Leafing through the city

Original Headlines：Leafing through the city

Source：中国日报英文版

A visitor checks out sketches highlighting the generic features of old Hong Kong architecture. CALVIN NG/CHINA DAILY

There is much to find out about the city's history and eclectic culture at the ongoing 32nd Hong Kong Book Fair, and then some more, writes Gennady Oreshkin.

The ongoing 32nd Hong Kong Book Fair could make for a happy hunting ground for those looking for answers to the question: What constitutes Hong Kong culture? And the History Writers display - one of four thematic exhibitions in the fair's Art Gallery section - could be a good place to start.

Selected works by Elizabeth Sinn Yuk-yee are a highlight of this display. The honorary professor at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences has engaged with the history of modern China for more than four decades. She will be sharing her experience of researching Hong Kong history on July 24, as part of Reading the World: Stories of Hong Kong seminar series.

Her book, Power and Charity, published in 1989, is an extension of her PhD thesis on the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals - "a living example of Hong Kong culture". The first Tung Wah Hospital was established in 1870 by a group of highly powerful Chinese merchants "to provide Chinese medicine to Chinese people in Hong Kong" at a time when the local government was mostly focused on Western medicine.

Sinn says the move helped bring stability to the city.

"Tung Wah was there to take care of the poor people, (which) meant (the government) didn't have to spend a lot of money on social welfare."

The hospital's network soon expanded beyond Hong Kong. "They didn't have a Tung Wah branch in San Francisco or anything, but they took care of Chinese people overseas ... everywhere," Sinn informs.

Such help was particularly useful during the California Gold Rush of the late 1840s and 1850s.

"Hundreds of thousands of Chinese people went (to California) in the 1850s and '60s to build railways. A lot of them died because the conditions were rough," Sinn says. "If they were not so rich, they would be buried in (American) cemeteries, and, after a few years, they'd dig the bones out, put them in bone boxes, and ship them back to their native villages through Hong Kong."

Since the 1870s, there has been a steady stream of such boxes arriving in Hong Kong from the United States. They were kept at the Tung Wah Coffin Home on Victoria Road, awaiting the onward journey. As a facilitator of the process, Tung Wah Hospital came to be seen as the face of the Chinese community abroad, gradually evolving into a world-famous and hugely influential charity.

From the very young to mature readers, Hong Kong Book Fair 2022 has something for everyone. CALVIN NG/CHINA DAILY

Arty tales

As in the field of caring for the less privileged, Hong Kong also plays a widely-acknowledged leading role in the world of art. The story of Hong Kong's thriving art scene also figures in this year's Hong Kong Book Fair.

Internationally renowned art critic and the founder-director of Hanart TZ Gallery, Johnson Chang was in dialogue with Li Pi, head of curatorial affairs at M+, on Thursday as part of the Renowned Writers Seminar Series. A major driving force behind the robust development of the Hong Kong art scene, Chang seems optimistic about the city's continued interest in contemporary Chinese art. He feels the volume of investment in the cultivation of art - in art schools and museums like M+ as well as the newly opened Hong Kong Palace Museum, for instance - "reflects an engagement with the lineage of Chinese culture and civilization".

Chang is probably one of Hong Kong's best qualified people to speak on the ways in which attitudes to art have changed over the years. "I remember Hong Kong being a place where being an artist was not very elitist. It didn't add to your social credibility. Today there's much personal value in being an artist," Chang says.

While postcolonial influences remain strong in Hong Kong, "the feminist movement, race issues, gender and sexual identities" have added new dimensions to it, Chang explains. "They are very much parallel to the socially, economically and politically anchored postcolonial sensibilities."

The need to create spaces for conversations around art resulted in the "big push towards collectives". Chang himself co-founded Asia Art Archive with Claire Hsu in 2000.

It started a trend that is still ongoing. The emergence of more recent institutions like the Hong Kong Arts Collective and Yeti Out - a music collective consisting of DJs, promoters, producers and graphic designers - is a testament to Hong Kong's appetite for cultural discourse, Chang feels.

A section of the History Writers display. Books and other printed material from the archives throw light on different aspects of Hong Kong's past. CALVIN NG/CHINA DAILY

Home and the world

The Hong Kong Book Fair, in and of itself, could be seen as a cultural symbol of the city. Its inclusive nature is similar to Hong Kong's own cosmopolitan, all-embracing character.

The fair's English and International Reading Series, supported by the international online book store Book Depository, is meant to encourage a dialogue between internationally-acclaimed novelists and aspiring authors and "spread the joy of reading", according to Sophia Chong, deputy executive director of Hong Kong Trade Development Council, the fair host.

Authors featured include Simon Toyne, Clare Mackintosh, Maisie Chan and Gillian McAllister, whose most-recent book, Wrong Place Wrong Time (2022), is an international bestseller that has also found a following in Hong Kong.

The novel tells the story of a woman who witnesses her teenage son murdering a stranger. The book is set in a twisted time-frame: Every time the woman wakes up in the morning, she finds herself in the previous day and has to relive the nightmare.

"It's sort of Groundhog Day", the author said, referring to the 1993 romantic comedy starring Bill Murray, whose character also always wakes up in the morning to find himself in the previous day. But the crux of McAllister's new story is about "going back (in time) to try and find the reason why her son commits the crime".

Incorporating magical realism and speculative elements in crime fiction might be the new trend, McAllister says. "There are a lot of Groundhog Day-type books coming out next year, some of them are crime, and I have seen quite a few speculative-ish books as well."

The 32nd Hong Kong Book Fair is a mixed bag of the old and new. From history and memoirs to speculative crime fiction, it covers quite a range. Its eclectic and all-encompassing nature makes it of a piece with the city.

From left: Hong Kong Book Fair 2022 panelists include historian-academic Elizabeth Sinn Yuk-yee, novelist Gillian McAllister, and Chinese contemporary art expert Johnson Chang. PHOTOS PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY

A homage to Hong Kong’s culinary traditions. CALVIN NG/CHINA DAILY

A booth dressed up like a traditional Chinese temple. CALVIN NG/CHINA DAILY

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