Diamond Hill: - Supernormal Reads

Paperback, 195 pages

English language

Published Jan. 1, 2009 by Blacksmith Books.

ISBN:: 978-988-17742-4-8
OCLC Number:: 503367712

(1 review)

"Diamond Hill was one of the poorest and most backward of villages in Hong Kong at a time when Hong Kong itself was poor and backward. We moved there in 1956 when I was almost 10. I left in 1966 when I was 19. Those were the formative years of my life. It’s a time that I remember well and cherish."

This memoir of a native son of a Kowloon-side squatter village – the first book ever on Diamond Hill, in either Chinese or English – presents the early days of a life shaped by a now-extinct community. Penned by a high-achieving Hong Kong professional, Feng Chi-shun’s sharp recollections of his humble upbringing contain warmth, humour, and an abundance of insights into a low-income Hong Kong neighbourhood that no longer exists – but remains close to the hearts of many who lived there.

Diamond Hill will invite comparisons with Martin …

"Diamond Hill was one of the poorest and most backward of villages in Hong Kong at a time when Hong Kong itself was poor and backward. We moved there in 1956 when I was almost 10. I left in 1966 when I was 19. Those were the formative years of my life. It’s a time that I remember well and cherish."

This memoir of a native son of a Kowloon-side squatter village – the first book ever on Diamond Hill, in either Chinese or English – presents the early days of a life shaped by a now-extinct community. Penned by a high-achieving Hong Kong professional, Feng Chi-shun’s sharp recollections of his humble upbringing contain warmth, humour, and an abundance of insights into a low-income Hong Kong neighbourhood that no longer exists – but remains close to the hearts of many who lived there.

Diamond Hill will invite comparisons with Martin Booth's 2004 hit Gweilo. If you enjoyed the latter, you will likely find the former similarly absorbing, because the young Feng was, for many a “gweilo”, the inaccessible yet intriguing face of an altogether edgier Hong Kong.

1 edition

ralentina reviewed Diamond Hill: by Feng Chi-shun

Another side of HK

3 stars

Inspired by Martin Booth's memoir, Gweilo, I decided to buy yet one more book before leaving Hong Kong. The back cover suggests that it 'invites' comparisons with Gweilo, but really if you read them on consecutive days, invitations turn into demands. I'm afraid that Booth is a better writer, and has a talent for creating a sense of nostalgia without sounding boring, or like an old uncle constantly shaking his head at the moral decay of our times and the new generation. Feng Chi-Shun's book is more interesting as a document, quite literally a documentation of what Hong Kong was like 50 years ago, than it is as a memoir. But this is no small thing: the Hong Kong to which the author had access is different from Booth's, and certainly unknown and harder to imagine for gweilos like me.

Subjects

Hong Kong