The “barren rock” in question is Hong Kong and the tales aspire to give a portrait of the territory through the eyes of some long-term residents. When visiting abroad, people from Hong Kong are often asked, “How have things changed since the Chinese took over?” These tales don’t address that question directly, but they span the period of the Chinese takeover in 1997 and very successfully evoke the life of one section of the population before and after. For anyone who has lived there and left they will appeal as evocative reminiscences.
There are 36 tales in all, offered by 23 different raconteurs. It’s fair to guess that their tales were solicited because they were friends of one of the editors. Most of the authors seem to be unabashed establishment types. Five of them are former policemen and one is a former soldier. About a third of the tales describe (mostly routine) police work. One, though, describes dabbling in shoplifting, one author managed a pool hall and one lived for a time off earnings from prostitution (unlike shoplifting, legal in Hong Kong). One of the editors (Metcalf) is a pilot, so another 20% of the tales are about flying, amateur or professional. Many of those have only a tenuous relationship with Hong Kong or Hong Kong life.
Only two of the authors have an ancestral connection with Hong Kong. Most would in Hong Kong parlance be routinely described as “expats”, though most of them would justifiably reject that characterization. “Expat” is short for expatriate, and it normally refers to the pervasive arrangement where a foreigner is transferred to Hong Kong on a 3-year contract. After that initial term, many don’t renew. As one of the authors puts it, “… there is an emotion shared among the people of the place I call home, the place I have grown and developed in, that I have not bothered to understand and am in no way part of. Somehow, I am submerged and removed at the same time.” But some expats renew again and again, and after seven years qualify for permanent residence. They should then properly be called immigrants; almost all of the 23 authors write as immigrants.
Tales from a Barren Rock sets out to “… give a portrait of the territory through the eyes of a cross-section of long-term residents.” About 3% of Hong Kong’s population are neither Chinese, Filipino nor Indonesian. So tales from 23 authors, only one of whom is of Chinese ancestry, can never qualify as any sort of “cross-section”. Most don’t pretend to have even a working knowledge of Cantonese. That said, most of their tales are intrinsically interesting, and would be especially so for readers unfamiliar with Hong Kong and with the shrinking world of British colonialism. They are in any case uniformly entertaining.