"Mainland house" : a spatial-cultural study on Hong Kong people buying house/home in the Pearl River Delta

Abstract

The purchasing of "Mainland house" (residential properties in Mainland China, mainly in the Pearl River Delta) was phenomenal in last few decades. But it still remains nearly unstudied in the field of humanities and social science. Besides filling this gap, this thesis also attempts to bring in a cultural perspective to the dominant economic and social discourses revolve around the merging of Hong Kong and the PRD. In this thesis, culture is viewed as a spatial process of meaning construction; attention would also be paid to the interaction between the social and spatial changes. This meaning construction of the purchasing as well as activities around Mainland house is investigated in three different perspectives (with reference to the framework of Lefebvre refined by Soja): the conceived, perceived, and lived space. The conceived space is mainly examined through the analysis of what and how meaning are and are being produced; the perceived space is investigated by the analysis of the spatial forms of Mainland, including internal spatial design as well as their locations; the study of lived space get it resources mainly from the owners and users' experiences and narrations. Emphasis would be on the detail of this threefold dynamics, as well as the changing of the meanings of the Mainland house's space through time, and the differences of the meaning between different owners and users.