Projecting Images of China: Star House as a Shopping Centre between Red China and Self-Orientalism, 1960s–1970s

ABSTRACT: Current scholarship shows that the 1960s and 1970s, during the Cold War era, were pivotal to Hong Kong’s development. The Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront, a famous tourist destination since the 1960s at the southern tip of the Kowloon Peninsula, presented an attractive Hong Kong to win global foreign visitors. To examine how Hong Kong culturally encompassed both East and West during the Cold War, this paper examines Star House, a unique liminal space in Tsim Sha Tsui. First, it explores the reasons and methods behind Hong Kong’s adoption of Orientalisation in the 1960s as a publicity and tourism strategy. Second, it analyses how Star House, a shopping centre located next to Ocean Terminal, presented alluring images of China to attract the attention of visitors. Built by the pro-PRC tycoon Henry Fok and later sold to Hongkong Land, Star House was geographically within the “Westerner’s stronghold” and primarily aimed at selling Oriental images of China. I therefore argue that businesspeople in Star House consciously engaged in self-Orientalism, catering to the gaze of Westerners who saw China as the other. KEYWORDS: authenticity, the Orient, self-Orientalism, Star House, tourism, tourist gaze.