Yes, Virginia, There is Hong Kong Literature
The Asian Review of Books is not given to running op-eds, but a recent article in Electric Lit entitled “Where Is Hong Kong Literature When We Need It Most?” merits some reflection.
Botticelli (& Friends) Come to Town
Despite travel bans, quarantines and social distancing, a delegation of dazzling (and unmasked) Italians have taken up temporary residence at Hong Kong’s Museum of Art.
“Beauty” by Christina Chiu
Novelists are often admonished to “write what you know”; Christina Chiu instead decided to know what she wrote. The Asian-American writer now has a sideline as shoe designer, something she learned as an integral part of writing her most recent novel set in and around the fashion industry.
“Crime, Justice and Punishment in Colonial Hong Kong: Central Police Station, Central Magistracy and Victoria Gaol” by May Holdsworth and Christopher Munn
In Crime, Justice and Punishment in Colonial Hong Kong, authors May Holdsworth and Christopher Munn use the intersection of the city’s former main police station, magistracy and jail—now the photogenic and commercial Tai Kwun—to tell a unique history of the city under British rule.
“When the Red Gates Opened” by Dori Jones Yang
Dori Jones Yang moved to Hong Kong in 1982 to run the BusinessWeek bureau. She was just 27 and the first woman to hold that position. In her memoir, When the Red Gates Opened, Jones Yang tells how she covered China during Deng’s ascent soon after China and the United States restored relations.
“Rebel City: Hong Kong’s Year of Water and Fire”, edited by Zuraidah Ibrahim and Jeffie Lam
There will, one imagines, be quite a few books written about Hong Kong’s year of protests, from journalistic retellings from the front-lines, memoirs from influential figures, and attempts to tie the protests to a broader “New Cold War” narrative. There have already been a few.
“Tea is for Everyone: Making Chinese Tea Accessible” by Chan Sin Yan
Despite the apparent global ubiquity of coffee culture, tea, rather than coffee, is the most popular beverage apart from water. Yet as the authors of Tea is for Everyone: Making Chinese Tea Accessible explain, Chinese tea is still not very well known outside Asia, despite tea having originated there.
“Bird Talk and Other Stories by Xu Xu: Modern Tales of a Chinese Romantic”
For some men, getting to know a woman isn’t quite what it seems. In this quirky collection of stories by Xu Xu, we can read about a man who dates a would-be ghost, another takes up with a supposedly mentally-challenged girl who has conversations with birds and eventually becomes a Buddhist nun, a third hooks…
“Sex and Vanity” by Kevin Kwan
In Kevin Kwan’s new blockbuster (for such it is universally expected to be), cousins half-Chinese/half old money WASP Lucie Honeychurch and WASPy Charlotte Barclay travel to Capri, where they encounter a Hong Kong Chinese mother and son duo, Rosemary and George Zao …
“Flèche”, poetry by Mary Jean Chan
Interrogating the complexities of love, history and the power of naming through refreshing experimentation in language and form, Flèche—winner of 2019 Costa Book Award for Poetry—is a significant and original contribution to Hong Kong poetry as well as to the current scene of British Asian diasporic voices.
“The Last Kings of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish Dynasties That Helped Create Modern China” by Jonathan Kaufman
Chinese often claim a special relationship, sometimes verging on kinship, with Jews. The origins and reasons remain unclear but it may be at least in part due to two Jewish families—the Sassoons and their rivals, the Kadoories—both of whom played lasting roles in the development of two of China’s most modern cities: Shanghai and its…
“Days of Distraction” by Alexandra Chang
Alexandra is a 25-year-old contract tech reporter in the Silicon Valley with a dilemma: should she stay in a job with neither benefits nor prospects, or move to Ithaca, New York with her boyfriend for five years while he pursues a PhD at Cornell? Alexandra Chang’s debut novel, Days of Distraction, is a fictionalized account…
“Red Affairs, White Affairs” by Felicia Nay
Part travelogue, part study of comparative religion, this debut novel by Felicia Nay is a love story and a love letter to the city where it is set—contemporary Hong Kong.
“Exciting Times” by Naoise Dolan
Twenty-two year-old Ava is a cash-strapped English teacher from Ireland living with roommates who pay less attention to her than the cockroaches in their Hong Kong Airbnb. When Ava meets Julian, a twenty-eight year-old Oxford-educated English banker, her life changes in ways she never imagined. Julian is conservative with expressing his feelings, yet offers his…
“City on Fire: the fight for Hong Kong” by Antony Dapiran
China’s National Day is a carefully orchestrated occasion. Each year on October 1st, rigorously rehearsed celebrations take place nationwide, with those on Tiananmen Square broadcast live across China. On the decadal anniversary years, the display of pageantry is ramped up further, though these commemorations of Mao Zedong’s announcement on October 1st 1949 that the Chinese…
