Indelible City

 Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong by Louisa Lim, 319 pages.

Hong Kong's conflicting colonial pasts has led to a pattern of intentional story building that has largely buried the city's true history. It was in England's best interest to portray the region as a "barren rock" to justify their possession and development of the area. Meanwhile, it's more advantageous to the Chinese government to present Hong Kong as having always been unified with China, to justify its reintegration. Journalist Louisa Lim, who grew up and reported in Hong Kong, attempts to sort through these competing myths to arrive not only at the history of the city, but also it's identity. This search for identity also carries her through to the present, where the city is attempting to operate under "one country, two systems" after it's return to China, and failing so spectacularly that large scale protest movements made international news. 

Lim's background as a journalist is very clear throughout this book. She interviews former colonial officials, art curators, amateur historians and archaeologists, and local artists of all stripes in an attempt to find the spirit of Hong Kong. Centrally woven through the whole narrative is the King of Kowloon, a controversial street artist who claimed ancestral possession of Hong Kong and surrounding territories, and who for many became a key symbol of Hong Kong itself. Lim paints a picture of a people who have been regularly, in fact nearly constantly, erased from their own history and excluded from making decisions about their own lives and governance; and have nonetheless managed to maintain a very unique identity and strong protest culture. I found this history to be both accessible and thorough, which can be a difficult line to walk, and I definitely came away feeling like I learned quite a lot.

The Painted Veil

 The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham (1925) 246 pages

Set in the 1920s, this novel follows Kitty, a beautiful young English woman whose mother has high hopes for her to make a great match. But Kitty's mother thinks that each beau who woos Kitty isn't good enough. When Kitty is 25, in a panic, she marries Walter Fane and moves to Hong Kong, where he's a bacteriologist who works for the government. When Walter discovers she's having an affair, he gives Kitty a choice: if her lover will divorce his wife and marry Kitty, Walter will give Kitty a divorce. Otherwise, Kitty must follow him to an area in China which lost its only doctor to cholera, and where cholera is still raging. Heartbroken when her lover won't leave his wife, Kitty goes into the heartland of China with Walter. The story finally takes off and Kitty begins to show some character.

Old Filth

Old Filth by Jane Gardam, 290 pages.
The first book in a trilogy following the life of Sir Edward Feathers, "Old Filth." The story, well-crafted and quietly moving, moves back and forth in time, starting with Feathers as an old retiree in the English countryside and jumping to his childhood. Seemingly happy when he was raised by Malay servants, young Feathers then became "an orphan of the Raj," wherein he (like many other children of colonial officials) was fostered out to a household in Britain, and endured a less prosaic upbringing.  The story skips back and forth. An engaging story. I am looking forward to reading the second book, The Man in the Wooden Hat.
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