Echoes: Classics of Hong Kong Culture and History – serie

Before the opening of the treaty ports in the 1840s, Canton was the only Chinese port where foreign merchants were allowed to trade. The Golden Ghetto takes us into the world of one of this city's most important foreign communities-the Americans-during the decades between the American Revolution of 1776 and the signing of the Sino-US Treaty of Wanghia in 1844. American merchants lived in isolation from Chinese society in sybaritic, albeit usually celibate luxury. Making use of exhaustive research, Downs provides an especially clear explanation of the Canton commercial setting generally and of the role of American merchants. Many of these men made fortunes and returned home to become important figures in the rapidly developing United States. The book devotes particular attention to the biographical details of the principal American traders, the leading American firms, and their operations in Canton and the United States. Opium smuggling receives special emphasis, as does the important topic of early diplomatic relations between the United States and China.Since its first publication in 1997, The Golden Ghetto has been recognized as the leading work on Americans trading at Canton.Long out of print, this new edition makes this key work again available, both to scholars and a wider readership.

First published in 1977, The Hong Kong Region is a historical reconstruction of long-settled vilA-lage and township society in Hong Kong's New Territories between 1850 and 1911. The book's central argument is that the gentry and bureauA-cracy played almost no role in these commuA-nities, which were run by local peasants and shopkeepers who had to deal virtually unaided with routine administration and with every form of disaster, natural or man-made. A subA-stantial new introduction reviews the research and its wider implications for our understandA-ing of traditional Chinese society in the light of later scholarly studies.

Written by Leung Ping-kwan in the 1980s and 1990s, this volume of poetry evokes the complexity of Hong Kong city life in the critical moments preceding the 1997 handover. The poet muses upon the problems of cultural identity and the passing of time, and explores the relationship between poetry and other genres and media within a cross-cultural and cross-border context. An introduction by Ackbar Abbas in the original edition relates Leung's writing to the cultural and political space of Hong Kong in the 1990s. This expanded bilingual version adds a new essay by Esther Cheung, and also a recent conversation between Leung and three critics, which provides insights on how Leung's poetry still resonates powerfully after two decades. The book invites readers to look afresh at Leung's meditative poetry and probe into the contradictory realities of this changing postcolonial city.