Hong Kong Books

a very good book which deals in details with the listening strategies. I would like to review it again as it is no longer availble in our university library. Iam a post graduate student preparing an M.A in linguistic sciense and E.L.T. I am working on the improvement of the listening skill through the use of storytelling. Here is my e-mail for any suggestions and help : messekher@francemail.com

Jason Wordie is already well-known to people interested in the history of Hong Kong. His book Streets: Exploring Hong Kong Island is the only cultural and historical guidebook to the city available in English. It is leagues ahead of any of the glib mass-produced travel books for the trendy rich or the parsimonious backpacker. Mr. Wordie brings to life the overlooked stories of Hong Kong island that can be found on every street corner. He writes with a passion for the city's history that simply cannot be found elsewhere. I highly recommend the book and eagerly look forward to the publication of his guide book for Kowloon.

Struggle of a Hong Kong Girl is the story of Cheung Mo-ying, a survivor. From the humblest beginnings, she struggled against all odds and left behind a life of poverty. Her parents had brought Mo-ying to Hong Kong when she was a child and, because of her father's gambling, they lived from hand to mouth, living on rice and all three sleeping in one bed.

Mo-ying was a beautiful girl, and, early on, her mother decided it would be she who would bring wealth to the family. Good fortune smiled on Mo-ying and she met Chan Yat-sing, one of the richest men in the Colony. Although married, he showered her with gifts and paid for her education. Though they lost touch many times, theirs was a love that spanned a lifetime.

With Yat-sing's money and her own thirst for knowledge, Mo-ying received the finest education. She spent several years in solitude and eventually wrote a book about her many years of hardship. When she became a best-selling author, Mo-ying once again tried to locate Yat-sing, this time after a twenty-year separation, to share with him her happiness.

A story of love and courage, Struggle of a Hong Kong Girl, by Lily Chan, is a beautiful and inspiring tribute to faith, hope, and perserverance.
--- from book's dustjacket

Since I started surfing a few years ago, I have looked for a good guide book for my aim. I had not found one til i read this one. This is the complete surf guide for anyone going to Indonesia discovering its marvelous waves.

Tsui Hark occupies a very important place in HK movies, for he virtually took HK movies to a new era by brilliantly melding elements of traditional chinese film with contemporary cinematographic aesthetics. This is a well-researched study on the subject and I would recommend it to anyone who has an interest in movies.

Carol Waite has excellently presented her father's memoirs about his time spent as a prisoner of war. His observations are broadminded for the most part. I liked his unaffected accounts of his everyday experiences, sometimes sprinkled with humor. I enjoyed Ms. Waite's inclusion at the end of each chapter her mother's thoughts about how the family was managing at home and how she perceived what was happening to her husband with the limited information available to her. I was glad I took the time to read this book.

This is a fabulous book in that though it's fiction, each of the writers inevitably revealed his/her true experiences with the different respective cultures. Being an asian myself, I very much appreciate this book as part of a classic collection. I believe this book also worked as an inspiration for any writer or would-be writers. I highly recommend it for inspirational and educational reading. I wonder if there are also following editions, ie. from after 1988, I hope so! If not, someone please do it!

This is one of my favorite kids books- the pictures are gorgeous, and are a wonderful history of what life was like in Hong Kong 30 years ago.

Quoting from the back cover:

"November 1944: Germany is losing World War II. In a last, desperate attempt to turn the tide, German High Command sends a U-boat loaded with the latest in weapons technology and uranium to meet with the Japanese in the Philippine Sea. U-1706 also carries highly sensitive documents.

"November 2004: High in the mountains of the Black Forest at the Freiberg Institute, two young scientists make a revolutionary breakthrough during a routine experiment. Instead of a test cube, they transport an entire submarine from the past to the future.

"Stranded in the 21st century, U-1706 with all its crew is soon sighted in Southeast Asia, drawing the attention of American Intelligence. The two German scientists must race U.S. operatives to find the boat and make contact, to prevent the worst."

If you like Sci-Fi and suspenseful submarine stories, you will most certainly enjoy this novel. Rene Egle is a consummate writer who uses his smooth flowing, delightful style to weave this multi-faceted adventure to a satisfactory conclusion. U-1706 is well written and well edited and considering the depth, complexity and intrigue, it is definitely worth the price.

Kaye Trout
Reviewer

This book is a major achievement. Detailed consideration of cases and memoranda, with sensitivity to their legal and administrative minutiae, brings out the interplay of large forces, all of them changing in relation to each other. He shows the importance of global forces, of the conversion of the Hong Kong economy into an advanced market-capitalist centre, of a colonial regime moving from a paternal imperialist to a powerful arbiter of profit-taking local interests and of Cold War strategy with pragmatic (mutually beneficial) arrangements with the mainland Communist government, and of the transformation of landholding and kinship by New Territory residents from surface-sub-soil bundles of rights to relations transformed by immigration of new settlers and urban migration of old in which the nature of land changes without disturbing ties to land. He achieves his aim to show that what are usually studied as phenomena isolated from each other, namely the kinship organisations of the New Territories, the laissez-faire and indirect rule of Hong Kong, and globalisation of politics and economy were not isolated, but formed in relation to each other locally and in basic ways. He shows successfully that the descriptions of each have been stereotyped.

The book is a contribution to historical anthropology, questioning and rethinking the way 'custom' has been an object first of transformation when it is preserved by a rationalising ordinance and then of negotiation and misunderstanding, as well as a preserve of indigenous subjects adapting themselves to fiercely competitive change. It is a contribution to the history of the ways in which the British colonial doctrine of indirect rule has been implemented. Finally, within these achievements, it is a reappraisal of the post-war anthropology of kinship, in the New Territories and elsewhere, while bringing together a great many individual studies. To them he adds his own enquiries into a number of Hakka villages in the NT. Again this is done with great sensitivity, this time to the participants' usage of terms and their misunderstanding when translated into English as 'family' or 'lineage'. The major theoretical result of this reappraisal is to dissolve the British social-structural problematic of local solidarity carried by lineage trusts and local lineage segments, and to demonstrate that the formation of trusts is an individual's will to his patri-descendants, distinct from the transmission of worship and of common substance down a patriline, and also from the general obligation to continue to look after the dead, and that all these are distinct from the incorporation of a family or of a village in a present situation which includes the formation of villages as communities in different and specifiable historical conjunctures (Ming dynasty as distinct from pre-Ming, British colony pre-war and post-war, etc.).

In short, this book is bound to be a major contribution to the anthropology of China and to the historical anthropology of British colonial rule, its basic assumptions and how some of the same assumptions were inflected through British anthropology.