By: Malcolm Jack
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Malcolm Jack was brought up and schooled in Hong Kong before returning to university in the UK. As a child, he learned Cantonese at the same time as English. He has had a career both as a public servant and a writer. His writing includes books, articles, reviews on history, literature, philosophy, and politics, as well as travel works on Portugal, and most recently, on South Africa. He is a frequent visitor to Hong Kong.
Reading this book brought back many memories of my childhood in colonial Hong Kong. The writings captured in its pages reflect the complex attitudes of people living in a place that was a mélange of cultures, identities, and histories. The book is a vintage documentary of a bygone age, a lovely time capsule.
This is an important and entertaining book not only for those who are familiar with Hong Kong's history and civilisation, but also for those who know little about this extraordinary place. The author draws colourful and informative portraits of people whose life and work made what Hong Kong had became: one of world's great centres of commerce, civilisation and culture.
Malcolm Jack is doubly qualified to write this book. First, he spent his childhood there, but more importantly, he had maintained and cultivated a life-long relationship. Even after he had retired as Clerk of the House of Commons, he shared his extensive expertise of knowledge of democratic governance to the younger generations - until this was possible. It is the current political changes which lend this book its urgency and importance. As the history of Hong Kong is going to be-written, this book remains a faithful testimony of the world of yesterday.
With colonization increasingly declining, it is a relief to read Malcolm Jack’s superb collection of essays based on his, and fellow authors' experiences of growing up and living in Hong Kong. This last of Britain’s colonies is a rich source of material; of fascinating insights of a bygone era. Malcolm Jack must take full credit for this beautiful and timely book.
I very much enjoyed "My Hong Kong".
It took me back to a place I knew well in my young days but in a different way through the eyes of Malcolm Jack's chosen authors, some of whom were familiar to me and some new.
A very original and entertaining read.
This is an instructive and entertaining read, particularly for those of us who grew up in one of the far corners of the 'colonial' Anglosphere. In his warm review of both his own and various others' experiences of Hong Kong, he communicates the deep affection of the wide variety of personalities making up this fascinating place during its British years. His account vividly counters the current automatic negativity related to all things 'colonial', and leaves the reader in no doubt as to the hugely positive contribution that the colony made to so much that was good about the 20th century.
