Indelible City by Louisa Lim

Do cry for Hong Kong. This is such a bittersweet story, told as a triptych, with three powerful narratives woven together to tell this city’s story. They are firstly a macro-level history of Hong Kong and its relationship with its two colonial masters: the United Kingdom and China. Then there is a micro-level history of a not-so-mentally-stable street calligrapher, the King of Kowloon, whose art and bearing embody the dispossession and defiance that frame the macro-level history. And finally the author shares her own personal narrative of growing up in Hong Kong and witnessing the transformation of the city in recent decades. It is no real surprise that Hong Kong’s return to China since 1997 has been an unmitigated disaster. Hong Kong is a culturally diverse, socially complex, rule-of-law-conscious, and politically engaged community: all traits for which China’s post-1989 leaders have had little patience and that has been playing out in big and small ways. The most telling part of this for me was how China managed the "negotiations" which was to basically ignore everyone, especially Hong Kong leadership and focused solely on the date that they would take charge. Something to remember as they set their sights on other options in the South China sea.