兩行書(Part 4/4)

Hong Kong in the Cold War - Priscilla Roberts and John M. Carroll

The Cold War was a distinct and crucial period in Hong Kong’s evolution and in its relations with China and the rest of the world. Hong Kong was a window through which the West could monitor what was happening in China and an outlet that China could use to keep in touch with the outside world. Exploring the many complexities of Cold War politics from a global and interdisciplinary perspective, Hong Kong in the Cold War shows how Hong Kong attained and honed a pragmatic tradition that bridged the abyss between such opposite ideas as capitalism and communism, thus maintaining a compromise between China and the rest of the world.

The chapters are written by nine leading international scholars and address issues of diplomacy and politics, finance and economics, intelligence and propaganda, refugees and humanitarianism, tourism and popular culture, and their lasting impact on Hong Kong. Far from simply describing a historical period, these essays show that Hong Kong’s unique Cold War experience may provide a viable blueprint for modern-day China to develop a similar model of good governance and may in fact hold the key to the successful implementation of the One Country Two Systems idea.

A Death in Hong Kong - Nigel Collett
In January 1980 a young police officer named John MacLennan committed suicide in his Ho Man Tin flat. His death came mere hours before he was to be arrested for committing homosexual acts still, at that point, illegal in Hong Kong. But this was more than the desperate act of a young man, ashamed and afraid; both his death and the subsequent investigation were a smokescreen for a scandal that went to the heart of the establishment.
MacLennan came to Hong Kong from Scotland during a time of social unrest and corruption scandals, a time when the triads still took their cut, and when homosexuality and pedophilia were considered interchangeable and both offered easy targets for blackmail. The governorship of Sir Murray MacLehose was to be a time of reform and progress, but with that remit came the determination of many to suppress scandals and silence those who stirred up trouble. Both the life and death of John MacLennan seemed to many of those in power to threaten the stability of one of Britain’s last colonies.

Hong Kong Memoirs - Stanley S. K. Kwan with Nicole Kwan
The Dragon and the Crown is the unforgettable memoirs of Stanley Kwan, the creator of the Hang Seng Index.
Wedged between the East and the West—the Dragon and the Crown—Stanley Kwan’s life experiences are a microcosm of the forces pulling at Hong Kong. He was born into a traditional Chinese banking family but attended King’s College under the British colonial system. Fired up by patriotism during the war, he joined the Nationalist Chinese army and served as an interpreter for American forces in southwest China. In 1949, two of his brothers went to the Mainland to join the socialist revolution. Although tempted to join, he stayed in Hong Kong, worked for a British firm and became a “China watcher” at the American Consulate General. He finally joined a local Chinese bank—Hang Seng Bank where, as head of the Research Department, he launched the Hang Seng Index and witnessed the dramatic ebbs and flows of the Hong Kong economy. With the prospect of 1997, Stanley Kwan deliberated on his future and decided to retire to Canada in 1984, joining the tide of immigrants from Hong Kong.
While Hong Kong’s spectacular economic growth and its political development have been well documented, the social and cultural experiences of the ordinary people swept up in the changes and their thoughts and aspirations have not found a significant voice. Through the personal experiences of Stanley Kwan and those around him, the book gives such a voice to people whose lives have been profoundly affected by the dramatic changes that Hong Kong underwent as it transitioned from an entrepôt to an international financial center and from a colony to become a part of China.
The book contributes to the ongoing search for Hong Kong identity in the Special Administrative Region and will resonate among people in Hong Kong and those with ties to or an interest in the fate of the former colony.

The Shek Kip Mei Myth
Alan Smart raises serious questions about the standard view that Hong Kong’s mass public housing program was a direct and humane response by the Government to the Shek Kip Mei fire. Rather he argues that the Government’s response to that fire was grudging and incremental rather than a sharp and radical turning point, and that the security and stability of Hong Kong weighed as heavily, possibly more so, in the decisions than the predicament of the fire victims. His research shows that a whole sequence of major fires after Shek Kip Mei, and the political costs of the Mainland sending comfort missions to fire victims both before and after were needed to bring about the final commitment to provide mass public housing. In his critical examination of the conventional position, Professor Smart bases his case on a thorough reading of government records and provides a careful investigation into the origins of the public housing policy in Hong Kong.
This volume makes an important contrarian contribution to the postwar history of Hong Kong and is a significant addition to the study of its modern development.

Elizabeth Sinn and Christopher Munn
Meeting Place: Encounters across Cultures in Hong Kong, 1841–1984 presents detailed empirical studies of day-to-day interactions between people of different cultures in a variety of settings. The broad conclusion—that there was sustained and multilevel contact between men and women of different cultures—will challenge and complicate traditional historical understandings of Hong Kong as a city either of rigid segregation or of pervasive integration.
Given its geographical location, its status as a free port, and its role as a center of migration, Hong Kong was an extraordinarily porous place. People of diverse cultures met and mingled here, often with unexpected results. The case studies in this book draw both on previously unused sources and on a rigorous rereading of familiar materials. They explore relationships between and within the Japanese, Eurasian, German, Portuguese, British, Chinese, and other communities in areas of activity that have often been overlooked—from the schoolroom and the family home to the courtroom and international trading concern, from the gardens of Government House to boarding houses for destitute sailors. In their diverse experiences we see not just East meeting West, but also East meeting East, and South meeting North—in fact, a range of complex and dynamic processes that seem to render obsolete any simplistic conception of “East meets West.”

Reluctant Heroes - Fung Chi Ming
Through the history of rickshaw pullers in Hong Kong and Canton, Reluctant Heroes provides a rich portrait of the urban milieu and life in two contrasting yet interrelated cities in South China. Fung Chi Ming explains the dynamics between the rickshaw pullers’ participation in collective action and the intervention of the British colonial and Chinese authorities, and traces the pullers’ emergence and eclipse as a political force.
Reluctant Heroes is a fascinating study of rickshaw pullers in Hong Kong and Canton. The author reconstructs the daily lives and social environments of rickshaw pullers, the majority of whom were emigrants who differed in the loyalties of dialect, place of origin and kinship. Low-skilled yet partially self-employed, rickshaw pullers relied on entrepreneurial flair, in addition to physical stamina, to tout for fares, thus bridging the culture of petty traders and physical laborers. In the volatile urban environment, they were subjected not just to patron-client problems, but also the directives and regulations of the state, and to interventions of the police, and the British colonial and Chinese authorities.
Rickshaw pullers struggled with their adversities and became a political force to be reckoned with. Fung argues that they are “reluctant heroes,” since their collective outbursts were authentic protests against encroachments on their livelihood. They were spurred into collective actions that were at times cheered by the public, or embroiled in city politics, thus suffering great losses in political storms, when they would have preferred to lead quiet, anonymous lives.
Set against the backdrop of two contrasting yet interrelated cities in South China, Reluctant Heroes brings a richer understanding of urban living through a comparative study of the historic pattern of adaptation in the urban workplace, the powers of the state, and the repertoire of mass activism.

Returning Home with Glory - Michael Williams
Employing the classic Chinese saying “returning home with glory” (man zai rong gui 榮歸故里) as the title, Michael Williams highlights the importance of return and home in the history of the connections established and maintained between villagers in the Pearl River Delta and various Pacific ports from the time of the Californian and Australian gold rushes to the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
Conventional scholarship on Chinese migration tends to privilege nation-state factors or concepts which are dependent on national boundaries. Such approaches are more concerned with the migrants’ settlement in the destination country, downplaying the awkward fact that the majority of the overseas Chinese (huaqiao) originally intended to (and eventually did) return to their home villages (qiaoxiang). Williams goes back to the basics by considering the strong influence exerted by the family and the home village on those who first set out in order to give a better appreciation of how and why many modest communities in southern China became more modern and affluent. He also gives a voice to those who never left their villages (women in particular). Designed as a single case study, this work presents detailed research based on the more than eighty villages of the Long Du district (near Zhongshan City in Guangdong Province), as well as the three major destinations—Sydney, San Francisco, and Honolulu—of the huaqiao who came from this region. Out of this analysis of what truly mattered to the villagers, the choices they had and made, and what constituted success and failure in their lives, a sympathetic portrayal of the huaqiao emerges.

A Voyage to War
Hugh Dulley’s father (Peter Dulley) and mother (Therese Sander) met in Hong Kong on New Year’s Eve 1935. Four years later at the outbreak of war Peter, a weekend sailor, was called up in the Hong Kong Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. He eventually graduated to commanding an ocean-going tug of 500 tons from Hong Kong to Aden. En route he called at islands still enjoying pre-war peacetime and navigated across the Indian Ocean using a sextant. In July 1940 Therese, who was eight months pregnant, was evacuated from Hong Kong to the Philippines, where Hugh was born. They then traveled to Australia after a short stop in Hong Kong, which was to be the last time she saw Peter. Collected here is Peter’s correspondence to Therese over a period of six years. Edited and condensed by Hugh, it paints a unique and often humorous picture of life in Hong Kong in World War 2. It is published to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Hong Kong.

Policing Hong Kong: An Irish History - Patricia O'Sullivan
Hong Kong, 1918. A tranquil place compared to war-torn Europe. But on the morning of the 22nd January, a running battle through the streets of Wanchai ended in “The Siege of Gresson Street”. Five policemen lay dead, so shocking Hong Kong that over half the population turned out to watch their funeral procession.
One of the dead, Inspector Mortimor O’Sullivan, came from Newmarket: a small town nestled deep in rural Ireland. He, along with a dozen and more relatives, had sailed out to Hong Kong to join the Police Force.
Using family records and memories alongside extensive research in Hong Kong, Ireland and London, Patricia O’Sullivan tells the story of these policemen and the criminals they dealt with. This book also gives a rare glimpse into the day-to-day life of working-class Europeans at the time, as it follows the Newmarket men, their wives and families, from their first arrival in 1864 through to 1941 and beyond.