Backreading Hong Kong Symposium 2026
Documentary Screening + Q&A: Metamorphosis of the Bay Area
Special Presentation by Producer Prof. Helen F. Siu
Date: Wednesday, 11 March, 2026
Time: 5:30pm – 7:30pm
Venue: Auditorium, Asian Center, UBC
Address: 1871 West Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2 | Map | Parking
The documentary film Metamorphosis of the Bay Area 灣區變形記 (2025) is produced by Prof. Helen F. Siu and directed by Ding Cheng, as a production of the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, The University of Hong Kong. Focusing on the Pearl River Delta, the film is based on over 40 years of field research in South China and explores the region’s transformation and evolution as a world shaped by water.
The film will be presented by Prof. Helen F. Siu, Emerita Professor of Anthropology and former chair of the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University, who will share her thought process and insights from the production in person.
Film in Cantonese with Chinese and English subtitles.
All are welcome. Registration required.
This is part of the special program of the Backreading Hong Kong Symposium 2026 at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Check out more public events from the program here.
The symposium is hosted by the UBC Hong Kong Studies Initiative, and the UBC Department of Asian Studies; and is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Canada Research Chair Program of the Government of Canada, UBC Center for Chinese Research, the UBC Department of English, the UBC Pop Culture Cluster, the UBC Campus + Community Planning, and the Sustainability Initiative Committee of the UBC Department of Asian Studies, as well as the Cha: An Asian Literary Journal.
About the Speaker
Helen F. Siu, is Emerita Professor of Anthropology and former chair of the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University.
Her teaching interests are political and historical anthropology, urban and global culture change. She has conducted decades of fieldwork in Southern China, exploring agrarian change and commerce, the nature of the socialist state, and the refashioning of identities. Lately, she explores rural-urban interface in China, inter-Asian connections, China-Africa encounters, popular music and new political space in Hong Kong.
She has served funding and research assessment committees in the United States, Europe, and Asia. She served on the University Grants Committee (1992-2001) and the Research Grant’s Council (1996-2001) in Hong Kong, for which she received the Bronze Bauhinia Star. In the U.S. she has served on the Committee for Advanced Study in China and the National Screening Committee for Fulbright awards in the U.S.
She is the founding director of the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong (www.hkihss.hku.hk), which highlights cross-disciplinary research and global collaborations.
She is the author, co-author, and co-editor of many well-received publications.
The most recent book publications are Asia Inside Out (3 volumes, Harvard U Press 2015, 2019), Tracing China: A Forty-year Ethnographic Journey (HKU Press 2016), and the Chinese edition of Tracing China, entitled 《踏跡尋中: 四十年華南田野之旅》(CUHK Press 2022). She is the producer of a documentary film on the Greater Bay Area (Metamorphosis of the Bay Area, 2025), and the executive producer of an earlier film on Hong Kong (Denise Ho: Becoming the Song; Kino Lorber 2020).
Her academic profile can be found at https://anthropology.yale.edu/people/helen-siu.
About the Film
Based on forty years of field research, “Metamorphosis of the Bay Area” narrates the making and unmaking of the Pearl River Delta in South China from the Ming to the present. Using historical images and vivid ethnographic encounters, the film illustrates how a mobile, water-based people became “landed” over time. They turned river marshes into fields, built lineage communities, performed rituals, and cultivated literati identity to engage the imperial state. Today, they face the challenges of state-led urban development, and struggle against all odds to maintain a regional ecology with rich cultural meanings that transcend rigid administrative boundaries.
The film production team and the historians and anthropologists walked through various villages to behold their vast transformations over time, observe the urbanization that has swept through the area, as well as capture the variegations and nuances in the natural and human landscapes of the Greater Bay Area. Using sources and images collected across the decades, the film portrays a fascinating tale of transformation of the GBA.
Registration for Documentary Screening of “Metamorphosis of the Bay Area” + Special Presentation by Dr. Helen F. Siu
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