Date: 10 March 2025 (Monday)
Time: 3:30-5:00pm
Venue: User Education Room, G/F, University Library, CUHK
Speaker: Brian Bernards (University of Southern California)
Moderator: Elmo Gonzaga (Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, CUHK)
Registration: https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=13703806
Abstract
As part of a larger research project on the transborder flows of migrant labor, popular culture, and tourism in inter-Asian cinema, this presentation narrates my recent experiences participating in Thailand-based package tours originally designed to capitalize on the popular media and cinema that first inspired the craze of outbound Thai travel to South Korea in the 2000s and brought hordes of inbound mainland Chinese tourists to Thailand in the 2010s. First, I discuss the lasting impact of early Korean Wave K-Dramas like Winter Sonata and Dae Jang Geum on the infrastructure of Thai tourism to South Korea. Although such K-Drama-oriented tours were once satirized in Thai director Banjong Pisanthanakun’s wildly popular 2010 film, Hello Stranger, my Thai-language “Happy Together Snow Lovers’ Korea Tour” revealed that two decades after these dramas reached peak popularity in Thailand, they remain anchoring referents on tourist routes that strikingly resemble those taken in Hello Stranger, with visits to Nami Island, Gyeongbokkung Palace, the Han-ok Village, and Namsan Seoul Tower punctuated by K-Drama-oriented narration from the tour’s Thai guides. Next, I discuss the residual impact of the domestic-box-office-shattering mainland Chinese hit comedy, Lost in Thailand, on Mandarin-language package tourism in Chiang Mai, tours facilitated through online mainland Chinese agencies but that rely on local Sinophone Thai guides. My Lost in Thailand-themed tour introduced Chinese visitors to Chiang Mai’s religious culture, nature retreats, and local products through reference to shooting locations and other popular destinations inspired by the film, including Wat Buppharam temple, the Chiang Mai University campus, and Mae Kampong, the so-called “Lost in Thailand village” outside the city. In both cases, the appeal of the original media product itself has largely faded from the priorities of snow-seeking northbound Thai travelers to South Korea and tropical safari-seeking southbound mainland Chinese tourists to Chiang Mai. Yet the legacy media and cinema still provide a key lens through which the local culture is curated, and their impact on the infrastructure of Thailand’s inbound and outbound tourist industry is indelible, creating—as each tour revealed—pathways for migrant labor, markets for new products, and translated narratives of cultural forms and customs with novel points for comparison and contrast.
Bio
Brian Bernards is Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. He is author of Writing the South Seas: Imagining the Nanyang in Chinese and Southeast Asian Postcolonial Literature (U of Washington Press, 2015 / NUS Press, 206) and co-editor of Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader (Columbia U Press, 2013). His articles have appeared in journals such as Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature, positions: asia critique, and Asian Cinema. He is currently working on two monographs, Inter-Asian Cinema: Migrant Labor, Popular Culture, Tourism and Translingual Micro-Affections: Sinophone Flash Fiction and Short Film in Southeast Asia. He is also co-editing a volume with Elmo Gonzaga entitled Inter-Asian Media Frictions: Creative Labor, Co-Production, and Outsourcing. He recently served as Visiting Professor of Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia (RILCA) at Mahidol University.
Organized by the Centre for Cultural Studies, CUHK
Venue sponsor: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Library
Enquiry: cuccs@cuhk.edu.hk