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A Hong Kong Memoir
by Karen Cheung
Book Reviewed by:A boldly rendered - and deeply intimate - account of Hong Kong today, from a resilient young woman whose stories explore what it means to survive in a city teeming with broken promises.
Hong Kong is known as a place of extremes: a former colony of the United Kingdom that now exists at the margins of an ascendant China; a city rocked by mass protests, where residents rally—often in vain—against threats to their fundamental freedoms. But it is also misunderstood, and often romanticized. Drawing from her own experience reporting on the politics and culture of her hometown, as well as interviews with musicians, protesters, and writers who have watched their home transform, Karen Cheung gives us a rare insider's view of this remarkable city at a pivotal moment—for Hong Kong and, ultimately, for herself.
Born just before the handover to China in 1997, Cheung grew up questioning what version of Hong Kong she belonged to. Not quite at ease within the middle-class, cosmopolitan identity available to her at her English-speaking international school, she also resisted the conservative values of her deeply traditional, often dysfunctional family.
Through vivid and character-rich stories, Cheung braids a dual narrative of her own coming of age alongside that of her generation. With heartbreaking candor, she recounts her yearslong struggle to find reliable mental health care in a city reeling from the traumatic aftermath of recent protests. Cheung also captures moments of miraculous triumph, documenting Hong Kong's vibrant counterculture and taking us deep into its indie music and creative scenes. Inevitably, she brings us to the protests, where her understanding of what it means to belong to Hong Kong finally crystallized.
An exhilarating blend of memoir and reportage, The Impossible City charts the parallel journeys of both a young woman and a city as they navigate the various, sometimes contradictory paths of coming into one's own.
Despite the heavy subject matter, Cheung has a candor and warmth that come through in these pages. The chapters, which read more like separate essays than a cohesive memoir, never feel like lectures. Rather, she gives vivid accounts of her experiences, then connects them to larger social issues. I also love that she explored what it means to be an activist. Cheung has done quite a lot by writing this book. Through her, we're able to humanize a movement and think of those affected by it. We connect more deeply with the issues around us. And we also learn about some fantastic new-to-us bands...continued
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(Reviewed by Erin Lyndal Martin).
In The Impossible City, Karen Cheung references a cultural code of conduct in Hong Kong called Lion Rock Spirit. Lion Rock is a 495 meter (1,600 ft) granite mountain in Kowloon Park in the urban area of Kowloon, in southern Hong Kong. but the idea of Lion Rock Spirit as a set of values has a more unlikely origin story. In the 1970s, a TV show titled Below the Lion Rock premiered in Hong Kong. The series ran from 1972-2016 and featured stories of working-class Hong Kongers. Its theme song is slow and earnest, unlike the catchy jingles of many TV shows. Yet, the song, "Lion Rock Spirit," felt apt then, and has persisted into the present day. That's right — a significant part of the Hong Kong national ethos comes from a 1970s TV program....
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Karen Cheung is an amazingly good writer whose precise observations about Hong Kong puncture the gauzy clichés about mahjong and milk tea. In The Impossible City, she has produced an edgy, highly personal memoir about a generation living in cage-size apartments and confronting tear gas, electronic surveillance, cultural confusion, and depression as they witness the disappearance of the city they call home.
