Customer Reviews

Hong Kong

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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."

This well-written and well-researched book is a fascinating introduction for those looking to get a feel for the history and dynamic of Hong Kong, its people and its historical rulers. This is not strictly a history book, nor is it a guidebook. Instead, Morris has woven together a story of a colony together with a writer's journal, laced with historical anecdotes and relevant passages from other writers and historians who have recorded their obersvations of Hong Kong over the course of its relatively short history. Morris does an excellent job of explaining how the demographics of Hong Kong evolved and continue to evolve, how an unlikely cast of characters landed on a once unwanted island and created a thriving port and city-state, and what the post-1997 future may bring to the former British colony. While Morris' account of Hong Kong's past, present and near future is extremely insightful, the book does have certain limitations. This is clearly a view of Hong Kong through the eyes of a European. Insightful as Morris may be, this perspective inevitably will have holes, as Europeans make up only a tiny fraction of Hong Kong's current population and lead a much different lifestyle than the other inhabitants. To give one example of such limitation, the experience of Filipinos, who make up the largest non-Chinese group currently living in Hong Kong and dominate the scene as domestic helpers and laborers in certain other low-wage fields, is described on portions of only two pages. Morris merely scratches the surface of one of the more complex storylines of Hong Kong. Still, while Morris is not able to present a Chinese (or Filipino) perspective of Hong Kong, the reader can see that Morris is intellectually honest and is aware of the limitations. Overall, the author stays within its boundaries, which makes for a tightly- written book that transitions well throughout. What Morris is able to bring to life so well is the conflict and coexistence of the English and the Chinese and how the colonial culture continues as an undercurrent (however fading) in every aspect of life in Hong Kong. Morris' account of Hong Kong is likely to stand the test of time and continue to be referred to as a "classic" for years to come.

I read and re-read this book over and over again while living in Hong Kong in the late nineteen nineties, both before and after the end of British rule.

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.

At least one of the reviewers on this list was unkind about the book, but I think it only fails, in the manner that all single-volume histories do, by trying to cover so much in so little. I have only read the unrevised 1990 Penguin paperback and only after I had already worked in Hong Kong in the early 90's. I wish I had read it before I went there, because it would have helped me to make sense of the total assault on the senses that HK is.
If you want, or need, to have more context than a guidebook will provide, this is where you will get it.

At least one of the reviewers on this list was unkind about the book, but I think it only fails, in the manner that all single-volume histories do, by trying to cover so much in so little. I have only read the unrevised 1990 Penguin paperback and only after I had already worked in Hong Kong in the early 90's. I wish I had read it before I went there, because it would have helped me to make sense of the total assault on the senses that HK is.
If you want, or need, to have more context than a guidebook will provide, this is where you will get it.

In this book, Jan Morris accounts Hong Kong's past and present concisely. This is a product of Jan Morris' accumulated years of intelligent perception and understanding of Hong Kong's history, culture, politics. Filled with quick-witted humor and details only perceived by someone who had travelled there, this book is entertaining and enlightening to read.

Another recent re-reading of this excellent historical portrait led to this review, but it was also stimulated by another review in which the reader complains of Ms Morris as reflecting a `western perspective'. Given that the Hong Kong of which Jan Morris writes was created by Westerners, from a declining pearl of the East, and that those same creators returned the territory and its teeming millions back to the East in an unprecedented action for a former Empire, a `western perspective' would seem to me to be perfectly valid.

Indeed, quoting Frank Ching, a noted Hong Kong author, from his own review of the book in the New York Times (1989); "She approaches the subject of Hong Kong as a student of British imperialism" and notes that she does a superb job.

For decades Hong Kong was not only a refuge for `mainland' Chinese but a destination that encourage the growth of a true Chinese middle and educated class that now inherits that `western' imperialistic generated wealth and relative democracy. Our `western' concerns and doubts of this, the first hand-over of free millions to a Communist regime, are not yet stilled and Jan Morris in her excellent book, outlines the historical roots that will eventually confirm the reality of the new `eastern" Hong Kong.

If lace doilies could read, they'd love Jan Morris. Yes, she's a facile writer. Her sentences are at once both sinewy and elegant, and her book is rich with detail. However, reading Hong Kong by Jan Morris is like surveying the wreckage after a car bomb explodes a national archive. Miles of shelves have dumped their contents; and all the pages have been blown off their bookbindings. What remains are heaps of torched and scattered passages having little to no connection, except in catastrophic coincidence. To think of it another way, imagine learning animal husbandry by studying the floor of the butcher shop: odd scraps of meat, tangled ligaments, knotty tendons, and splattered blood. Collectively, they suggest "animal," but all the meaning and life has been stripped away. No one is going to learn to raise pigs that way. Similarly, I couldn't understand Hong Kong by reading Hong Kong. Perhaps I'm too harsh. Her book was neither a terrorist act nor even a massacre. In fact, at times her flowery writing is intoxicating. Nevertheless, I got the feeling that in her mind, Morris writes to seduce William F. Buckley, Jr., and that's just sick.