Streets: Exploring Kowloon (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

This is a guidebook with a difference: it aims to illustrate aspects of Hong Kong's history, culture, society and heritage in ways not covered in standard works, and to guide the reader to areas where few visitors go. With maps and travel information, it takes the reader on walks along specific streets pointing out historically and culturaly important sites, but also the curious and the intriguing. The book starts with a district familiar to all visitors - Tsim Sha Tsui - but then moves into the hinterland of Kowloon, taking the reader and walker far beyond the well-known streets of tourist-oriented shops and hotels. Like its companion, Streets: Exploring Hong Kong Island, Streets: Exploring Kowloon guides the reader with maps and travel information to take walks, each along a specific street pointing out historically and culturally important sites, but also the curious and the intriguing. While accessible to readers new to Hong Kong and offering to them a very different side of the place to the shopping-focused tourist traps or the glass and steel glitz of Central, it also offer much that is new and unknown to frequent visitors and to residents.

From the Inside Flap

Streets: Exploring Kowloon is a guidebook with a difference: it aims to illustrate aspects of Hong Kong's history, culture, society and heritage in ways not covered in standard works, and to guide the reader to explore areas few locals, let alone visitors, go to. It is the ideal book for the person who wishes to see a different, more authentic and gritty Hong Kong than that of the standard guidebooks and tours.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 284 pages
• Publisher: Hong Kong University Press (March 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9622098134
• ISBN-13: 978-9622098138
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,969,263 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book., January 18, 2009

By	John Dowdell (San Francisco) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Provides historical background on streets and neighborhoods within Greater Kowloon. Not a guidebook listing every attraction... more like the observations of a longtime resident and historian who has studied these streets, and understands how an area has changed over time.

The book was inspired by a newspaper series on local history -- think of it as a collection of articles, each offering highlights into a particular street or neighborhood. It covers a wider geographic area than the companion book on Hong Kong, with a greater variety of regions and cultural influences, and the writing seems a little more direct and readable too.

Negatives: Read it alongside a regular street map -- the book has hand-drawn maps of neighborhoods, but you need a larger map to see it all in context. Has a deep bibliography but no index. The paper is a good weight for reading at home, but is heavy for travel -- would be a great candidate for Kindle, if Kindle supported travellers' guides.

Why does that temple overlook the sea? Why does this neighborhood have such a different feel than the one a few streets over? What is the story behind that fishing village so near a city? Why is this small park so hidden, serene, quiet? Tourists in taxicabs will still need their Fodors, but walkers in Hong Kong will gain much from this book.