Anthony FungAfter Hong Kong’s handover back to China, Ma (1999) found that the presentation of Chinese
in Hong Kong TV dramas has been evolving towards a more positive imagination.
While it could be said that Hong Kong TV dramas crossing the Chinese border might
speed up the way China is being globalized, the nationalist discourse from China through the
coproduction of TV drama between Chinese and Hong Kong television stations—indirectly a
mediated means to “re-nationalize” Hong Kong—has gained more momentum. Hong Kong is
willing to embrace coproduction, because the same TV program can also be broadcast both in
Hong Kong and also in China with a much bigger audience size. To a certain degree, the effect
of the coproduction of television drama is on a par with the cross-bordering effect. Coproduc-
tion between Hong Kong and China involves negotiations between socialism and democracy,
capitalism and authoritarianism, and so forth, and eventually the nationalist ideology on the part
of China is inserted into the program, which is then watched by Hong Kong audiences.
The Drive of Life is coproduced by Television Broadcasts Ltd. and China International Tele-
vision Corporation, a subsidiary of China Central Television. This 60-episode drama, featuring
the successful story of a family with members in Hong Kong and China, is an epitome and a
eulogy of the union between Hong Kong and China. It begins with the life-long story of three
brothers of the Hua family who are separated in Beijing and Hong Kong during the 1950s and
1960s. They surmount difficulties and come together to establish an automobile firm on the
mainland to produce China’s first original design sedan car, which then achieves great success in
overseas markets. With the handover of Hong Kong’s sovereignty back to China as a backdrop,
the TV drama portrays Hong Kong people sharing the joy of being unified with China.
Hong Kong’s Asia Television also produced a TV drama Return Home, having a similar theme
with its China counterpart, to celebrate the anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China. One
of the remarkable plots is an elder brother who donated his bone marrow to save his little
brother, while saying, “We should pay effort to contribute to our home country rather than
accumulating personal wealth”. In the wake of such cooperation between Hong Kong and
China television industries, Hong Kong appears to be bombarded by the ideology of China
through these coproduced television dramas. Eyeing the China market, Hong Kong televisions
are expected to produce more coproduction dramas and to broadcast these dramas locally, while
at the same time embracing the fact that these dramas carry a communist ideology from China.
This process seems ongoing rather than fragmented or temporal. In this case, cross-bordering
could be a threat to the open and liberal values of Hong Kong society.
transnational transaction and tV format adaptation
Alongside the Hong Kong–China interaction on TV production, Hong Kong also adopts TV
formats from Korea as the Korean Wave sweeps East Asia. With a liberal attitude towards accept-
ing foreign pop-culture, Hong Kong is one of the regions that has been most welcome to South
Korean cultural products (Kim 2009). An example is Sunny, a South Korean movie about girl
friendship directed by Kang Hyeong-cheol in 2011. This movie was re-made as a TV drama,
Never Dance Alone, by Television Broadcasts Limited in Hong Kong and broadcasted in 2014.
Sunny talks about how seven high-school girls get together again when in their 40s. The movie
is narrated between two timelines: the present and the 1980s when the characters were high-
school students. These girls form among themselves a clique named Sunny. However, their
friendship deteriorates due to some minor misunderstandings, and the group eventually falls
apart. Going back to the present day, the movie features an incident in which the lead character
Na-mi bumps into Chun-hwa in a hospital ward and notices she has terminal cancer. Chun-hwa’s
wish is to witness the reunion of all seven members of Sunny before she dies. Sadly, the reunion