Dragon Boys and the Tale of “Hongcouver”: Tracing Hong Kong-Canada Migration, Community Connection and Cultural Co-production

Dragon Boys (2007) is a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) miniseries filmed in Vancouver as the national broadcaster's first television production with an all-Asian cast, featuring the people of Chinatown and their stories, bilingual dialogues, and transitional stardom from Hong Kong, the US, and Canada. Using Dragon Boys as a case study, the chapter explores how the Hong Kong-Canada affinity, community ties, and recognition of dual identities are manifested in mainstream English media. This research traces the trajectory of Hong Kong-Canada migration since the 1980s and delineates the cultural heritage, exchanges, and collaboration that were established amid the multidirectional and transnational mobilities. The chapter first examines, through a neoliberal framework, the various migration schemes from Hong Kong to Canada between the 1980s and the 2020s. It then discusses the economic, social, and lifestyle impacts that Hong Kong immigrants have brought to Vancouver, including real estate bubbles, urban development, and the newly-emerged racism that targets Asian communities. With the socioeconomic backdrop explained, the chapter finally analyzes the rising cultural influence of Hong Kong in Vancouver over the past two decades, as represented by the production of Dragon Boys. Through meticulous textual analysis and interpretation of the miniseries, the chapter elucidates how such cultural production has generated transnational cultural flows between Hong Kong and Canada, and how that has nurtured multicultural storytelling as a norm in popular media.