• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

You can also check out the enlightening Cantonese-opera display at the Hong Kong Heri-tage Museum ( Click here), where the HKTB (Click here) offers a Chinese-opera appreciation course every Saturday from 2.30pm to 3.45pm.

Other varieties of Chinese opera being performed in Hong Kong by local and/or visiting troupes include Peking opera, a highly refined form that uses almost no scenery but different kinds of traditional props; and Kun opera, the oldest form and one designated a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by Unesco.

Return to beginning of chapter

LITERATURE

Hong Kong has long suffered from the misconception that it does not have a literature of its own, a situation not helped by the official lack of support for literary writing. But, in fact, the city has seen a thriving microclimate in the vast landscape of Chinese literature, where the same sun shining on other parts of China has spawned distinct smells, textures and voices.

From the 1920s to the ’40s, Hong Kong was a haven for Chinese writers on the run. These émigrés continued their writing here, their influence lasting until the ’70s when the first gener-ation of writers born and/or raised locally came into their own. The relative creative freedom offered by the city has spawned works in a variety of genres and subjects, from prose poems to experimental novels, from swordplay romance to life as a make-up artist for the dead.

Hong Kong Collage: Contemporary Stories and Writing (ed Martha PY Cheung; 1998) is an important collection of fiction and essays by 15 contemporary local writers. To Pierce the Material Screen: an Anthology of Twentieth Century Hong Kong Literature (ed Eva Hung; Renditions; 2008) is a two-volume anthology featuring established figures, younger names and emerging voices, and spans 75 years. In From the Bluest Part of the Harbour: Poems from Hong Kong (ed Andrew Parkin; 1996), 12 modern poets reveal the emotions of Hong Kong people in the run-up to 1997. For critical articles on Hong Kong literature, check out the special Hong Kong issue (winter 2008) of the Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese (Lingnan University of Hong Kong).

The major literary festival in the city is the Hong Kong Literary Festival (June–July).

* * *

TRANSLATED HONG KONG FICTION

Many works by local Chinese writers have been translated into English, among other languages. Hong Kong’s English bookstores carry some of them, but it’s probably easier to buy or order directly from the publishers. Both the anthology mentioned in the introduction and many of the works listed below can be found in Renditions ( 2609 7399; www.renditions.org/renditions), a leading journal of Chinese literature in English published by the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The Hong Kong University Press ( 2550 2703; www.hkupress.org) also publishes works by local Chinese writers.

The Cockroach and Other Stories, by Liu Yichang (Renditions; 1995) – Liu Yichang (1918–), Hong Kong’s most respected senior writer, is believed to have written the first stream-of-consciousness novel in Chinese literature. ‘The Cockroach’ is a Kafkaesque exploration of psychology and philosophy. In ‘Indecision’, a woman is torn between staying in Hong Kong and returning to her mad husband in Shanghai.

Flying Carpet: A Tale of Fertillia, by Xi Xi (Hong Kong University Press; 2000) – Xi Xi (1938–) is one of Hong Kong’s most versatile and original fiction writers. This novel chronicles the rise and fall of one family and the development of a poor village into a modern metropolis, all told in the voice of a little girl who speaks with mythic insight.

A Girl Like Me and Other Stories, by Xi Xi (ed Eva Hung; Renditions; 1996) – the narrator in the title story is a make-up artist for the dead, who feels doomed by her macabre job to a pale and loveless existence. The book also includes excerpts from Elegy for a Breast, the writer’s personal account of her battle with cancer.

Islands and Continents: Short Stories, by Leung