Dear Hong Kong: An Elegy For A City
“But what really opens this book to a wider audience is that it's as much about the history of Hong Kong as it is about her. And a Hong Kong that is long gone. We learn about the city's infamous home factories of the 1960s when she visits a school friend, her childhood fingers made busy with the task of assembling plastic flowers. She also recounts portents of its future when she steals secret glimpses of the Mong Kok Workers' Children School from a flyover with its Chairman Mao portrait, fluttering PRC flag and students pumping their little red books in the air.” The News Lens
“An unique take on the love-hate, hope-despair relationship that is so familiar to those who are from Hong Kong or have made this city their home – and the changing landscape that ultimately pushed Xu to decide to bid it farewell. Through several "Dear John" type letters addressed to the city, which chronicle Xu's life in Hong Kong before and after the handover, the book examines the joys and sorrows of her experience as a first-generation local growing up during the city's colonial era. It also reflects her perspective on how Hong Kong has transformed in the past decades. In the most general sense, it's a memoir detailing what it means to be a writer, a woman and a person of mixed heritage living and working in Hong Kong before and after the handover. But it's also an exploration of the anxiety that surrounds Hong Kong identity, and one evocation of the tumultuous emotions that come from reflecting on and ultimately saying goodbye to the city.” Zolima City Mag