinese I learned. Moving between them often felt like a form of translation. Things I enjoy hearing in Cantonese, like puns and jokes, often lose something in translation, and I feel a sense of loss about that. This is one of the inspirations for my project. In my work, I also explore Cantonese humor, including comedian Stephen Chow’s movies. Many of the jokes depend on Cantonese sounds and expressions, so they lose their meaning when dubbed into Mandarin. They may seem nonsensical when expressed in Mandarin, but in Cantonese there is a logic to the humor, because it depends on play on words and idioms that do not translate easily. This prompted me to ask what happens to a culture when its sounds are changed or lost in translation. It is also a personal interest, because this is what I grew up with and where my passion lies.
What does listening reveal about the history of Cantonese media?
Listening helps us understand how cultural connections persist even when languages lose public or institutional recognition. My research follows Cantonese sounds across Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and Guangzhou. In Singapore, for example, restrictions on Cantonese broadcasting did not mean that people stopped listening. Even as Hong Kong television dramas remained on screen while their Cantonese voices were replaced by Mandarin dubbing, VHS tapes of the original Cantonese television dramas continued to circulate through private collections and informal networks, including on the black market. If we focus only on images or official broadcasting histories, we miss these differences between what could be seen and what could be heard. I’m interested in how listening brings those histories into focus, and how people maintain cultural attachments through sounds that are no longer publicly available in the same ways.
What gap are you hoping this research will fill?
There is still more to understand about how listening connects the histories of Cantonese media across different places. Growing up speaking Cantonese helps me recognize wordplay, vocal styles, and cultural references that may be difficult to capture in writing or translation. I bring that familiarity to my historical research, asking how sounds reveal relationships between migration, politics, identity, and belonging. I also want to reveal and discuss what has been made “inaudible”—sounds and listening practices that language policies have pushed out of public circulation or that existing historical accounts have overlooked. My aim is to bring musical and media forms into a connected history that shows both the connections and the differences among Chinese diasporic communities. This also raises a methodological question: how can listening help us understand cultural histories that are harder to trace through written records alone?
