Hong Kong and Macau_ City Guide (Lonely Planet, 14th Edition) - Andrew Stone [21]
anti-heroes enter the limelight against the background of Hong Kong history. In ‘Postcolonial Affairs of Food and the Heart’, a man devours the culinary and erotic delights of other cultures in a bid to find his identity. Leung (see the boxed text on Click here) also published the bilingual Travelling with a Bitter Melon: Selected Poems (1973–1998).
Love in a Fallen City: And Other Stories, by Eileen Chang – Chang (1920–95) is considered by some to be the best modern Chinese writer. In the title story set during WWII, a divorcée pursues a liaison with a playboy from Shanghai to Hong Kong. Director Ann Hui made it into a film starring Chow Yun-fat. Chang also wrote Lust, Caution, a tale of love and espionage, which was adapted for film by Ang Lee.
My City: A Hong Kong Story, by Xi Xi (Renditions; 1993) – this novel offers a personal vision of Hong Kong in the ’60s and ’70s through the lives of a telephone repairman, his family, friends and, come to think of it, pineapples and stationery. Asia Weekly ranked it one of the top 100 works of 20th-century Chinese fiction.
The Literary Review ‘Hong Kong Issue’ (summer 2004) – featuring works by Liu Yichang, Xi Xi and Hong Kong poets, including Leung Ping-kwan.
Renditions Nos 29 & 30 ‘Hong Kong’ – a gem-studded anthology that includes ‘Intersection’, which inspired Wong Kar-wai’s film In the Mood for Love (Click here). Penned by Liu Yichang, it shows how the lives of two strangers crisscross in ways determined by the nature of the city. There are also stories by Ni Kuang, a prolific martial arts and sci-fi writer, who co-wrote screenplays with director Chang Cheh.
Renditions No 45 ‘Eileen Chang’ – a special issue on literary legend Eileen Chang, featuring fiction, drawings, photographs and critiques. In ‘From the Ashes’, Chang shrewdly relates life at the University of Hong Kong, where she was a student, in the wake of the Japanese attack.
Renditions Nos 47 & 48 ‘Hong Kong Nineties’ – a collection of ’90s Hong Kong fiction. Two writers to watch are Wong Bik-wan (1961–) and Dung Kai-cheung (1969–). Wong, a flamenco dancer, writes with a violent passion. ‘Plenty and Sorrow’ is a tale about Shanghai, with a chunk of cannibalism thrown in. Dung recreates the legend of the Father of Chinese Agriculture in ‘The Young Shen Nong’.
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ARCHITECTURE
Welcome to the most dazzling skyline in the world. We defy you not to be awed as you stand for the first time at the harbour’s edge in Tsim Sha Tsui and see Hong Kong Island’s majestic panorama of skyscrapers marching up those steep jungle-clad hills.
This spectacle is thanks to the fact that in Hong Kong buildings are knocked down and replaced with taller, shinier versions almost while your back is turned. The scarcity of land, the pressures of a growing population and the rapacity of developers drive this relentless cycle of destruction and construction.
Over the years Hong Kong has played host to everything from Taoist temples and Qing dyn-asty forts to Victorian churches and Edwardian food markets, not that you’d know it walking down the average street. Commercial imperatives and the almost inexhaustible demand for social housing have resulted in these high-rise forests.
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ART VERSES INVISIBILITY: LEUNG PING-KWAN
Why is food one of your favourite metaphors? (See ‘Tea-Coffee’, Click here, and ‘Basin Feast’, Click here.) When Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997, the West says, ‘Poor you!’, and China tells us, ‘You should be happy!’ But the reality is neither. Most of us aren’t eager to embrace China’s new nationalism, nor do they miss colonial days. But we carry on loving and eating. So instead of heroic tragedies, I write about the wear and tear of daily life, about history, about our emotional complexities through food and romance.
What are some of the features of Hong Kong literature? A mature urban sensibility. It was exploring the individual’s psychology when mainland Chinese literature focused on collective