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Title: Hong Kong: Epilogue to an Empire (Vintage Departures) by Jan Morris ISBN: 0-679-77648-6 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 January, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (6 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: If you are going to Hong Kong, read this first.
Comment: At least one of the reviewers on this list was unkind about the book, but I think it only fails, in the manner that all single-volume histories do, by trying to cover so much in so little. I have only read the unrevised 1990 Penguin paperback and only after I had already worked in Hong Kong in the early 90's. I wish I had read it before I went there, because it would have helped me to make sense of the total assault on the senses that HK is.
If you want, or need, to have more context than a guidebook will provide, this is where you will get it.
Rating: 2
Summary: Scattershot
Comment: If lace doilies could read, they'd love Jan Morris. Yes, she's a facile writer. Her sentences are at once both sinewy and elegant, and her book is rich with detail. However, reading Hong Kong by Jan Morris is like surveying the wreckage after a car bomb explodes a national archive. Miles of shelves have dumped their contents; and all the pages have been blown off their bookbindings. What remains are heaps of torched and scattered passages having little to no connection, except in catastrophic coincidence. To think of it another way, imagine learning animal husbandry by studying the floor of the butcher shop: odd scraps of meat, tangled ligaments, knotty tendons, and splattered blood. Collectively, they suggest "animal," but all the meaning and life has been stripped away. No one is going to learn to raise pigs that way. Similarly, I couldn't understand Hong Kong by reading Hong Kong. Perhaps I'm too harsh. Her book was neither a terrorist act nor even a massacre. In fact, at times her flowery writing is intoxicating. Nevertheless, I got the feeling that in her mind, Morris writes to seduce William F. Buckley, Jr., and that's just sick.
Rating: 4
Summary: Impressions of Hong Kong
Comment: I thought that this was a very readable, informative and entertaining portrait of Hong Kong. I can't attest to the book's accuracy as I've not yet visited Hong Kong, and it did feel a little out-of-date as the edition I had was written just prior to the British withdrawal in 1997. I can, therefore, only judge the book on how well it maintained my interest, which it did throughout.
Jan Morris uses a mixture of anecdotes, personal impressions and history: what the reader does not get is a straightforward history, nor a "travel book". Rather, it is a combination of both, and I thought that her method worked well, enabling her to make direct contrasts with the past, contextualising her impressions of the place.
As far as I could tell, Morris does not limit her examination - no parts of Hong Kong society are neglected. There is a good scattering of maps, which I found very useful. The photos in my edition could have been a bit less grainy though. But above all, I'm intrigued to know how an "electric ash tray" is supposed to operate (even though I don't smoke) and, more fascinating than that, what on earth an "electronic stud-finder" is supposed to be used for!!
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Title: Travelers' Tales Hong Kong by James O'Reilly, Larry Habegger, Sean O'Reilly ISBN: 1885211031 Publisher: Travelers' Tales Guides Pub. Date: 01 March, 1996 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Kowloon Tong by Paul Theroux ISBN: 0395901413 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 06 July, 1998 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Lonely Planet Hong Kong, Macau (10th Edition) by Damian Harper ISBN: 1864502304 Publisher: Lonely Planet Publications Pub. Date: 01 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.99 |
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Title: Culture Shock! Hong Kong by Betty Wei, Elizabeth Li ISBN: 1558686487 Publisher: Graphic Arts Center Publishing Company Pub. Date: 01 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Fodor's 2003 Hong Kong (Fodor's Hong Kong) by Fodors ISBN: 1400010861 Publisher: Fodor's Travel Publications Pub. Date: 07 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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