By: Malcolm Jack
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Malcolm Jack was brought up and schooled in Hong Kong before returning to university in the UK. As a child, he learned Cantonese at the same time as English. He has had a career both as a public servant and a writer. His writing includes books, articles, reviews on history, literature, philosophy, and politics, as well as travel works on Portugal, and most recently, on South Africa. He is a frequent visitor to Hong Kong.
Malcolm Jack ha dato un taglio originalissimo alla sua rappresentazione di Hong Kong, scegliendo di dedicare ciascun capitolo del libro a una scrittrice o scrittore che hanno eletto il ‘porto profumato’ a ispirazione delle proprie opere. Della realtà complessa, ibrida e affascinante, frutto dell’incontro tra Oriente e Occidente, Jack è la guida ideale. A Hong Kong è cresciuto, conosce la lingua e la cultura del posto e all’indomani del trasferimento di sovranità del 1997 ha prestato pure opera di consulenza presso il LEGCO, il consiglio legislativo della città, in qualità di esperto istituzionale di procedure legislative dell’ordinamento britannico. La sua Hong Kong è la città novecentesca che vive nell’attesa del ritorno alla Cina. È un libro essenziale, che meriterebbe una traduzione italiana.
This is a wonderful book for anyone seeking to understand the historic, latter 20th Century identity of Hong Kong through the eyes and experiences of real people whose lives and experiences crossed multiple boundaries in a very complex society in many ways. Dr Jack’s writing style is as dramatic as a Mahler Symphony, and draws one into each person’s life as if you were there. and then one can weave all this together in a collage of understanding a land and society in a way that would otherwise be unknown to the visitor of today. Read this book first, and then anything else about HK!
My Hong Kong è il lavoro di raccolta di Malcolm Jack dei punti di vista di autori di varie nazionalità che hanno vissuto nella Hong Kong tra gli anni Cinquanta e il 1997, anno della fine del controllo britannico. Ogni capitolo è dedicato ad uno scrittore diverso tramite cui vengono mostrate tutte le sfaccettatura della Hong Kong del tempo, dal lusso della Victoria Peak fino alle stradine vivaci di Kowloon, e, in particolare, sorge la questione della identità ibrida della città.
In My Hong Kong Malcolm Jack captures the essence of Hong Kong through the eyes of an eclectic group of authors, as well as his own experiences in that metropolis. This book has wide appeal and will be enjoyed by those with a passion for travel and those with a passion for literature alike. A most enjoyable read.
GC, Toronto.
Review of “My Hong Kong” by Malcolm Jack
How important are our first recollections? I personally remember the double-decker trams that trundled around the corner of Theobalds Road in London and into Kingsway via the tunnel that still remains to this day though no longer used for trams. Imagine my surprise, when visiting Hong Kong in 1996, to find similar modes of transport trundling through the streets there.
Malcolm Jack’s experience was altogether more exotic than that of most of us who have had the good fortune to learn Cantonese Chinese in Hong Kong at the knee of his Amah although this was not the more prestigious Mandarin Chinese, which perhaps touches on the theme of racism that keeps cropping up through the book. Nevertheless, the book also picks up that sense of excitement, dynamism and energy which would have infused the life of a young European lad.
The race issue comes across as the Mandarin Chinese speakers feel themselves to be superior to all other groups and all Chinese people look down on the Europeans. Surprisingly for a group of people considered to be inscrutable, the Chinese are more openly emotional than their British counterparts. Behind closed doors, British diplomatic elites look askance and make their asides about everybody else whilst keeping their emotions to themselves behind their stiff upper lips. Worse still is the broad contempt for the Eurasians by everyone else.
The 99-year lease of Hong Kong makes the period of the book quite unique - I don’t suppose the Chinese will lease it to anyone else in the near future now that it has been returned to them. Moreover, the book gathers stories from people with a complete gamut of backgrounds all of whom have been directly involved with the place in some way or other. There are those in diplomatic employment in Hong Kong, native Chinese who have always supported the Chinese way of life and those who have taken the opportunity to seek alternative lifestyles in the West. His writers come from periods throughout the tenure of the British 99-year lease but the racist attitudes seem the same no matter what the background of the writer or when they were writing.
As has been written, at the end of the day, Hong Kong is essentially Chinese (at least 95% of the population being so) and this has been the case throughout Britain’s tenure. The Hong Kong populace will gradually be absorbed into the “Chinese Empire” despite Britain’s efforts to try to dilute that effect. Whilst the Cantonese inhabitants may be more "devil may care” than their Chinese cousins further North, they are nevertheless Chinese not European or even “worse!” Eurasian. Race rears its ugly head in every place and in every walk of life. It seems to be inescapable whether in China or anywhere else in the world.
As I have said Malcolm Jack’s book draws on the experience of writers and commentators from all backgrounds but out of this he provides us with a nostalgic view of Hong Kong, clearly heartfelt, which has affected the most formative years of his life. A good and enlightening read.
Malcolm Jack’s book on Hong Kong is innovative, charming and compelling. Through his curious and sympathetic approach, the reader discovers a multicultural and multifaceted vibrant city. The various authors become part of a masterly crafted narrative, creating a rich tapestry of a fascinating city. It’s a very personal book, but, at the same time, with all its warmth, the reader is captivated and makes it somehow part of his own experience. I guess this is what a great book really is: a bridge between different worlds. And this is a very fine one!
It was a great pleasure to be transported back by Macolm Jack's book to the Hong Kong of my youth in the 50's and 60's. Reading the names of familiar people and places so evocatively described, my memory went back over the years, recalling the sights and sounds of busy streets, the aromas and flavours of different foods, the strange encounters with unusual people; remembering the annual celebrations of seasonal occasions, always accompanied by the rapid stutter of strings of fireworks; in short I relived the happy years of a childhood so enriched by the cosmopolitan nature of the colony. I have often struggled to describe those early experiences to friends and family in later years, but somehow the description never quite comes off. Unless I was talking to one who had been there and shared the experience, it has been well nigh impossible to convey the wonder and the excitement of that time, the rare friendships, trips to the beaches, weekly visits to the cinemas, the everyday stumbling upon new and unexpected places as one roamed about different districts in Hong Kong and Kowloon.
Now I shall be able to put "My Hong Kong" into their hands and say, "Read this and it will give you some idea of what it was like". From the careful selection of books about the Hong Kong of those years, Malcolm Jack in his comments has succeeded in conjuring up both a history of the times as perceived by the different communities who came to the colony as businessmen and bankers, shopkeepers, fishermen, colonial officials, refugees and migrants, expatriates from around the globe, all playing very different parts, the very rich and the very poor. At the same time the references to particular places, Wanchai, the Peak, Repulse Bay, Aberdeen, Nathan Road, Kowloon Tong and many others, each invested with their own charcteristic associations that he so accurately recounts, gives the receptive reader a vivid picture of the kaleidoscopic nature of those years. The Hong Kong of that time has long passed, but thanks to this book, as aide-memoire for those who were there, or, for others as an evocative account of a wondrous time and place in the middle of the twentieth century, it remains an indelible vision of what once was.
“My Hong Kong” by Malcolm Jack is a delightful read.
The quotes and stories from other books add to the pleasure and depth. This makes one want to re-read or read these books as no one has a better perception of the backdrop that they were set against.
It is a pity that there is not much about Malcolm Jack’s experiences in Hong Kong as to what happened after he attended school in England and returned for holidays. It would be nice to learn more about his enlightened parents and why they went against the colonial norm by allowing Malcolm to learn the local vernacular.
Another matter that would be a delightful episode to include is how in later years he went in search of his beloved Ah Lan.
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