When local, national, and racial identities seem confining, reductionist, hurtful, or even dangerous, when claiming these identities takes a toll on one's livelihood or sense of self-worth, there's a comfort in knowing that one can resort to universalist, seemingly undeniable and peace-seeking affiliations like “citizen of the world” or the “human race.” Like the local, the universal is an imaginary shaped by political and historical forces, as well as an intense and imminently “real” feeling experienced through the body. Most cultures are equipped with the vocabulary and iconography for expressing local/national identities, for instance, through common languages, inherited and invented traditions, or cartological imaginaries. But beyond purely stating it, how does one prove to be a citizen of the world, which some have termed “cosmopolitanism”? And if the desire to seek comfort in cosmopolitanism is often a reaction to the difficulty of the local/national, must the process of cosmopolitanization itself be ambivalent, and must cosmopolitan discourse necessitate an interrogation of the instability of the local/national?

As small islands with thorny relationships with the national, Hong Kong and Taiwan provide useful examples for looking at the affective disjunctures between the cosmopolitan and the local. This book examines the important role that cinema played in imagining Hong Kong and Taiwan's place in the world during decades in which the idea of belonging and identity was under duress. Through colonial and post-colonial upheaval, riots and massacres, economic miracles and financial crises, Hong Kong and Taiwan felt the weight of the world both suppress and uplift its residents’ senses of identity and standards of living. Meanwhile, the allure of transcending narrow strictures of national or provincial identity pervaded, with stories of globe-trotting Chinese businessmen and politicians, America-bound Little Leaguers, and jet-set tourists circulating in the zeitgeist. Neighbors and family members went to Japan, Australia, Europe, or North America for college, or to raise their children. Young people did ballet and the mambo, and those who excelled in these western arts went abroad to perform alongside the faces and bodies locals only saw on TV.