Review: Goodbye Chinatown (by Kit Fan)

My Rating: 3.5 stars

As a Hong Kong native, I’m always on the lookout for books about or set in the city of my birth, especially ones that are truly HK-focused – meaning written by authors actually born in or based in HK and who are familiar with the city’s culture, history, places, people, etc.  Therefore, going into Kit Fan’s second novel Goodbye Chinatown, I should’ve been excited, but instead, I was a bit apprehensive, as I had read his debut novel Diamond Hill back in 2021 and despite that book’s authentic portrayal of HK, I did not like the writing overall and struggled to get through it (and unsurprisingly, I ended up rating that one only 2 stars).  I didn’t know if this second novel would go down the same disappointing path as Fan’s previous one, so I picked this one up with some hesitation, though I’m happy to report that this one ended up being a very different book, both in style and tone, and surprised me in a good way.

This time around, Fan sets his story primarily in the UK (London, specifically), with Hong Kong serving as a secondary setting – only in the background during the first half of the book and then at the forefront during the second half – with the family at the center of the story being of Cantonese descent and also having the surname Fan.  After the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, Mr. and Mrs. Fan decided to leave Hong Kong with their 10-year-old daughter Amber in tow, eventually settling in London’s Chinatown and opening a Chinese restaurant called The Golden Palace.  Flash forward 12 years, The Golden Palace is no more, as it was bought out (ironically) by Mainland Chinese investors several years ago, but young Amber, who is now an Oxford-educated chef, decides to open a Chinese fusion restaurant she names Luna. Meanwhile, Amber’s parents make the decision to return to their home city of Hong Kong, taking their 4-year-old grandson Bobby with them.  Left behind to run her new restaurant, Amber channels her loneliness into the complex dishes that she makes and soon, Luna becomes the talk of the town and goes on to earn a Michelin star after a mysterious woman named Celeste pays a visit and provides Amber with some much-needed advice and support. 

Set primarily after the return of Hong Kong to China, with the shadow of “the June 4^th Incident” (HK people’s name for the Tiananmen Massacre) lingering constantly in the background, the story, at its core, is about an immigrant family’s struggle to reconcile the two disparate cultures that shape their lives and ultimately, their identities.  Amber is the main focus in much of the story, as we track the various changes that occur in her life against the backdrop of major world events such as the aftermath of the 1997 HK handover, 9/11, the Asian financial crisis in 2008, the HK student protests and umbrella movement in 2019, and finally, the onset of Covid in 2020.

I was around Amber’s age when Tiananmen occurred and I remember the nearly identical scene in the book occurring in my own household -- the chaos unfolding on TV and my parents watching with mouths open and tears streaming down their faces; celebrities and ordinary citizens alike, dressed in black, their faces grim, some crying, all holding candles and singing solemn, heart-wrenching ballads in televised vigils; and of course, in the aftermath of such a tragic event, the pervasive fear throughout Hong Kong that what happened in Tiananmen could happen to them too once the city is returned to China – a fear that prompted many of Hong Kong’s 7 million+ citizens to frantically look into the fastest ways to get themselves and their families out of the city before 1997 came along.  As a Hong Konger who grew up in the shadow of Tiananmen, I absolutely related to so many aspects of this story – in particular, this passage from the story summed up perfectly my own memories of how the event impacted my family and so many others at the time: “Sitting in the dark, [Amber] remembered the tens of thousands of candles of the televised vigils in the aftermath of Tiananmen, where everyone had worn black and sung heart-breaking songs about heroes—how bodies became mountains and how the colour of blood turned into the colour of a nation’s flag. Grief consumed images at a faster rate. Her parents had reassured Amber that the family had gone out onto the streets in solidarity. They’d choked back tears as they sang at the top of their lungs, mourning for the students and feeling proud and scared of a single man stopping a column of tanks, standing up for the freedom and democracy they still held dear. Among an ocean of like-minded citizens, they stood there, witnessing and being witnessed. Those were times when grief became an engine of fear, when parental responsibility meant emigration.”

Indeed, there were many beautiful passages such as the above in this book, but I especially loved the descriptions of the HK foods and dishes, many of which were familiar to me, as well as Amber’s interesting fusion take on this cuisine (I especially want to try the pineapple bun burger, which there is a recipe for in the book).  The food and historical elements aside though, the complexity of Amber’s family dynamics as well as her personal struggle with identity and meaning also resonated with me, with that said, I do wish that the family relationship part was explored a little more, as I felt that there was a certain lack of emotional depth to the story overall.

In terms of the main issue I had with this book (hence the 3.5 star rating), I echoed all the other reviewers’ complaint that the ending was too abrupt, to the point that the story felt incomplete.  I honestly felt shocked and disappointed when I reached what I thought would be the climax of the story, only to turn the page and see the Acknowledgements section.  I initially thought that perhaps I turned the pages too quickly and maybe missed a page or two (or three), but nope, I had truly reached the end of the book -- given how invested I was in the story, the poorly executed ending hit especially hard for me.  Also, the last segment of the book (the chapters that take place in 2020) felt kind of rushed, which also contributed to why I couldn’t bring myself to rate this higher. 

Overall, I definitely enjoyed this novel much more than Fan’s debut, but the structure issues unfortunately impacted my reading experience more than I would have liked.  Hopefully Fan’s next novel will see improvement with this.

Received ARC from World Editions via NetGalley.

Review: Diamond Hill (by Kit Fan)

My Rating: 2 stars

 

I really really wanted to like this book…actually, not just like it, but love it. I mean, how often do I come across a book written in English that is set in my birth city of Hong Kong and is actually about HK people, places, culture, history, etc.  After reading the premise, my expectation was that this would be a story that was truly HK-focused, with an authentic portrayal of the city that wasn't written from a primarily Western point of view.  Going into this, I was excited and kept thinking to myself — finally, a book about the old HK that will satisfy the nostalgia I've been feeling lately about a city I've always loved, but had become increasingly foreign to me in recent years.  I went into this with high hopes and also preparing to rate it highly.  Unfortunately, this book turned out to be nothing like what I expected (in a bad way) and after reading it, instead of feeling nostalgic, I actually ended up feeling frustrated and disappointed.

 

The biggest issue I had with this book was that the writing was very disjointed and uneven, which wouldn't have been as bad of a problem except that the story overall was also poorly executed — both of these things, along with several other issues I found, made this an extremely frustrating read for me. In fact, I had actually wanted to DNF this book several times (which is not a good sign, as I'm a stickler for finishing every book I read), but I pressed on, reminding myself every couple pages of all the things I had mentioned above about why I had been so excited to read this.  I ultimately finished, but not without resorting to skimming the last 50 pages or so (because by that point, I was already at my wit's end).

 

The main thing about the writing and execution that frustrated me was the constant switching back and forth between style and tone — one minute, the writing would be eloquent, descriptive, even philosophical, but then the next minute, the writing would descend into profanity-laced vulgarities that seemed to come out of nowhere.  If this happened only once or twice, then it wouldn't be a problem, but the writing actually alternated between these two extremes for the entire story.  As if that weren't enough, there was also a lot of switching back and forth between English and either formal Chinese or Cantonese slang (with English translation in parentheses next to it) — normally, I would be happy to see a book written in English about Chinese culture / experience utilize Chinese characters as needed to enhance the story, but in this case, the switching was done haphazardly, in a random way that made absolutely no sense to me — for instance, randomly inserting Chinese (with English translation) in the middle of characters' dialogues or having some side character who only shows up for like a minute blurt out a bunch of profanities in Cantonese as a main character passes by.  Again, I would be fine with it if incorporating these phrases served a purpose in the story, advanced the plot, or were necessary to characterization— but none of it did…the phrases that the author chose to write in Chinese didn't seem to have any rhyme or reason to them.  From a character perspective, it didn't make sense for some of the characters to speak a hybrid of English / Cantonese to the extent that these characters did (yes, some Hong Kongers do mix some English in their speech, but most ordinary folks don't constantly switch back and forth between the two languages like that unless they're bicultural or they were educated overseas or in an international school where everything is taught in English).  It almost seemed like the author couldn't decide whether he wanted to write in English or Chinese and so decided to do a hodgepodge of both.  

In addition, I also found the prolific and gratuitous use of Cantonese slang words and profanities throughout the story not only unnecessary, but also annoying.  In the Author's Note at the end of the book, Kit Fan explains that he included the Cantonese slang and profanities in both Chinese and English throughout the book in order to "give a culturally distinctive inflection to a language that is under threat, not unlike the shanty town in the novel" – while I agree with the sentiment that Cantonese is a language that has increasingly come under threat over the years, I disagree with the method of sprinkling 'random Cantonese profanities + their English translations' throughout the story as a means of preserving the "vitality of the language."  Even if the author wanted to show the distinctive cultural flavor of Cantonese slang (or the language as a whole), incorporating a few phrases here and there would've been enough — but inundating the story with it, especially when majority of the slang and profanities were irrelevant to the story, that's going overboard in my opinion.  In terms of the translations in parentheses— perhaps because I am both a Cantonese and English speaker myself (as well as a translator for the Chinese/English language pairing), this method especially frustrated me, as my brain is wired to automatically compare the Chinese and English to see if it was translated correctly (quite a bit of it actually wasn't), so each time it switched to Chinese, I got jarred out of the story – basically, rather than enhancing the story or helping me appreciate it more, the Chinese words and phrases with its translations ended up being a distraction that made it difficult to concentrate on the story itself.

 

Speaking of the story – well, this was another aspect that I found problematic.  First of all, there wasn't really a plot to speak of – there were a lot of detailed descriptions of places and characters' surroundings, but little to no substance in terms of what actually happens.  If I had to summarize this book, I would say that it is essentially an "information dump about HK" – there is an abundance of name-dropping of various HK people, places, things, historical events, cultural aspects, etc., almost all of which would be recognizable to anyone decently familiar with the city, but none of it advanced the plot and very little (if any) was actually relevant to the story.  Even the characters had no depth to them -- it seemed like the main purpose of the characters was to either 1) describe their surroundings, or 2) regurgitate heaps of (oftentimes unnecessary and irrelevant) information about HK to anyone who would listen, or 3) insult others with some type of profanity / vulgarity and/or drop a random Chinese idiom in the middle of a lengthy, rambling discourse about things may or may not have been important, but I had already stopped caring by that point.

 

What bothered me most about this book though was the stereotypical way in which all the female characters were portrayed in the story.  Of course, I wasn't expecting a male author to write complex female characters completely accurately, but I was disappointed (and more than a bit miffed) that the author seemed to go the route of portraying all the women as sexual stereotypes who essentially fell into three categories:  the uptight, sex-deprived nun; the promiscuous, 'gangster wannabe' tomboy;  and the sex-crazy, possibly a little unhinged prostitute.  Though I understand that these portrayals probably weren't intentional on the author's part, as a woman, I found such depictions offensive and worrisome, especially since we've seen over the past year how harmful perpetuating such stereotypes can be.  

 

With all that said, I do believe in giving credit where it's due and so I have to say that the author did a pretty good job giving readers unfamiliar with HK a better understanding of what life in Diamond Hill was like back in the day.  The feelings of despair and uncertainty that were pretty widespread throughout HK in the years after the signing of the Joint Declaration were also well-depicted — feelings that were exacerbated tenfold after what happened in Tiananmen in 1989 (and sparked fears about the fate of Hong Kongers after the handover).

Even though this book absolutely didn't work for me, I am clearly the exception here given all the 4 and 5 star reviews I've seen for this one.  So I would say check out the other reviews so you can make an informed decision on whether you'd be interested in reading this one. 

Received ARC from World Editions via Edelweiss.