Batgung - books about Hong Kong

Hong Kong on Air

Mr Tall — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Title: Hong Kong on Air

Author: Muhammad Cohen

Published: 2007

Genre: satire/comic

Period: 1997

One-sentence synopsis: An American expat couple -- Jeff the lingerie maven and Laura the print journalist-turned-TV news producer -- move to Hong Kong to seek their fortunes in the runup to the handover.

Cultural focus (i.e. is the book about westerners or Chinese): Expats, almost exclusively. Although there is a prominent -- and quite unforgettable -- ABC in the cast here, the local Chinese characters are mostly used as stage setting.

Evocation of Hong Kong setting: Very good. There are some vivid descriptions of Hong Kong's views, signature features, and street-level chaos. It's also the best among the HK novels I've read so far at capturing the energy and amphetamine-like highs and lows of life here.

Since the novel's so expat-centered, it's appropriate that Jeff and Laura live on Robinson Road. There's a good sequence in which the high-powered executive taxi-and-MTR-taking Laura discovers (to her shock) that taking a bus down from mid-levels to Pacific Place is efficient and even fun:

Laura is no longer listening, caught up in the thrill ride aspect of the bus barreling along the dips and rises of Robinson Road, towering apartment buildings and fenced in sidewalks with barely enough space for cars, trucks, and buses, including other double-deckers coming in the opposite direction. Buses pass so close to each other, Laura can read newpaper headlines through the windows. Their bus skids to a stop at the curb in a wide spot at the end of Robinson Road, then slithers back out into traffic and around the bend along the side of the hill above the zoo. Rounding the curve unveils an unobstructed view of the Central skyline with night newly fallen, all the way to the rocket-ship building in Wanchai and its smaller cousin in Causeway Bay. To the left, there's the harbor, with dozens of ships anchored off the container port in Kowloon, like little light bulbs, rather than candles, bobbing on the surface of a swimming pool at a big party like the one they're heading for tonight, like the one they're all speeding toward on June 30th. 'That's the view from my bedroom window,' Jeff notes, 'if that building next door and ten others weren't there.'

Inscrutability index, on a scale of 1-10 (i.e., since the book is written by a westerner, to what degree does he see Chinese culture as 'inscrutable'): It's a seven, maybe even an eight. Neither Jeff nor Laura seems to make much headway grasping even the rudiments of Chinese culture. And although Jeff's succumbs to a yellow-fever induced fling, it's with a Japanese expat, not a Chinese girl.

There are numerous little signs that Cohen doesn't quite get Hong Kong Chinese culture. For example, one of his expat characters (a colleague who mentors Laura on expat life in Hong Kong) mentions that a Hong Kong Chinese coworker whose mobile phone has been ruined (in a funny scene) will likely find it hard to acquire another:

Where's she going to find two thousand Hongkies for a mobile phone when she only makes fourteen a month?

I hope this is meant to be funny, but I've got a sneaking suspicion it's not.

Cohen also takes advantage of the Hong Kong penchant for odd English names by reprising a little trick pioneered by John Bunyan in his 17th-century New York Times best-seller The Pilgrim's Progress. That is, he gives Laura's Chinese subordinates names that directly reflect their essential natures, at least as she perceives them. So we've got 'Quickie', 'Honest' -- and 'Pussy', who at least gets upgraded (I suppose) to 'Candy'. Hmmmm.

I should note, in Cohen's defense, that he's frequently satirizing expat cluelessness. Laura is in fact the image of the self-absorbed expat, griping constantly about 'tasteless, greasy Chinese food', and her apartment building looking like a 'Chinese brothel'.

Typhoon count: None, again! But we do get frequent mentions of that apocalyptic string of rainy days over the actual handover. Strangely, though, Cohen never mentions the Black Rainstorm signals that were issued; weather geeks everywhere disapprove strongly of this omission.

Review: This is a good first novel, and it shows. By that, I mean that it's got lots of energy and color, but it's also shot through with obvious flaws that become distracting at times.

Let's get the negatives out of the way first.

They say that the good novelist should show, not tell. That means dialog and action, not narrative description, right? Cohen follows this rule to the nth degree, especially in his depictions of Laura's adventures as a TV news producer. Long stretches of the book comprise almost minute-by-minute behind-the-scenes accounts of new broadcasts, including Laura's directions (and often her thoughts), the chatter of the other crew members, plus lengthy voiceovers as spoken by the news anchors and reporters on screen.

This technique works well at times, especially in novel's heart, i.e. a recounting of the newscast on handover night itself. But Cohen turns to this trick so often it becomes exhausting; it should have been saved as a one-off for the handover sequence.

Next, Cohen's characterization needs work. Neither Laura nor Jeff is particularly likable (which is fine in a satirical work) or memorable (which is not fine). They've each got a couple of quirks (Laura, for example, unknowingly shouts out stage directions in the throes of passion), but they don't come alive. Jeff is particularly bland, drifting about in reaction to shoves from the women in his life.

Most of the secondary characters are also thin. For example, Yogi, Jeff's sexually rapacious and seemingly single-minded mistress, is also supposed to be an investment banking savant, but there's no way to reconcile these two aspects of her character.

On the plus side, especially for Hong Kong expats, and indeed for anyone interested in Hong Kong at all, this novel wallows magnificently in the daily absurdities of life in this singular city. Here's a fine description, for example, of life in a typical Hong Kong flat:

Jeff tosses his clothes on to his bed and turns into the bathroom between their bedrooms to wash up at the sink sized for a bus restroom. He steps out, turns, and he's in his bedroom, precisely the length of his bed plus headboard cum night table, with a built-in closet along the opposite wall, and just enough room to walk sideways between them. He positions himself between the closet doors and swings them open to pull out jeans and a tee-shirt. As he crabwalks to the door, he thinks he sees someone in the window the next building. Why not? It's about three feet away. You could have dinner with the neighbors without anyone leaving their apartment.

One step to the left, two steps the right across the living room, and he's in the kitchen, big enough for two if one them stands in the sink, which Kennedy [their estate agent] nearly made them do to confirm the 'partial sea view' their ad promised: 'I want you to trust me,' he said, pointing out the sliver of Victoria Harbor between the highrises through the window over the two-burner gas cooker.

Cohen also identifies and digs out many of the inevitable burrs under the saddle of expat life: Jeff must try to deal with manufacturers in the mainland; Laura is crushed to discover that 'who-you-know' is often the key to power and promotion in her workplace; the wildly inflated costs of western grocery items are surveyed, with Jeff turning to the alternative of fighting through the old ladies at the wet market; and so on.

Another strength is Cohen's ability to evoke the ethos of the handover era. Cohen has nailed the enervating confusion of that strange time, with hope and ambiguity and greed and insecurity all competing for the top spot in one's daily emotional workout program. [/nostalgic grandpa voice]

In fact, this novel does one of the better jobs I've seen (outside of the blessed pixels of batgung.com, of course) of giving a potential Hong Kong expat the feel of what life here might turn out to be like. It's also enjoyable reading for those of us who live here already, especially for us old-timers who were here through the handover.

Bonus information: Okay, I know you're wondering about the author's name. Mr Cohen, formerly 'Eliot', changed his given name to Muhammad upon marrying an Indonesian woman, as a sign of intercultural and inter-faith solidarity.

Unsurprisingly, Cohen worked as a producer for CNN and CNBC in Hong Kong in the 1990s.

Getting your hands on a copy: The Amazon link is here, and the HKPL system has the book also; you can search for the title here.

You should also note that Hong Kong On Air is published by a local operation, Blacksmith Books, so I recommend getting your copy directly here.

Next up: Hmmm. I think I just might tackle the famously irascible Paul Theroux's Kowloon Tong.

Love in a Fallen City

Mr Tall — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Title: Love in a Fallen City

Author: Eileen Chang

Published: the stories included in this volume were all published in the 1940s; the volume itself was published in 2007

Genre: short stories; two in this volume -- 'Aloeswood Incense' and 'Jasmine Tea' -- are set in Hong Kong

Period: The 1940s

One-sentence synopsis: Eileen Chang's Love in a Fallen City is a misnomer: it's a collection of elegant short stories about lives and loves in two fallen cities, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Cultural focus (i.e. is the book about westerners or Chinese): Chinese -- the major characters in the Hong Kong stories are Chinese, but differences in these characters' subcultural/linguistic/national backgrounds are often catalysts for contrast and conflict.

Evocation of Hong Kong setting: Superb. The two Hong Kong stories in this collection are set on Hong Kong Island, which is described with well-chosen detail. For example, there's a description of a stylish 'modern' house on the Peak that's just brimming with juicy 1940s decoration:

This garden was like a a gold-lacquered serving tray lifted high amid the wild hills: one row of carefully pruned evergreens; two beds of fine, well-spaced English roses -- the whole arrangement severely perfect, not a hair out of place, as if the tray had been deftly adorned with a lavish painting in the fine-line style. In one corner of the lawn, a small azalea was in flower, its pink petals, touched with yellow, a bright shrimp-pink.

. . .

From the veranda, glass doors opened onto a living room. The furniture and the arrangement were basically Western, touched up with some unexceptionable Chinese bric-a-brac. An ivory bodhisattva stood on the mantel of the fireplace, along with snuff bottles made of emerald-green jade; a small screen with a bamboo motif curved around the sofa. These Oriental touches had been put there, it was clear, for the benefit of foreigners. The English come from so far to see China -- one has to give them something of China to see. But this was China as Westerners imagine it: exquisite, illogical, very entertaining.

The feel of this fascinating historical era effortlessly suffuses Chang's stories.

Inscrutability index, on a scale of 1-10 (i.e., since the book is written by a Chinese, to what degree does she see Western culture as 'inscrutable'): very low indeed, maybe a three. Several of the Chinese characters in Chang's two Hong Kong stories are sophisticated cosmopolitans; they're clearly familiar with both western and Chinese cultures, etiquettes, and expectations. One minor character, a famous beauty of the day, has a complex geneology described as including 'at the minimum, Arab, Negro, Indian, Indonesian, and Portuguese blood, with only a dash of Chinese'.

Typhoon count: None; no typhoon would dare muss the carefully-coiffed ladies inhabiting these stories!

But we are given one of the better run-downs of Hong Kong's heat and humidity I've read:

During plum-rain season, the trees on the mountain were steeped in mist; the scent of green leaves was everywhere. Plantains, Cape jasmine, magnolia, banana trees, camphor trees, sweet flag, ferns, ivorywoods, palms, reeds, and tobacco, all growing too fast and spreading too rapidly: it was ominous, with a whiff of something like blood in the air. The humidity was oppressive, and the walls and the furniture were slick with moisture.

Weilong lay on her bed. The bedding was gummy; the pillowcase ready to grow moss. She had just had a bath, but already the humidity made her wish for another.

Just so!

Review: Eileen Chang's stories are some of the best I've read, and I've read a few.

'Aloeswood Incense', the first Hong Kong story, is a jewel. Weilong, a secondary school girl from a shabby-genteel Shanghainese family that's quite new on the scene in colonial Hong Kong, faces a return to the mainland because her parents can no longer afford her school fees. But although she's never shown much of a creative spark before, she hatches a scheme: she'll try to hit up her father's wealthy but scandalous sister, and see if she can help with the money. But Weilong ends up getting much more than she bargained for, as her aunt takes her on as a kind of apprentice in corruption and the flouting of social conventions. Will Weilong resist the temptation, or will she slide into the debased life her aunt has chosen? This story is ripe with the gossipy interplay amongst a clique of rich, decadent Chinese and Eurasians, and illustrates their social and cultural constraints in colonial Hong Kong with occasional bitterness, but also with style and acerbic wit.

In the second story, 'Jasmine Tea', a university student from a rich but disreputable family attracts the amorous attention of his professor's pretty but very proper daughter. His reaction is a welter of mixed emotions, misunderstanding, and resentment. This story is harsher than 'Aloeswood Incense', with a violent, ambiguous ending.

In all of her stories, Chang's narrative voice is highly distinctive, even in translation (which, speaking of, is very well done indeed). It's a sinuous voice that curls like a wisp of smoke around a tai-tai's slim black cigarette holder. Chang never overstates, never explains the obvious, and never relaxes into sentimentality or brutality -- although she certainly courts more danger with the latter than the former.

I recommend these stories very highly.

Bonus information: Eileen Chang is best-known for having written Lust, Caution, which has been made into a recent, highly-acclaimed film directed by Ang Lee, and starring Tony Leung. But since that's again a Shanghai story, it's off-limits here.

Eileen Chang was born in Shanghai and made her name there during the WWII years, but she did attend Hong Kong University, and later spent a few years here before emigrating to the USA in the 1950s. She died in Los Angeles in 1995, having lived an eventful but often lonely and reclusive life.

Getting your hands on a copy: The Amazon link is here, and the HKPL system has the book also; you can search for the title here.

Next up: Muhammad Cohen's Hong Kong on Air.

HONG KONG

Mr Tall — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Title: Hong Kong

Author: Stephen Coonts

Published: 2000

Genre: judging from its lurid orange cover (with two junks on the harbor outlined in black, of course) and the blurbs on the back -- 'High-octane techno-wizardry!' (USA Today) -- let's call it a 'high-tech, weapons-intensive thriller in the Tom Clancy mode'.

Period: 2000

One-sentence synopsis: Trouble is brewing in Hong Kong as the Chinese government seeks to destabilize the SAR after the handover, so supertough smart guy Jake Grafton is dispatched stat to see if the US Consul General is involved.

Cultural focus (i.e. is the book about westerners or Chinese): Neither: the best-developed characters seem to be explosive devices.

Evocation of Hong Kong setting: Let's leave this for just now, shall we?

Inscrutability index: Just hang on, please . . . .

Typhoon count: Undetermined, and you'll now see why.

Review: After the heavy emotional involvment of my last reading venture, Xu Xi's Hong Kong Rose, I decided I needed a change -- so how about a rock 'em, sock 'em, shoot 'em-up-real-good type of story, with lots of action and weapons and stuff? Stephen Coonts's Hong Kong seemed well-suited to fill the bill. In fact, it looked to be such an exciting book I felt that I needed to call it HONG KONG instead. It just seemed more fitting.

Anyway, I got started. Or, rather, I PLUNGED IN.

Well, it turns out that our hero, the craggily-named Jake Grafton, is in Hong Kong on a secret mission authorized by the State Department, or the CIA, or maybe the League of Women Voters, and he witnesses a bank run brought on by the ChiComs destabilizing the Japanese finance minister's underwear supply (I admit to engaging in moderate skimming by page 28), which is described in this sequence (the bank run, not the underwear):

Although he spoke not a word of Chinese, [Jake] didn't really need the language to read the emotions on people's faces. A few people were openly crying, weeping silently as they rocked back and forth in sitting positions. Others were on cellular phones, presumably sharing their misfortune with family and friends.

The number of wireless telephones in use by the crowd surprised Jake -- China was definitely third or fourth world. There was money in Hong Kong, a lot of which had been invested in state-of-the-art technology. Still, most of the people in this square existed on a small fraction of the money that the average American family earned.

As Jake sat there with two thousand American dollars' worth of traveler's checks in his pocket that he could get cashed in any bank in town [except for the failed one he's staring at, the intelligent reader assumes --ed.], the vast gulf between the comfortable, middle-class circumstances in which he had lived his life and the hand-to-mouth existence that so many hundreds of millions -- billions -- of people around the world accepted as their lot in life spread before him like the Grand Canyon.

One morning Benny Alden sat in his room thinking. The four Alden children lived with their grandfather, James Alden.

'What a lot of adventures we have had,' thought Benny. 'First, we lived in a boxcar in the woods. That was fun!'

You may have noted a slight shift in focus in the middle of that quotation. I can blame it only indirectly on Stephen Coonts. It in fact marks the point at which I flung aside HONG KONG in disgust, and picked up Daughter Tall's copy of The Boxcar Children: The Caboose Mystery, which promised a closer correspondence with reality, plus characters who exhibit a measure of savoir faire greatly exceeding those in Mr Coonts's work.

I mean, come on: how, in 2000, can you do so little research (or so willfully distort the truth) as to suggest that people in Hong Kong live in the third world? (Or the 'fourth world' -- I don't even know what that means!)

Also, if your main character is supposed to be a truly righteous badass type, how could you so utterly humiliate him by sending him tramping around Hong Kong with a pocket full of traveler's checks, for goodness sake? Can't you just see Jake trying to cash one -- and failing, in a withering barrage of derisive comments from the counter staff -- as he orders a Happy Meal at one of HK's many third-world McDonald's restaurants? Sheesh.

The upshot here is clear: if you can get past page 28, you've got a lot better pain tolerance than I do. And although I do recommend The Caboose Mystery without reservation, unfortunately it's not set in Hong Kong.

Bonus information: There's not much to say here, other than that HONG KONG comes published in an extremely book-bag-friendly paperback format that seems to weigh mere ounces. I realize, however, that if a book's greatest virtue is its portability, the bar is being set pretty low.

One last note: you didn't think I'd just leave that that 'fourth world' question hanging, did you? Inevitably, Wikipedia's got an entry on it, which informs us that 'The term Fourth World in academia . . . commonly refers to peoples living nomadic, pastoral, hunter-gatherer or other ways of life considered outside the modern industrial norm'. So, obviously, I was wrong: who better fits the profile of a typical nomadic hunter-gatherer raiding party than a claque of Hong Kong tai-tais saddling up their camels to go hit the sales at Lane Crawford?

Getting your hands on a copy: You're on your own. I refuse to aid and abet the reading of this novel in any form, by any means, in any world, whether it be first, second, third, or fourth.

Next up: Eileen Chang's Love in a Fallen City.

Hong Kong Rose

Mr Tall — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Title: Hong Kong Rose

Author: Xu Xi

Published: 1999

Genre: chicklit that's wearing its one really good outfit as it aspires to literary respectabilty

Period: The groovy '70s!

One-sentence synopsis: Rose is a (sorry!) blooming young woman who's seeking the meaning of life, love, and liberty as she balances her relationships (or lack thereof) with her family, her husband, and her lover.

Cultural focus (i.e. is the book about westerners or Chinese): Chinese, mostly. There are numerous western characters, but the focus here is on an overseas Chinese woman trying to deal with essentially Chinese issues, including the ways in which non-Cantonese Chinese get on in Hong Kong.

Evocation of Hong Kong setting: It depends on how you look at it. In terms of physical description, Xu Xi's Hong Kong is anycity. It's the antithesis of Martin Booth's Hong Kong.

On the other hand, this is in essence a family novel, and in this sphere lies the book's primary virtues. Rose is a middle class girl, a product of an SE Asian/overseas Chinese family. Her boyfriend/eventual husband's family's background is even more unusual: he's from a rich South African Chinese clan, with some mixed genes tossed in for good measure. Most of the book's action takes place in Kowloon Tong, where there's lots of money-grubbing and status-gaming, but not in the dreary life-on-the-Peak patterns that start to seem so familiar when you're reading a series of Hong Kong novels!

To give an example of the social setting here, Rose and her then-boyfriend get their photo on the society page of the SCMP. This is a big deal to Rose, but she doesn't want to admit it. This jockeying for social position while trying to navigate the shoals of status consciousness and longstanding snobbery is one of the most interesting aspects of the novel.

Inscrutability index, on a scale of 1-10 (i.e., since the book is written by a Chinese, to what degree does she see Western culture as 'inscrutable'): It's a three.

On the one hand, there's plenty of, shall we say, mingling between western and Chinese characters here. And the western characters are written up in a generally natural idiom.

But there are occasional reminders of Rose's lack of total comfort around westerners and western culture, since one of her 'issues' is the degree she's becoming westernized in the face of her mother's opposition.

For example, Rose goes on a junk trip with gweilos, and gets a little melodramatic:

There was something surreal about this alien world of foreigners, far apart from the core of my city which could be so hellishly crowded, so unpleasantly claustrophobic. Was I privileged or damned to witness this occidental paradise? (p. 72)

Rose's ruminations on race and culture frequently reach this high pitch of near-theological significance. The problem is, they seem insightful at first, but then leave you scratching your head:

That ABC moves like a gwai, despite his Chinese face.

A long time ago, some slick Englishman translated gwai as 'foreign devil'. But it isn't that simple, is it? In the world I came from there were Chinese, the yan, meaning people or humans, and then there were all the rest, the gwais.

Yet sometimes I think it was we the yan who were inhuman.

Was the truth of my life simply what Gordie says life's about -- where devils are angels and angels are devils and all are just yan? (p. 228)

Let's move that inscrutability index up to five.

Typhoon count: One! It catches Rose off guard:

A typhoon in October? [Oh, as if that's unheard of! --ed.] The sky was an indeterminate grey, and the wind gusty. (p. 126)

And that's all we get. The typhoon does help Rose kickstart her affair, though, so there's that.

Review: The fixed point about which the typhoon of Rose's life rotates is her long-running relationship with Paul, the rich boy who's first her gentlemanly suitor, then her enigmatic husband.

But there's something a bit strange going on here . . . .

When they're dating, Paul makes a move on Rose, which she rebuffs because it seems so odd, even to her. She describes her feelings:

'All the way home in the taxi my body wouldn't stop trembling. My desire was knotted in my stomach. Could this really be the man I was going to marry? I didn't understand him at all. Something separated us, something I couldn't articulate. I wanted him, felt passion for him, passion I usually had to keep buried . . . . I was at the mouth of a gaping abyss into which I couldn't stop from plunging. Did I love Paul? Of course I did, with a fierce clinging desire I wasn't permitted to exhibit.' (pp, 78-79)

Hmmm. What could be the problem? Why does the suave and dashing Paul always seem to be out for nights on the town with 'the boys', and doesn't come back till morning? Why does he seem unwilling -- unable, even -- to return Rose's trembling knotted passionate buried fierce clinging desire for him? It's a total mystery, for over half the book -- at least to our dear Hong Kong Rose!

Before she's married, Rose makes a trip to the USA to visit her fraternal twin sister Regina, who's living an artist's bohemian life in New York City. There Rose meets Miguel, a creepy but compelling South American who's also her sister's pimp (don't make me explain this). Frustrated by Paul's indifference to her, Rose is captivated. She enthuses:

His voice was rich and soothing, like Chinese peanut soup that warmed your tongue before sliding down your throat. (p. 80)

Oh, dear. Let's just move on.

Eventually, Rose ties the knot with Paul, for better or (more likely) worse, and finally figures out the truth about him that everyone from Repulse Bay to outer Mongolia has known for years. Rose then promptly begins a long-running affair with Elliot, an American who speaks fluent Chinese, hangs out with the beautiful people, seems to have money and connections to burn, but who never the less pines for Rose as she wavers back and forth between her life-as-a-lie with Paul, whom she still loves and adores and admires, except that he sleeps with men instead of her, and the possibility of a new life with Elliot, who does actually, you know, manage to get the deed done with her on occasion. This bizarre balance is tipped to an extreme at a wild New Year's Eve party at which Rose, Paul, Elliot and one of Paul's lovers all end up dancing together and getting entangled in a terribly confusing and quite unsatisfactory mess.

And messiness -- of relationships, of emotions, of social standing and of the general meaning of life -- is what Hong Kong Rose is all about. Rose tries to express her own lack of certainty late in the book:

I thought about all these people who had what I couldn't have, because no matter how I looked at my life, when I pushed aside the clouds that blurred my vision, the only thing I knew with absolute clarity was that I still didn't understand very much about myself at all. (p. 255)

So if you like lots of feelings, thinking about feelings, talking about feelings, and feeling feelings, all wrapped up in a Hong Kong package, this may be the book for you. Initially, I enjoyed Hong Kong Rose's prurient detail and catty tone, and the insights into Hong Kong families and status striving. But the longer I read, the farther away the book's last page seemed to be. The harder I tried to stagger through the emotional quicksand, the more bogged down I got.

Bonus information: Xu Xi is Indonesian Chinese, and also writes under the name Sussy Komala.

There's another interesting sidelight here for American readers: Regina and Rose both get their undergrad degrees in the USA, at the seriously obscure State University of New York-Plattsburgh (this must be where Xu Xi attended herself; there's no other possible explanation for its inclusion). But then Regina goes on to pursue a Master of Fine Arts at the slightly less-obscure University of Iowa, the flagship university of Mr Tall's home state. This turns out to be highly problematic. To wit, in one paragraph, Regina moves to Iowa. In the next, she slashes her wrists.

Rose tries to console her:

Calm down, Regina! What did you expect, in the middle of Iowa!
(p. 99)

Okay, okay -- it's not Plattsburgh, of course, but Iowa City's not quite that bad!

Getting your hands on a copy: The Amazon link is here, and the HKPL system has the book also; you can search for the title here.

Next up: Stephen Coonts's Hong Kong.

Hiroshima Joe

Mr Tall — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Title: Hiroshima Joe

Author: Martin Booth

Published: 1985

Genre: war + prison novel

Period: Just two periods: the WWII years, and 1952. There's also a brief epilogue set in 1985.

One-sentence synopsis: Hiroshima Joe is a war novel executed via character study: Joe Sandingham fights in the defense of Hong Kong against the 1941 Japanese invasion, spends the next several years in a variety of internment camps, then looks back on these events from the perspective of the sordid mess his life's become seven years after the war ended.

Cultural focus (i.e. is the book about westerners or Chinese): Westerners. Joe is English, and nearly all of the book's action takes place in the company of English soldiers or western prisoners of war.

Evocation of Hong Kong setting: Excellent. Just as is the case in his memoir Gweilo, which is reviewed and traced out in detail at our sister site, gwulo.com, Booth's great strength as a novelist is his ability to draw his reader into this book's place and time. And again much of the action here in Hiroshima Joe takes place in areas familiar to Gweilo readers: the back streets of Homantin, the hills and twistings roads of Hong Kong Island, the docks in west Kowloon, and so on.

The war sections are also very good. There are two major battle sequences, one on Wong Nai Chung Gap, and the other down in the streets of Causeway Bay. Booth works in a lot of detail, e.g.:

Furniture was wedged tightly into the corner shopfront and sandbags were in place three-high along the base of this barricade. The dull daylight pierced through the cracks and crannies. Sandingham had the Sten gun and two Canadians had the Bren. Across the floor, Bob Bellerby had another Sten. Through those cracks in their flimsy defence they could see along several hundred yards of Yee Wo Street. It was deserted. In several places, the tram lines had been wrecked during endless daylight bomb raids, the tracks twisting upward and curling back as if torn loose by some giant-sized sardine-tin key. A tram, gutted by fire, lay on its side halfway down the stretch under their surveillance. It was a major source of their attention, for its contorted steel frame and chassis bed provided more than adequate cover. (p. 87)

The parts of the book set in the Japanese internment camps, both in Stanley in Hong Kong, and then later in Japan itself, are equally good at pulling the reader into these horrific contexts. There is frequent graphic detail, but it's justified by the subject matter.

Inscrutability index, on a scale of 1-10 (i.e., if the book is written by a westerner, to what degree does he see Chinese culture as 'inscrutable'?): I’ll give it a 2 -- that is, not very inscrutable at all. Booth is quite unselfconscious in drawing his Chinese characters, rarely calling attention to their 'difference'. How well he really 'gets' Chinese culture is another question, but there's certainly little maundering about with 'inscrutability' here.

Typhoon count: One, finally! What the book's single typhoon lacks in meteorological excitement it certainly makes up for in metaphorical impact. The typhoon sequence is in some ways the heart of the book.

Review: Hiroshima Joe is a profoundly sad story. Its events are harsh: Joe experiences war, fights desperately for survival in internment/labor camps, and struggles to silence his demons in his empty post-war years.

Since Hiroshima Joe follows its protagonist's life so closely, it stands or falls on Booth's ability to draw his character. And it stands. Joe is not at all who you might expect him to be -- he's no conventional hero; that's for sure -- but he is believable, vulnerable, sympathetic (in spite of his numerous and ugly flaws), and always very human. He's seeking a beauty he knows can never be his, and it's heartbreaking.

Perhaps the highest praise for Hiroshima Joe is Booth's ability to explore tragedy -- in several forms, including the one obviously suggested by the book's title -- without descending into bitterness. This is a difficult challenge for war novels, and Booth overcomes it with brutal elegance.

I highly recommend Hiroshima Joe, especially if you've read and enjoyed Gweilo.

Bonus information: This novel has many and varied virtues, but there was one flaw that really got under my skin -- it's badly edited, and this fault ends up being a distraction and a real pity. First, there are numerous careless word-choice errors, e.g. 'hoards' instead of 'hordes' and 'grizzly' instead of 'grisly' (given the book's content, this last one is especially unfortunate).

Second, Booth makes a valiant attempt to write dialog for several minor American characters in their vernacular, but fails utterly. I can't recall more misremembered and/or misconceived American local knowledge, idioms and slang outside Agatha Christie's oeuvre. For example, one of Booth's American characters tells a story about his romantic rival's car slipping off a 'carriageway' and falling into a river. No American would ever use that term. Another American POW goes on about the snow in Oklahoma reaching the roofs of his farmplace's buildings, and tobogganing across it: it snows only infrequently in Oklahoma. Perhaps most implausibly, Booth stages a scene in which a group of American POWs join their British couterparts in a spontaneous rendition of 'Rule Britannia' when the war ends: not only would American soldiers not know the words to such a song, they'd never make the tacit admission that anyone other the good ol' US of A finished off the Japanese and won the war.

A good editor would surely have caught some of these gaffes, and the book would have been better for it.

Getting your hands on a copy:

The Amazon link is here.

This book is available for borrowing in the Hong Kong Public Library System. You can search for copies here. Please note that if you get the copy from the Lockhart Road branch, and are bothered by the small coffee stain on page 167, I offer my profuse apologies -- it really was an accident!

Next up: A double bill! I'll review Xu Xi's Hong Kong Rose and Stephen Coonts's Hong Kong.

Reading the Hong Kong novels

Mr Tall — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 01:00:00 +0000

I've embarked on a new project for batgung.com: reading and reviewing some of the many (many!) novels that are set at least partially here in Hong Kong.

Even though everyone's heard of Taipan, of course, and read it -- except me -- I didn't start there.

Note that this series of reviews will include several criteria for assessment that are very Hong Kong-specific, but I'll also try to let you know if the book is any good or not, and hence worth reading.

If you're looking for even more recommendations, or you're more interested in non-fiction books about Hong Kong, this thread elsewhere on the site has excellent suggestions.

Anyway, on with the show!

Fragrant Harbour

Mr Tall — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Title: Fragrant Harbour

Author: John Lanchester

Published: 2002

Period: The action here spans the bulk of the 20^th century, but the book’s most important sections focus on the WWII years and the decade in the run-up to the 1997 handover.

One-sentence synopsis: The intertwining stories of four Hong Kong characters – two western, and two Chinese; two men, and two women – are told in separate narratives, but are unified by their focus on the book’s true protagonist, i.e. the city of Hong Kong itself.

Cultural focus (i.e. is the book about westerners or Chinese): Lanchester balances the cultural backgrounds of his main characters, with two of each:

The book’s first section chronicles the arrival of a western journalist – the archly-named ‘Dawn Stone’ – in Hong Kong, and her (rapid!) adjustment to expat life.

The second section, by far the book’s longest, tells the story of Tom Stewart, a British lad who comes over to Hong Kong in the 1930s, finds his vocation, survives the war, including a stint in Stanley internment camp, and then witnesses the transformation of the city into someplace we recognize today.

The third part unlocks the story of Sister Maria, a Chinese nun, and although she appears elsewhere in the book, the part she plays is summed up here in just one of her letters.

The finale focuses on Matthew Ho, who escapes to Hong Kong with his mother during the Cultural Revolution, and then goes on to live out the story of so many Hong Kong people who studied hard, founded businesses, and dealt with the uncertainties of changing political regimes.

Note, however, that the real breakdown of Lanchester’s story is much closer to a 70%-30% western/Chinese split, since the Tom Stewart section is quite long, and Sister Maria’s so short.

Evocation of Hong Kong setting: As the book’s title suggests, Lanchester intended this novel to tell the underlying story of Hong Kong itself, so the characters and plotting are usually secondary to his desire to evoke Hong Kong as a unique cultural phenomenon.

Does he succeed? Yes and no. Lanchester is not a lyrical writer; his descriptions are more of the travelogue/laundry-list variety. Here’s a typical account of a trip to Mongkok:

The bus went north on Nathan Road, as crowded and streaming as ever. Every time one saw it there were new businesses: Taiwoo Sewing Machine Emporium, with a huge pink Singer sign. Lotus Garden Dim Sum. Wishful Cottage Tea Shop. Cheng Kee Electronics. Sam’s Tailors. Auspicious Festival Men’s Tailoring. A huge branch of China Arts and Crafts, the company which sold goods from Communist China. Prosperous Future Watch Repairs: Cheaper Faster Better. The pavements were full of charging pedestrians. The only time I had seen Nathan Road anything other than seething with people was the day after the Japanese Invasion.

We get plenty of detail here, but not a lot of life. This is unfortunately the case throughout much of the book.

Also, the section of the book that’s the most exciting in terms of plot and action – i.e. the WWII years – is marred by vagueness about the war’s events, and some implausible scenarios.

Inscrutability index, on a scale of 1-10 (i.e., if the book is written by a westerner, to what degree does he see Chinese culture as 'inscrutable'?): I’ll give it a 5. Lanchester tries very hard to get into the heads of his Chinese characters, and in the book’s final section on Matthew Ho, he’s reasonably successful. Ho is plausible, both in the way he makes business decisions and personal choices, and in his characteristic Hong Kong motivations.

But Lanchester’s other Chinese character, a nun who occasionally appears in Tom Stewart’s life – and with memorable effect – is badly drawn. Lanchester seems incapable of grasping the nature of the religious devotion and commitment he more or less accuses her of practicing. A more sympathetic portrayal would have made for a more powerful story.

Typhoon count: Zero again. I was deeply disappointed in this.

Review: Fragrant Harbour is an occasionally-excellent, but often-frustrating read. It’s one of the more uneven efforts I’ve encountered in quite a while, in any genre.

The first section, the Dawn Stone Saga, nearly put me off the book entirely – I found it clichéd, tedious, almost insulting to me as a reader. But a caveat on this: my problem is that I’m a long-term Hong Kong expat, so there was no way I could read about Dawn’s initiation into all the Hong Kong expat in-jokes and bargain-basement epiphanies – the Bank of China shoots bad Fung Shui at its neighbors! Expats go on drunken junk trips! Some domestic helpers have more degrees than their employers! – with fresh eyes. But Lanchester gets no breaks just because he’s writing with tongue in cheek here: his satire is frequently smug; it’s rarely funny or insightful.

So if you too are a Hong Konger, I’d advise you to grit your teeth and bear with the book’s first 70 pages or so; they will end, and at least they’re easy reading. It’s worth persevering because the Tom Stewart story is so much better. In spite of its shaky historical accuracy, it’s an engaging tale with a sympathetic main character, and it’s very much the heart of the novel itself. Lanchester might have done a better job by simply fleshing out the sometimes-rushed episodes in Tom’s life and just dropping the other three sections altogether.

Another point in Fragrant Harbour's favor is that it ends rather well. Many books that track historical events just trail off as the calendar reaches the end of the era being covered, but not this one. There is a confluence of characters and events in the Matthew Ho section that follows on from the book’s events into a satisfactory resolution.

So I’ll give Fragrant Harbour a qualified recommendation, but I wouldn’t put it at the top of my reading list.

Bonus information: It seems very likely that John Lanchester lived on Cheung Chau at some point, as much of the book’s action takes place there.

Getting your hands on a copy:

The Amazon link is here.

This book is available for borrowing in the Hong Kong Public Library System. You can search for copies here.

Next up: Martin Booth’s Hiroshima Joe.

The Painted Veil

Mr Tall — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:00:00 +0000

Title: The Painted Veil

Author: M Somerset Maugham

Published: 1925

Period: Around 1920 or so; the book's action takes place in a single summer.

One-sentence synopsis: Kitty, a hot but aging English spinster, marries in haste and comes to regret it as her medical scientist husband ships her out to Hong Kong, where she, ah, gets involved in colonial society, only to be shanghaied by hubby once more, this time on a mission of mercy to a cholera-stricken city deep in the mainland.

Cutural focus (i.e. is the book about westerners or Chinese): Westerners, definitely. Although there are a few brief (and mostly sympathetic) portrayals of Chinese characters, they are mere props in the drama of the Europeans' lives.

Evocation of Hong Kong setting: There's little sense here of Hong Kong's physical setting (there are just brief mentions of 'Happy Valley' and 'the Peak'). But the satire of colonial/expat society in Hong Kong is pointed:

Kitty, coming to Hong Kong on her marriage, had found it hard to reconcile herself to the fact that her social position was determined by her husband's occupation. Of course every one had been very kind and for two or three months they had gone out to parties almost every night; when they dined at Government House the Governor took her in as a bride; but she had understood quickly that as the wife of the Government bacteriologist she was of no particular consequence.

"It's too absurd," she told her husband. "Why, there's hardly any one here that one would bother about for five minutes at home. Mother wouldn't dream of asking any of them to dine at our house. (p. 15)

Also note this one-liner from Charles Townsend, the 'Assistant Colonial Secretary', and Kitty's lover:

"There's no reason I shouldn't be a Governor one of these days, and it's a damn soft job to be a Colonial Governor." (p. 76)

But Townsend may not even be capable of meeting that standard:

"As long as Charlie Townsend's got her [i.e. his homely but sensible wife] to depend on he's pretty safe never to do a foolish thing, and that the first thing necessary for a man to get on in Government service. They don't want clever men; clever men have ideas, and ideas cause trouble; they want men who have charm and tact and who can be counted on never to make a blunder." (p. 101)

The sequence of the book that takes place in the mainland is much more evocative. The horrors and general air of unreality and fatalism surrounding the cholera epidemic are well-drawn, and images of the sticken city linger in the mind:

Though on the river it was light so that you could discern palely the lines of the crowded junks and the thick forest of their masts, in front it was a shining wall the eye could not pierce. But suddenly from that white cloud a tall, grim, and massive bastion emerged . . . . It towered, the stronghold of a cruel and barbaric race, over the river. But the magician who built worked swiftly and now a fragment of colored wall crowned the bastion; in a moment, out of the mist, looming vastly and touched here and there by a yellow ray of sun, there was seen a cluster of green and yellow roofs . . . . This was no fortress, nor a temple, but the magic palace of some emperor of the gods where no man might enter. It was too airy, fantastic, and unsubstantial to be the work of human hands; it was the fabric of a dream. (pp. 96-97)

Inscrutability index, on a scale of 1-10 (i.e., if the book is written by a westerner, to what degree does he see Chinese culture as 'inscrutable'?): I've got to give it no less than an 8.

To his credit, Maugham does make some stabs at establishing the humanity of the Chinese people in these pages. For example, as he's describing Mr Waddington, an English customs inspector who's clearly 'gone native' in the mainland, there's a window opened in that wall of inscrutability:

. . . he had adopted the Chinese view that the Europeans were the barbarians and their life a folly: in China alone was it so led that a sensible mand might discern in it a sort of reality. Here was food for reflection: Kitty had never heard of the Chinese spoken of as anything but decadent, dirty and unspeakable. It was as though the corner of a curtain were lifted for a moment, and she caught a glimpse of a world rich with a color and significance she had not dreamt of. (p. 104)

But in general Maugham falls short in his attempts to understand Chinese culture and people; see, for example, Kitty's reaction as she meets Waddington's Manchu mistress, as Maugham slips back into the familiar, and uses that very word:

Here was the East, immemorial, dark, and inscrutable. The beliefs and the ideals of the West seemed crude beside ideals and ideals and beliefs of which in this exquisite creature she seemed to catch a fugitive glimpse. (p. 170)

"of which in this"? Gaaah! Maybe I'm giving Maugham too much credit as a writer . . . !

Typhoon count: Zero. This is surprising; there's lots of dialog in which the characters moan about the heat, but there's nary a tropical storm in sight in this one.

Review: I decided to begin my series of reviews of Hong Kong novels with a book by an author I read quite avidly at one point in my life, and who I think gets less respect as a novelist than he may deserve. Maughm is best known for blockbusters such as Of Human Bondage and The Razor's Edge. But he also traveled extensively, including to the far East, and wrote this nice compact novel based on a trip that obviously included a stop in colonial Hong Kong.

In spite of Maugham's occasionally clumsy prose, this is a book worth reading. It's typical of a Maugham novel in that its central character's spiritual quest provides its depth and driving energy. Although there are long sequences here comprising nothing but internal monologue, they're rarely boring or trite, and they sometimes rise to the level of real insight. Maugham infuses his characters' decisions, and the often-sordid messes they get themselves into, with emotional, psychological and spiritual significance. There's also enough historical and cultural texture here to keep Hong Kong readers interested.

Finally, The Painted Veil serves as a good introduction to Maugham's work in that you get a representative taste of his style and approach, but it's not too long (under 250 pages), unlike his massive signature works.

Bonus information: The Painted Veil has been made into a film three times. The first, from 1934, starred no less than Greta Garbo. The most recent came out in 2006, starring Edward Norton and Naomi Watts, with a setting in Shanghai substituted for HK. I never even knew these films existed! Has anyone seen either of them?

Getting your hands on a copy:

The Amazon link is here.

This book is available for borrowing in the Hong Kong Public Library System. You can search for copies here.

Next up: John Lanchester's Fragrant Harbour