Hong Kong

I found it both an absorbing, exciting read, and a useful practical guide - I explored many parts of Hong Kong after first reading about them in this book - for example, some of the more remote peaks of the New Territories where there are wonderful hiking trails set up in British days, full of beauty and history (they are Hong Kong's best kept secret - the only antitidote for the city's overcrowding). Also, the author's description of the ceaseless (aargh!) jack-hammering in urban areas is almost poetic (every expat's nightmare).

Her description of Western expatriate life is informative and amusing - and accurate - some expats resent this kind of blunt description!

Her account of the Chinese population must not be missed as she goes into great detail of the sad and poignant refugee movement that sent millions of Chinese fleeing into Hong Kong from mainland China to become the city's residents of today - if you are going to Hong Kong (or are simply interested), do take this book along, as the refugee status of the population is a very painful subject (understandably) for Hong Kong Chinese and you will here little about it in post - handover Hong Kong, but an essential element in understanding how the place ticks.

Like many wonderful, accurate books about Hong Kong (Timothy Mo's the Monkey King; Paul Theroux's Kowloon Tong - read those if you like this one), Jan Morris's Hong Kong can be a painful read for some - Hong Kong's sad history of insecurity ensures that. But the detached reader, with this book, is in for a truly enjoyable experience that will be both a wealth of information and insight. Cracking good prose, too. UK edition is updated to 1997.


A bit out-of-date but still the best book on Hong Kong   March 15, 2001
 11 out of 11 found this review helpful

Two lions made of bronze guard the entrance of the old Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank building on the Bund in Shanghai. One looks cross, the other one snarls. Their paws shine from the touch of thousands of hands. Many people hope that some of the lions' power (and some of the bank's wealth) will rub off on them. The two guards of good fortune even had names once. In the 19th century, the snarler was called Stephen, and the cross lion was called Stitt in honor of their resemblance to two senior managers at the bank's offices in Hong Kong.

This piece of trivia is part of the fun of reading Jan Morris's "Hong Kong: Epilogue to an Empire". As the subtitle suggests, the main focus of the book is on the British influence in Hong Kong. This is particularly evident in the four chapters that deal with selected periods of the history of Hong Kong: (1) the 1840s when Hong Kong was founded on a barren island as the base for British drug trafficking into China, (2) the 1880s when the colony and the British Empire were at the pinnacle of their power, (3) the 1920s when Shanghai began to eclipse the city, and (4) the 1940s when Hong Kong was occupied by the Japanese and later became the refuge for Chinese (many of them entrepreneurs from Shanghai) who fled the Communist revolution in China. The historical chapters are well-researched, and Morris enjoys elaborating on the quirks of the British in Hong Kong. The historical chapters are embedded in five chapters that take a more anecdotal look at the social, cultural, administrative, and economic aspects of life in Hong Kong. The chapter on administration is aptly named "Control Systems". Not surprisingly for Hong Kong, the most extensive and interesting chapter deals with business and the economy. "Means of Support" is a very understated title for this aspect of life in Hong Kong. It would be more fitting to call it "Get rich quick". Jan Morris knows how to sprinkle delightful illustrations of Chinese industriousness and entrepreneurial talent into her tale. With a smirk she revels in the "endless variety of ingenuity, given to the world by such splendid-sounding concerns as "the Grand Dragon Universal Sales Company, the Ever-Rich Industrial Company, or the perhaps unfortunately named Flying Junk Industrial Company Ltd."

The book has only two shortcomings. One is the fact that most parts of the book have been written in 1987, and only minor revisions were added in 1997, just before Hong Kong became a Special Administrative Region of China. To understand today's Hong Kong, the epilogue to an empire ought to be appended by a prologue to an uncertain future. The other shortcoming is the effect of Ms. Morris's expatriate perspective on Hong Kong. Her point of view omits many aspects that shape the life of the Chinese who have always been the majority of the city's inhabitants. There is still some truth in William Somerset Maugham's observation in the 1920s: the vast majority of foreign residents has not the slightest notion what is happening among the Chinese masses. Yet, in defense of Ms. Morris I want to state that she writes about what she knows best - and that is a writer's job.

Currently Ms. Morris's book is the best work about the vibrant, greedy, contradictory, and ultimately inscrutable city of Hong Kong, a place where it seems that only the temporary is permanent (except for the constant, ubiquitous noise of jack-hammers maybe), nothing is rooted and everyone is trying to move on. There is no simple denominator for this city and its inhabitants.

Having lived in Hong Kong for half a year, I can recommend Jan Morris's book as an entertaining introduction to the history and character of this fascinating city. I have enjoyed her Western perspective and her sense of humor as evidenced in her illustration why the Hong Kong Chinese are opportunists of genius: "When communal lavatories were first installed in Hong Kong, Chinese entrepreneurs took to sitting on them for so long that people were obliged to bribe them to come off."