Kylie Chan

The very first Gold Coast Supanova was held in April, and Maddy and me stayed in one of the Broadbeach apartment buildings across the road. We arrived Friday night when everything was being set up, and on Saturday morning woke up, looked out the window, and were shocked.

The line to enter Supanova wound all the way around the Convention Centre, down the street and back again. Much bigger than I think anyone was expecting. When we walked across the road to the Convention Centre, the line was still going forever, from the front door:

 

All the way down the length of the Convention Centre and onto the grass.

At one stage I believe they had to close the doors because there were so many people present. Okay, big success all around, right from the start!

I joined the magnificent Trent Jamieson and Keri Arthur to sign books and talk to people:

And was kept so busy that I didn't have a chance to fill out my usual Supanova Bingo Card.

(Next Supanova I'll have to give everybody a copy of the card, it was a huge hit.)

I cannot forget to mention the other writers there who aren't in the pics: the extremely talented (and meticulously steampunk well-dressed) Michael Pryor and Richard Harland, as well as Brandon Sanderson who's finishing the Wheel of Time series.

I've refrained from asking for photos from the celebs in the Green Room because they get enough of that outside but I couldn't resist to have my photo taken with Janet Fielding, a companion of Peter Davison's Doctor Who. She was very much a part of my teen years and I could not express my appreciation enough!

The show had a main stage playing excellent music most of the weekend.

A full-size replica of the Tardis stood outside the Green Room entrance, and Trent couldn't help himself and tried (successfully!) to get in...

One of Trent's main characters wandered past, and Trent had to have his photo taken. (If you haven't checked out Trent's excellent Death Works trilogy and Roil, I cannot recommend them enough.)

The beauty of Supanova is that costumes (Cosplay) are normal. I think people (like me) who aren't in costume feel somewhat out of place! The amount of work and detail that goes into them is magnificent:

(Maddy said he wouldn't stand still to have his photo taken!)

There's a free-wheeling aspect to Cosplay. If you're a guy and like putting on a dress and feeling pretty for a day, go for your life. (I'll often ask this. Why can girls wear anything they like and boys are so limited? Guys should be able to wear anything they like without society giving them a hard time. Really.) If you adore a male character and want to dress like him, even though you're a girl that's not an issue. Say you're a huge fan of Loki from Thor:

 

 

There's no reason why you can't 'crossplay' it. Some of the interpretations are particularly creative: how do you dress as a tiny glowing dot from Zelda, or as a box with hearts on it from Portal? Easy:

(Glowing dot on the left. Note the 'listen!' on her wings - this glowing dot is incredibly annoying in that it constantly shouts 'listen! hey listen!'. Companion Cube on the right - a fantastic interpretation.

Overall, the show was a huge success, I had a great time, and the Gold Coast Convention Centre was a terrific venue. The next Supanova I'll be attending is Brisbane in November.

Supanova's website is: www.Supanova.com.au

Extra special thanks to Ineke Prochazka, who organized all the authors so magnificently. Lynne Lumsden Green who helped most greatly. Daniel Zachariou, Missy, and Quinny who run the show without going insane. And my fellow writers Keri Arthur (check out her stuff!) and Trent Jamieson (check out his stuff too!) who made it a show to remember.

I'm a guest blogger over at Gillian Polack's site for Women's History Month, and here I talk about a woman writer who completely changed my life - and at the time, I did even know she was a woman - D C (Dorothy) Fontana. Check out my little ramble here.

Over on my forums, Shiroikami asked me an excellent question. Here's my take on why Hong Kong people still talk about 'China' as if it was a different country:

Characters frequently say "I'm going to be in China." or something along those lines, when they're in Hong Kong. Why is that? I mean, Hong Kong is actually part of China, isn't it? It's not like it's a separate country or anything... (I'm American, they don't teach us much about any other country in school... pretty much everything I know about other countries comes from actually visiting them or asking people who live there. It's incredibly frustrating.)

Here’s an answer for you, Shiroikami. Warning: incoming history lesson!

Hong Kong’s relationship with the People’s Republic of China is long and vitriolic and has resulted in an unusual attitude (and terms for the different countries) from Hong Kong residents.

In 1842 after the First Opium War (Britain won), Britain forced China to cede the whole of Hong Kong island to them. (Note this is just the island, not Kowloon). This defeat still rankles to this day and is often referred to as ‘The Great Shame’.

This affects Hong Kong people’s view of themselves; they are living in a city that is a result of the defeat of their own nation. At the same time, many of them escaped from the ‘evil communist’ government during the Great Leap Forward, so they abandoned China themselves. There’s a huge cultural guilt trip happening here.

Crib Notes on the Great Leap Forward, extremely condensed version (and from memory so may not be completely accurate): Someone showed Chairman Mao a ‘modernized’ farm/commune that could produce ‘twice the rice’. The rest of the country, regardless of where they were or their particular circumstances, were ordered to follow the same bogus collective farming practises, produce ‘twice the rice’ and give the surplus half to the government. This surplus was to be stored as a buffer against famine. Now, if you’re not a lying scumbag like the original farmer, you aren’t going to produce twice your yield just from forming a commune. You’re going to produce the same, or slightly less because forced communes don’t work. The government inspector, however, is going to come and see how much you were producing last year, blithely say that you’ve doubled it now, and demand half of your doubled yield. Which is all of it. He’ll take everything, store it as a ‘buffer against famine’, execute you for being ‘unpatriotic’ if you tell him you didn’t, and after he’s taken your rice he’ll let you die of starvation anyway.

Millions did die of starvation while the grain silos were full. Nobody’s quite sure, but that number could be as high as forty-five million people. Thousands hid in the bottom of boats and escaped to Hong Kong; a grand tradition that’s been going on as long as Hong Kong existed.

In 1860, the British government won another war and China ceded the Kowloon peninsula to them as well. There’s a road in Kowloon called Boundary Road, and that’s where the old boundary was.

Everything past Boundary Road, which is a good 75% of Hong Kong, is the New Territories. Britain gained these from China in a treaty in 1898. Unlike the first two land grabs, however, this was a 99-year lease.

Even after Kowloon and the New Territories were ceded, Hong Kong people spoke of China as being ‘The Mainland.’ I think it’s sort of an emotional distancing from what was going on over there. There was a strictly controlled border with two four-metre tall barbed wire fences with guard posts on either side of a ten-metre wide No Man’s Land.

So: Hong Kong and Kowloon are permanently ceded to Britain, and never have to go back. The New Territories, however, will expire in 1997. Oh dear.

The Brits, being the optimistic people they are, tried to renew the lease. The New Territories were part of the whole colony (and it was a colony, with Governor, English language system, UK schooling and considered part of the UK). There was absolutely no difference from one side of Boundary Road to the other. People in the New Territories were just as much Hong Kong as people everywhere else. It was essentially a single territory. Makes sense, right?

The Chinese government said absolutely not, they were taking the whole lot back again. This was a Great National Shame and Part of the Nation and blah blah blah and they were doing Their Patriotic Duty etc etc. (They had a point. 95% of the HK population is Chinese.)

After many years of bitter negotiation (Brits: ‘We own HK so we should keep all of it.’ China: ‘You are playing games by saying the economy would suffer’) China won. They said the Brits could keep Hong Kong and Kowloon, but the lease was gone. Britain had to give in because the parts of Hong Kong could no longer be separated. It just wouldn’t be fair to the residents.

Hong Kong would go back to being part of the People’s Republic in 1997. China promised a separate government, free trade, and that things would continue as they had for another fifty years, in a ‘Special Administrative Region’, the HKSAR. Nobody believed them, and Hong Kong citizens, of course, panicked. Particularly after the Tiananmen massacre in 1989 - there was a huge wave of migration of people out of the territory. Canada took any Hong Kong citizen who wanted to leave – which explains Canada’s large Chinese community. People fully expected tanks down Connaught Road on the handover.

The ‘Handover’ was a huge ceremony with a five-day holiday and celebrations. Hong Kong people loudly proclaimed their loyalty to their Mainland masters. We left town and made sure our Australian passports were stamped with the new regime’s stamps when we reentered Hong Kong.

After the handover, the border between Hong Kong and China was still closed with the same barbed-wire fences and No Man’s Land. You needed a special Hong Kong ID card or immigration visa to reside in Hong Kong, even though they were technically part of the same nation. You still do.

Essentially, things haven’t really changed that much, except there’s much dewy-eyed patriotic nonsense with the Chinese flag flying on the television as the media suck up to their new Mainland masters. There used to be a Governor controlled by London; now there’s a Chief Executive controlled by Beijing. Business goes on.

As someone who lived through the Handover, the terms we used for China/the Mainland haven’t changed either. Before the handover, we were Hong Kong, and they were China. The situation’s still very much the same. The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China is a small almost independent mini-state existing inside China.  But don’t say that in front of anyone from either state, because they’ll loudly proclaim that Hong Kong is definitely a part of China, and the Great Shame has now been removed, we’re exceptionally proud to be Chinese, and let’s all sing the national anthem.

My lovely publishers at Voyager Books have launched a new global site, and as part of the interglobailityness of it, they asked me to provide a blog on behalf of Australia.

I wrote about Christmas in Hong Kong, and how it differs from the holiday I was used to. I include old family photos!

You can see the blog posting at Voyager's new website here:

http://harpervoyagerbooks.com/2011/12/15/christmas-in-hong-kong-by-kylie-chan/

Enjoy!

Supanova is such a big part of my family's life that it amuses me to actually have to explain it to people who've never heard of it. The whole week before the show, the newspaper had teaser articles about what visitors could expect there.

And for those who don't know....

Supanova is a pop-culture expo held for one weekend each year. It travels from city to city, and next year is expanding to six Australian cities.

If you've seen news articles about ComiCon in America, it's our own version of that but not quite. There are three main reasons people come along:

- Stars of science fiction and fantasy movies are special guests, and you can collect autographed photos, have your picture taken with them, and hear them talk about their experiences. My daughter was hugely excited about coming along and having her photo taken with Evanna Lynch – Luna Lovegood from the Harry Potter movies.

Billy Boyd (Pippin from Lord of the Rings) came down to the stand when I wasn’t there, and had his photo taken with Ian Irvine. Ian rolled out a map he’d done for one of his fantasy novels, and it was nearly 2m by 1m – huge and detailed. The man’s a genius at worldbuilding.

 

Ian and Billy - two lovely gentlemen! 

- You can dress up. Anything you like, but most people choose a sci-fi/fantasy/anime/manga character – I counted ten Doctors on my first day and gave up counting the second. You can strut around looking awesome in lycra with green skin and red eyes, nobody will look twice, and there’s a competition for the best costume. The technical term for this is ‘cosplay’ (from the Japanese) and it’s one of the most fun parts for me. If you do an awesome costume people will stop you and ask for their photo with you.

Of course, if you’re a group that’s decided to cosplay every single Doctor, four companions AND K9, you’ll never be able to move because you’re constantly having your photo taken. Four, Five and Nine were somewhere around, probably stuck in a time vortex. I stood between ‘my’ Doctors, Two and Three. Damn, I’m old.

My daughter dressed up as a character from a manga called ‘Blue Exorcist’ which was a Japanese school uniform and a long purple wig with pigtails below her waist. The wig drove her completely nuts – it was unbelievably heavy! – but she enjoyed herself tremendously.

- The trading floor is a bad place. Very bad place. I protest loudly every time my daughter nears the Madman stand – last time I was there I bought a complete collection of both Astroboys – the black and white sixties version from my childhood, and the colour eighties version - in boxed sets. There’s traders of vintage comics, awesome t-shirts and bags (I got my Hellsing signing bag at Supanova), tryouts of new games, collectible figures (my daughter got a matched set of 20cm Ezio and Leonardo figures).

Dymock’s have a stand on the trading floor, and that’s where I come in. You can come up to the stand and buy books from us Awesome Authors and have them signed on the spot, and embarrass us horribly by having your photo taken with us.

 

Left to Right: Rowena Cory Daniells, in front Keri Arthur, Tracy O’Hara, me (short), Marianne de Pierres (tall), Ineke, and Lynne in awesome hippy steampunk.

There’s a bunch of new fantasy and sci-fi to try out, and the staff on the stand are knowledgeable and all-around terrific people.

They can help you with every need.

I love Supanova because people can come up to me and actually have a chat about my plans for my new books, rather than having to line up at a signing and not have a chance to speak to me. There’s not often a line of people for signings, so if you’re in the mood to have a chat, I’m there all day.

For the admission fee, it’s a grand day out and as a computer/sci-fi nerd long before I was any sort of author (and a Doctor Who fan since I first saw it in the late seventies) – well, I feel right at home. The other authors sometimes asked me what a particular costume referenced – and most of the time I got it right (sorry Totoro!). I’m very much looking forward to the inaugural Gold Coast one next April, and hoping that I can make a few other cities next year.

Special thanks to Ineke Prochazka, the staff of Dymock’s, Daniel Zachariou, Dion, Roland, Missy, and Quinny from Supanova.

The Supanova site is at http://www.supanova.com.au.