My Rating: 3 stars
I was born in Hong Kong and even though I had never
really lived there due to my family immigrating to the U.S. when I was a baby, I’ve
always had an inexplicable attraction towards the city of my birth. I
follow HK news daily, sometimes even more so than news about the U.S. or local
news about the state where I currently live.
I watch a lot of HK movies and drama series and also follow the HK
entertainment scene very closely (despite living in Los Angeles, I can’t begin
to tell you who the current rising stars are in Hollywood because I honestly don’t
pay much attention, but ask me who the most popular HK celebrities are and I
can probably talk your ear off). As an
avid reader, I also naturally gravitate towards books that have a Hong Kong
element to them – i.e.: books set in HK,
about HK people or culture, written by HK authors, etc. I’ve never really understood why, throughout
my life, I’ve always had such an affinity for a city that I barely lived in and
certainly didn’t grow up in – to this day, I still don’t really understand, but
regardless, I’ve come to embrace the city as a place very near and dear to my
heart. Nowadays, every time the words
“Hong Kong” comes up, whether in casual conversation with friends, in the media,
on television, in books, etc., my ears automatically perk up. There’s a constant curiosity within me to see
how my birth place is depicted, especially to those who may not be familiar
with the city.
When I first heard that a compilation of HK author Xu Xi’s
short stories would be republished in a new collection to be released this year, I was
excited and quickly picked up the collection as soon as it was released several
months ago. I’ve read some of Xu Xi’s
works before, but it was a long time ago, back during a time when I read more
casually and didn’t really have the foresight to understand or appreciate what I
was reading. Things are different now of
course and having experienced what I have over the years, I tend to approach most
of what I read with the hope of forming a “personal connection” in some way. With short stories, especially ones that have
completely different characters and little to no linkage from one story to the
next, this type of connection is hard to establish, which is why I’m not much
of a fan of short story collections in general.
The stories in this particular collection were actually ones that Xu Xi
wrote throughout her long, illustrious career, with the oldest one written back
in 1981 and the most recent one from 2001 (this is actually the second printing
of the book – it originally came out back in August 2001). Not having read this collection back when it was
originally published in 2001, this was my first experience reading Xu Xi’s short
stories and I have to admit that it was different from what I expected. This was a mixed bag of sorts – an eclectic
combination of stories, all set in Hong Kong, with the common theme of being
infused with doses of Hong Kong history spanning 3 decades (from the 1960s up
through HK’s return to China in 1997) that serve as the backdrop for each
story. I was expecting the stories to
all have a “uniqueness” to them that was distinctly and recognizably HK and
while most of them did, there were a few that I felt were a bit too “generic,”
almost as though they could’ve taken place anywhere else other than HK. Also, a few of the stories felt incomplete,
as though we as readers were only being treated to a small “snippet” of the
story and would have to go hunt down the continuation elsewhere. In reading through Xu Xi’s author notes and
acknowledgments at the beginning of the book, it does seem that each story was excerpted
from various publications over a span of 20 years – some of the stories were originally
published in magazines and newspapers, a few were from earlier short story anthologies,
two were actually excerpts from novels, and two were originally manuscripts
broadcast on the radio. I’m not too sure
why these particular stories were selected to be included in this collection,
but I think the way these stories were pulled together (being from so many
different sources and formats) affected my ability to connect with some of the
stories as much as I wanted to. I would
prefer to have read these stories from the original source where they were initially
published, within the original context of the stories, rather than excerpts from
a longer anthology or novel. This was the
main reason for me rating this collection only 3 stars, as I put a little more
weight on the impact to my personal reading experience than I did to the contents
of the stories themselves. With that
said, I do appreciate the fact that Xu Xi listed in detail the original sources
that these stories came from in her Acknowledgements page so I can at least go
back and hunt down those sources and perhaps re-read these stories in their
original context someday.
Overall, I would say that for those who may not be
familiar with Hong Kong and its history, this collection is a good way to “get
your feet wet” – plus the way Xu Xi blended history and fiction together was
well-done and made the history portion especially accessible to those who may
not be too keen on reading history straight from textbooks. One thing to note is that Xu Xi is one of the
few writers born and raised in HK who actually writes entirely in English
rather than Chinese, so at least we don’t have to worry about aspects of her
stories being “lost in translation” (something that I’m very particular
about). With all that said however, I would
recommend reading these stories in their original form if possible (i.e.: from
the sources in which they were originally published) so as to do justice to Xu
Xi’s skills as a writer and story-teller, which stands out less in this story
collection than it does in her other works.
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