Customer Reviews

Unwalled City

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It is a terrible injustice to the writer, and a mark of shame on a publication as prestigious as Publisher's Weekly that the editorial review of Xu Xi's The Unwalled City be allowed to stand. The cavalier tone of this reviewer's critique betrays the fact that he gave the novel no more than a cursory browse. He condemns the book for being "crammed with extraneous detail." Perhaps if he'd been paying closer attention to those details he might not have identified the red-haired Colleen, one of the two principal caucasian characters in the book, as an Asian woman. He laments the lack of "action" and erroneously claims that "a picture of modern-day Hong Kong never materializes." These observations belie a sensibility more at home with "oriental" cliches and leaves me wondering if he shouldn't ply his trade reviewing kung fu movies and leave the discussion of serious literature to people who know "how" to read. I read The Unwalled City with great curiosity and interest. As in her previous novel, Hong Kong Rose and short fiction collections, History's Fiction and Daughters of Hui -- Xu Xi presents a picture of contemporary Asia; unsentimentalized and void of a cloying exotica. I am always struck by this author's ability to shed light on a culture and a people that few in the West truly understand and to render it in a way that is both accessible and insightful. In The UnWalled City, Xu Xi dares to present Hong Kongers (of all stripes) as real men and women embroiled in contemporary life struggles. If you're looking for lotus blossoms, tea ceremonies, crouching tigers or hidden dragons there's plenty of that to be found elsewhere. But if you crave the genuine article -- Xu Xi has no equal.

Xu Xi does an excellent job of capturing the internal experience of living life between the Asian and Western cultures. I am a caucasian-American married to a Chinese man who was born in Hong Kong, and I could really relate to Xu Xi's characters. Their struggles to relate to a culture different from their own was very familiar to me. Her choice to use sexuality and relationships as the setting in which to play out the story was appropriate. After all, romance and sex are our most personal arenas, and the areas where we most poignantly experience culture.

As a typical "white male" with limited exposure to Asia (having travelled through Hong Kong several times), I find Xu Xi's books bear a resemblance to Bryce Courtney's writings on Africa. Having never been to Africa, I have gained deep insight from Courtney's books. Same with Xu Xi and Hong Kong. In The Unwalled City, Xu Xi captures the essence of the lives of the people of the walled city. It is a fascinating look at how Hong Kong works at many levels, the people and places, the history and future. I was therefore surprised at the Publishers Weekly review as I would think that the reviewer -- most likely more travelled than I -- would have understood the uniqueness of Hong Kong's East/West identity. The book's characters are consistent with the people of the territory, confronting the fear and prejudices of the unknown, allowing this reader a rare insight into such multiculturalism. This is a must read for anyone who has visited or is contemplating a visit to Hong Kong.

I find this novel astounding, a must read for everyone interested in the vibrant world of trans-Pacific writing. It is a novel about four very different characters caught up in the urgency and terror of negotiating personal space in the years leading up to Hong Kong's return to China in 1997. Avoiding the narcissism of expats and the demeaning perspective of Orientalism, Xu Xi writes as a true native.

The dyspeptic and snide review of this novel in Publishers Weekly, usually a judicious source, is a bit shocking at first, for this is a fine and finely crafted novel. But after all, one of the characters in The Unwalled City has the guts to declare New York is passe. And here also is an upstart Hong Kong small press, Chameleon, publishing a novel which moves the center of the known universein the eyes of too many in the publishing worldfrom the Big Apple to the shores of China. So you see that The Unwalled City is heretical from the start because it spurns Newyorcentirism and asserts that the lives and fortunes of the middle-class people, from diverse and intertwining cultural backgrounds, that inhabit the Hong Kong of this novel are as interesting and important as those of anywhere else.
Furthermore, this novel is not the World of Suzie Wong nor does it reflect the Hong Kong of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. This is a novel about the kinds of people who make Hong Kong work: people with brains, hearts, responsibilities, family and friends and lovers, and imperfect pasts they must learn to understand before they can grow. Some of them do better than struggle and survive. Some of them survive with panache. This, too, flies in the face of what current New York marketing departmentsand reviewersdeclare is all the mode. But then most New Yorkers think Ohio is out west. Could they find Hong Kong on the map?
Xu Xi, author of several works of fiction, in fact lives half her life in New York, and the other half in Hong Kong, when she is not traveling, that is, to writing residencies in Norway, Florida and Massachusetts, as she did last year. Her bad luckbut many a writers bad luck these dayswas to hit a reviewer whose outlook is utterly provincialanother heresy for those New Yorkers who like to think of themselves as the worlds only cosmopolitans. Worse, the reviewer is apparently badly educated. The quotations he or she marshals to demonstrate what the reviewer regards as Xu Xis narrative weaknesses all come early in the novel (did the reviewer even finish the book?) and come from the point of view of only one of the several characters in this novel, a woman whom sensitive readers will recognize as shallow, lazy and vain. In other words, the PW reviewer didnt, or couldnt, make the simple distinction between the characters and the authors point of view.
The reviewer was also equally numb to the several other subtleties and pleasures of this novel including the ironic and sometimes amusing interplay between the several different points of view; the intellignence and inclusiveness of Xu Xis handling of the dynamics of multi-linguistic, inter racial and cross cultural relationships, both personal and political; the rather astonishing internationalism of her characters who move between Jakarta and Myanmar, Singapore, Taiwan, China and Hong Kong the way many of us commute; and the background drama of the approaching handover to China with all the unknowns, and anxieties and hopes which accompanied itand still do. In other words, the PW review is either a smug provincial cheap shot or a calculated attempt to keep us believing that unless you live in that very over-rated city of New York, you dont exist.
This is not to say you have to be a world traveler or a foreign affairs expert to enjoy Xu Xis novel. First and foremost, this is a novel of characterssomething New York seems to be on the verge of rediscovering, finally?of people, and I would argue, of pairs of people, in love relationships and friendships which give off the sparks of conflict and passionate encounter, all of which lead to some kind of greater understanding. When you finish this novel, you realize just how carefully these relationships have been orchestrated. People may be lonley in this novel, but there are no loners in the sense that they are totally alienated and disconnected from others. These characters all inhabit a world of connections, some helpful, some inhibiting. Heresy!
The portraits of the friendships in this novel impress me most deeply, because none of them are easy friendships, and the friends quarrel with and irritate each other and take chances with each others trust and hopes and self-images. The same could be said for the love relationships here, some of which unravel, some of which survive even the most shocking of secrets. (In all her writing Xu Xi is always wonderful about the secrets people keep.) The author of this novel has clearly lived with her eyes and earsand heart--open, and one suspects she has known the highs and lows of success and failure and loving and losing, or unrequited desire and desire fulfilled. Personally, I think the Unwalled City rocksits a wonderful adventure into the intimate world of people I am happy this novel introduced me to.
Hong Kong exists. Xu Xi is one of its best natural resources. The Unwalled City will show you why.

The Unwalled City is a refreshing and highly entertaining novel that captures the atmosphere of living in HK in the 90s. I loved how Xu Xi brings out the uncertainties and tensions that prevailed at that period in time through the aspirations and fears of her 4 main characters. A fascinating read and a must for anyone who has a modicum of interest in modern HK and the real people who live there.

FINALLY, a book about Hong Kong that uncovers the REAL city, as opposed to dragons and triads. Don't at all understand the Publisher's Weekly review -- has the reviewer even READ the book, since he/she refers to Colleen, a Caucasian character, as an Asian?????