Hong Kong Books

City of Darkness - Life In Kowloon City

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

One of the best books I've ever seen! 5 out of 5 stars.
17 of 17 people found this review helpful.

Everyone who I have ever shown this book to has had a deep reaction to it. I wouldn't handicap this book by calling it a photography book alone, although the photos are very powerful and prominent, but the text deserves recognition aswell. Plenty of personal stories of how people made this decaying city their home. Both epic and intimate. A testament of the human animal's ability to adapt and thrive. Thank god the authors got in to Kowloon before its destruction to create this book.

Also, as a side note: Any artist wanting reference material for decaying urban sprawl, look no further. This book makes for great city or science fiction reference, with unbelievable details (electrical boxes, pipes, hallways, stairwells, etc...)

Editorial Review:

Girard and Lambot spent four years exploring the notorious Walled City of Kowloon (Hong Kong), before it's final clearance in 1992. With over 320 photographs, 32 extended interviews, and essays on the City's history and character, this reprint is not only an informative glimpse of a now vanished landmark but a sensitive and penetrating portrait of a unique community.

A Modern History of Hong Kong

Steve Tsang

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A well-balanced treatment of Hong Kong's history that lives up to its name 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

A Modern History of Hong Kong presents a supremely well-balanced history of this former British imperial possession. Steve Tsang's meticulously researched historical narrative duly recognizes the efforts of both Hong Kong's industrious and civic-minded local Chinese population and the expatriate British who held the bulk of the administrative power over Hong Kong during its tenure as a crown colony. Tsang's work demonstrates that Hong Kong's ethnic Chinese inhabitants played an essential and dynamic role in the creation of the former colony in that they constituted its economic, industrial, and infrastructural workforce from the beginning, and came to develop their own unique Hong Kong identity as the population stabilized culturally but exploded in number in the decades following the Second World War. Tsang's historical account never strays far from what students of Marxist theory would likely refer to as Hong Kong's material conditions, in that the book portrays Hong Kong's cultural development within the context of its economic and political circumstances. The work puts forth a history of Hong Kong in which the colony's unique social and cultural characteristics were established as a result of the relatively minimalist legal and political framework that was provided by the British colonizers in order to ensure Hong Kong's capitalistic success. Students of history, English, postcolonial studies, comparative literature, and other academic disciplines will find this book to be a fascinating primer for further studies into both Hong Kong's history and the colonial and postcolonial initiatives of Britain and other Eurasian countries. General readers and academics alike who are interested in Hong Kong's history will find Steve Tsang's book to be a lively, entertaining, and fair treatment of the forces and events that led to the formation of this former colony and to the creation of its current identity as a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China.

Editorial Review:

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.

China (Global Studies China, 8th ed)

Suzanne Ogden

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Editorial Review:

This edition includes country reports and current statistics for the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, with essays discussing the region as a whole. A wide selection of articles from the World press and an annotated list of World Wide Web sites are also featured in this volume.

Asia Shock: Horror and Dark Cinema from Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Thailand

Patrick Galloway

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

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

Golden Boy: Memories of a Hong Kong Childhood

Martin Booth

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Fabulous memoir ! This is a book everyone should read. 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I am deeply sad that the author Martin Booth is no longer with us. However, he left behind a treasure in this amazing memoir. This book is also published under the name "Gweilo." I hated coming to the end of this enchanting book and recommend it to everyone.

Golden Throughout 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I read this book because I love Hong Kong and its history. I was totally unprepared for Booth's parents and adored Joyce. How cannot you not like someone so lively, loving, accepting (except of Ken) and adventuresome?

While the family (Ken, Joyce and Martin) are exploring Algiers, Joyce buys some dates from a market stall, and Ken pitches a fit because they are probably unsanitary. He asks, 'How can you tell where they've been?' Joyce replies that they've been up a date tree. 'And they picked themselves I suppose?' 'No,' Joyce rplies, 'I expect they were plucked by a scrofulous urchin and thrown down to his tubercular aunt who wrapped them in her phlegm-stiffened handerchief.' I had a large mouthful of iced tea when I read that and spat the tea I didn't snort up my nose all over the page. I couldn't stop laughing. This was, I learned, pure Joyce.

'Golden Boy' is delightful, insightful and something more - a word or phrase that escapes these old brain cells. This is the first book by Booth I've read, and I'm eager to read more.

Editorial Review:

At seven years old, Martin Booth found himself with all of Hong Kong at his feet when his father was posted there in 1952. This is his memoir of that youth, a time when he had access to corners of the colony normally closed to a gweilo, a "pale fellow" like him. From the plink plonk man with his dancing monkey to Nagasaki Jim, and from a drunken child molester to the Queen of Kowloon (the crazed tramp who may have been a Romanov), Martin saw it all--but his memoir illustrates a deeper challenge in his warring parents. This is an intimate and powerful memory of a place and time now past.

City Between Worlds: My Hong Kong

Leo Ou-fan Lee

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Hong Kong is perched on the fault line between China and the West, a Special Administrative Region of the PRC. Leo Ou-fan Lee offers an insider’s view of Hong Kong, capturing the history and culture that make his densely packed home city so different from its generic neighbors.

The search for an indigenous Hong Kong takes Lee to the wet markets and corner bookshops of congested Mong Kok, remote fishing villages and mountainside temples, teahouses and noodle stalls, Cantonese opera and Cantopop. But he also finds the “real” Hong Kong in a maze of interconnected shopping malls, a jungle of high-rise residential towers, and the neon glow of Chinese-owned skyscrapers in the Central Business District, where land development, global trade, capital accumulation, consumerism, and free-market competition trump every value—except family.

Lee illuminates the relationship between Hong Kong’s geography and its colonial experience, revisiting colonial life on the secluded Peak, in the opium-filled godowns along the harborfront, and in crowded, plague-infested tenements. He examines, with a critic’s eye, the “Hong Kong story” in film and fiction: romance in the bars and brothels of Wan Chai, crime in the walled city of Kowloon, ennui on the eve of the 1997 handover.

Whether viewed from Tsing Yi Bridge or the deck of the Star Ferry, from Victoria Peak or Lion Rock, Hong Kong sparkles here in all its multifaceted complexity, a city forever between worlds.

(20080620)

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

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

This is one of the most frustrating books I've ever read. 3 out of 5 stars.
16 of 19 people found this review helpful.

Peter Fay's book on the Opium War is one of the most detailed studies of the period between 1838-1842 one can find at anything like the price, and would be a valuable resource except for one major flaw--there is no time-line given, and dates are provided, at most, with day and month, not year. This may seem like an insignificant thing, but given that correspondence took at least six months in one direction from China to England, and that the war was taking place with sailing ships up and down most of China's coast, it quickly becomes impossible to tell, either from the footnotes or the text, what year precisely specific events happened. Since so few dates are given at all, it is impossible to get a good sense of the exact sequence of events, particularly as the fighting part of the war heated up. When the book is next released, it should have a time line!

Editorial Review:

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.

The Four Little Dragons: The Spread of Industrialization in East Asia (The Edwin O. Reischauer Lectures)

Ezra F. Vogel

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Japan and the four little dragons--Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore--constitute less than 1 percent of the world's land mass and less than 4 percent of the world's population. Yet in the last four decades they have become, with Europe and North America, one of the three great pillars of the modern industrial world order. How did they achieve such a rapid industrial transformation? Why did the four little dragons, dots on the East Asian periphery, gain such Promethean energy at this particular time in history?

Ezra F. Vogel, one of the most widely read scholars on Asian affairs, provides a comprehensive explanation of East Asia's industrial breakthrough. While others have attributed this success to tradition or to national economic policy, Vogel's penetrating analysis illuminates how cultural background interacted with politics, strategy, and situational factors to ignite the greatest burst of sustained economic growth the world has yet seen.

Vogel describes how each of the four little dragons acquired the political stability needed to take advantage of the special opportunities available to would-be industrializers after World War II. He traces how each little dragon devised a structure and a strategy to hasten industrialization and how firms acquired the entrepreneurial skill, capital, and technology to produce internationally competitive goods. Vogel brings masterly insight to the underlying question of why Japan and the little dragons have been so extraordinarily successful in industrializing while other developing countries have not. No other work has pinpointed with such clarity how institutions and cultural practices rooted in the Confucian tradition were adapted to the needs of an industrial society, enabling East Asia to use its special situational advantages to respond to global opportunities.

This is a book that all scholars and lay readers with an interest in Asia will want to read and ponder.

A Borrowed Place: The History of Hong Kong

Frank Welsh

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Good Read 3 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Frank Welsch provides his audience with a clear and comprehensive interperation of the events that have shaped this great city of the world. I would, however, make a few suggestions and warnings before one purchases this book. First, one of the great aspects of this work is its relentless display of primary sources and attention to detail. It might not be the best read for one who is trying to obtain a concise and short history of hong kong. The primary sources are fascinating and makes one feel as if they are watching over the shoulders of colonial officiers and engrossing themselves in the soap opera of creating and maintaining a colony. The second warning would be to expect a majority of the work to focus on the pre-twentieth century development of the colony. Although the author does provide enough of post twentieth century to ensure a satisfied understanding of the events, one who is focusing on modern hong kong, like myself, might want to consider another read. And finally, Mr. Welsch does touch base with social and cultural history, but his main focus is on the polties of hong kong. Do not expect a great emergence into this subject.

Editorial Review:

A sweeping history of Hong Kong, Britain's last colony, documents court intrigues of London and Peking, the heyday of the British Empire, economic development, its role as a refuge from mainland Chinese communism, and the 1997 return to Chinese sovereignty.

Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment

David Bordwell

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Since the 1970s, Hong Kong has been home to arguably the world’s most energetic, imaginative mass-market film industry. At its peak it surpassed nearly all Western countries in number of films released, ruled the East Asian market, and produced movies (ranging from John Woo’s action pictures to the comic adventures of Jackie Chan) that have thrilled global audiences and attained cult status in the West. This book offers a deeply informed and highly engaging look at how Hong Kong cinema has become one of the success stories of film history, and how it has influenced international film culture and the development of film as a medium.

As sentimental and outrageous as Hong Kong films can be, David Bordwell demonstrates that they are not merely crowd-pleasing; they harbor remarkable inventiveness and careful craftsmanship and in many cases rise to the level of a rich and delightful art. Bordwell surveys the historical conditions that fueled the rise of this cinema: the high output, shrewd entrepreneurship, changing world tastes, and a unique skill in action genres that cross cultural boundaries. Considering both the movies themselves and the bigger picture, he moves from deft and detailed analyses of many classics of this tradition to a broader assessment of the basic strategies and impulses of mass entertainment.