In this splendid, lavishly illustrated cultural history of Hong Kong, Leo Ou-fan Lee asks what makes “his” city so special. A “rational answer,” he explains, is difficult to come up with, as Hong Kong “thrives on confusion and contradiction” (p. 1). Inspired by architect and theorist Rem Koolhaas, Lee assumes the posture of an archaelogue and a local flâneur: His book includes six chapters dedicated to different regions of Hong Kong, their streets and sites, and their connections with literature and film, concluding with two more thematic chapters—“Hong Kong Lifestyle” and “City and Country”—the latter dealing with this former British colony's relationship with the rest of China since 1997.
Lee argues that most Western observers have overemphasized Hong Kong's role in the global economy, ignoring the “dynamics of local culture and its interaction with the official political regime” (p. 7). Although he occasionally groups a diverse range of sources under “colonial” or “Western” images, and although he wonders whether he may have leaned too far toward localism, Lee brilliantly captures the dynamic interplay between global and local, Western and Chinese, traditional and modern, and among the diverse political, social, economic, and cultural forces that drive this fascinating city. In chapter 1, he warns against belittling the “low” origins of Hong Kong's culture, “which contain the seeds of its real strength” (p. 41). Later, he explains how “real” Hong Kong food is not Cantonese but the “half-colonial and half-native hybrid” of the cha tsan ting (teahouse, p. 205). Accounting for the persistence of traditional Cantonese opera, Lee argues that although this persistence represents the “dynamism of native culture” that “refuses to be overwhelmed by globalization” and the “uneven” development of Hong Kong's modernization, it is mainly because opera is “the only popular form that unites the local Hong Kong population, regardless of age, gender, or class” (p. 231). Throughout, Lee highlights Hong Kong's many contradictions and paradoxes, such as how, in the early twentieth century, it was a “seedbed of revolution” and a “conservative backwater”—a “city between worlds” (p. 75).
What especially distinguishes Lee's book from those bemoaning Hong Kong's lack of culture and history is his commitment to showing what is to be found in the region. Although he is quick to point out what Hong Kong is missing (it cannot boast a single entry on UNESCO's list of World Heritage sites), he also notes that if colonial Hong Kong never produced a literature “worthy of a Conrad, Camus, or Mann,” it nevertheless inspired a “string of best-selling novels dealing with the themes of commerce, romance, adventure, and spying” (p. 129). Rather than mourning the loss of the once-rural New Territories to development, Lee argues that the “sheer density of humanity” in new towns such as Sha Tin has domesticated the “cold rationality” of modern planned-living environments inspired by Le Corbusier (p. 176). Far from a “non-place,” Lee sees a “hybrid place,” with “its energy derived not only from its mixture of Chinese and Western traditions on the most basic level of people's existence . . . but from the constant evolution of this mixture in people's everyday lives” (p. 240). It is also a place where aspects of Chinese history that have been forgotten or suppressed in mainland China are still commemorated: Annual candlelight vigils for the Tiananmen massacre, for example, continue to draw tens of thousands of participants.
Although Lee's affection for Hong Kong shines through on every page, his book is neither nostalgic nor congratulatory. On the contrary, Lee expresses serious reservations about Hong Kong's cultural future. Becoming part of China again since 1997 has made the region more parochial, visible in a “siege mentality” whereby “all outsiders, especially those from the mainland, are potential competitors” (p. 276). Following social anthropologist Ulf Hannerz's definition of a cosmopolitan and transnational metropolis, Lee finds Hong Kong lacking in two aspects: third-world populations that have become an integral part of the dominant population, and specialists in “expressive activities” such as cuisine, design, fashion, film, and literature. He suggests that Hong Kong's population is perhaps “too overwhelmingly Chinese” to make Hong Kong “truly cosmopolitan.” The region's racial homogeneity may even reinforce Hong Kong's “provincialism,” which, Lee argues, has been worsened by “its prevalent monolingualism”—Cantonese (p. 277).
If the very same localism that has given Hong Kong its cultural vitality “degenerates into a narrow form of provincialism,” Lee notes, Hong Kong will become “a parochial town, just another Cantonese city in the Pearl River delta, no longer an international metropolis” (p. 279). Nor is Lee sparing in his criticism of the Hong Kong government, whose commitment to urban development at the expense of cultural heritage may turn Hong Kong into “another generic city, without character or characteristics beyond malls, hotels, and an expanded airport” (p. 279). Anyone who is interested in Hong Kong will find this book enormously satisfying.
