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Ghetto at the Center of the World: Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong Gordon Mathews There is nowhere else in the world quite like Chungking Mansions, a dilapidated seventeen-story commercial and residential structure in the heart of Hong Kong’s tourist district. A remarkably motley group of people call the building home; Pakistani phone stall operators, Chinese guesthouse workers, Nepalese heroin addicts, Indonesian sex workers, and traders and asylum seekers from all over Asia and Africa live and work there—even backpacking tourists rent rooms. In short, it is possibly the most globalized spot on the planet.
But as Ghetto at the Center of the World shows us, a trip to Chungking Mansions reveals a far less glamorous side of globalization. A world away from the gleaming headquarters of multinational corporations, Chungking Mansions is emblematic of the way globalization actually works for most of the world’s people. Gordon Mathews’s intimate portrayal of the building’s polyethnic residents lays bare their intricate connections to the international circulation of goods, money, and ideas. We come to understand the day-to-day realities of globalization through the stories of entrepreneurs from Africa carting cell phones in their luggage to sell back home and temporary workers from South Asia struggling to earn money to bring to their families. And we see that this so-called ghetto—which inspires fear in many of Hong Kong’s other residents, despite its low crime rate—is not a place of darkness and desperation but a beacon of hope.
Gordon Mathews’s compendium of riveting stories enthralls and instructs in equal measure, making Ghetto at the Center of the World not just a fascinating tour of a singular place but also a peek into the future of life on our shrinking planet. |
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Golden Boy: Memories of a Hong Kong Childhood Martin Booth At seven years old, Martin Booth found himself with all of Hong Kong at his feet. His father was posted there in 1952, and this memoir is his telling of that youth, a time when he had access to the corners of a colony normally closed to a "Gweilo," a "pale fellow" like him.
His experiences were colorful and vast. Befriending rickshaw coolies and local stallholders, he learned Cantonese, sampled delicacies such as boiled water beetles and one-hundred-year-old eggs, and participated in vibrant festivals. He even entered the forbidden Kowloon Walled City, wandered into a secret lair of Triads, and visited an opium den.
From the plink-plonk man with his dancing monkey to the Queen of Kowloon (a crazed tramp who may have been a Romanov), Martin Booth saw it all---but his memoir illustrates the deeper challenges he faced in his warring parents: a broad-minded mother who embraced all things Chinese and a bigoted father who was enraged by his family's interest in "going native."
Martin Booth's compelling memoir, the last book he completed before dying, glows with infectious curiosity and humor and is an intimate representation of the now extinct time and place of his growing up.
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Asian Godfathers: Money and Power in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia Joe Studwell Hong Kong and Southeast Asia are home to five hundred million people, yet their economies are dominated by only fifty families whose interests range from banking to real estate, shipping to sugar, gambling to lumber. At their peak, eight of the world’s two dozen richest men were Southeast Asian, but their names would not be familiar to most regular readers of The Wall Street Journal. A complex mythology surrounds these billionaires, but in Asian Godfathers, Joe Studwell finds that the facts are even more remarkable than the myths. Studwell has spent fifteen years as a reporter in the region, and he marshals his unprecedented sources to paint intimate and revealing portraits of the men who control Southeast Asia. Studwell also provides us with a rich and deep understanding of the broader historic, economic, and political influences that have shaped Southeast Asia over the past 150 years. Asian Godfathers is a riveting and illuminating book that lifts the curtain on a world of staggering secrecy and hypocrisy, and revealsfor the first timewho the leaders of one of the planet’s most important and tumultuous markets really are, why they got to the top, and how they keep themselves there. |
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A Modern History of Hong Kong Steve Tsang From a little-known fishing community at the periphery of China, Hong Kong developed into one of the world's most spectacular and cosmopolitan metropoles after a century and a half of British imperial rule. This history of Hong Kong -- from its occupation by the British in 1841 to its return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 -- includes the foundation of modern Hong Kong; its developments as an imperial outpost, its transformation into the "pearl" of the British Empire and of the Orient and the events leading to the end of British rule. Based on extensive research in British and Chinese sources, both official and private, the book addresses the changing relations between the local Chinese and the expatriate communities in 156 years of British rule, and the emergence of a local identity. It ends with a critical but dispassionate examination of Hong Kong's transition from a British Crown Colony to a Chinese Special Administrative Region. |
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Opium War, 1840-1842: Barbarians in the Celestial Empire in the Early Part of the Nineteenth Century and the War by Which They Forced Her Gates Peter Ward Fay This book tells the fascinating story of the war between England and China that delivered Hong Kong to the English, forced the imperial Chinese government to add four ports to Canton as places in which foreigners could live and trade, and rendered irreversible the process that for almost a century thereafter distinguished western relations with this quarter of the globe—the process that is loosely termed the "opening of China." Originally published by UNC Press in 1975, Peter Ward Fay's study was the first to treat extensively the opium trade from the point of production in India to the point of consumption in China and the first to give both Protestant and Catholic missionaries their due; it remains the most comprehensive account of the first Opium War through western eyes. In a new preface, Fay reflects on the relationship between the events described in the book and Hong Kong's more recent history. |
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Asia Shock: Horror and Dark Cinema from Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Thailand Patrick Galloway Asian Extreme cinema is hot, and this book lays it out in all its gory glory. Patrick Galloway, who last looked at samurai movies in his well-received Stray Dogs and Lone Wolves, now takes on Asian masters of suspense, exploitation, the supernatural, and bone-chilling, blood-curdling fear and evil. The films featured here are pan-Asian, including Korea and Thailand, and represent a mix of classics and the contemporary cutting edge. Included are viewing tips and overviews of genres and cultures. "Galloway has all sorts of interesting insights and facts that'll make you want to rewatch your favorites, or check out some that you've never seen." -- Wired "It has a conversational feel, as if you're sitting down with a film buddy and just discussing the film." -- Twitch “What with brain-sauce spaghetti, switchblade cellphones, and other wonders, could horror flicks from Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong be any better? PatrickGalloway savors the genre in Asia Shock.” – East Bay Express |
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Hong Kong Jan Morris In its last days under British rule, the Crown Colony of Hong Kong is the world's most exciting city, at once fascinating and exasperating, a tangle of contradictions. It is a dazzling amalgam of conspicuous consumption and primitive poverty, the most architecturally incongruous yet undeniably beautiful urban panorama of all. World-renowned travel writer Jan Morris offers the most insightful and comprehensive study of the enigma of Hong Kong thus far. |
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Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers (Global Chinese Culture) Michael Berry "I always compare filmmaking to cooking. Shooting is like buying the groceries. You buy all kinds of ingredients and the better ingredients you get, the better chance you have of making the movie you want."—Ang Lee, from Speaking in Images Speaking in Images offers an engaging and rare collection of interviews with the directors who have changed the face of Chinese and international cinema. Michael Berry's discussions with such directors as Ang Lee ( Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Zhang Yimou ( Hero), Chen Kaige ( Farewell My Concubine), Stanley Kwan ( Lan Yu), Tsai Ming-Liang ( Vive l'Amour), Edward Yang ( Yi Yi), and Hou Hsiao-hsien ( Flowers of Shanghai) offer an eclectic and comprehensive portrait of contemporary Chinese cinema. In interviews that capture each filmmaker's unique vision, the subjects discuss their formative years, the ideas and influences that shaped their work, film aesthetics, battles with censors and studios, the mingling of commercial and art film, and the future of Chinese cinema in a transnational context. Berry's introduction to the collection provides an overview of Chinese cinema in the second half of the twentieth century, placing the directors and their work in a wider historical and cultural context.
(Spring 2006) |
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The Chinese Cinema Book Song Hwee Lim, Julian Ward The Chinese Cinema Book provides an essential guide to the cinemas of the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Chinese diaspora, from early cinema to the present day. With contributions from leading international scholars, the book is structured around five thematic sections: Territories, Trajectories, Historiographies; Early Cinema to 1949; The Forgotten Period: 1949–80; The New Waves; and Stars, Auteurs and Genres.
This important collection addresses issues of film production and exhibition and places Chinese cinema in its national and transnational contexts. Individual chapters examine major film movements such as the Shanghai cinema of the 1930s, Fifth Generation film-makers and the Hong Kong New Wave, as well as key issues such as stars and auteurs. The book will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars, as well as for anyone wanting to deepen their understanding of the cinemas of Greater China. |
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Escape from Hong Kong: Admiral Chan Chak's Christmas Day Dash, 1941 (Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Studies Series) Tim Luard On 25 December 1941, the day of Hong Kong’s surrender to the Japanese, Admiral Chan Chak – the Chinese government’s chief agent in Hong Kong – and more than 60 Chinese, British and Danish intelligence, naval and marine personnel made a dramatic escape from the invading army. They travelled on five small motor torpedo boats – all that remained of the Royal Navy in Hong Kong – across Mirs Bay, landing at a beach near Nan’ao. Then, guided by guerrillas and villagers, they walked for four days through enemy lines to Huizhou, before flying to Chongqingor travelling by land to Burma. The breakout laid the foundations of an escape trail jointly used by the British Army Aid Group and the East River Column for the rest of the war. Chan Chak, the celebrated ‘one-legged admiral’, became Mayor of Canton after the war and was knighted by the British for his services to the Allied cause. His comrade in the escape, David MacDougall, became head of the civil administration of Hong Kong in 1945.
This gripping account of the escape draws on a wealth of primary sources in both English and Chinese and sheds new light on the role played by the Chinese in the defence of Hong Kong, on the diplomacy behind the escape, and on the guerillas who carried the Admiral in a sedan chair as they led his party over the rivers and mountains of enemy-occupied China.
Escape from Hong Kong will appeal not just to military and other historians and those with a special interest in Hong Kong and China but also to anyone who appreciates a good old-fashioned adventure story.
Tim Luard is a former Beijing correspondent for the BBC World Service.
"Tim Luard tells this exciting and little known story with great skill. Some of us departed from Hong Kong much more comfortably! But we missed this extraordinary adventure." — Chris Patten, governor of Hong Kong, 1992–97
"Escape from Hong Kong is a crisp and comprehensive account of one of the epic untold tales of the Second World War - a unique Chinese-led British escape, under fire, from the Japanese invaders of Hong Kong." — Tony Banham, author of Not the Slightest Chance: The Defence of Hong Kong, 1941.
"The great Christmas Day breakout of 1941, when British and Chinese officers teamed up virtually for the fi rst time to escape from Hong Kong as the Japanese Army engulfed it, is one of the most dramatic episodes in Hong Kong’s history. Up till now the story has been diffused in a mass of individual diaries, letters and memoirs. Tim Luard has drawn this material together (Chinese as well as British) to produce a unifi ed narrative that is as full and balanced as it is enthralling." — Philip Snow, author of The Fall of Hong Kong: Britain, China, and the Japanese Occupation |