Lamma Island, 9:41AM – Rainy and Humid.

Entry 87

Irritation at breakfast. It’s not breakfast’s fault. It’s nothing really. It’s just mediocre writing. It’s the way Xu Xi writes about Hong Kong. Lots of telling and no showing.

She calls Hong Kong “immovably petulant.” A petulant city, so, one that is childish and bad-tempered? I imagine a crayon drawing of a black rain-cloud with a frowny face. Hard to say. I doubt I’d like a city that much if it were that way.

Perhaps Xu Xi meant petulant politically? Her book was published before the NSL, before the protests even (but after the umbrella movement), yet she does not elaborate further, does not show us what she means. Her words are so self-explanatory that we must be reading her book because we already know what she wants to say. Wait.

“Pure” Cantonese is also dead apparently. Too much English now mixed in, Xu Xi explains. Dead? Now? The only places where I hear English code-switched with Cantonese are upward-looking places like high-end malls, a Pacific Place or a K11 Musea. Makes me wonder if Xu Xi ever ventured out to the New Territories or over to Lamma before leaving Hong Kong “for good”?

 Dear Hong Kong strikes me as a 136-page complaint, more jarring now that COVID is with us. Whingeing that this city is changing - what city isn’t changing? - without much on the how. Petulant, one might say.

Perhaps Xu Xi is leaning a little too hard on her words, expecting them to do the heavy lifting. Obscure word choice is a symptom of teller syndrome. Words like spasmodic, confabbing, and flummoxed are peppered throughout. Prose as decorative as it is meaningless. Jewellery shop window prose. An old man dusting off his best hat just to fetch the mail. A clever cat bringing in a dead bird for its owners.

Hong Kong deserves better.

But it seems the editors at Penguin didn’t think so. I stop at page 17. There is so much to show about Hong Kong and I suppose that’s why I write. My noodles are soggy and the ice in my coffee has melted. A wasted opportunity. I’ll try again tomorrow.