Dear Hong Kong: An Elegy to a City

Penguin Specials: The Hong Kong Series

by Xu Xi

From a writer whose body of work witnesses her love affair with Hong Kong comes a highly personal narrative that unravels her recently finalized decision to leave the city for good. Xu Xi explores her tumultuous relationship with Hong Kong, her personal frustrations with how the city has developed in the recent past, and how these changes have informed her decision not to spend her later years there—a farewell address to the place that has shaped so much of her own identity.

Genres: Nonfiction, China, Memoir, Asia, Asian Literature, History

144 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2017

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

XU XI is the author’s pinyin* short form name which is also her byline, but she is most assuredly not the following beings with the same pinyin name: a Chinese painter & sculptor; the author of tomes about acupuncture; a nationalist or a dissident-in-exile of any nation-state; a reality TV show host in some special economic zone or on YouTube; an Academic in any Intellectual Discipline, real or imagined, as capitalized by Pooh or some other friendly wild thing. She has however had three legal English names (as well as several best left unnamed of dubious legal quality) and strives assiduously not to acquire any others.

However, she really is the author of thirteen books, including five novels, six collections of short fiction & essays and most recently Insignificance: Hong Kong Stories, released June 15, 2018 by Signal 8 Press; the memoir Dear Hong Kong: An Elegy for a City (2017), as part of Penguin's Hong Kong series for the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to China. She is also editor of four anthologies of Hong Kong writing in English. Forthcoming from Nebraska Univeristy Press in March 2019 is an essay collection This Fish Is Fowl.


A former Indonesian national, born and raised in Hong Kong, she eventually morphed into a U.S. citizen at the age of 33, having washed onto that distant shore across from Lady Liberty. These days, she splits time between New York and Asia (her sights set on the land of her former nationality, Indonesia) and still mourns the loss of her beloved writing retreat in Seacliff, on the South Island of New Zealand, where she hovered, joyously, for seven years.

*pinyin = transliteration for Mandarin Chinese or Putonghua (P), the official language of China although Xu is far more fluent in Cantonese (C), that being the people’s language of her birth city, Hong Kong.

Reviews

[Jasmine A. N. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok Xu Xi. I will officially be dropping you from my oeuvre of Anglophone HK writers because I just don't think this is working out. The last work I read from her is The Unwalled City, which I then used, along with another work by a different author, to write out my undergraduate capstone essay as an English major. I didn't like that one as well, but my point in mentioning that is to elucidate that this is not my first time with Xu Xi as an author, and that I am both personally and academically invested in narratives of Hong Kong as a place.

Where do I start with my issues? The writing. By golly. I was seriously holding out that The Unwalled City was an anomaly and that the writing in that was just unbearable. How do I explain Xu Xi's writing style? She writes like your ex that thinks he can write poetry but simply doesn't know how to lay back on excess and words that seem pretty and sentences that seem complex, all in the name of seeming to have style. I want to say the writing is atrocious, but I do understand it can just be a matter of taste. That said, I couldn't help but think to myself that if I were a little bit more uninhibited with my writing, I would have sounded exactly like this. Too many weird words with sentences that run on and on. Thank God for professors who tell me my writing can be unbearable. A humbling process, but very much needed.

What else? Reading this in 2023, you can tell it is extremely dated. Hong Kong as a place, if not obvious enough already, is very strange. We are a city living in, to use the hackneyed term, 'borrowed time'. While this brings on a level of stagnation, it is also a place that moves at breakneck speed in some ways. Every new year there is some new development, good or bad, as we patiently wait for 2046/7 to roll in. I will be 45 then. Middle-aged. This city matters to me. Writing about leaving the city in 2017, therefore unable to mention all that is 2019 and after, feels laughable. Wow, yes, you chose to leave this city way before it got into bigger shit and still had the audacity to be sombre about it. That is how it feels reading this as a 20-something-year-old born and raised in this city, who has yet the capacity and ability to move out.

For a work that claims to be a love letter to the city, there really is barely any analysis of the city itself and its history. Only little footnotes that give the illusion of knowing a lot about the city, but come off as extremely white-washed and trying to gain brownie points. With who? Lord knows. The work is more just a string of Xu Xi's own memories of her fairly privileged upbringing, which is ultimately uninteresting. I see people say this is a heartbreaking letter to this city, and I want to laugh. Who are you? Where the hell do you live? She barely talks about the city in this. It is barely heartbreaking. I feel no sense of sadness. She never writes of why she is reluctantly fond of this place. All she talks about is how she never wants to be back but can't help it and comes back and then leaves and now she will never be back ever again. Ok and? I have no idea what the hell y'all are on about.

She also refers to Hong Kong as a 'he' throughout? Referencing 'him' as this toxic lover she has. I really had a bone to pick with this analogy, because you can tell as she goes along telling her story (or whatever this was) that the 'he'-choice is to amplify Hong Kong's role as this kind of perpetrator for her pain and sadness (if it was even felt). Hong Kong as 'perpetrator' or 'abuser' or 'actor' has never sat right with me. It ignores so many political nuances and the way Hong Kong is essentially a victim to the whims of two (pseudo)colonial powers, all the more evidenced now that we live in post-2019/2020/NSL Hong Kong. Of course, switching the pronoun to a 'she' doesn't make anything better, but the choice so clearly illuminates how little Xu Xi knows of Hong Kong outside her own little bubble. It is just aggravating and upsetting. I am very incensed writing this review if it isn't already obvious.

For the love of God, if you want to read about Hong Kong, please start with Karen Cheung's The Impossible City. It isn't perfect, but it is eons better and much more updated. It also, thank God, because this is a phenomena I am so fucking tired of, follows an author who did not go through colonial education (or the IB, thank God again). It brings in a much needed perspective that is especially missing in narratives about Hong Kong, academically or literarily, and I would much rather that receives all the hype.

I am so tired of being disappointed by Hong Kong writers. Time and time again, narratives out there in English of this city, to put very bluntly, just suck. As I write this review, Tony Leung has just won a lifetime achievement award at the Venice Film Festival. Chow Yun-fat is still thriving and happily living here and greatly beloved. I'm so tired of Hong Kong writers in diaspora acting as if the city is beyond saving when they've never done anything in the first place and have no clear idea what they're losing anyways. There are people who have immense heart for this city and can clearly show it. I do reluctantly love this city, faults and all. This place is all I've ever known. I'm so tired of reading of people who think they get it but don't. Good grief.

[Annie Su]

This book made me feel a sense of longing for a city that I've never really lived in. The author wrote love letters over the course of decades (including through the increasing cosmopolitanism of the city and its 1997 handover) to Hong Kong and mourned its growing pains and the city that it used to be. Memory was also treated like a...living thing that speaks. I really liked the footnotes, many of which provided historical and cultural information tinged with the author's observations such as the multilingualism in HK and how the author's most fluent language was English, but a context-less one that was inculcated in school based on British-Anglo teachings, so she was culture shocked when she moved to the US, as she picked up slang and colloquialisms.

"My life exploded whenever I left HK scattering pieces of me around the world. At 17 my tears over leaving home were quickly replaced by the wonder of the new, of all that Hong Kong did not offer."

"When memory speaks of those early adult years, it is travel away from HK that is recalled with the greatest pleasure. Which makes me wonder if home is really where the heart is, or where you simply park your stuff during specific time periods."

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although this is a short book, it's one to savor. I wasn't born and raised in Hong Kong, but felt I could relate to a great part of her story. I've lived in Hong Kong a couple times and that always seems so complicated when I tell people. But after Xu Xi left for college, she returned to Hong Kong a number of times and this book recounts her many incarnations as a Hong Kong person. She tackles identity issues as the daughter of overseas Chinese. And each time she returned to Hong Kong, she grasped with that state of feeling both like an insider and outsider. I enjoyed reading about her school years, her early career in Hong Kong before she became a writer, and the time in which she not only delved into writing, but became Hong Kong's preeminent writer in English. I first learned of Xu Xi in the mid-90s when a British colleague in Hong Kong spoke of her friendship with one of Xu Xi's sisters. It has been fun tracking her career ever since. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is in love with Hong Kong and/or has an interest in the literary scene there.

[Hendra · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book kindly portrait how she loved HK so much. Her feeling, love, dignity was amid the growth of her petulant lover. She describes her childhood that grow together with the city, the lifestyle, economy, politics, and education. She really understand HK more than the city itself. The feeling from a person to the city more to a lover. Furthermore, I do appreciate how Xu Xi interpret herself in this book, it was very good senses with some of the word that seems unfamiliar with me that makes me opened my dictionary often. However, i do not feel more with this book due to the weight of the word she used and also not my genre. Therefore, I strongly recommend this book to whoever that like an elegy with poetry words either for literacy or memoirs to read.

[Libby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this book! So easy to read, and for a while there resonated so strongly with me in so many levels I was feeling it was my story in another location!

For a quick overview of one person’s “love affair” with HK, and her reasons why she has decided she will not live out the rest of her years here, grab this Penguin Special edition. If you have an interest in anomalies like HK, this is worthwhile.

[ani ♡ · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is incredibly outdated as it does not cover anything that happened from 2019 onwards, which is fine on its own, but somewhat unsettling for people who did experience 2019 to read

As a HKer born and raised in this city, i found it annoying that Xu Xi seems to harbour no hope at all for this city she claims to love

Besides from describing her privileged childhood, which i think most cannot relate to, she mostly laments over HK’s lack of a literary scene which is impossible for her to write fiction. This i can imagine and understand

For a book giving its reader the impression that this is about the author’s love for HK, the information i gleaned left me confused, i could not understand why she loves HK, she says she does, but all she ever wanted to do (and still does i presume) was to leave the city, this she emphasises emphatically and repeatedly over the course of the book

It made me wonder, if she loves this HK so much, how can she not even have a sliver of hope for her “Dear HK”? Where’s the love in that?

I enjoyed Xu Xi’s style of writing, it’s captivating but she sometimes uses a lot of big words that made me think they are only there for the sake of being profound??

I thought i’d like this book, love it even, it still is an interesting read, but its tone is too pessimistic for me

[El · Rating 2 out of 5]

Self-indulgent stream of consciousness.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting cultural insights but after a while the autobiographical tale was insufficiently interesting to sustain my interest.

[Mr Siegal · Rating 4 out of 5]

For All Those Who Have Left

Having met Xu Xi in person via a common friend, I was intrigued by her personality and strength of spirit. This was confirmed when I purchased and read her beautiful book. Indeed, it must be a very hard feeling when you leave the city that you were born in and that you love, not because of economic reasons, but because the city becomes suffocating.

I am sure this book will find an audience not only to those familiar with Hong Kong, but to other people who have left their native land simply because they no longer ‘fit in’. Highly recommended.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

As the author argues, Hong Kong is a cultural mish-mash, born of Chinese and British parentage, and never fully finding itself or its own true identity. She compares this with her own upbringing (born to an Indonesian Chinese family in HK). A short but fun read for those wishing to learn more about the city.

[Abby · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book after my own heart

This book, a letter to a city I have repeatedly fallen in and out of love with during my short time here, captures so many of the thoughts all residents have. I found myself highlighting so many passages to refer back to that there is likely more yellowed text than there is blank.

[Johnathon Yeo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Every Asian city should have its elegy even though they will be taken for granted by those who are meant to comprehend them in the first place. Dear HK is honest and sincere. The final reminder that things have come to pass.

[Ken Cambie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Much better accounts of growing up in Hong Kong and critiques of HOng Kong out there. I found the writing style annoying, covering up for a lack of substance.

[c · Rating 3 out of 5]

xu mourns for hk, which she often refers to as a ‘complicated’, ‘petulant’ lover, but i’m not sure what exactly she’s mourning for. throughout the entire elegy, she shows time and time again how the city has failed her, as someone from a non-canto family + visible ethnic minority, and the city’s youth, both in the time before and during the occupy protests. it seems that she is quite detached from the city’s local culture, which is common amongst the anglophone community, and this manifests in the way she talks about hk; “john” is always a distant other that has wronged her in some way, be it her fujian origins, her keralan name, the inadequate support in chinese language in school, the closing of the MFA programme at cityu, to list a few, and co-opts into ‘expat’/’local’ identities, whatever is more beneficial to her in a given situation. at some points, i wonder how much this is actually an elegy to hk; in the last pages of the book, she even talks about how love is ‘irrelevant’ between her and hk. that perhaps, the ‘love’ she speaks of is the nostalgia in hk pics and the duty she has to her parents. at times, she speaks more of her time in the US and her writing career, which quite frankly, isn’t interesting enough to hold my interest.

i definitely get how her background adds complexity to her relationship with hk, and i really feel for her. i respect her for her honesty, for presenting hk as it was, and not a repackaged vision that’s palatable for a white audience. the footnotes are also extremely informative, for a non-hk audience, but also to hkers for reminders of what happened pre-2017. but i must ask — what responsibilities do hk writers (especially those who write in english) have to the city? it is unclear who this elegy is written for, as she asks herself — if hk will even read this book. what does it say about a city, when its authors are willing to disown it? if the ‘locals don’t read english’, then what message does this send to the anglophone community that call hk home? (there was also this part where she picks a journalist apart for transcribing an interview verbatim (amongst other things) just to make a point about declining english standards in the city, which was unnecessary and extremely condescending). how does this challenge, or enrich the views of expats who call hk home? is she writing to be understood by the minority of hong kongers who do read english, or the expat community?

[Juls · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is structured as a letter the author writes to Hong Kong narrating, as it goes, her life. She personalizes the city to express it’s indecisive character and the love-hate relationship she has developed towards it.

There are two reasons why I didn’t like the book:

-First, I picked up the book with the intention of understanding better Hong Kong’s people’s view on their history, and the book did not meet my expectations in this regard.
I was personally not interested in her autobiography, so I was only captivated by her childhood’s fragments which do shade some lights on Hong Kong’s culture. For this reason I found too many details were given on some personal stories that did not matter to me.

-Second, because I did not appreciate the author’s writing style -I was not convinced by the metaphors used to describe HK, which I found lacked imagination and were repetitive-. The book does reflect several times on the identity crisis Hong Kongers experiment, but I did not relate to her feelings.

[Andrei Brinzai · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have never been to Hong Kong, but I am sure I would have liked to visit it pre-1997 and closer to our time, to understand its changes. The author does a good job of giving us some glimpses of the Hong Kong she grew up in and also some interesting stories about herself and her life in Hong Kong. Part memoir, part break up letter, this books works for me best when I read about how things used to be or how things have changed. I was expecting to have an even higher proportion of such stories, but some of the author's life stories are not that captivating to me.

I really like the vocabulary Xu Xi employs, though sometimes it is repetitive and excessive for my taste, however what bothers me more are the lengthy footnotes and her divagations. These make an otherwise decent read a bit boring.

[Trevor · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book. I also read Dung Kai-cheung's Cantonese Love Stories from the same series. Halfway through reading this book I realised I didn't quite enjoy it. Like I wouldn't give it 100 marks – it's fine, not super mind-blowing or fantastic. And then I realised that I write like her. Random anecdotes about my 4 different granduncles, going on five hundred different tangents, all interspersed in a larger narrative. The saddest part is I thought my friends enjoyed my content - all the tangents and stuff. I didn't realise that this writing style kinda sucked until I read it from the perspective of a reader, and not as the writer. So all in all, lesson learnt.

[Vicky Wong · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book. Unfortunately I didn't, and this is setting aside Holmes Chan's essay about it. (https://still-loud.com/2017/09/11/dea...)

The writer frames the book as part memoir and oart break up letter with Hong Kong, which as a device didn't work for me.

She lumps a lot of Hong Kong's ills (pro democracy protesters, government incompetence, greedy landlords) into one homogeneous blob without care for nuance.

I found the tone quite bitter and at times patronizing.

[Danielzhang · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book Dear Hong Kong: An Elegy to a City by Xu Xi details the authors experience and ever-changing relationship with her home-city of Hong Kong. As the book goes through from when she was a child to the present day, she talks about why she finally made the decision to leave the city forever.

I didn't enjoy this book that much simply because I couldn't relate to it as much as the previous book I read. However, I could definitely see how someone with interests that align with hers would enjoy the book much more than I did.

[Heather Diamond · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hong Kong is a complex place with a complicated history and present, and Xu Xi does a beautiful job of presenting how it feels to love and leave a place that is lodged in your heart. As someone who is a different kind of insider/outsider (temporary Hong Kong resident married into a Hong Kong family) I appreciate her honesty and insight about her love affair with a place that has always been an intersection between cultures and is now changing beyond recognition.

[Edwina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four stars for such a superb novella. I really enjoyed Xu Xi's recount of her life in Hong Kong and it is quite emotional reading about one's connection to the land and where they are from. It is also a bittersweet and sentimental novella, one that is easy to get into. Would highly recommend.

[David Jonson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having lengthy footnotes every second page is just poor writing and really detracts from the author's message. A shame, because there are some interesting observations here

[Maxwell Sh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just what I needed on that flight out

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

[Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t often write an unfavorable review, but I found a few aspects grating. What I did value was seeing HK through Xu Xi’s eyes at different temporal moments. What irked me was a sometimes judgmental tone (including of self), frequent references to white “classics” authors (which I get on some level growing up in a colony, but don’t need any more of), what seemed to me like a reification of mixed race othering without any unpacking of the causes of stratum, and use of cliche. I also think the Dear John letter format, including its history, was a missed opportunity to connect colonialism with militarism. Instead, Xu Xi defaulted to infantilizing HK.