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paperback HK$89.00
Chameleon Press
Paddyfield.com
More reviews by Robert H. Abel
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History's Fiction: Stories from the City of Hong Kong by Xu Xi
Here is an immensely gratifying collection of stories from a truly international writer who now calls herself Xu Xi. HISTORY'S FICTION: STORIES FROM THE CITY OF HONG KONG contains the kind of complexity and inter-connectedness of Hong Kong itself, and of personalities who not only speak several languages and move easily from one country to another but who also come to understand the final resting place of history is in the heart. Written with a seemingly calm surface, for the most part realistically, these stories nevertheless boil with secrets, some of which erupt, some of which are barely glimpsed, acknowledged, then tucked away again.
The stories are organized in a kind of reverse evolution, from the most recent times to the early 'Sixties, like peeling back layers of memory to get at root causes. The first story, "Until the Next Century," concerns an elderly man and his elderly former mistress trying to reconnect after a long hiatus; the last story, "Democracy," concerns a 16 year-old girl hoping to be elected a Girl Guide leader on the cusp of the Nathan Road riots. One the eve of the handover, in "Insignificant Moments in the History of Hong Kong," we find ourselves in the company of Lam Yam Kuen, a maitre de at the Butterfield Soong Club. Lim is more concerned with the fate and affairs of his uncle Cheuk than he is with the changing of the historical guard. The ceremonies and rituals of the handover flicker by on a TV screen across a large dining room. In these stories, historical events are a bit like snakes in the woodpile-sometimes they slither off into the shadows, and sometimes they strike with a nasty surprise.
XU XI's characters in this collection run the gamut from a na'efve hutong boy psychologically shattered by the pace of Hong Kong's modernization ("The Yellow Line") to super-sophisticates at ease with bisexuality and lovers of other races ("The Tryst," and others). Several of the stories are coming of age narratives which grapple with sexual awakening and/or questions of self-realization. These familiar themes, however, have been given zest by characters who "dream in psychedelic Chinglish" or discover themselves to be "convent school mistakes . . . Sino-American missionary style." Food is ever-present in these stories, and I think it is possible to say without exaggeration there is also here a real international buffet of personalities.
These stories are also written with enormous delicacy and sensitivity. This has two consequences for the reader. One is that some stories require the attention of poetry ("Dannemora," e.g.) Another is that sometimes the uncanny-as when one young woman has her first orgasm with a skeleton named Jimmy-is delivered with the same aplomb as the ordinary. These stories will shock and surprise you the same way a walk down a Hong Kong street will-ordinary and extraordinary blend almost effortlessly.
My personal favorite in the collection is "Rage." Unlike the other stories, this one is written in a stream of consciousness style. It is told from the point of view of Ms. Lo, a "marketing specialist" who likes to think of herself as amoral and quite able to handle an on-again, off-again love-tryst relationship with an English businessman named Allistair. The story sparkles with insights which I am not going to spoil for the reader by listing here (despite the temptation) and has, I think, a particularly powerful ending in which Ms. Lo gets another look at herself and her life and is a bit horrified by what she sees. In the case of this story, the secrets boiling beneath the surface do indeed explode into view. And in the context of the whole collection, we also see that Ms. Lo is not alone, but cousin in spirit to some of the Hui daughters we also meet here whose cool is shattered by personal realizations.
HISTORY'S FICTION: STORIES FROM THE CITY OF HONG KONG, by the way, comes with a remarkable personal preface in which Xu Xi describes her fictional concerns and the preoccupations that led to the writing of the stories gathered here. It is a remarkable document in its own right.
Xu Xi has written previous collections of stories and novels under the names of Sussy Chako ("Chinese Walls") and Sussy Komala ("The Yellow Line)."The Daughters of Hui" and "Hong Kong Rose"were written under Xu Xi, the name she was given at birth. Her latest work, just published by Chameleon Press, is "The Unwalled City."
Xu Xi lives "somewhere between New York and Hong Kong," she says, but has also lived at length in Singapore. She attended the University of Massachusetts (USA) writing program and also traveled extensively in Europe and Greece. Hers is a truly international mind and spirit, and her unique and marvelous fictions reflect it.
Robert H. Abel
29/05/2001
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Robert H. Abel is a USA-based writer who writes frequently on subjects related to China. He has published three novels (including Riding a Tiger) and three collections of stories. |
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