Review | Hong Kong Noir: 14 short stories delve into ghosts and spirits lurking in ultra-modern city
- The ‘umbrella movement’ protests, Japanese occupation, the post-war boom, and the 1997 handover to Chinese rule are among the backdrops to the stories
- The book is part of an international series, and its editors say working in Hong Kong they ‘constantly feel like kids in a confectionery shop’
Hong Kong Noir, by various authors, edited by Jason Y. Ng and Susan Blumberg-Kason, Blacksmith Books/Akashic Books
Hong Kong may be known for its cold-hearted capitalism and ultra-modern efficiency, but it is also a society steeped in tradition and superstitions. Fortune-tellers hold sway over tycoons, property giants avoid having an unlucky fourth floor in buildings, and shrines shrouded in incense smoke sit among the world’s most expensive real estate.
Hong Kong Noir digs below the financial centre’s gleaming surface to unearth stories of the city’s ghosts and spirits. “There is a bounty of quirks to make writers like us constantly feel like kids in a confectionery shop,” the book’s editors say in the introduction.
The “Noir” short story series, launched in New York in 2004, features a different international city in each edition. Hong Kong is the chosen locale for 14 stories – an inauspicious figure which, as the editors note, sounds like “certain death” in Cantonese. The 14 authors were only instructed to end each tale “on a dark note”.
The stories touch on major points in Hong Kong modern history: the horrors of Japanese occupation, post-war poverty, the economic boom under the British, the city’s return to Chinese sovereignty, and the tensions of the 2014 “umbrella movement” occupation of key thoroughfares by pro-democracy activists. What better way to tie together the present and the past – the living and the dead – than through ghost stories?
