I am a historian of Hong Kong, late imperial and modern China, and the Asian maritime world. My thematic interests include frontiers and borderlands, empires and colonialism, race and ethnicity, and the Chinese diaspora. I am completing a monograph that employs the analytical framework of “frontier” to reinterpret the nature of the Opium War (1839-1842) and its significance in the history of the British Empire in Asia and the Qing Empire. My other research projects concern the profound impact of the Opium War on Chinese littoral societies in Asia, the Opium War in the Jiangnan region, the making of littoral space and people in nineteenth-century Hong Kong, and the political-cultural representations of the Dan as a littoral “nationality” in twentieth-century China.

• Hong Kong history
• Late imperial and modern Chinese history
• Asian maritime history
• Frontiers and borderlands
• Empires and colonialism
• Race and ethnicity
• Overseas Chinese

Book Manuscript

• “The Opium War: A Transfrontier History of the British and Qing Empires” (in preparation)

Edited Volume and Journal Special Issue

• Canadian Journal of History 54.3 (2019), Transnational Chinese Passages and the Global Making of Frontiers and Borderlands.
• From a British to a Chinese Colony? Hong Kong before and after the 1997 Handover. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 2018.

Journal Articles and Book Chapter

• “The Making of a Littoral Minzu: The Dan in Late Qing–Republican Intellectual Writings.” International Journal of Asian Studies 20 (2023): 1-17.
• “Accommodating Foreigners in a Littoral Borderland: The Lower Pearl River Delta during the Opium War.” Modern China 48.1 (2022): 197-228.
• “Straddling the Handover: Colonialism and Decolonization in British and PRC Hong Kong.” In From a British to a Chinese Colony? Hong Kong before and after the 1997 Handover, 1-49. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 2018.
• “Heritage in Translation: ‘A Dagur Story’ as Historical Fiction and Sample Text for Learning Manchu—Part Two 翻譯中的遺產: 作為歷史小說與滿文學習範例的 ‘達斡爾故事,’ (下).” Saksaha: A Journal of Manchu Studies 14 (2016-2017): 45-56. (Coauthored with Monica Kin-ian Chang and Eugene Shun-yung Tam)     
• “Occupied Space, Occupied Time: Food Hawking and the Central Market in Hong Kong’s Victoria City during the Opium War.” Frontiers of History in China 11.3 (2016): 400-430. (Converted from the paper that won the Gastronomy Program Prize of the Food and the City Conference at Boston University in February 24-25, 2012)
• “Monopoly, Transaction and Extortion: Public Market Franchise and Colonial Relations in British Hong Kong, 1844-58.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch 52 (2012): 139-187.

Presentations, Invited Talks, and Workshops (since August 2021)

• “The Opium War (1840-42) and the British Littoral Frontier in China.” The Global / Oceanic / Nineteenth Century: Symposium and Workshop, Mount Saint Mary’s University (Doheny campus), Los Angeles, California, November 5-6, 2022. [online presentation]
• “The Enumerative Making of Colonial Littoral Society: The Tanka Boat People and “Native” Craft in the Census and Registers of Early British Hong Kong.” Annual Conference, Association for Asian Studies, Honolulu, Hawaii, March 24-27, 2022. [online presentation]
• “Hanjian in the Qing Empire during the Opium War (1839-1842).” Treason: A Conceptual and Comparative History, University of Southampton and WWU Münster, September 23-24, 2021. [online presentation]

Book Review and Editor’s Note

•  “Guest Editor’s Note.” Canadian Journal of History 54.3 (2019), Transnational Chinese Passages and the Global Making of Frontiers and Borderlands: 277-285.
• Review of Unruly People: Crime, Communities, and State in Late Imperial South China by Robert J. Antony. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch 57 (2017): 254-257.