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Review | Bird Talk: in Xu Xu’s short stories, Hong Kong is a symbol of new beginnings and opportunity

  • The Chinese author’s short story collection has been translated into English for the first time
  • The tales chart socio-political narratives and memories of the writer’s own itinerant life

Reading Time:4 minutes
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An image from the cover of Bird Talk.
Ysabelle Cheung

Bird Talk and Other Stories by Xu Xu (translated by Frederik H. Green), Stone Bridge Press. 4/5 stars

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Early in Xu Xu’s short story “When Ah Heung Came to Gousing Road”, we are introduced to the titular street in 1960s Hong Kong. The area is described as a “steep little alley”, which near the top contains luxury houses and near the bottom three little stalls run by a shoemaker, a key cutter and a florist.

While the introduction of Gousing Road – most prob­ably today’s Ko Shing Street in Sheung Wan – is historically accurate, Xu Xu likely also selected this area for its meta­phori­cal significance. “Gou sing”, meaning “rising high”, fore­shadows growth, ambition and commerce, three signi­ficant factors that are predominant themes in the story, and that led to the city’s economic boom in the latter half of the 20th century.

This emphasis on language and symbolism is prevalent in Xu Xu’s short story collection Bird Talk, translated for the first time into English by Frederik Green.

Pre-war buildings in Sheung Wan. Xu Xu sets one of the short stories in Bird Talk, written in 1950, in the neighbourhood. Photo: SCMP
Pre-war buildings in Sheung Wan. Xu Xu sets one of the short stories in Bird Talk, written in 1950, in the neighbourhood. Photo: SCMP
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The five tales were written between 1937 and 1965, chart­­ing socio-political narratives and memories of the writer’s own itinerant life, and painful exile from pre-war Shanghai to colonial Hong Kong via sojourns in Taiwan and Europe.
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