A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY
Browse by Title
81 scholarly books by Hong Kong University Press
81 scholarly books by Hong Kong University Press
The 70's Biweekly
Social Activism and Alternative Cultural Production in 1970s Hong Kong
Edited by Lu Pan
Hong Kong University Press, 2023
An examination of the 1970s art and culture scene in Hong Kong through the lens of an independent youth magazine.
Taking The 70’s Biweekly—an independent youth publication in 1970s Hong Kong—as the main thread, this edited collection investigates an unexplored trajectory of Hong Kong’s cultural and artistic production in the 1970s. The 70’s Biweekly stands out from many other independent magazines with its unique blending of radical political theories, social activism, avant-garde art, and local literature. By taking the magazine as a node of social and cultural activism from and around which actions, debates, community, and artistic practices are formed, this book fills gaps in the study of how young Hong Kong cultural producers carved out an alternative space to speak out against established authorities.
Split into three parts, The 70’s Biweekly provides readers with a panoramic view of the political and cultural activism in Hong Kong during the 1970s, featuring writings on art and film, and interviews with former founders and contributors that reflect on how their participation led them to engage ideologically with their activism and community.
Taking The 70’s Biweekly—an independent youth publication in 1970s Hong Kong—as the main thread, this edited collection investigates an unexplored trajectory of Hong Kong’s cultural and artistic production in the 1970s. The 70’s Biweekly stands out from many other independent magazines with its unique blending of radical political theories, social activism, avant-garde art, and local literature. By taking the magazine as a node of social and cultural activism from and around which actions, debates, community, and artistic practices are formed, this book fills gaps in the study of how young Hong Kong cultural producers carved out an alternative space to speak out against established authorities.
Split into three parts, The 70’s Biweekly provides readers with a panoramic view of the political and cultural activism in Hong Kong during the 1970s, featuring writings on art and film, and interviews with former founders and contributors that reflect on how their participation led them to engage ideologically with their activism and community.
[more]
Academic English
Skills for Success, Third Edition
Miranda Legg, et al.
Hong Kong University Press, 2025
Bridging the gap between high school and university: academic English made accessible.
This book features five theme-based units on cross-disciplinary academic English skills, focusing on the needs of first-year undergraduate students. Each unit covers academic writing, reading, and speaking skills. The units progressively take students through the steps needed to complete three common academic assignments: the essay, report, and tutorial discussion. These steps include searching for quality sources, note-taking, establishing a critical stance, formulating evidence-based arguments, synthesizing information from multiple sources, and structuring academic texts. Each unit also provides opportunities for students to analyze texts, apply their critical thinking skills, practice what they have learned in productive tasks, and reflect upon their progress.
This book is aimed at first-time university students. Many of the readings are related to China and a broader Asian context. As such, it appeals to first-year university students in Hong Kong, Mainland China, and Taiwan.
This book features five theme-based units on cross-disciplinary academic English skills, focusing on the needs of first-year undergraduate students. Each unit covers academic writing, reading, and speaking skills. The units progressively take students through the steps needed to complete three common academic assignments: the essay, report, and tutorial discussion. These steps include searching for quality sources, note-taking, establishing a critical stance, formulating evidence-based arguments, synthesizing information from multiple sources, and structuring academic texts. Each unit also provides opportunities for students to analyze texts, apply their critical thinking skills, practice what they have learned in productive tasks, and reflect upon their progress.
This book is aimed at first-time university students. Many of the readings are related to China and a broader Asian context. As such, it appeals to first-year university students in Hong Kong, Mainland China, and Taiwan.
[more]
American-Designed Shopping Malls in China
Charlie Qiuli Xue and Arwen Yingting Chen
Hong Kong University Press, 2026
How shopping malls transformed China’s urban landscapes and the consumer patterns of their residents.
China’s remarkable journey from poverty to becoming the world’s second-largest economic power is marked by extraordinary urban growth and the booming consumption capacity of urban populations. Central to this development are multifunctional commercial complexes and shopping malls, which are now key features of modern urban districts. Shopping malls, originally introduced to China by American architects in the 1980s, have since flourished on an even larger scale than their American counterparts.
This book delves into the origins of shopping mall development in the United States after World War II, tracing how American architects exported this building type into China’s rapidly evolving urban landscapes, particularly in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Kunming, and Guangzhou. Using primary sources, statistical analyses, and illustrated case studies, American-Designed Shopping Malls in China explores the evolution of shopping malls as a consequence of China’s profound economic, social, and cultural change over the past four decades. The book also highlights the impact of American consumerism on the everyday lives of Chinese people, altering not only consumer patterns but also local architectural practices. This tale of transformation is essential reading for anyone interested in China’s rapid urban development.
[more]
Art, Politics, and Commerce in Chinese Cinema
Edited by Ying Zhu and Stanley Rosen
Hong Kong University Press, 2010
Art, politics, and commerce are intertwined everywhere, but in China the interplay is explicit, intimate, and elemental, and nowhere more so than in the film industry. Understanding this interplay in the era of market reform and globalization is essential to understanding mainland Chinese cinema. This interdisciplinary book provides a comprehensive reappraisal of Chinese cinema, surveying the evolution of film production and consumption in mainland China as a product of shifting relations between art, politics, and commerce. Within these arenas, each of the twelve chapters treats a particular history, development, genre, filmmaker or generation of filmmakers, adding up to a distinctively comprehensive rendering of Chinese cinema. The book illuminates China’s changing state-society relations, the trajectory of marketization and globalization, the effects of China’s stark historical shifts, Hollywood’s role, the role of nationalism, and related themes of interest to scholars of Asian studies, cinema and media studies, political science, sociology, comparative literature and Chinese language. Contributors include Ying Zhu, Stanley Rosen, Seio Nakajima, Zhiwei Xiao, Shujen Wang, Paul Clark, Stephen Teo, John Lent, Ying Xu, Yingjin Zhang, Bruce Robinson, Liyan Qin, and Shuqin Cui.
[more]
Asian Celebrity Cultures in the Digital Age
Edited by Jian Xu, Glen Donnar, and Divya Garg
Hong Kong University Press, 2025
An interdisciplinary study of Asian celebrity culture and digital media.
Asian Celebrity Cultures in the Digital Age represents the first comprehensive study on the transformations of celebrity cultures in increasingly globalized and digitalized Asian societies. It discusses relations between Asian celebrities and digital media across emerging phenomena in celebrity practices, cultures, politics, fandom, and economies. Highlighting original case studies from prominent Asian societies, including India, China, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea, and Japan, this book sheds much-needed light on the de-Westernization and internationalization of celebrity studies and is essential reading for scholars and students in celebrity, fandom, digital media and communication, and cultural studies.
Asian Celebrity Cultures in the Digital Age represents the first comprehensive study on the transformations of celebrity cultures in increasingly globalized and digitalized Asian societies. It discusses relations between Asian celebrities and digital media across emerging phenomena in celebrity practices, cultures, politics, fandom, and economies. Highlighting original case studies from prominent Asian societies, including India, China, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea, and Japan, this book sheds much-needed light on the de-Westernization and internationalization of celebrity studies and is essential reading for scholars and students in celebrity, fandom, digital media and communication, and cultural studies.
[more]
The Authorship of Place
A Cultural Geography of the New Chinese Cinemas
Dennis Lo
Hong Kong University Press, 2020
The Authorship of Place is the first monograph dedicated to the study of the politics, history, aesthetics, and practices of location shooting for Taiwanese, Mainland Chinese, and coproduced art cinemas shot in rural communities since the late 1970s. Dennis Lo argues that rural location shooting, beyond serving aesthetic and technical needs, constitutes practices of cultural survival in a region beset with disruptive and disorienting social changes, including rapid urbanization, geopolitical shifts, and ecological crises. In response to these social changes, auteurs like Hou Xiaoxian, Jia Zhangke, Chen Kaige, and Li Xing engaged in location shooting to transform sites of film production into symbolically meaningful places of collective memories and aspirations. These production practices ultimately enabled auteurs to experiment with imagining Taiwanese, Mainland Chinese, and cross-strait communities in novel and contentious ways. Deftly guiding readers on a cross-strait tour of prominent shooting locations for the New Chinese Cinemas, this book shows how auteurs sought out their disappearing cultural heritage by reenacting lived experiences of nation building, homecoming, and cultural salvage while shooting on-location. This was an especially daunting task when auteurs encountered the shooting locations as spaces of unresolved historical, social, and geopolitical contestations, tensions which were only intensified by the impact of filmmaking on rural communities. This book demonstrates how these complex circumstances surrounding location shooting were pivotal in shaping both representations of the rural on-screen, as well as the production communities, institutions, and industries off-screen. Informed by cutting-edge perspectives in cultural geography and media anthropology, The Authorship of Place both revises Chinese-language film history and theorizes groundbreaking approaches for investigating the cultural politics of film authorship and production.
[more]
C. Y. Tung and the Rise of Modern Chinese Shipping, 1912–1982
Howard Dick and Stephen Kentwell
Hong Kong University Press, 2026
A business biography of C. Y. Tung, founder of the Orient Overseas Container Line and philanthropist.
Shipowner Tung Chao-Yung (1912–82) is remembered worldwide as a champion for Chinese shipping and a pioneer of container shipping. Despite coming from a humble background, by the time of his death, he controlled a huge fleet of passenger liners, bulk carriers, tankers, and container ships, while also managing a diverse network of port terminals, dockyards, banks, and prime real estate. C. Y. Tung and the Rise of Modern Chinese Shipping sets out his pathway from a junior executive in the early 1930s to one of the world’s leading private shipowners. The authors argue that Tung achieved his dream of developing Chinese ocean shipping through his ability to learn, innovate, network, and devise strategies through decades of rapid technical and organizational change. He also earned wide respect for his generous philanthropy. The book concludes with an overview of the emergence of the state-owned PRC fleet and brief histories of other multi-generational family companies in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore.
[more]
A Century of Travels in China
Critical Essays on Travel Writing from the 1840s to the 1940s
Edited by Douglas Kerr and Julia Kuehn
Hong Kong University Press, 2007
Writings of travelers have shaped ideas about an evolving China, while preconceived ideas about China also shaped the way they saw the country. A Century of Travels in China explores the impressions of these writers on various themes, from Chinese cities and landscapes to the work of Europeans abroad. From the time of the first Opium War to the declaration of the People’s Republic, China’s history has been one of extraordinary change and stubborn continuities. At the same time, the country has beguiled, scared and puzzled people in the West. The Victorian public admired and imitated Chinese fashions, in furniture and design, gardens and clothing, while maintaining a generally negative idea of the Chinese empire as pagan, backward and cruel. In the first half of the twentieth century, the fascination continued. Most foreigners were aware that revolutionary changes were taking place in Chinese politics and society, yet most still knew very little about the country. But what about those few people from the English-speaking world who had first-hand experience of the place? What did they have to say about the “real” China? To answer this question, we have to turn to the travel accounts and memoirs of people who went to see for themselves, during China’s most traumatic century. While this book represents the work of expert scholars, it is also accessible to non-specialists with an interest in travel writing and China, and care has been taken to explain the critical terms and ideas deployed in the essays from recent scholarship of the travel genre.
[more]
China’s Foreign Places
The Foreign Presence in China in the Treaty Port Era, 1840–1943
Robert Nield
Hong Kong University Press, 2015
During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the imperial powers—principally Britain, the United States, Russia, France, Germany and Japan—signed treaties with China to secure trading, residence and other rights in cities on the coast, along important rivers, and in remote places further inland. The largest of them—the great treaty ports of Shanghai and Tientsin—became modern cities of international importance, centres of cultural exchange and safe havens for Chinese who sought to subvert the Qing government. They are also lasting symbols of the uninvited and often violent incursions by foreign powers during China’s century of weakness. The extraterritorial privileges that underpinned the treaty ports were abolished in 1943—a time when much of the treaty port world was under Japanese occupation. China’s Foreign Places provides a historical account of the hundred or more major foreign settlements that appeared in China during the period 1840 to 1943. Most of the entries are about treaty ports, large and small, but the book also includes colonies, leased territories, resorts and illicit centres of trade. Information has been drawn from a wide range of sources and entries are arranged alphabetically with extensive illustrations and maps. China’s Foreign Places is both a unique work of reference, essential for scholars of this period and travellers to modern China. It is also a fascinating account of the people, institutions and businesses that inhabited China’s treaty port world.
[more]
Chinese Cinema
Identity, Power, and Globalization
Edited by Jeff Kyong-McClain, Russell Meeuf, and Jing Jing Chang
Hong Kong University Press, 2022
A pioneer investigation of Chinese cinema and the Chinese film industry.
In Chinese Cinema: Identity, Power, and Globalization, a variety of scholars explore the history, aesthetics, and politics of Chinese cinema as the Chinese film industry grapples with its place as the second-largest film industry in the world. Exploring the various ways that Chinese cinema engages with global politics, market forces, and film cultures, this edited volume places Chinese cinema against an array of contexts informing the contours of Chinese cinema today. The book also demonstrates that Chinese cinema in the global context is informed by the intersections and tensions found in Chinese and world politics, national and international co-productions, the local and global in representing Chineseness, and the lived experiences of social and political movements versus screened politics in Chinese film culture.
In Chinese Cinema: Identity, Power, and Globalization, a variety of scholars explore the history, aesthetics, and politics of Chinese cinema as the Chinese film industry grapples with its place as the second-largest film industry in the world. Exploring the various ways that Chinese cinema engages with global politics, market forces, and film cultures, this edited volume places Chinese cinema against an array of contexts informing the contours of Chinese cinema today. The book also demonstrates that Chinese cinema in the global context is informed by the intersections and tensions found in Chinese and world politics, national and international co-productions, the local and global in representing Chineseness, and the lived experiences of social and political movements versus screened politics in Chinese film culture.
[more]
Christianity and Education in Modern China
Edited by Man Kong Wong and George Kam Wah Mak
Hong Kong University Press, 2025
A close look at the effects of Christianity on contemporary Chinese education.
In Christianity and Education in Modern China, the contributors demonstrate how Christianity served as a driving force in the development of modern education in China. Each essay offers new insights into Christian influence on education in modern China while examining how Christian missionaries and Chinese Christian educators interacted with China's social, cultural, and political contexts. They also explore how the legacies of Christian higher education affected higher education in mainland China, Taiwan, and Asia at large. On the whole, this volume compares the Western missionary and Chinese Christian perspectives with rich historiographical acumen by offering original case studies to examine Christianity’s impact on education in modern China.
In Christianity and Education in Modern China, the contributors demonstrate how Christianity served as a driving force in the development of modern education in China. Each essay offers new insights into Christian influence on education in modern China while examining how Christian missionaries and Chinese Christian educators interacted with China's social, cultural, and political contexts. They also explore how the legacies of Christian higher education affected higher education in mainland China, Taiwan, and Asia at large. On the whole, this volume compares the Western missionary and Chinese Christian perspectives with rich historiographical acumen by offering original case studies to examine Christianity’s impact on education in modern China.
[more]
The Cinema of Wang Bing
Chinese Documentary between History and Labor
Bruno Lessard
Hong Kong University Press, 2023
An examination of the films of Chinese documentarian Wang Bing.
In The Cinema of Wang Bing, Bruno Lessard examines documentarian Wang Bing’s most important films. He focuses on the two obsessions at the heart of Wang’s oeuvre—the legacy of Maoist China in the present and the transformation of labor since China’s entry into the market economy—and how the crucial figures of survivor and worker are represented on screen. Bruno Lessard argues that Wang is a minjian (grassroots) intellectual whose films document the impact of Mao’s Great Leap Forward on Chinese collective memory and register the repercussions of China’s turn to neoliberalism on workers in the post-Reform era. Bringing together Chinese documentary studies and China studies, Lessard shows how Wang’s practice reflects the minjian ethos when documenting the survivors of the Great Famine and those who have not benefitted from China’s neoliberal policies—from laid-off workers to migrant workers. The films discussed include some of Wang’s most celebrated works such as West of the Tracks and Dead Souls, as well as neglected documentaries such as Coal Money and Bitter Money.
In The Cinema of Wang Bing, Bruno Lessard examines documentarian Wang Bing’s most important films. He focuses on the two obsessions at the heart of Wang’s oeuvre—the legacy of Maoist China in the present and the transformation of labor since China’s entry into the market economy—and how the crucial figures of survivor and worker are represented on screen. Bruno Lessard argues that Wang is a minjian (grassroots) intellectual whose films document the impact of Mao’s Great Leap Forward on Chinese collective memory and register the repercussions of China’s turn to neoliberalism on workers in the post-Reform era. Bringing together Chinese documentary studies and China studies, Lessard shows how Wang’s practice reflects the minjian ethos when documenting the survivors of the Great Famine and those who have not benefitted from China’s neoliberal policies—from laid-off workers to migrant workers. The films discussed include some of Wang’s most celebrated works such as West of the Tracks and Dead Souls, as well as neglected documentaries such as Coal Money and Bitter Money.
[more]
The Classical Gardens of Shanghai
Shelly Bryant
Hong Kong University Press, 2016
In The Classical Gardens of Shanghai, Shelly Bryant looks at five of Shanghai’s remaining classical gardens through their origins, changing fortunes, restorations, and links to a wider Chinese aesthetic. Shanghai’s classical gardens are as much text as space; they exist in art, poetry, and literature as much as in stone, rock, and earth. But these gardens have not remained static entities. Rather, they have been remodelled constantly since their inception. This book reflects this process within the constancy of traditional Chinese horticulture and reveals Shanghai’s remaining classical gardens as places representing wealth and social status, social and dynastic shifts, through falling family fortunes and political revolutions to search for a recovery of China’s ancient culture in the modern day.
[more]
Coercive Commerce
Global Capital and Imperial Governance at the End of the Qing Empire
Stacie A. Kent
Hong Kong University Press, 2025
An extensive analysis of the development of capital in Qing Empire China.
In 1842, the Qing Empire signed a watershed commercial treaty with Great Britain, beginning a century-long period in which geopolitical and global economic entanglements intruded on Qing territory and governance. Previously understood as an era of “semi-colonialism,” Stacie A. Kent reframes this century of intervention by shedding light on the generative force of global capital.
Based on extensive research, conducted with British and Chinese government archives, Coercive Commerce shows how commercial treaties and the regulatory regime that grew out of them catalyzed a revised arts of governance in Qing-administered China. Capital, which had long been present in Chinese merchants’ pocketbooks, came to shape and even govern Chinese statecraft during the “treaty era.” This book contends that Qing administrators alternately resisted and adapted to this new reality through taxation systems such as transit passes and the Imperial Maritime Customs Service by reorganizing Chinese territory into a space where global circuits of capital could circulate and reproduce at an ever greater scale.
Offering a deep dive into the coercive nature of capitalism and the historically specific ways global capital reproduction took root in Qing China, Coercive Commerce will interest historians of capital and modern China alike.
In 1842, the Qing Empire signed a watershed commercial treaty with Great Britain, beginning a century-long period in which geopolitical and global economic entanglements intruded on Qing territory and governance. Previously understood as an era of “semi-colonialism,” Stacie A. Kent reframes this century of intervention by shedding light on the generative force of global capital.
Based on extensive research, conducted with British and Chinese government archives, Coercive Commerce shows how commercial treaties and the regulatory regime that grew out of them catalyzed a revised arts of governance in Qing-administered China. Capital, which had long been present in Chinese merchants’ pocketbooks, came to shape and even govern Chinese statecraft during the “treaty era.” This book contends that Qing administrators alternately resisted and adapted to this new reality through taxation systems such as transit passes and the Imperial Maritime Customs Service by reorganizing Chinese territory into a space where global circuits of capital could circulate and reproduce at an ever greater scale.
Offering a deep dive into the coercive nature of capitalism and the historically specific ways global capital reproduction took root in Qing China, Coercive Commerce will interest historians of capital and modern China alike.
[more]
Contemporary Hong Kong Government and Politics, Third Edition
Edited by Wai-man Lam, Percy Luen-tim Lui, and Wilson Wong
Hong Kong University Press, 2024
An updated edition of a close and comprehensive look at modern Hong Kong politics up to the present.
In its third edition, Contemporary Hong Kong Government and Politics analyzes Hong Kong’s basic political institutions, mediating institutions, political actors, specific policy areas, and its relationships with the mainland and the international community. All chapters have either been significantly updated or rewritten by new contributors. This edition presents a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the main continuities and changes after the 2019 Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill. It examines various aspects of the Hong Kong government and politics such as the executive, the legislature, the judiciary, the civil service, district councils, and advisory and statutory bodies. It also investigates the structures of the wider society with particular attention to political parties and elections, civil society, political identity and political culture, the mass media, and public opinions.
[more]
Contract Law in Hong Kong
Michael J. Fisher and Desmond G. Greenwood
Hong Kong University Press, 2024
A new edition of the textbook for Hong Kong contract law students.
This fourth edition of Contract Law in Hong Kong is the most comprehensive contemporary textbook on Hong Kong contract law written primarily for law students. The sixteen chapters of the book cover all basic contract concepts in a reader-friendly style and make ample use of case illustrations, including over 200 new cases since the third edition. The book deals with the core areas of contract law. The new legislative rules, such as the Contract Ordinance regarding the rights of third parties, have also been covered.
The first two chapters introduce the major themes and explain the multiple sources of law in Hong Kong. The subsequent thirteen chapters cover the formation of a valid contract, its contents, "vitiating" elements, the consequences of illegality, the termination of contracts, and remedies for breach of contract. The book concludes with an explanation of the doctrine of privity and the legislative reform of the operation of privity in Hong Kong. Particular attention is given to what makes Hong Kong law different from other common law jurisdictions, and to the continuing significance of English case law in Hong Kong.
This fourth edition of Contract Law in Hong Kong is the most comprehensive contemporary textbook on Hong Kong contract law written primarily for law students. The sixteen chapters of the book cover all basic contract concepts in a reader-friendly style and make ample use of case illustrations, including over 200 new cases since the third edition. The book deals with the core areas of contract law. The new legislative rules, such as the Contract Ordinance regarding the rights of third parties, have also been covered.
The first two chapters introduce the major themes and explain the multiple sources of law in Hong Kong. The subsequent thirteen chapters cover the formation of a valid contract, its contents, "vitiating" elements, the consequences of illegality, the termination of contracts, and remedies for breach of contract. The book concludes with an explanation of the doctrine of privity and the legislative reform of the operation of privity in Hong Kong. Particular attention is given to what makes Hong Kong law different from other common law jurisdictions, and to the continuing significance of English case law in Hong Kong.
[more]
Crime and Pangolins
A Mammalian Murder Mystery
Timothy C. Bonebrake
Hong Kong University Press, 2026
This volume investigates the minimally discussed global plight of pangolins, exploring the possible culprits of their extinction.
In 2018, authorities in Hong Kong seized a shipment from smugglers that contained 88 dead pangolins. Where did these animals come from, and why were they killed? Where were they going? Who was responsible? In classic true crime fashion, Crime and Pangolins examines evidence, suspects, and legal perspectives related to this specific case and, through it, the plight of pangolins globally.
The chapters detail the lives and natural history of pangolins across Africa and Asia while exploring clues that may reveal who is responsible for the endangerment of the species. The book also explores speculation surrounding the possible role of pangolins in the emergence of COVID-19 and, more broadly, the relationship between wildlife trade and zoonotic disease. The resulting tale is one of conservation researchers, public health experts, and global organizations across Asia, Africa, North America, and Europe fighting to create a world in which pangolins can thrive again.
In 2018, authorities in Hong Kong seized a shipment from smugglers that contained 88 dead pangolins. Where did these animals come from, and why were they killed? Where were they going? Who was responsible? In classic true crime fashion, Crime and Pangolins examines evidence, suspects, and legal perspectives related to this specific case and, through it, the plight of pangolins globally.
The chapters detail the lives and natural history of pangolins across Africa and Asia while exploring clues that may reveal who is responsible for the endangerment of the species. The book also explores speculation surrounding the possible role of pangolins in the emergence of COVID-19 and, more broadly, the relationship between wildlife trade and zoonotic disease. The resulting tale is one of conservation researchers, public health experts, and global organizations across Asia, Africa, North America, and Europe fighting to create a world in which pangolins can thrive again.
[more]
Cross and Dragon – Matteo Ricci and China
A Screenplay by Edwin Kong
Edwin Kong
Hong Kong University Press, 2025
In Ming China, foreigners were barred from entry—until Matteo Ricci found another way in.
Edwin Kong brings to life the extraordinary journey of Matteo Ricci, the Italian Jesuit whose daring mission to China reshaped the course of East-West relations. Sent by the Pope in the late sixteenth century to convert the Chinese Emperor, Ricci faced an impenetrable barrier—Ming Dynasty China was closed to foreigners. But armed with knowledge and an unmatched mastery of memory techniques, he found another way in.
Disguised as a Buddhist monk, Ricci captivated scholars, officials, and eventually the imperial court, introducing Western science while immersing himself in Chinese culture. His thirty-year odyssey from rural villages to the heart of the Forbidden City proved that engagement, rather than conquest, could bridge civilizations.
Told in the form of a screenplay, Cross and Dragon is a gripping historical drama with urgent contemporary resonance, exploring the power of faith and cultural exchange in the face of division.
Edwin Kong brings to life the extraordinary journey of Matteo Ricci, the Italian Jesuit whose daring mission to China reshaped the course of East-West relations. Sent by the Pope in the late sixteenth century to convert the Chinese Emperor, Ricci faced an impenetrable barrier—Ming Dynasty China was closed to foreigners. But armed with knowledge and an unmatched mastery of memory techniques, he found another way in.
Disguised as a Buddhist monk, Ricci captivated scholars, officials, and eventually the imperial court, introducing Western science while immersing himself in Chinese culture. His thirty-year odyssey from rural villages to the heart of the Forbidden City proved that engagement, rather than conquest, could bridge civilizations.
Told in the form of a screenplay, Cross and Dragon is a gripping historical drama with urgent contemporary resonance, exploring the power of faith and cultural exchange in the face of division.
[more]
Daily Giving Service
A History of the Diocesan Girls’ School
Moira M. W. Chan-Yeung
Hong Kong University Press, 2022
A history of a Hong Kong girls’ school that illustrates the city’s dynamic development through the first-hand and archival accounts of its alumni.
The Diocesan Girls’ School is one of Hong Kong’s oldest girls’ schools, founded during British rule in 1860. As an alumna of the school’s Class of 1955, Professor Moira Chan-Yeung traces the history of her alma mater from its establishment through its development over the last 150 years in Daily Giving Service. Having grown alongside Hong Kong as it expanded from a small city to a global metropolitan center, Diocesan has become one of the most prominent girl’s schools in the city and serves a significant role in the history of education and growth in the region. With contributions from other alumni, this book recounts various aspects of school life throughout different eras, illustrating the connection between the socioeconomic development of Hong Kong and this cornerstone of regional education.
The Diocesan Girls’ School is one of Hong Kong’s oldest girls’ schools, founded during British rule in 1860. As an alumna of the school’s Class of 1955, Professor Moira Chan-Yeung traces the history of her alma mater from its establishment through its development over the last 150 years in Daily Giving Service. Having grown alongside Hong Kong as it expanded from a small city to a global metropolitan center, Diocesan has become one of the most prominent girl’s schools in the city and serves a significant role in the history of education and growth in the region. With contributions from other alumni, this book recounts various aspects of school life throughout different eras, illustrating the connection between the socioeconomic development of Hong Kong and this cornerstone of regional education.
[more]
Early Buddhist Teachings
A Foundation for Counseling
Kin Cheung George Lee, Adrian J. Davis, and Sabin Maharjan
Hong Kong University Press, 2025
A novel dialogue between Buddhism and Western psychology, grounded in original Pali texts.
As mindfulness and meditation become mainstream therapeutic tools, their deep Buddhist roots are often stripped away and limit their effectiveness for clients from Buddhist cultural backgrounds. Early Buddhist Teachings: A Theoretical Foundation for Counseling restores these practices to their original context, offering a culturally congruent counseling model grounded in Pali scriptures and core Buddhist principles.
This informative volume explores key Buddhist concepts including dependent co-arising, non-self, and impermanence, and places them in conversation with Western psychological theories. Supplemented with practical assessment tools and intervention techniques, this work provides mental health professionals with a new framework for integrating Buddhist teachings into counseling.
For therapists, students, and counselors seeking to expand their approach, Early Buddhist Teachings offers a vital resource at the intersection of Buddhism and psychotherapy, offering a more holistic and effective model of mental health care.
As mindfulness and meditation become mainstream therapeutic tools, their deep Buddhist roots are often stripped away and limit their effectiveness for clients from Buddhist cultural backgrounds. Early Buddhist Teachings: A Theoretical Foundation for Counseling restores these practices to their original context, offering a culturally congruent counseling model grounded in Pali scriptures and core Buddhist principles.
This informative volume explores key Buddhist concepts including dependent co-arising, non-self, and impermanence, and places them in conversation with Western psychological theories. Supplemented with practical assessment tools and intervention techniques, this work provides mental health professionals with a new framework for integrating Buddhist teachings into counseling.
For therapists, students, and counselors seeking to expand their approach, Early Buddhist Teachings offers a vital resource at the intersection of Buddhism and psychotherapy, offering a more holistic and effective model of mental health care.
[more]
Eastern Figures
Orient and Empire in British Writing
Douglas Kerr
Hong Kong University Press, 2008
Eastern Figures is a literary history with a difference. It examines British writing about the East – centred on India but radiating as far as Egypt and the Pacific – in the colonial and postcolonial period. It takes as its subject “the East” that was real to the British imagination, largely the creation of writers who described and told stories about it, descriptions and stories coloured by the experience of empire and its aftermath. It is bold in its scope, with a centre of gravity in the work of writers like Stevenson, Kipling, Conrad, and Orwell, but also covering less well-known literary authors, and including Anglo-Indian romance writing, the reports and memoirs of administrators, and travel writing from Auden and Isherwood in China to Redmond O’Hanlon in Borneo. Eastern Figures produces a history of this writing by looking at a series of “figures” or tropes of representation through which successive writers sought to represent the East and the British experience of it – tropes such as exploring the hinterland, going native, and the figure of rule itself. Eastern Figures is accessible to anyone interested in the literary and cultural history of empire and its aftermath. It will be of especial interest to students and scholars of colonial and postcolonial writing, as it raises issues of identity and representation, power and knowledge, and centrally the question of how to represent other people. It has original ideas and approaches to offer specialists in literary history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, cultural historians, and researchers in colonial discourse analysis, postcolonial studies, and Asian area studies and history. It is also aimed at students in courses in literature and empire, culture and imperialism, and cross-cultural studies.
[more]
The Empress and the Dragon Throne
Imperial Women of the Early Ming Dynasty
Ellen Soulliere
Hong Kong University Press, 2025
How empresses and consorts were indispensable to the Ming dynasty and its politics and governance.
The rulers of the Ming dynasty enacted paradigms of hierarchical order. Like imperial families, households, and courts in earlier Chinese dynasties, they articulated patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal organizational principles as exemplars for families and institutions throughout the empire. Women made indispensable contributions to the development of these paradigms and principles and to the social, cultural, and political fabric of the family and the state. And yet, in the existing literature in Chinese and English women are often burdened with stereotypes, positioned as peripheral, or rendered almost invisible.
Reading available texts “against the grain,” and drawing on a trove of evidence from material culture, Soulliere shows how women defined a place for themselves in the multigenerational Ming imperial family, imperial household, and court. The Empress and the Dragon Throne spans the first Ming century from just before the founding of the dynasty in 1368 to the end of the Tianshun reign in 1465. This richly illustrated volume is a must-read for scholars, students, and anyone interested in learning about women’s lives during the Ming dynasty.
The rulers of the Ming dynasty enacted paradigms of hierarchical order. Like imperial families, households, and courts in earlier Chinese dynasties, they articulated patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal organizational principles as exemplars for families and institutions throughout the empire. Women made indispensable contributions to the development of these paradigms and principles and to the social, cultural, and political fabric of the family and the state. And yet, in the existing literature in Chinese and English women are often burdened with stereotypes, positioned as peripheral, or rendered almost invisible.
Reading available texts “against the grain,” and drawing on a trove of evidence from material culture, Soulliere shows how women defined a place for themselves in the multigenerational Ming imperial family, imperial household, and court. The Empress and the Dragon Throne spans the first Ming century from just before the founding of the dynasty in 1368 to the end of the Tianshun reign in 1465. This richly illustrated volume is a must-read for scholars, students, and anyone interested in learning about women’s lives during the Ming dynasty.
[more]
Evolving Creative Mindsets
Thinking through the Arts
Lynn F. C Yau
Hong Kong University Press, 2025
Why the future belongs to creative thinkers—and how the arts shape the way we learn.
For decades, arts education in Hong Kong has struggled to find its place within an exam-driven school system. In Evolving Creative Mindsets, Lynn F. C. Yau argues that the arts are not an extracurricular luxury but a vital force in shaping innovative minds. Drawing on over fourteen years of research and conversations with artists and educators, Yau makes a compelling case for integrating the arts more deeply into education, both as a subject and as a way of thinking.
From fostering critical problem-solving skills to preparing students for an unpredictable world, the arts provide tools for creativity and meaningful learning. This book is an essential resource for policymakers, educators, arts institutions, and those invested in reimagining the role of the arts in education.
For decades, arts education in Hong Kong has struggled to find its place within an exam-driven school system. In Evolving Creative Mindsets, Lynn F. C. Yau argues that the arts are not an extracurricular luxury but a vital force in shaping innovative minds. Drawing on over fourteen years of research and conversations with artists and educators, Yau makes a compelling case for integrating the arts more deeply into education, both as a subject and as a way of thinking.
From fostering critical problem-solving skills to preparing students for an unpredictable world, the arts provide tools for creativity and meaningful learning. This book is an essential resource for policymakers, educators, arts institutions, and those invested in reimagining the role of the arts in education.
[more]
The First British Trade Expedition to China
Captain Weddell and the Courteen Fleet in Asia and Late Ming Canton
Nicholas D. Jackson
Hong Kong University Press, 2022
A groundbreaking study of early modern British enterprise in south China.
In The First British Trade Expedition to China, Nicholas D. Jackson explores the pioneering British trade expedition to China launched in the late Ming period by Charles I and the Courteen Association. Utilizing the vivid perspective of its commander Captain John Weddell, this study concentrates on the fleet’s adventures in south China between Portuguese Macao and the provincial capital, Guangzhou. Tracing the obscure origins of Sino-British diplomatic and commercial relations back to the late Ming era, Jackson examines the first episodes of Sino-British interaction, exchange, and collision in the seventeenth century. His analysis constitutes a groundbreaking study of early modern British initiatives and enterprises in the coastal areas of south China.
In The First British Trade Expedition to China, Nicholas D. Jackson explores the pioneering British trade expedition to China launched in the late Ming period by Charles I and the Courteen Association. Utilizing the vivid perspective of its commander Captain John Weddell, this study concentrates on the fleet’s adventures in south China between Portuguese Macao and the provincial capital, Guangzhou. Tracing the obscure origins of Sino-British diplomatic and commercial relations back to the late Ming era, Jackson examines the first episodes of Sino-British interaction, exchange, and collision in the seventeenth century. His analysis constitutes a groundbreaking study of early modern British initiatives and enterprises in the coastal areas of south China.
[more]
Gender, Health, and History in Modern East Asia
Edited by Angela Ki Che Leung and Izumi Nakayama
Hong Kong University Press, 2017
This groundbreaking volume captures and analyzes the exhilarating and at times disorienting experience when scientists, government officials, educators, and the general public in East Asia tried to come to terms with the introduction of Western biological and medical sciences to the region. The nexus of gender and health is a compelling theme, for this is an area in which private lives and personal characteristics encounter the interventions of public policies. The nine empirically based studies by scholars of history of medicine, sociology, anthropology, and STS (science, technology, and society), spanning Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong from the 1870s to the present, demonstrate just how tightly concerns with gender and health have been woven into the enterprise of modernization and nation-building throughout the long twentieth century. The concepts of “gender” and “health” have become so commonly used that one might overlook that they are actually complicated notions with vexed histories even in their native contexts. Transposing such terminologies into another historical or geographical dimension is fraught with problems, and what makes the East Asian cases in this volume particularly illuminating is that they present concepts of gender and health in motion. The studies show how individuals and societies made sense of modern scientific discourses on diseases, body, sex, and reproduction, redefining existing terms in the process and adopting novel ideas to face new challenges and demands.
[more]
Han Heroes and Yamato Warriors
Competing Masculinities in Chinese and Japanese War Cinema
Amanda Weiss
Hong Kong University Press, 2023
An exploration of collective memory through the lens of East Asian film during World War II.
Taking the “tidal wave” of memory in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century as its starting point, this monograph explores the collective memory of World War II in East Asia (1937–1945) through film. Weiss argues that Chinese, Japanese, and American remembrance of World War II is intertwined in what she terms a “memory loop,” the transnational mediation and remediation of war narratives. Gender is central to this process, as the changing representation of male soldiers, political leaders, and patriarchal father figures within these narratives reveals Japanese and Chinese challenges to each other and to the perceived “foundational” American narrative of the war. This process continues to intensify due to the globally visible nature of the memory loop, which drives this cycle of transmission, translation, and reassessment.
This volume is the first to bring together a collection of Chinese and Japanese war films that have received little attention in English-language literature. It also produces new readings of popular war memory in East Asia by revealing the gendered dimensions of collective remembrance in these films.
Taking the “tidal wave” of memory in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century as its starting point, this monograph explores the collective memory of World War II in East Asia (1937–1945) through film. Weiss argues that Chinese, Japanese, and American remembrance of World War II is intertwined in what she terms a “memory loop,” the transnational mediation and remediation of war narratives. Gender is central to this process, as the changing representation of male soldiers, political leaders, and patriarchal father figures within these narratives reveals Japanese and Chinese challenges to each other and to the perceived “foundational” American narrative of the war. This process continues to intensify due to the globally visible nature of the memory loop, which drives this cycle of transmission, translation, and reassessment.
This volume is the first to bring together a collection of Chinese and Japanese war films that have received little attention in English-language literature. It also produces new readings of popular war memory in East Asia by revealing the gendered dimensions of collective remembrance in these films.
[more]
The Happy Hsiungs
Performing China and the Struggle for Modernity
Diana Yeh
Hong Kong University Press, 2014
“Try Something Different. Something Really Chinese” The Happy Hsiungs recovers the lost histories of Shih-I and Dymia Hsiung, two once highly visible, but now largely forgotten Chinese writers in Britain, who sought to represent China and Chineseness to the rest of the world. Shih-I shot to worldwide fame with his play Lady Precious Stream in the 1930s and became known as the first Chinese director to work in the West End and on Broadway. Dymia was the first Chinese woman in Britain to publish a fictional autobiography in English. Diana Yeh traces the Hsiungs’ lives from their childhood in Qing dynasty China and youth amid the radical May Fourth era to Britain and the USA, where they rubbed shoulders with George Bernard Shaw, James M. Barrie, H. G. Wells, Pearl Buck, Lin Yutang, Anna May Wong and Paul Robeson. In recounting the Hsiungs’ rise to fame, Yeh focuses on the challenges they faced in becoming accepted as modern subjects, as knowledge of China and the Chinese was persistently framed by colonial legacies and Orientalist discourses, which often determined how their works were shaped and understood. She also shows how Shih-I and Dymia, in negotiating acceptance, “performed” not only specific forms of Chineseness but identities that conformed to modern ideals of class, gender and sexuality, defined by the heteronormative nuclear family. Though fêted as ‘The Happy Hsiungs’, their lives ultimately highlight a bitter struggle in attempts to become modern.
[more]
The Heart Sutra
Revisiting Its Texts, History, and Meaning
Henry C.H. Shiu
Hong Kong University Press, 2025
A nuanced reconsideration of the Heart Sutra, one of the most celebrated and widely chanted texts in Mahayana Buddhism.
In The Heart Sutra: Revisiting Its Texts, History, and Meaning, Henry C. H. Shiu investigates the historical origins of the Heart Sutra, a significant Buddhist scripture. He compares the Sanskrit texts with their Chinese and Tibetan translations to analyse whether the Heart Sutra might be a Chinese apocryphon, through detailed linguistic examination. To achieve this goal, Shiu thoroughly examines the primary sources from which the scripture was extracted. He emphasises the necessity of reading the Heart Sutra in the larger context of the Perfection of Wisdom literature, which contains the essence of Mahayana Buddhist teaching. In this monograph, Shiu successfully transcends the boundaries between the Chinese, Indian, and Tibetan Buddhist traditions and provides a revisionist interpretation of the Heart Sutra.
[more]
HK Phil 50+
Jimmy Shiu
Hong Kong University Press, 2025
A symphony of history: celebrating fifty years of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.
In the 1970s, as Hong Kong’s economy began to soar, the public started to place greater emphasis on cultural and artistic pursuits. The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra (HK Phil) became a professional ensemble in 1974, providing high-quality musical entertainment for the public while also promoting classical music and nurturing the next generation of young musicians.
Upon obtaining his master’s degree in the late 1980s, author Jimmy Shiu joined the orchestra as audience development manager from 1988 to 1994, working alongside the ensemble to cultivate Hong Kong’s musical landscape. On the orchestra’s golden jubilee, Shiu offers a warm narrative that reflects on fifty significant moments both on and off stage.
The HK Phil is celebrated as one of Asia’s premier classical orchestras. During its forty-four-week season, the orchestra performs over 150 concerts in the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, and other international cities, reaching more than 200,000 audience members. In 2019, the HK Phil became the first Asian winner of the “Orchestra of the Year” award by the renowned British magazine Gramophone. While its history dates to the establishment of the Sino-British Orchestra in 1947, the HK Phil was officially registered in 1957 and became a professional orchestra in 1974. The 2023/24 season marked its fiftieth professional season.
[more]
Horror to the Extreme
Changing Boundaries in Asian Cinema
Edited by Jinhee Choi and Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano
Hong Kong University Press, 2009
This book compares production and consumption of Asian horror cinemas in different national contexts and their multidirectional dialogues with Hollywood and neighboring Asian cultures. Individual essays highlight common themes including technology, digital media, adolescent audience sensibilities, transnational productions, pan-Asian marketing techniques, and variations on good vs. evil evident in many Asian horror films. Contributors include Kevin Heffernan, Adam Knee, Chi-Yun Shin, Chika Kinoshita, Robert Cagle, Emilie Yeh Yueh-yu, Neda Ng Hei-tung, Hyun-suk Seo, Kyung Hyun Kim, and Robert Hyland.
[more]
How COVID-19 Took Over the World
Lessons for the Future
Edited by Christine Loh
Hong Kong University Press, 2023
This analysis of the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic will help health professionals and policymakers move forward.
The pandemic left disorder and crises in its wake everywhere it struck. Drawing on disciplines including public health, politics, and socioeconomics, this book tracks the spread of COVID-19 to weave a coherent picture that explains how scientists learned about the virus, how authorities reacted around the world, and how different societies coped.
Written by a leading team of public health, policy, and economics experts, How COVID-19 Took Over the World provides an in-depth analysis of various countries’ responses to the pandemic, as well as suggestions to increase the capability to fight future pandemics. The first part of the book provides an overview of global governance and international cooperation, the economic and social consequences of the outbreak, and breakthroughs in mathematical modeling and COVID-19 vaccines. The second part of the book examines and compares specific countries and regions through the lens of good governance, social contract, and political trust.
How COVID-19 Took Over the World is essential for anyone seeking to learn from the impact of COVID-19, particularly professionals and policymakers, as well as those with a general interest in governance and pandemics.
The pandemic left disorder and crises in its wake everywhere it struck. Drawing on disciplines including public health, politics, and socioeconomics, this book tracks the spread of COVID-19 to weave a coherent picture that explains how scientists learned about the virus, how authorities reacted around the world, and how different societies coped.
Written by a leading team of public health, policy, and economics experts, How COVID-19 Took Over the World provides an in-depth analysis of various countries’ responses to the pandemic, as well as suggestions to increase the capability to fight future pandemics. The first part of the book provides an overview of global governance and international cooperation, the economic and social consequences of the outbreak, and breakthroughs in mathematical modeling and COVID-19 vaccines. The second part of the book examines and compares specific countries and regions through the lens of good governance, social contract, and political trust.
How COVID-19 Took Over the World is essential for anyone seeking to learn from the impact of COVID-19, particularly professionals and policymakers, as well as those with a general interest in governance and pandemics.
[more]
The Idea of a China Arrest Warrant
Surrender of Fugitive Offenders between Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau
Yanhong Yin
Hong Kong University Press, 2025
A theoretical model for extradition between China, Hong Kong SAR, and Macau SAR.
Hong Kong and Macau have both been Special Administrative Regions of China since 1999. To this day, however, the two SARs and mainland China have yet to form a cohesive agreement for extradition. Yanhong Yin proposes a theoretical model, the China Arrest Warrant, that fulfills three essential criteria: compliance with the framework of “one country, two systems,” allowance for differences within the three divergent legal systems, and sufficient human rights protection.
This model takes direct inspiration from the European Arrest Warrant, which is undergirded by the principle of mutual recognition—the idea that while states may make different decisions on a wide range of matters, results will be accepted equivalently to decisions made by one’s own state. The success of the European Union’s adoption of mutual recognition across political, economic, and legal situations is instrumental in providing a blueprint for judicial cooperation among mainland China, Hong Kong SAR, and Macau SAR.
The Idea of a China Arrest Warrant seeks to resolve a legal quandary that has existed for decades without resolution, and is essential reading in criminal and constitutional law.
Hong Kong and Macau have both been Special Administrative Regions of China since 1999. To this day, however, the two SARs and mainland China have yet to form a cohesive agreement for extradition. Yanhong Yin proposes a theoretical model, the China Arrest Warrant, that fulfills three essential criteria: compliance with the framework of “one country, two systems,” allowance for differences within the three divergent legal systems, and sufficient human rights protection.
This model takes direct inspiration from the European Arrest Warrant, which is undergirded by the principle of mutual recognition—the idea that while states may make different decisions on a wide range of matters, results will be accepted equivalently to decisions made by one’s own state. The success of the European Union’s adoption of mutual recognition across political, economic, and legal situations is instrumental in providing a blueprint for judicial cooperation among mainland China, Hong Kong SAR, and Macau SAR.
The Idea of a China Arrest Warrant seeks to resolve a legal quandary that has existed for decades without resolution, and is essential reading in criminal and constitutional law.
[more]
Images of the Canton Factories 1760–1822
Reading History in Art
Paul A. Van Dyke and Maria Kar-wing Mok
Hong Kong University Press, 2015
Hundreds of Chinese export paintings of Canton trading houses and shopping streets are in museums and private collections throughout the world, and scholars of art and history have often questioned the reliability of these historical paintings. In this illustrated volume, Paul Van Dyke and Maria Mok examine these Chinese export paintings by matching the changes in the images with new historical data collected from various archives. Many factory paintings are reliable historical records in their own right and can be dated to a single year. Dating images with such precision was not possible in the past owing to insufficient information on the scenes. The new findings in this volume provide unprecedented opportunities to re-date many art works and prove that images of the Canton factories painted on canvas by Chinese artists are far more trustworthy than what scholars have believed in the past.
[more]
Journalism Ethics
21 Essentials from Wars to Artificial Intelligence
Eric Wishart
Hong Kong University Press, 2024
A necessary guide to responsible journalism in a challenging media landscape.
This concise and authoritative work offers the latest guidance on journalism ethics for students and media professionals and will help empower news consumers to make informed decisions about the trustworthiness of their sources of information. It offers advice on all aspects of journalism ethics including accuracy and seeking the truth, representation of women, LGBTQ coverage, climate change, mental health, use of images, conflict reporting, elections, and how to use artificial intelligence. The author brings a unique perspective and depth of knowledge to the complex challenges facing journalists and news consumers in this era of fake news, disinformation, and artificial intelligence.
This concise and authoritative work offers the latest guidance on journalism ethics for students and media professionals and will help empower news consumers to make informed decisions about the trustworthiness of their sources of information. It offers advice on all aspects of journalism ethics including accuracy and seeking the truth, representation of women, LGBTQ coverage, climate change, mental health, use of images, conflict reporting, elections, and how to use artificial intelligence. The author brings a unique perspective and depth of knowledge to the complex challenges facing journalists and news consumers in this era of fake news, disinformation, and artificial intelligence.
[more]
Lu Xun and World Literature
Edited by Xiaolu Ma and Carlos Rojas
Hong Kong University Press, 2025
Impressive and significant contributions to Lu Xun scholarship and world literature.
In Lu Xun and World Literature, the contributors examine various aspects of Lu Xun, who is known as the father of modern Chinese literature. Essays in this book focus on Lu Xun’s works in relation to the notions of world literature and processes of literary worlding. They offer detailed analyses of Lu Xun’s own literary oeuvre and of foreign works that engage with his writings. This volume also focuses on many facets of the publication and dissemination of Lu Xun’s works, from printing and binding to the discussions and debates that followed their release in China and abroad. This book not only makes an important contribution to the field of Lu Xun studies, but also proposes a reexamination of the category of world literature.
In Lu Xun and World Literature, the contributors examine various aspects of Lu Xun, who is known as the father of modern Chinese literature. Essays in this book focus on Lu Xun’s works in relation to the notions of world literature and processes of literary worlding. They offer detailed analyses of Lu Xun’s own literary oeuvre and of foreign works that engage with his writings. This volume also focuses on many facets of the publication and dissemination of Lu Xun’s works, from printing and binding to the discussions and debates that followed their release in China and abroad. This book not only makes an important contribution to the field of Lu Xun studies, but also proposes a reexamination of the category of world literature.
[more]
Macao and the British, 1637–1842
Prelude to Hong Kong
Austin Coates
Hong Kong University Press, 2009
The story of the British acquisition of Hong Kong is intricately related to that of the Portuguese enclave of Macao. The British acquired Hong Kong in 1841, following 200 years of European endeavours to induce China to engage in foreign trade. As a residential base of European trade, Portuguese Macao enabled the West to maintain continuous relations with China from 1557 onwards. Opening with a vivid description of the first English voyage to China in 1637. Macao and the British traces the ensuing course of Anglo-Chinese relations, during which time Macao skillfully—and without fortifications—escaped domination by the British and Chinese. The account covers the opening of regular trade by the East India Company in 1770, including the ‘country’ trade between India and China and Britain’s first embassies to Peking, and relates the bedeviling effect of the opium trade. The story culminates in the resulting war from which Britain won, as part of its concessions, the obscure island of Hong Kong. Among those who feature in this lucid and lively account are the merchant princes Jardine and Matheson, the missionary Robert Morrison, the artist George Chinnery, and Captain Charles Elliot, Hong Kong’s maligned founder.
[more]
A Macao Narrative
Austin Coates
Hong Kong University Press, 2009
Macao, 40 miles west of Hong Kong, became a place of Portuguese residence between 1555–57. In this short, lively and affectionate book, Austin Coates explains how and why the Portuguese came to the Far East, and how they peacefully settled in Macao with tacit Chinese goodwill. Macao’s golden age, from 1557 to the disastrous collapse of 1641, is vividly reconstructed. There follows the cuckoo-in-the-nest situation of the late eighteenth century when the British in Macao were a law unto themselves, until the foundation of Hong Kong and the opening of Shanghai gave wider scope for their energies. Portugal’s subsequent struggle to obtain full sovereignty in Macao, and the extraordinary outcome in 1975, brings this account to a close. Special tribute is paid to the risks Macao gallantly undertook in harbouring Hong Kong’s starving and destitute during World War II.
[more]
Making National Heroes
The Exemplarist Production of Masculinities in Contemporary China
Jacqueline Zhenru Lin
Hong Kong University Press, 2024
A study of the relationship between gender and war commemoration in China.
Making National Heroes is an ethnography on the making of national heroes in the commemoration of the Second World War in contemporary China. Foregrounding the lived experience of men and women who participate in commemorative activities, it theorizes how masculinity and nationalism entangle in recollecting war memories. Taking the line of feminist inquiry, this anthropological study aims to capture the significance of creating exemplars that are the realization of hegemonic masculinities. It adds a gendered perspective to studies on the exemplarist moral theory and theorizes exemplary men’s cross-culture significance in defining masculinities. Researchers in the fields of critical masculinity studies, anthropology, feminist methodology, China studies, and war memories will be interested in this book.
Making National Heroes is an ethnography on the making of national heroes in the commemoration of the Second World War in contemporary China. Foregrounding the lived experience of men and women who participate in commemorative activities, it theorizes how masculinity and nationalism entangle in recollecting war memories. Taking the line of feminist inquiry, this anthropological study aims to capture the significance of creating exemplars that are the realization of hegemonic masculinities. It adds a gendered perspective to studies on the exemplarist moral theory and theorizes exemplary men’s cross-culture significance in defining masculinities. Researchers in the fields of critical masculinity studies, anthropology, feminist methodology, China studies, and war memories will be interested in this book.
[more]
Man in a Hurry
Murray MacLehose and Colonial Autonomy in Hong Kong
Ray Yep
Hong Kong University Press, 2024
A careful analysis of the intricacies of decolonizing British-ruled Hong Kong.
Man in a Hurry explores the latest available archival materials and re-examines MacLehose’s pivotal governorship in Hong Kong (1971–1982). MacLehose arrived in the challenging 1970s, when there were expectations for social reforms, uneasiness in the relationship between Hong Kong and London, and the 1997 factor looming large. The governor successfully carried out various social reforms and he also handled various major issues, including the anti-corruption campaign, the Vietnamese refugee crisis, and the granting of land lease of the New Territories beyond 1997. Yep unveils the tension and bargaining between the British government and explains how interest of the colony could be asserted, defended, and negotiated. This book is an important study of Hong Kong’s "golden years" when the city’s economy took off. It is a significant contribution to our understanding of how local autonomy was defined.
Man in a Hurry explores the latest available archival materials and re-examines MacLehose’s pivotal governorship in Hong Kong (1971–1982). MacLehose arrived in the challenging 1970s, when there were expectations for social reforms, uneasiness in the relationship between Hong Kong and London, and the 1997 factor looming large. The governor successfully carried out various social reforms and he also handled various major issues, including the anti-corruption campaign, the Vietnamese refugee crisis, and the granting of land lease of the New Territories beyond 1997. Yep unveils the tension and bargaining between the British government and explains how interest of the colony could be asserted, defended, and negotiated. This book is an important study of Hong Kong’s "golden years" when the city’s economy took off. It is a significant contribution to our understanding of how local autonomy was defined.
[more]
Meiji Graves in Happy Valley
Stories of Early Japanese Residents in Hong Kong
Yoshiko Nakano and Georgina Challen
Hong Kong University Press, 2024
Stories of Meiji-era Japanese residents and their final resting place in Hong Kong.
The Hong Kong Cemetery in Happy Valley is home to over 470 graves connected to the city’s Japanese population. Most of these graves belong to individuals who died during the Meiji era (1868–1912), a remarkable period of modernization and opening up of Japan that saw thousands of its inhabitants travel to other parts of the world to study, work, and settle. Who were these people? What were they doing in Hong Kong? And why were unbaptized Japanese buried in what was called at one time the "Protestant Cemetery"?
Hong Kong’s Meiji-era Japanese community was one of two halves. Company executives sat atop the social ladder and karayuki-san, or prostitutes, occupied the lower echelons, with tradespeople and professionals somewhere in between. By revealing the personal journeys of these mostly forgotten Japanese, the authors aim to add to transnational perspectives on Hong Kong and Japan during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as increase recognition of this fragmented community’s place in the development of this diverse city.
The Hong Kong Cemetery in Happy Valley is home to over 470 graves connected to the city’s Japanese population. Most of these graves belong to individuals who died during the Meiji era (1868–1912), a remarkable period of modernization and opening up of Japan that saw thousands of its inhabitants travel to other parts of the world to study, work, and settle. Who were these people? What were they doing in Hong Kong? And why were unbaptized Japanese buried in what was called at one time the "Protestant Cemetery"?
Hong Kong’s Meiji-era Japanese community was one of two halves. Company executives sat atop the social ladder and karayuki-san, or prostitutes, occupied the lower echelons, with tradespeople and professionals somewhere in between. By revealing the personal journeys of these mostly forgotten Japanese, the authors aim to add to transnational perspectives on Hong Kong and Japan during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as increase recognition of this fragmented community’s place in the development of this diverse city.
[more]
Melancholy Drift
Marking Time in Chinese Cinema
Jean Ma
Hong Kong University Press, 2010
Ma offers an innovative study of three provocative Chinese directors Wong Kar-wai, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and Tsai Ming-liang. Focusing on the highly stylized and nonlinear configurations of time in each director’s films, she argues that these directors have brought new global respect for Chinese cinema in amplifying motifs of loss, nostalgia, haunting, absence and ephemeral poetics. Hou, Tsai, and Wong all insist on the significance of being out of time, not merely out of place, as a condition of global modernity. Ma argues that their films collectively foreground the central place of contemporary Chinese films in a transnational culture of memory, characterized by a distinctive melancholy that highlights the difficulty of binding together past and present into a meaningful narrative.
[more]
Merchants' Daughters
Women, Commerce, and Regional Culture in South China
Edited by Helen F. Siu
Hong Kong University Press, 2010
Historians and anthropologists have long been interested in South China where powerful lineages and gendered hierarchies are juxtaposed with unorthodox trading cultures, multi-ethnic colonial encounters, and market-driven consumption. The divergent paths taken by women in Hong Kong and Guangdong during thirty years of Maoist closure, and the post-reform cross-border fluidities have also gained analytical attention. This collection provides further theoretical application of a “regional construct” that appreciates process, transcends definitive powers of administrative borders, and brings out nuanced gender notions. An interdisciplinary team uses fine-grained historical and ethnographic materials to map out three crucial historical junctures in the evolution of South China, from late imperial to contemporary periods, that have significantly shaped the construction of gendered space. Stressing process and human agency, the volume uses women’s experiences to challenge dichotomous analytical perspectives on lineage patriarchy, colonial institutions, power, and social activism. For scholars of modern Hong Kong society, Merchants’ Daughters refocuses attention to cultural dynamics in the South China region of which Hong Kong is an integral part. For audiences generally interested in gender issues, this book illuminates the analytical importance of long historical periods in which layers of social, political, and economic activities intersected to constitute the complicated positioning of women.
[more]
Modern Chinese Counter-Enlightenment
Affect, Reason, and the Transcultural Lexicon
Peng Hsiao-yen
Hong Kong University Press, 2023
An examination of the Counter-Enlightenment movement in China.
In Modern Chinese Counter-Enlightenment, Peng Hsiao-yen argues that a trend of Counter-Enlightenment had grown from the late Qing to the May Fourth era in the 1910s to the 1920s and continued to the 1940s. She demonstrates how Counter-Enlightenment was manifested with case studies such as Lu Xun’s writings in the late 1900s, the Aesthetic Education movement from the 1910s to 1920s, and the Science and Lifeview debate in the 1920s. During the period, the life philosophy movement, highlighting the epistemic debate on affect and reason, is connected with its counterparts in Germany, France, and Japan. The movement had a widespread and long-term impact on Chinese philosophy and literature. Using the transcultural lexicon as methodology, this book traces how the German term Lebensanschauung (life view), a key concept in Rudolf Eucken’s life philosophy, constituted a global tide of Counter-Enlightenment that influenced the thought of leading Chinese intellectuals in the Republican era. Peng contends that Chinese intellectuals’ transcultural connections with others in the philosophical pursuit of knowledge triggered China’s self-transformation. She successfully reconstructs the missing link in the Chinese theater of the worldwide dialectic of Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment.
In Modern Chinese Counter-Enlightenment, Peng Hsiao-yen argues that a trend of Counter-Enlightenment had grown from the late Qing to the May Fourth era in the 1910s to the 1920s and continued to the 1940s. She demonstrates how Counter-Enlightenment was manifested with case studies such as Lu Xun’s writings in the late 1900s, the Aesthetic Education movement from the 1910s to 1920s, and the Science and Lifeview debate in the 1920s. During the period, the life philosophy movement, highlighting the epistemic debate on affect and reason, is connected with its counterparts in Germany, France, and Japan. The movement had a widespread and long-term impact on Chinese philosophy and literature. Using the transcultural lexicon as methodology, this book traces how the German term Lebensanschauung (life view), a key concept in Rudolf Eucken’s life philosophy, constituted a global tide of Counter-Enlightenment that influenced the thought of leading Chinese intellectuals in the Republican era. Peng contends that Chinese intellectuals’ transcultural connections with others in the philosophical pursuit of knowledge triggered China’s self-transformation. She successfully reconstructs the missing link in the Chinese theater of the worldwide dialectic of Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment.
[more]
More than 1001 Days and Nights of Hong Kong Internment
A Personal Narrative
Chaloner Grenville Alabaster
Hong Kong University Press, 2022
A diary of life at the Stanley Internment Camp in Hong Kong in the 1940s.
More Than 1001 Days and Nights of Hong Kong Internment is the wartime journal of Sir Chaloner Grenville Alabaster, former attorney-general of Hong Kong and one of the three highest-ranking British officials during the Japanese occupation. He was imprisoned by the Japanese at the Stanley Internment Camp from 1941 to 1945. During his internment, he kept a diary of his life in the camp in small notebooks, hiding them until his release in 1945. He wrote his wartime journal on the basis of these notes. The journal records his day-to-day experiences of the fall of Hong Kong, his time at Stanley, and his eventual release. The book is an important primary source for understanding the daily operation of the Stanley Internment Camp and the period immediately after the fall of Hong Kong.
More Than 1001 Days and Nights of Hong Kong Internment is the wartime journal of Sir Chaloner Grenville Alabaster, former attorney-general of Hong Kong and one of the three highest-ranking British officials during the Japanese occupation. He was imprisoned by the Japanese at the Stanley Internment Camp from 1941 to 1945. During his internment, he kept a diary of his life in the camp in small notebooks, hiding them until his release in 1945. He wrote his wartime journal on the basis of these notes. The journal records his day-to-day experiences of the fall of Hong Kong, his time at Stanley, and his eventual release. The book is an important primary source for understanding the daily operation of the Stanley Internment Camp and the period immediately after the fall of Hong Kong.
[more]
My Life in Medicine
A Hong Kong Journey
Kwok-Yung Yuen
Hong Kong University Press, 2024
A memoir from a medical hero and political advisor who faced immense public and personal challenges during SARS and the COVID-19 pandemic.
From humble beginnings in Hong Kong, Yuen Kwok-Yung rose to international prominence as a doctor, surgeon, academic, and microbiologist. As an advisor to governments, he and colleagues made discoveries that helped the world cope with unprecedented threats to public health, including the COVID-19 pandemic. In this compelling memoir, Dr. Yuen weaves personal stories with those from his extraordinary medical career to take readers on an inspiring journey about perseverance, courage, faith, and the ongoing peril of infectious diseases.
From humble beginnings in Hong Kong, Yuen Kwok-Yung rose to international prominence as a doctor, surgeon, academic, and microbiologist. As an advisor to governments, he and colleagues made discoveries that helped the world cope with unprecedented threats to public health, including the COVID-19 pandemic. In this compelling memoir, Dr. Yuen weaves personal stories with those from his extraordinary medical career to take readers on an inspiring journey about perseverance, courage, faith, and the ongoing peril of infectious diseases.
[more]
A New Documentary History of Hong Kong, 1945–1997
Edited by Florence Mok and Fung Chi Keung Charles
Hong Kong University Press, 2025
A deeply rich and new history of post-war Hong Kong from 1945 to 1997.
Through analyzing newly released archival records from the National Archives in London and the Public Records Office in Hong Kong, A New Documentary History of Hong Kong, 1945–1997 provides an updated and improved understanding of basic aspects of the city such as governance, economy, society, and culture. It also aims to investigate topics that are under-explored in previous sourcebooks, such as race and diasporas, gender and familial relations, medicine and healthcare, and environment and natural disasters. Overall, this book offers an innovative and comprehensive long-term perspective of Hong Kong’s colonial history.
Through analyzing newly released archival records from the National Archives in London and the Public Records Office in Hong Kong, A New Documentary History of Hong Kong, 1945–1997 provides an updated and improved understanding of basic aspects of the city such as governance, economy, society, and culture. It also aims to investigate topics that are under-explored in previous sourcebooks, such as race and diasporas, gender and familial relations, medicine and healthcare, and environment and natural disasters. Overall, this book offers an innovative and comprehensive long-term perspective of Hong Kong’s colonial history.
[more]
The New Politics of Beijing–Hong Kong Relations
Ideological Conflicts and Factionalism
Sonny Shiu-Hing Lo
Hong Kong University Press, 2024
Examines the changing ideologies and conflicts between Hong Kong and the mainland from 2012 to the present.
The New Politics of Beijing–Hong Kong Relations particularly examines the paternalistic authoritarianism that can be seen in Beijing's policy toward Hong Kong since the promulgation of the national security law in late June 2020. Lo analyzes the ideological shift from liberal nationalism to conservative nationalism on the mainland Chinese side since late 2012. The increasingly radical localism on the Hong Kong side after 2014 altered Beijing-Hong Kong relations and introduced factional struggles. While the imposition of the national security law in Hong Kong in late June 2020 has stabilized the city politically, Beijing's policy toward Hong Kong is now guided by the principles of protecting its national security and maintaining economic pragmatism, with implications for Beijing's relations with Taipei in the coming years.
The New Politics of Beijing–Hong Kong Relations particularly examines the paternalistic authoritarianism that can be seen in Beijing's policy toward Hong Kong since the promulgation of the national security law in late June 2020. Lo analyzes the ideological shift from liberal nationalism to conservative nationalism on the mainland Chinese side since late 2012. The increasingly radical localism on the Hong Kong side after 2014 altered Beijing-Hong Kong relations and introduced factional struggles. While the imposition of the national security law in Hong Kong in late June 2020 has stabilized the city politically, Beijing's policy toward Hong Kong is now guided by the principles of protecting its national security and maintaining economic pragmatism, with implications for Beijing's relations with Taipei in the coming years.
[more]
Outlaws of the Sea
Maritime Piracy in Modern China
Robert J. Antony
Hong Kong University Press, 2024
A compelling study of piracy in modern South China.
In Outlaws of the Sea, Robert J. Antony provides a comprehensive account of the history of maritime piracy in coastal south China from the 1630s to the 1940s. He neither romanticizes nor maligns pirates, but rather analyzes them in the context of their times and the broader world in which they lived. The author demonstrates that Chinese piracy was a pervasive force shaping maritime society as it ebbed and flowed between sporadic, small-scale ventures and professional, large-scale enterprises in the modern era. This book offers important new insights into the underside of modern China’s history and the interactions between pirates, foreign traders, local communities, and the state.
In Outlaws of the Sea, Robert J. Antony provides a comprehensive account of the history of maritime piracy in coastal south China from the 1630s to the 1940s. He neither romanticizes nor maligns pirates, but rather analyzes them in the context of their times and the broader world in which they lived. The author demonstrates that Chinese piracy was a pervasive force shaping maritime society as it ebbed and flowed between sporadic, small-scale ventures and professional, large-scale enterprises in the modern era. This book offers important new insights into the underside of modern China’s history and the interactions between pirates, foreign traders, local communities, and the state.
[more]
Pacific Crossing
California Gold, Chinese Migration, and the Making of Hong Kong
Elizabeth Sinn
Hong Kong University Press, 2014
During the nineteenth century tens of thousands of Chinese men and women crossed the Pacific to work, trade, and settle in California. Drawn initially by the gold rush, they took with them skills and goods and a view of the world which, though still Chinese, was transformed by their long journeys back and forth. They in turn transformed Hong Kong, their main point of embarkation, from a struggling infant colony into a prosperous international port and the cultural center of a far-ranging Chinese diaspora. Making use of extensive research in archives around the world, Pacific Crossing charts the rise of Chinese Gold Mountain firms engaged in all kinds of transpacific trade, especially the lucrative export of prepared opium and other luxury goods. Challenging the traditional view that the migration was primarily a “coolie trade,” Elizabeth Sinn uncovers leadership and agency among the many Chinese who made the crossing. In presenting Hong Kong as an “in-between place” of repeated journeys and continuous movement, Sinn also offers a fresh view of the British colony and a new paradigm for migration studies.
[more]
Pandemic Minds
COVID-19 and Mental Health in Hong Kong
Kate Whitehead
Hong Kong University Press, 2024
Uses stories of life under Hong Kong’s strict pandemic restrictions to inspire mental health awareness.
The COVID-19 pandemic was a global crisis that affected millions of lives and brought mental health challenges to the forefront. In Hong Kong, the situation was worsened by uniquely strict COVID-19 regulations, quarantine measures, and travel restrictions. The mental health issues associated with the pandemic did not end with the lifting of the mask mandate. On the contrary, the repercussions are only just beginning to surface and their impact will be felt for years to come.
This eye-opening book shares the stories of ordinary Hongkongers who faced extraordinary challenges during the pandemic. Through a blend of first-person accounts, psychological insights, and hard data, it offers a compelling and accessible exploration of the toll that the COVID-19 pandemic has taken on mental health in Hong Kong.
However, Pandemic Minds is not only a chronicle of suffering—it is also a guide to healing and hope. It offers practical advice on how to overcome the mental health issues caused by the pandemic, and how to build resilience and well-being. It reveals the lessons that can be learned from Hong Kong’s experience, and how they can help individuals and policymakers around the world.
The COVID-19 pandemic was a global crisis that affected millions of lives and brought mental health challenges to the forefront. In Hong Kong, the situation was worsened by uniquely strict COVID-19 regulations, quarantine measures, and travel restrictions. The mental health issues associated with the pandemic did not end with the lifting of the mask mandate. On the contrary, the repercussions are only just beginning to surface and their impact will be felt for years to come.
This eye-opening book shares the stories of ordinary Hongkongers who faced extraordinary challenges during the pandemic. Through a blend of first-person accounts, psychological insights, and hard data, it offers a compelling and accessible exploration of the toll that the COVID-19 pandemic has taken on mental health in Hong Kong.
However, Pandemic Minds is not only a chronicle of suffering—it is also a guide to healing and hope. It offers practical advice on how to overcome the mental health issues caused by the pandemic, and how to build resilience and well-being. It reveals the lessons that can be learned from Hong Kong’s experience, and how they can help individuals and policymakers around the world.
[more]
Penalties of Empire
Capital Trials in Colonial Hong Kong
Christopher Munn
Hong Kong University Press, 2025
An eye-opening study of the evolution of the death penalty in Hong Kong.
"We must have a procedure – if we are going to hang anyone – that is just," said Chief Justice Sir Francis Piggott in 1909, on discovering that Chinese persons accused of murder were being denied interpretation in Hong Kong’s courts. Due process, no matter how costly or inconvenient, was "one of the penalties of empire," he declared.
Penalties of Empire explores how judges, juries, and lawyers strove to deliver justice during the 150 years when the death penalty was in force in Hong Kong. Nine main chapters focus on key capital trials in the first century of British rule. Among the cases are piracies, assassinations, crimes of passion, and murders committed from desperation. These chapters describe the proceedings and participants in court. They also examine the public debates surrounding each case and the exercise of mercy by governors. Two final chapters discuss the decline of the death penalty after World War II, its suspension after 1966, and the controversies leading to its formal abolition in 1993. Penalties of Empire traces the evolution of criminal justice at its highest levels. It also offers a prism for understanding some of the broader forces at work in Hong Kong’s history.
"We must have a procedure – if we are going to hang anyone – that is just," said Chief Justice Sir Francis Piggott in 1909, on discovering that Chinese persons accused of murder were being denied interpretation in Hong Kong’s courts. Due process, no matter how costly or inconvenient, was "one of the penalties of empire," he declared.
Penalties of Empire explores how judges, juries, and lawyers strove to deliver justice during the 150 years when the death penalty was in force in Hong Kong. Nine main chapters focus on key capital trials in the first century of British rule. Among the cases are piracies, assassinations, crimes of passion, and murders committed from desperation. These chapters describe the proceedings and participants in court. They also examine the public debates surrounding each case and the exercise of mercy by governors. Two final chapters discuss the decline of the death penalty after World War II, its suspension after 1966, and the controversies leading to its formal abolition in 1993. Penalties of Empire traces the evolution of criminal justice at its highest levels. It also offers a prism for understanding some of the broader forces at work in Hong Kong’s history.
[more]
The Placemakers of Hong Kong
Roger Nissim
Hong Kong University Press, 2025
The story of Hong Kong’s urban development.
The Placemakers of Hong Kong pays homage to what local development companies, charitable organizations, as well as the government have been able to achieve in contributing to the enhancement of Hong Kong’s evolving urban and rural landscape. Far from being solely profit-driven, developers and urban planners have been vital to the community by creating and designing urban spaces for the public, increasing walkability, and embracing sustainable design—a process called ‘placemaking.’ The book also recognizes that the subsequent placekeeping activities necessary to keep each project site relevant and up-to-date are just as important.
Featuring five case studies from the past and one that examines the ambitious and far-reaching plans for the Northern Metropolis, this book tells the story of Hong Kong’s miraculous urban development over the past few decades.
The Placemakers of Hong Kong pays homage to what local development companies, charitable organizations, as well as the government have been able to achieve in contributing to the enhancement of Hong Kong’s evolving urban and rural landscape. Far from being solely profit-driven, developers and urban planners have been vital to the community by creating and designing urban spaces for the public, increasing walkability, and embracing sustainable design—a process called ‘placemaking.’ The book also recognizes that the subsequent placekeeping activities necessary to keep each project site relevant and up-to-date are just as important.
Featuring five case studies from the past and one that examines the ambitious and far-reaching plans for the Northern Metropolis, this book tells the story of Hong Kong’s miraculous urban development over the past few decades.
[more]
Psychopathology
An Empathic Representational Approach; An Integration of Phenomenology and Cognitive Neuroscience
Eric Yu Hai Chen
Hong Kong University Press, 2024
Explores how the scientific concepts of information and representation can be used to understand subjective mental phenomena and integrate them in empathic clinical dialogues during interactions with patients.
Psychopathology: An Empathic Representational Approach retraces the foundations of classical phenomenological psychopathology and integrates them with modern ideas drawn from anthropology, cognitive neuroscience, computational science, and evolutionary biology to synthesize a comprehensive framework and provide fresh insights. It explores key issues in clinical psychopathology coherently and systematically, illustrates advanced topics in an accessible manner using clinical case examples, metaphors, and clarifying diagrams, and directly links advanced conceptual frameworks with pragmatic skills in the clinical dialogue process.
This volume is aimed at a broad audience of mental health professionals, researchers, and students in psychiatry, psychology, and social work. Its interdisciplinary treatment of the subject will also interest biologists, anthropologists, cognitive psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers.
Psychopathology: An Empathic Representational Approach retraces the foundations of classical phenomenological psychopathology and integrates them with modern ideas drawn from anthropology, cognitive neuroscience, computational science, and evolutionary biology to synthesize a comprehensive framework and provide fresh insights. It explores key issues in clinical psychopathology coherently and systematically, illustrates advanced topics in an accessible manner using clinical case examples, metaphors, and clarifying diagrams, and directly links advanced conceptual frameworks with pragmatic skills in the clinical dialogue process.
This volume is aimed at a broad audience of mental health professionals, researchers, and students in psychiatry, psychology, and social work. Its interdisciplinary treatment of the subject will also interest biologists, anthropologists, cognitive psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers.
[more]
Psychosis and Schizophrenia in Hong Kong
Navigating Clinical and Cultural Crossroads
Eric Yu Hai Chen and Yvonne Treffurth
Hong Kong University Press, 2024
Fills a gap in research by focusing psychosis studies on those affected in Hong Kong.
Psychosis and Schizophrenia in Hong Kong covers some of the most serious mental health conditions that top the global disease burden and affect three percent of the general population. However, most research on psychotic disorders is undertaken in the West, and few studies have been systematically carried out in Asia despite global interest in regional differences. This work offers a unique and coherent account of these disorders and their treatment in Hong Kong over the last thirty years.
Chen and his research program’s pioneering work has ranged from the impact of early intervention on outcomes and relapse prevention to the renaming of psychosis to reduce stigma. The studies have contributed to wider international debates on the optimal management of the condition. Their investigations in semantics and cognition, as well as cognition-enhancing exercise interventions, have provided novel insights into deficits encountered in the treatment of psychotic disorders and how they might be ameliorated. The research has also explored subjective experiences of psychosis and elicited unique perspectives in patients of Asian origin.
Each topic is divided into three sections: a global background of the challenges encountered; research findings from Hong Kong; and reflections that place the data in scientific and clinical contexts and offer future directions.
Psychosis and Schizophrenia in Hong Kong covers some of the most serious mental health conditions that top the global disease burden and affect three percent of the general population. However, most research on psychotic disorders is undertaken in the West, and few studies have been systematically carried out in Asia despite global interest in regional differences. This work offers a unique and coherent account of these disorders and their treatment in Hong Kong over the last thirty years.
Chen and his research program’s pioneering work has ranged from the impact of early intervention on outcomes and relapse prevention to the renaming of psychosis to reduce stigma. The studies have contributed to wider international debates on the optimal management of the condition. Their investigations in semantics and cognition, as well as cognition-enhancing exercise interventions, have provided novel insights into deficits encountered in the treatment of psychotic disorders and how they might be ameliorated. The research has also explored subjective experiences of psychosis and elicited unique perspectives in patients of Asian origin.
Each topic is divided into three sections: a global background of the challenges encountered; research findings from Hong Kong; and reflections that place the data in scientific and clinical contexts and offer future directions.
[more]
Queer Bangkok
21st Century Markets, Media, and Rights
Edited by Peter A. Jackson
Hong Kong University Press, 2011
The Thai capital Bangkok is the unrivalled centre of the country’s gay, lesbian, and transgender communities. These communities are among the largest in Southeast Asia, and indeed in the world, and have a diversity, social presence, and historical depth that set them apart from the queer cultures of many neighbouring societies. The first years of the twenty-first century have marked a significant transition moment for all of Thailand’s LGBT cultures, with a multidimensional expansion in the geographical extent, media presence, economic importance, political impact, social standing, and cultural relevance of Thai queer communities. This book analyses the roles of the market and media — especially cinema and the Internet — in these transformations, and considers the ambiguous consequences that the growing commodification and mediatization of queer lives have had for LGBT rights in Thailand. A key finding is that in the early twenty-first century processes of global queering are leading to a growing Asianization of Bangkok’s queer cultures. This book traces Bangkok’s emergence as a central focus of an expanding regional network linking gay, lesbian, and transgender communities in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines and other rapidly developing East and Southeast Asian societies.
[more]
Queer Chinese Cultures and Mobilities
Kinship, Migration, and Middle Classes
John Wei
Hong Kong University Press, 2020
In Queer Chinese Cultures and Mobilities, John Wei brings light to the germination and movements of queer cultures and social practices in today’s China and Sinophone Asia. While many scholars attribute China’s emergent queer cultures to the neoliberal turn and the global political landscape, Wei refuses to take these assumptions for granted. He finds that the values and pitfalls of the development-induced mobilities and post-development syndromes have conjointly structured and sustained people’s ongoing longings and sufferings under the dual pressure of compulsory familism and compulsory development. While young gay men are increasingly mobilized in their decision-making to pursue sociocultural and socioeconomic capital to afford a queer life, the ubiquitous and compulsory mobilities have significantly reshaped and redefined today’s queer kinship structure, transnational cultural network, and social stratification in China and capitalist Asia. With Queer Chinese Cultures and Mobilities, Wei interrogates the meanings and functions of mobilities at the forefront of China’s internal transformation and international expansion for its great dream of revival, when gender and sexuality have become increasingly mobilized with geographical, cultural, and social class migrations and mobilizations beyond traditional and conventional frameworks, categories, and boundaries.
[more]
Reading Du Fu
Nine Views
Edited by Xiaofei Tian
Hong Kong University Press, 2020
This is the first collection of essays in English, contributed by well-known experts of Chinese literature as well as scholars of a younger generation, dedicated to the poetry of Du Fu, commonly regarded as the greatest Chinese poet. These essays are engaged in historically nuanced close reading of Du Fu’s poems, both canonical and less known, from new angles and in various contexts, and discuss a series of critical issues, including the local and the imperial; the body politic and the individual body; poetry and geography; perspectives on the complicated relation of religion and literature; materiality and contemporary reception of Du Fu; poetry and visual art; and tradition and modernity. Many of the poems discussed in this book were written in the backwater town of Kuizhou, far from Du Fu’s earlier residence in the capital city Chang’an, at a time when the Tang dynasty was going through devastating social and political disturbances. The authors contend that Du Fu’s isolation from the elite literary establishments allowed him to become a pioneer who introduced a new order to the Chinese poetic discourse. However, his attention to details in everyday reality, his preoccupation with domestic life and the larger issues embroiled in it, his humor, and his ability to surprise tend to be obscured by the clichéd image of the “poet sage” and “poet historian”—an image this collection of essays successfully complicates.
[more]
Redefining Heresy and Tolerance
Governance of Muslims and Christians in the Qing Empire before 1864
Tak Wai Hung
Hong Kong University Press, 2024
Insight into the Qing dynasty’s policies towards Muslims and Christians traveling to East Asia.
Redefining Heresy and Tolerance demonstrates how the political philosophies of toleration developed in the context of late Imperial China were different from the theories that emerged in the West during their time. Focusing on religious policy in the Qing Empire, Hung attempts to clarify the Qing toleration policies and the reasoning behind them. He also demonstrates how the Qing government prevented Confucian bureaucrats from interfering in the religious life of Christians and Muslims, and how the Confucians’ understanding of “religion” was reshaped in the period.
Redefining Heresy and Tolerance demonstrates how the political philosophies of toleration developed in the context of late Imperial China were different from the theories that emerged in the West during their time. Focusing on religious policy in the Qing Empire, Hung attempts to clarify the Qing toleration policies and the reasoning behind them. He also demonstrates how the Qing government prevented Confucian bureaucrats from interfering in the religious life of Christians and Muslims, and how the Confucians’ understanding of “religion” was reshaped in the period.
[more]
Revitalization in Asia
Adaptive Reuse in Macao, Mumbai, and Penang
Edited by Lavina Ahuja and Lynne D. DiStefano
Hong Kong University Press, 2025
Useful case studies on sustainability and revitalization in Asia.
Revitalization in Asia offers a clear understanding of the value of sustainable adaptive reuse within an Asian context. Three highly urbanized places—Macao, Mumbai, and Penang —are considered in detail through essays and timelines that examine both conservation and planning perspectives. Six essays look at the connection between adaptive reuse and the three dimensions of sustainability regarding the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. Additionally, for each location, five case studies offer a comparative framework for understanding similarities and differences between adaptive reuse projects.
Revitalization in Asia offers a clear understanding of the value of sustainable adaptive reuse within an Asian context. Three highly urbanized places—Macao, Mumbai, and Penang —are considered in detail through essays and timelines that examine both conservation and planning perspectives. Six essays look at the connection between adaptive reuse and the three dimensions of sustainability regarding the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. Additionally, for each location, five case studies offer a comparative framework for understanding similarities and differences between adaptive reuse projects.
[more]
Rosie Young
A Lifetime of Selfless Service
Moira M. W. Chan-Yeung
Hong Kong University Press, 2024
Chronicles the life of a professor who dedicated her career to improving medical education and healthcare in Hong Kong.
In Rosie Young: A Lifetime of Selfless Service, Moira Chan-Yeung presents a brief history of professor Young’s remarkable career in medical education and administration at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and her wide-ranging public service to the community over many decades. As the first female dean of HKU’s Faculty of Medicine, her career was deeply intertwined with the socio-economic development of Hong Kong. After she retired from HKU, she continued to serve HKU and the community until the present. This book illustrates her many contributions to the development of medical education in Hong Kong and the university administration at HKU. Young’s extensive public service in the field of medicine also helped improve primary care, hospital care, and public health in Hong Kong. In short, this book provides a valuable record of a female giant in medical history and documents her selfless and enduring service to the HKU community and Hong Kong society.
In Rosie Young: A Lifetime of Selfless Service, Moira Chan-Yeung presents a brief history of professor Young’s remarkable career in medical education and administration at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and her wide-ranging public service to the community over many decades. As the first female dean of HKU’s Faculty of Medicine, her career was deeply intertwined with the socio-economic development of Hong Kong. After she retired from HKU, she continued to serve HKU and the community until the present. This book illustrates her many contributions to the development of medical education in Hong Kong and the university administration at HKU. Young’s extensive public service in the field of medicine also helped improve primary care, hospital care, and public health in Hong Kong. In short, this book provides a valuable record of a female giant in medical history and documents her selfless and enduring service to the HKU community and Hong Kong society.
[more]
Scottish Mandarin
The Life and Times of Sir Reginald Johnston
Shiona Airlie
Hong Kong University Press, 2012
Colonial administrator, writer, explorer, Buddhist, and friend to China's last emperor, Sir Reginald Johnston (1874–1938) was a distinguished sinologist with a tangled love and family life that he kept secret even from his closest friends. Born and educated in Edinburgh, he began his career in the colony of Hong Kong and eventually became Commissioner of the remote British leased territory of Weihai in northern China. He travelled widely and, during a break from colonial service, served as tutor and advisor to Puyi, the deposed emperor. As the only foreigner allowed to work in the Forbidden City, he wrote the classic account of the last days of the Qing Dynasty—Twilight in the Forbidden City. Granted unique access to Johnston's extensive personal papers, once thought to be lost, Shiona Airlie tells the life of a complex and sensitive character whose career made a deep impression on 20th-century China.
[more]
Selected Writings of Lu Zhi
Zhi Lu
Hong Kong University Press, 2026
A Chinese-language collection of writing from Lu Zhi, who devoted his life to the revolutionary cause and published numerous articles in Jiefang Daily,People’s Daily, and other newspapers.
Selected Writings of Lu Zhi is divided into three parts, featuring the author’s views on the construction of the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region, political and cultural work in the army, and the economic development of the new China. Lu Zhi’s writings not only embody the “Yan’an Spirit” but also allow readers to gain insight into his personal experiences and the revolutionary atmosphere in China during the 1940s and 1950s. This collection also provides scholars with valuable primary historical materials and serves as an important reference for the study of China’s revolutionary history and the development of socialist economic construction.
[more]
The Sensuous Cinema of Wong Kar-wai
Film Poetics and the Aesthetic of Disturbance, Second Edition
Gary Bettinson
Hong Kong University Press, 2025
More than just mood: how Wong Kar-wai reshapes storytelling through sensation and style.
The widely acclaimed films of Wong Kar-wai are characterized by their sumptuous yet complex visual and sonic style. This study of Wong’s filmmaking techniques uses a poetics approach to examine how form, music, narration, characterization, genre, and other artistic elements work together to produce certain effects on audiences. Bettinson argues that Wong’s films are permeated by an aesthetic of sensuousness and “disturbance” achieved through techniques such as narrative interruptions, facial masking, opaque cuts, and other complex strategies. The effect is to jolt the viewer out of complete aesthetic absorption. Each of the chapters focuses on a single aspect of Wong’s filmmaking.
This tenth-anniversary edition of The Sensuous Cinema of Wong Kar-wai includes a substantial new afterword bringing the story of Wong’s career up to date (including reflections on the Mainland Chinese drama Blossoms Shanghai). Bettinson revisits and extends the arguments of the first edition, surveys the recent key debates on Wong’s filmmaking, and introduces fresh lines of critical investigation. The book will appeal to all who are interested in authorship and aesthetics in film studies, to scholars in Asian studies, media, and cultural studies, and to anyone with an interest in Hong Kong cinema in general, and Wong’s films in particular.
The widely acclaimed films of Wong Kar-wai are characterized by their sumptuous yet complex visual and sonic style. This study of Wong’s filmmaking techniques uses a poetics approach to examine how form, music, narration, characterization, genre, and other artistic elements work together to produce certain effects on audiences. Bettinson argues that Wong’s films are permeated by an aesthetic of sensuousness and “disturbance” achieved through techniques such as narrative interruptions, facial masking, opaque cuts, and other complex strategies. The effect is to jolt the viewer out of complete aesthetic absorption. Each of the chapters focuses on a single aspect of Wong’s filmmaking.
This tenth-anniversary edition of The Sensuous Cinema of Wong Kar-wai includes a substantial new afterword bringing the story of Wong’s career up to date (including reflections on the Mainland Chinese drama Blossoms Shanghai). Bettinson revisits and extends the arguments of the first edition, surveys the recent key debates on Wong’s filmmaking, and introduces fresh lines of critical investigation. The book will appeal to all who are interested in authorship and aesthetics in film studies, to scholars in Asian studies, media, and cultural studies, and to anyone with an interest in Hong Kong cinema in general, and Wong’s films in particular.
[more]
The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru
Britain’s Forgotten Wartime Tragedy
Tony Banham
Hong Kong University Press, 2006
Although never previously studied in any depth, the sinking of the Lisbon Maru was the most costly American on British ‘Friendly Fire’ incident of the Second World War. Of the 4,500 of Hong Kong’s garrison who perished during the war, 1,000 died directly or indirectly from this sinking. From American, British, Hong Kong and Japanese sources, this book reconstructs the fateful voyage of the Lisbon Maru, and the experiences of the captives, the captors, and those on board the submarine that sank her. The book will be of interest to anyone wishing to know more about the ‘Hellships’ that caused the deaths of almost 20,000 Allied Prisoners of War during the Second World War, or the experiences of Allied POWs in Japan.
[more]
Sinoglossia
Edited by Andrea Bachner, Howard Chiang, and Yu-Lin Lee
Hong Kong University Press, 2023
An expansion of the field of Sinophone studies through the notion of sinoglossia.
Sinoglossia places embodiment, mediality, and translation at the center of this analytical inquiry into Chinese and Sinophone cultures. This book introduces a theory defined by cultural formations not overdetermined by Sinitic linguistic ties. The concept of sinoglossia combines a heteroglossic and heterotopian approach to the critical study of mediated discourses of China and “Chineseness.” From the history of physical examinations and queer subalternity to the cinematic inscription of “Chineseness-as-landscape,” and from Sinopop to the translational writings of Eileen Chang and Syaman Rapongan, this book argues for a flexible conceptualization of cultural objects, conditions, and contexts that draws attention to an array of polyphonic, multi-discursive, and multilingual articulations. In this new horizon of understanding, place or theme create a source of friction and innovation.
Sinoglossia places embodiment, mediality, and translation at the center of this analytical inquiry into Chinese and Sinophone cultures. This book introduces a theory defined by cultural formations not overdetermined by Sinitic linguistic ties. The concept of sinoglossia combines a heteroglossic and heterotopian approach to the critical study of mediated discourses of China and “Chineseness.” From the history of physical examinations and queer subalternity to the cinematic inscription of “Chineseness-as-landscape,” and from Sinopop to the translational writings of Eileen Chang and Syaman Rapongan, this book argues for a flexible conceptualization of cultural objects, conditions, and contexts that draws attention to an array of polyphonic, multi-discursive, and multilingual articulations. In this new horizon of understanding, place or theme create a source of friction and innovation.
[more]
Sir Robert Ho Tung
Public Figure, Private Man
May Holdsworth
Hong Kong University Press, 2022
A nuanced perspective on Sir Robert Ho Tung, Hong Kong philanthropist.
Sir Robert Ho Tung (1862–1954) is a compelling figure in Hong Kong history. He is regularly portrayed as the colony’s greatest philanthropist and wealthiest man of his day, the first Chinese to live on the Peak, and, at the end of his life, the “Grand Old Man of Hong Kong.” The illegitimate son of a Chinese mother and European father, he was highly sensitive about his mixed heritage, although his success was driven as much by his entrepreneurial talents as by his being Eurasian. This book shows him in all his immense variety—financial wizard, husband and lover, patriarch of a large family, loyal British subject but also, paradoxically, Chinese patriot. China’s president Yuan Shikai awarded him the Order of the Excellent Crop, and King George V knighted him. May Holdsworth’s thoughtful and deftly written account of his life is the first full-length biography in English. Given unique and unprecedented access to family and personal papers, including letters, diaries, notes, and photographs, she offers a nuanced perspective on a public but also a private man. Her book will be a rich resource for historians and readers interested in the men and women who played a key part in the shaping of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Hong Kong.
Sir Robert Ho Tung (1862–1954) is a compelling figure in Hong Kong history. He is regularly portrayed as the colony’s greatest philanthropist and wealthiest man of his day, the first Chinese to live on the Peak, and, at the end of his life, the “Grand Old Man of Hong Kong.” The illegitimate son of a Chinese mother and European father, he was highly sensitive about his mixed heritage, although his success was driven as much by his entrepreneurial talents as by his being Eurasian. This book shows him in all his immense variety—financial wizard, husband and lover, patriarch of a large family, loyal British subject but also, paradoxically, Chinese patriot. China’s president Yuan Shikai awarded him the Order of the Excellent Crop, and King George V knighted him. May Holdsworth’s thoughtful and deftly written account of his life is the first full-length biography in English. Given unique and unprecedented access to family and personal papers, including letters, diaries, notes, and photographs, she offers a nuanced perspective on a public but also a private man. Her book will be a rich resource for historians and readers interested in the men and women who played a key part in the shaping of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Hong Kong.
[more]
Socializing Medicine
Health Humanities and East Asian Media
Edited by Pao-chen Tang, Yuqian Yan, and Ling Zhang
Hong Kong University Press, 2025
An analysis of the use of mass media as a tool to control healthcare.
Socializing Medicine explores the intersections of medicine, health, and East Asian media. Interweaving archival research, audiovisual analyses, and theoretical insights from the emerging field of Health Humanities, the contributors reveal the multifaceted ways in which mass media—including photography, film, television, and live streaming—has been deployed as a tool for controlling medicine and health, privileging those with power and authority since the early twentieth century. Adopting anti-colonial and anti-capitalist perspectives, the contributors in this volume challenge the dominant mediations of health against the backdrop of imperialism, Cold War geopolitical tensions, and neoliberal capitalism. Collectively, they advocate for alternative understandings of medical culture through media productions that envision accessible and equitable healthcare practices.
Socializing Medicine explores the intersections of medicine, health, and East Asian media. Interweaving archival research, audiovisual analyses, and theoretical insights from the emerging field of Health Humanities, the contributors reveal the multifaceted ways in which mass media—including photography, film, television, and live streaming—has been deployed as a tool for controlling medicine and health, privileging those with power and authority since the early twentieth century. Adopting anti-colonial and anti-capitalist perspectives, the contributors in this volume challenge the dominant mediations of health against the backdrop of imperialism, Cold War geopolitical tensions, and neoliberal capitalism. Collectively, they advocate for alternative understandings of medical culture through media productions that envision accessible and equitable healthcare practices.
[more]
Steamships across the Pacific
Maritime Journeys between Mexico, China, and Japan, 1867–1914
Ruth Mandujano López
Hong Kong University Press, 2025
A unique investigation of the transpacific steam network of Mexico, Britain, China, and Japan.
During the nineteenth century, the Trans-Pacific world underwent a profound transformation due to the transition from sail to steam navigation that was accompanied by a reconfiguration of power. Steamships across the Pacific explores how diverse Mexican, British, Chinese, and Japanese interests participated, particularly during Porfirio Díaz’s presidency at the peak of Mexico’s participation, in the steam network. It investigates this network in its 1860s outset through a time of many revolutionary changes, including the World War, the Mexican Revolution, the opening of the Panama Canal, and the introduction of a new maritime technology—vessels run by oil. These transoceanic exchanges, generated within these new geographies of power, contributed not only to the formation of a Trans-Pacific region but also to the refashioning of the Mexican national imaginary.
With transnationalism, global, and migration studies as its main frameworks, this study draws upon a dazzling array of primary sources to center Mexico’s Trans-Pacific relations and the influence they wielded over the region at the height of the steamship period.
During the nineteenth century, the Trans-Pacific world underwent a profound transformation due to the transition from sail to steam navigation that was accompanied by a reconfiguration of power. Steamships across the Pacific explores how diverse Mexican, British, Chinese, and Japanese interests participated, particularly during Porfirio Díaz’s presidency at the peak of Mexico’s participation, in the steam network. It investigates this network in its 1860s outset through a time of many revolutionary changes, including the World War, the Mexican Revolution, the opening of the Panama Canal, and the introduction of a new maritime technology—vessels run by oil. These transoceanic exchanges, generated within these new geographies of power, contributed not only to the formation of a Trans-Pacific region but also to the refashioning of the Mexican national imaginary.
With transnationalism, global, and migration studies as its main frameworks, this study draws upon a dazzling array of primary sources to center Mexico’s Trans-Pacific relations and the influence they wielded over the region at the height of the steamship period.
[more]
The Sublime Object of Orientalism
Asian Physical Culture in the West
Paul Bowman
Hong Kong University Press, 2026
An exploration of the little-understood relationship between popular Asian physical practices and the sublime.
This book proposes that globalized Asian physical and cultural practices such as taiji, qigong, yoga, and meditation can be understood by examining the intimate connection between Western orientalism and the Romantic aesthetic notion of the sublime. The Sublime Object of Orientalism recasts “orientalist physical culture” as a set of practices animated by the sublime.
Paul Bowman combines new readings of philosophers and cultural critics such as Slavoj Žižek and Jane Iwamura with analyses of film, media, and Asian physical practices and their entrepreneurial forms to shed light on the quest to articulate a philosophy of orientalist physical culture. He also explores ways to make sense of orientalist physical culture in the contemporary world and evaluate the often problematic ideologies that circulate around these cultural practices without uncritically accepting their value or rejecting them outright. This empathetic and accessible volume is a must-read for students, researchers, and teachers of cross-cultural studies, cultural theory, postcolonialism, and orientalism.
[more]
Surrealism from Paris to Shanghai
Lauren Walden
Hong Kong University Press, 2024
Surrealism through the lens of China.
Surrealism from Paris to Shanghai is the first English language book dedicated to introducing Chinese Surrealism, enlarging the geographical authority of Surrealist studies beyond a Eurocentric prism of analysis. The book reveals the mutual cultural influence between China and the Western avant-garde, moving beyond notions of “copying from the West.” Utilizing primary source materials, particularly periodicals, Lauren Walden reveals the underexplored dissemination of Surrealism in Shanghai. Highlighting how Surrealism was applied across a broad political spectrum in Shanghai including anti-colonialism, communism, and nationalism, Walden also demonstrates why Shanghai’s former French concession became the birthplace of Surrealism in China.
Surrealism from Paris to Shanghai is the first English language book dedicated to introducing Chinese Surrealism, enlarging the geographical authority of Surrealist studies beyond a Eurocentric prism of analysis. The book reveals the mutual cultural influence between China and the Western avant-garde, moving beyond notions of “copying from the West.” Utilizing primary source materials, particularly periodicals, Lauren Walden reveals the underexplored dissemination of Surrealism in Shanghai. Highlighting how Surrealism was applied across a broad political spectrum in Shanghai including anti-colonialism, communism, and nationalism, Walden also demonstrates why Shanghai’s former French concession became the birthplace of Surrealism in China.
[more]
Sustaining Landscapes
Governance and Ecology in Chinese Visual Culture, 960–1368 CE
Gerui Wang
Hong Kong University Press, 2025
Before climate policy, there was landscape painting—how visual culture illustrated ecological concerns in imperial China.
Sustaining Landscapes: Governance and Ecology in Chinese Visual Culture, 960–1368 CE examines ecological thought contested amid the rise of the Chinese landscape genre, tracing its intersections with infrastructure governance, natural resource management, and geospatial knowledge. It traces the pre-industrial notion of “sustainability” in policy debates, legal regulations, and arts. Landscape imagery on paintings, maps, as well as mass-produced artifacts such as fans and ceramic pillows documented both appropriate and exploitative use of natural resources, and critiqued on social inequity and political turmoil. This book breaks new ground by bringing together research on visual and material culture with analysis of politics and ecology. Wang argues that the Chinese landscape genre embodied a holistic approach to negotiating debates on human-nature interdependence and people-state relationships. It joins the increasing literature on ecocriticism and offers alternative perspectives to address contemporary challenges, ranging from environmental crisis to global governance.
Sustaining Landscapes: Governance and Ecology in Chinese Visual Culture, 960–1368 CE examines ecological thought contested amid the rise of the Chinese landscape genre, tracing its intersections with infrastructure governance, natural resource management, and geospatial knowledge. It traces the pre-industrial notion of “sustainability” in policy debates, legal regulations, and arts. Landscape imagery on paintings, maps, as well as mass-produced artifacts such as fans and ceramic pillows documented both appropriate and exploitative use of natural resources, and critiqued on social inequity and political turmoil. This book breaks new ground by bringing together research on visual and material culture with analysis of politics and ecology. Wang argues that the Chinese landscape genre embodied a holistic approach to negotiating debates on human-nature interdependence and people-state relationships. It joins the increasing literature on ecocriticism and offers alternative perspectives to address contemporary challenges, ranging from environmental crisis to global governance.
[more]
Talk to Me in Cantonese
Betty Hung
Hong Kong University Press, 2019
Talk to Me in Cantonese is a comprehensive and self-paced textbook tailor-made for English-speaking learners with a basic knowledge of Cantonese. It consists of 10 lessons, each covering a real-life situation using dialogues and stories. Through systematic explanations of the grammar and sentence patterns introduced in the text, readers are able to acquire crucial grammatical structures needed to express themselves fluently and precisely. Each lesson reinforces grammar usage with a review and a wide variety of exercises. The Cantonese pronunciation practice in Appendix 1 serves a dual purpose: it exposes the reader to the richness of the Cantonese language by using slang and colloquial expressions to practise every element of Cantonese pronunciation. This book is a sequel to A Cantonese Book, a popular textbook designed for beginning-level learners. Since there are very few books that help teach anything beyond survival Cantonese, Talk to Me in Cantonese is suitable for anyone who wants to continue their study, no matter what text they used to start with. The book is enhanced by downloadable audio files by native speakers for all dialogues, stories, vocabulary items, and grammatical practices in the text.
[more]
Time Exposures
Catholic Photography and the Evolution of Modern China
Joseph W. Ho and Anthony E. Clark
Hong Kong University Press, 2026
A history of China’s transition from empire to modern nation, told through photographs by and of Chinese Catholic communities.
Time Exposures explores how historical photographs created by and of Chinese Catholic communities illuminate the vicissitudes of China’s transition from empire to modern nation. Relying on an expansive worldwide network of Catholic photographic archives, this book examines largely unseen and unpublished images related to Catholicism in China. These images, made from the 1870s through the 1990s, were central to visual practices and afterlives that represent, recover, and reenvision diverse Chinese experiences. This volume provides insight into the lives of women and men behind and in front of the camera who were important documentarians of China’s local and national changes over time, shaping ways of seeing and belonging to the country’s many cultural evolutions.
[more]
Towards a Future for BRICS+
Edited by Heiwai Tang and Brian Wong Yue Shun
Hong Kong University Press, 2025
Economic powerhouse or geopolitical experiment? A critical look at BRICS+ in the twenty-first century.
As the BRICS bloc expands beyond its original five members to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Indonesia, and the UAE—with Saudi Arabia invited to join—the influence of BRICS+ in global trade and geopolitics is growing. The question remains: what does this shifting balance of power mean for the world?
Towards a Future for BRICS+, edited by Heiwai Tang and Brian Wong, brings together leading scholars to assess the past, present, and future of this evolving coalition. With rigorous, evidence-based analysis, this work outlines the economic and political complementarities between BRICS+ nations while also addressing internal tensions and the broader implications for the Global South.
As questions linger over the viability of BRICS+ as a counterweight to the G7, this book is a valuable reference for policymakers and scholars seeking to understand the emerging global order.
As the BRICS bloc expands beyond its original five members to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Indonesia, and the UAE—with Saudi Arabia invited to join—the influence of BRICS+ in global trade and geopolitics is growing. The question remains: what does this shifting balance of power mean for the world?
Towards a Future for BRICS+, edited by Heiwai Tang and Brian Wong, brings together leading scholars to assess the past, present, and future of this evolving coalition. With rigorous, evidence-based analysis, this work outlines the economic and political complementarities between BRICS+ nations while also addressing internal tensions and the broader implications for the Global South.
As questions linger over the viability of BRICS+ as a counterweight to the G7, this book is a valuable reference for policymakers and scholars seeking to understand the emerging global order.
[more]
Travels and Revelations
23 Essays by Zhang Chengzhi
Chengzhi Zhang
Hong Kong University Press, 2026
A collection of personal and reflective essays that mark the first English translation of author Zhang Chengzhi’s work.
This is an English translation of twenty-three essays written by the Chinese author Zhang Chengzhi, spanning over twenty years. The collection of prose covers Zhang’s memories when living in Inner Mongolia, his perception of the Western part of China, his views on several figures, and events in modern Chinese history and contemporary China.
This is an English translation of twenty-three essays written by the Chinese author Zhang Chengzhi, spanning over twenty years. The collection of prose covers Zhang’s memories when living in Inner Mongolia, his perception of the Western part of China, his views on several figures, and events in modern Chinese history and contemporary China.
[more]
Tuberculosis Control and Institutional Change in Shanghai, 1911–2011
Rachel S. Core
Hong Kong University Press, 2023
An analysis of the lessons learned from tuberculosis control in Shanghai.
Tuberculosis Control and Institutional Change in Shanghai, 1911–2011 is the first book on the most widespread and deadly infectious disease in China, both historically and today. Weaving together interviews with data from periodicals and local archives in Shanghai, Rachel Core examines the rise and fall of tuberculosis control in China from the 1950s to the 1990s. Under the socialist work unit system, the vast majority of people had guaranteed employment, a host of benefits tied to their workplace, and there was little mobility—factors that made the delivery of medical and public health services possible in both urban and rural areas. The dismantling of work units amid wider market reforms in the 1980s and 1990s led to the rise of temporary and casual employment and a huge migrant worker population, with little access to health care, creating new challenges in TB control. This study of Shanghai will provide valuable lessons for historians, social scientists, public health specialists, and many others working on public health infrastructure on both the national and global levels.
Tuberculosis Control and Institutional Change in Shanghai, 1911–2011 is the first book on the most widespread and deadly infectious disease in China, both historically and today. Weaving together interviews with data from periodicals and local archives in Shanghai, Rachel Core examines the rise and fall of tuberculosis control in China from the 1950s to the 1990s. Under the socialist work unit system, the vast majority of people had guaranteed employment, a host of benefits tied to their workplace, and there was little mobility—factors that made the delivery of medical and public health services possible in both urban and rural areas. The dismantling of work units amid wider market reforms in the 1980s and 1990s led to the rise of temporary and casual employment and a huge migrant worker population, with little access to health care, creating new challenges in TB control. This study of Shanghai will provide valuable lessons for historians, social scientists, public health specialists, and many others working on public health infrastructure on both the national and global levels.
[more]
Underground Front
The Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong, Second Edition
Christine Loh
Hong Kong University Press, 2019
Underground Front is a pioneering examination of the role that the Chinese Communist Party has played in Hong Kong since the creation of the party in 1921, through to the present day. The second edition goes into greater depth on the party’s view on “one country, two systems”, “patriotism”, and “elections”. The introduction has been extensively revised and the concluding chapter has been completely rewritten in order to give a thorough account of the post-1997 governance and political system in Hong Kong, and where challenges lie. Christine Loh endeavours to keep the data and the materials up to date and to include the discussion of some recent events in Hong Kong. The appendices on the key targets of the party’s united front activities also make the book an especially useful read for all who are interested in Hong Kong history and politics, and the history of modern China.
[more]
Whampoa and the Canton Trade
Life and Death in a Chinese Port, 1700–1842
Paul A. Van Dyke
Hong Kong University Press, 2020
Paul A. Van Dyke’s new book, Whampoa and the Canton Trade: Life and Death in a Chinese Port, 1700–1842, authoritatively corrects misconceptions about how the Qing government treated foreigners when it controlled all trade in the Guangzhou port. Van Dyke reappraises the role of Whampoa in the system—a port twenty kilometres away from Guangzhou—and reassesses the government’s attitude towards foreigners, which was much more accommodating than previous research suggested. In fact, Van Dyke shows that foreigners were not bound by local laws and were given freedom of movement around Whampoa and Canton to the extent that they were treated with leniency even when found in off-limit places. Whampoa and the Canton Trade recounts the lives of seamen who travelled half-way around the globe at great risk and lived through a historic period that would become the framework for subsequent encounters between China and the rest of the world. Were it not for the exchanges between the major powers and the Qing empire, the world—as we know it—would be a rather different place. Hence, Van Dyke’s command of data mining shows that Whampoa was a key pillar in the Canton System and, thus, in the making of the modern world economy.
[more]
When the Yellow River Floods
Water, Technology, and Nation-Building in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Literature
Hui-Lin Hsu
Hong Kong University Press, 2024
A study of The Travels of Lao Can through an environmental lens.
When the Yellow River Floods explores the relationship between environmental degradation, hydraulic engineering, and nation-building in the context of Liu E’s The Travels of Lao Can. This book provides a unique perspective on modern Chinese literary history that goes beyond conventional narratives that focus solely on political and cultural factors. The main areas covered include the role of water management in literary nation-building and the connections between the novel’s various themes, such as river engineering, medical and political discourses, national sentiment, and landscape description.
By offering a comprehensive analysis of The Travels of Lao Can, this book broadens the understanding of nation-building in early twentieth-century China, highlighting the impact of environmental crises and hydraulics on the formation of national literature and consciousness. When the Yellow River Floods provides a new perspective on the environmental roots of modern Chinese literature, making it an essential read for those seeking to understand the complex interplay between literature, the environment, and national identity in China. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of Chinese literature, history, and environmental studies.
When the Yellow River Floods explores the relationship between environmental degradation, hydraulic engineering, and nation-building in the context of Liu E’s The Travels of Lao Can. This book provides a unique perspective on modern Chinese literary history that goes beyond conventional narratives that focus solely on political and cultural factors. The main areas covered include the role of water management in literary nation-building and the connections between the novel’s various themes, such as river engineering, medical and political discourses, national sentiment, and landscape description.
By offering a comprehensive analysis of The Travels of Lao Can, this book broadens the understanding of nation-building in early twentieth-century China, highlighting the impact of environmental crises and hydraulics on the formation of national literature and consciousness. When the Yellow River Floods provides a new perspective on the environmental roots of modern Chinese literature, making it an essential read for those seeking to understand the complex interplay between literature, the environment, and national identity in China. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of Chinese literature, history, and environmental studies.
[more]
The Wolf Economy Awakens
Mongolia’s Fight for Democracy, and a Green and Digital Future
Johan Nylander
Hong Kong University Press, 2024
Discover why Mongolia may lead the future of Asia.
Mongolia, a vibrant democracy landlocked between Russia and China, stands on the edge of becoming Asia’s next boom nation—one of the richest countries per capita in the region. Referred to as the “wolf economy” for its vast natural resources (copper, gold, and rare earth metals), it is also home to a growing number of cutting-edge tech startups and international lifestyle brands. Its vast steppe landscape lends itself not only to herding and tourism but also to renewable energy production and filmmaking.
The Wolf Economy Awakens is about the individuals who are fighting to strengthen the country’s democracy and diversify its economy. It is about innovators aiming to realize Mongolia’s promise as a hub for green energy, tech and lifestyle entrepreneurs who are shaking up traditional industries, and go-getters who have left jobs on Wall Street to return to the country they love and help move it forward. Asia correspondent and award-winning author Johan Nylander travels across Mongolia to speak to the country’s leaders and innovators—not to mention a cast of digital nomads, jazz musicians, and ordinary families—and finds a nation ready to grasp a better future. Unlocking a country’s potential is never easy, but Mongolia stands every chance of becoming Asia’s next success story.
Mongolia, a vibrant democracy landlocked between Russia and China, stands on the edge of becoming Asia’s next boom nation—one of the richest countries per capita in the region. Referred to as the “wolf economy” for its vast natural resources (copper, gold, and rare earth metals), it is also home to a growing number of cutting-edge tech startups and international lifestyle brands. Its vast steppe landscape lends itself not only to herding and tourism but also to renewable energy production and filmmaking.
The Wolf Economy Awakens is about the individuals who are fighting to strengthen the country’s democracy and diversify its economy. It is about innovators aiming to realize Mongolia’s promise as a hub for green energy, tech and lifestyle entrepreneurs who are shaking up traditional industries, and go-getters who have left jobs on Wall Street to return to the country they love and help move it forward. Asia correspondent and award-winning author Johan Nylander travels across Mongolia to speak to the country’s leaders and innovators—not to mention a cast of digital nomads, jazz musicians, and ordinary families—and finds a nation ready to grasp a better future. Unlocking a country’s potential is never easy, but Mongolia stands every chance of becoming Asia’s next success story.
[more]
Women We Love
Femininities and the Korean Wave
Edited by Soojin Lee, Kate Korroch, and Kai Khiun Liew
Hong Kong University Press, 2023
Fills a gap in Korean Wave studies by studying it through the lens of gender.
Women We Love is an edited collection exploring femininities in and around the Korean Wave since 2000. While studies on the Korean Wave are abundant, there is a dearth of analysis about the female-identifying stars, characters, and fans who shape and lead this crucial cultural movement. Using “women” as an inclusive term extending to all those who self-define as women, this collection of essays examines the role of women in K-pop and K-drama industries and fandom spaces, encompassing crucial intersectional topics such as queering of gender, dissemination of media, and fan culture.
The audience for Women We Love will reflect the contributors to this text; they are K-pop and K-drama fans, queer, international; they are also academics of Asian histories, sociology, gender and sexuality, art history, and visual culture. The chapters are playful, intersectional, and will be adapted well into syllabi for media studies, gender studies, visual culture studies, sociology, and contemporary global history.
Women We Love is an edited collection exploring femininities in and around the Korean Wave since 2000. While studies on the Korean Wave are abundant, there is a dearth of analysis about the female-identifying stars, characters, and fans who shape and lead this crucial cultural movement. Using “women” as an inclusive term extending to all those who self-define as women, this collection of essays examines the role of women in K-pop and K-drama industries and fandom spaces, encompassing crucial intersectional topics such as queering of gender, dissemination of media, and fan culture.
The audience for Women We Love will reflect the contributors to this text; they are K-pop and K-drama fans, queer, international; they are also academics of Asian histories, sociology, gender and sexuality, art history, and visual culture. The chapters are playful, intersectional, and will be adapted well into syllabi for media studies, gender studies, visual culture studies, sociology, and contemporary global history.
[more]
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