More Book Lust by Nancy Pearl

Author:Nancy Pearl
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sasquatch Books
Published: 2010-07-21T16:00:00+00:00

HONG KONG HOLIDAYS

I think that the main reason I’ve always loved reading about Hong Kong is because years ago I was lucky enough to stumble across the Yellowthread Street mysteries of William Marshall (who was described on the cover as “living in a modest castle in Ireland,” which thoroughly delighted me). The first books in this series were published in the 1970s, and though Hong Kong has changed significantly since then, especially since the 1997 transfer from British to Chinese hands, some essential elements remain the same. Hong Kong’s polyglot society comes across vividly in these often very funny police procedurals starring Detective Chief Inspector Harry Feiffer and his colleagues Spencer, Auden, and O’Yee. They’re sometimes hard to find, but worth looking for (especially if you enjoyed the television show Barney Miller) at libraries, in used bookstores, or over the Internet. Start with the first, Yellowthread Street,butdon’tmiss Skulduggery or War Machine.

One of the best novels to read if you want a strong sense of the history (from 1935 on) of contemporary Hong Kong is John Lanchester’s Fragrant Harbor. (The title is the literal translation of the Chinese name of the former British crown colony.) This story is indeed worthy of the adjective “sweeping.” It’s a good choice for anyone who enjoyed Colleen McCullough’s The Thorn Birds or other sagas of that ilk.

The Language of Threads,Gail Tsukiyama’s sequel to her much-loved Women of the Silk, follows one of her earlier characters as she travels to Hong Kong and gets caught up in the terrible experience of the Japanese occupation during World War II.

It’s easy to find good guidebooks to Hong Kong, as well as lots of history books, but it’s harder to find compulsively readable armchair travel books about the country. Here are two, and it’s no surprise that one is by that consummate traveler Jan Morris. Called simply Hong Kong, it’s filled with facts as well as evocative writing. The other is Travelers’ Tales Guides: Hong Kong: True Stories of Life on the Road, edited by James O’Reilly et al., part of a reliable series of well-written books about many different countries. In its more than fifty personal essays, written by authors as diverse as Paul Theroux, Simon Winchester, and Pico Iyer as well as lesser-known writers, you get a great introduction to everything Hong Kong—from food to language to sights and scenes of a search for the perfect pig.

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