Hong Kong University Press was established in 1956. Since then it has grown from publishing a few titles, primarily the work of the University's faculty, into a publisher issuing close to 50 new titles each year. From its very first book, it has been a bilingual publisher of works both in English and Chinese. Our authors now come from all the universities of Hong Kong, and from Mainland China, Macau, Taiwan, Singapore, also from the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Canada and other countries.
Hong Kong University Press plays a unique and growing role in the intellectual discourse of Hong Kong and its broader region. We publish the majority of our books in English and strive to achieve for them the widest international distribution. Yet, rather than imposing the homogenizing changes usually considered necessary to maximize sales in rich country markets, we respect and sustain the intellectual and cultural variety of our authors and their work. The Press values intra-regional conversation as highly as exchanges with North America and Europe.
The Press's publishing for international readers is focused on cultural studies, film and media studies, Chinese history and culture. Noting Hong Kong's special characteristics, we publish in language and linguistics emphasizing Asian varieties of English and Cantonese. For readers in Hong Kong and those elsewhere interested in our remarkable city, we publish on its history, law, politics, economy, society and literature. Also for Hong Kong, we publish both in Chinese and English for such professions as education, social work, law, medicine, real estate and construction.
Throughout its existence the Press has remained an integral part of the University, overseen by a university committee and having as its central mission the publication of high quality scholarship that contributes both to the quality of debate and ideas and to the wider understanding of Hong Kong and its region.
During the nineteenth century, the transpacific world underwent profound transformation, due to the transition from sail to steam navigation that was accompanied by a concomitant reconfiguration of power. This book explores the ways in which diverse Mexican, British, Chinese, and Japanese interests participated, particularly during Porfirio Díaz’s presidency at the peak of Mexico’s participation in the steam network: from its 1860s outset through a time of many revolutionary changes ending with the World War, the Mexican Revolution, the opening of the Panama Canal, and the introduction of a new maritime technology based on vessels run by oil. These transoceanic exchanges, generated within these new geographies of power, contributed not only to the formation of a transpacific region but also to refashioning the Mexican national imaginary. With transnationalism, global and migration studies as its main framework, this study draws upon a dazzling array of primary sources to center Mexico’
Hong Kong and Macau have both been Special Administrative Regions of China since 1999. To this day, however, the two SARs and mainland China have yet to form a cohesive agreement for extradition. Yanhong Yin proposes a theoretical model—the China Arrest Warrant—that fulfils three essential criteria: compliance with the framework of “One Country, Two Systems,” allowance for differences within the three divergent legal systems, and sufficient human rights protection.This model takes direct inspiration from the European Arrest Warrant, which is undergirded by the principle of mutual recognition—the idea that while states may make different decisions on a wide range of matters, results will be accepted as equivalent to decisions made by one’s own state. The success of the European Union’s adoption of mutual recognition across political, economic, and legal situations is instrumental in providing a blueprint for judicial cooperation among mainland China, Hong Kong SAR, and Macau SAR. This a
Benny Chia’s memoir of life on the fringe is a vivacious slice of Hong Kong’s life and cultural development at a time of minimal institutional support. His colourful and anecdotal story will interest culture practitioners as well as the general reader curious about the Fringe Club and its role as a seedbed for local artists and as a venue for international ones, both functions championed by Benny at the helm of this small but important institution housed in a distinctive former ice house in Central. general reader curious about the Fringe Club and its role as a seedbed for local artists and as a venue for international ones, both functions championed by Benny at the helm of this small but important institution housed in a distinctive former ice house in Central.
In Outlaws of the Sea, Robert J. Antony provides a comprehensive account of the history of maritime piracy in coastal south China from the 1630s to the 1940s. He neither romanticizes nor maligns pirates, but rather analyzes them in the context of their times and the broader world in which they lived. The author demonstrates that Chinese piracy was a pervasive force shaping maritime society as it ebbed and flowed between sporadic, small-scale ventures and professional, large-scale enterprises in the modern era. This book offers important new insights into the underside of modern China’s history and the interactions between pirates, foreign traders, local communities, and the state.
The Hong Kong Cemetery in Happy Valley is home to over 470 graves connected to the city’s Japanese population. Most of these graves belong to individuals who died during the Meiji era (1868–1912), a remarkable period of modernisation and opening up of Japan that saw thousands of its inhabitants travel to other parts of the world to study, work, and settle. Who were these people? What were they doing in Hong Kong? And why were unbaptised Japanese buried in what was called at one time the ‘Protestant Cemetery’?Hong Kong’s Meiji-era Japanese community was one of two halves. Company executives sat atop the social ladder and karayuki-san, or prostitutes, occupied the lower echelons, with tradespeople and professionals somewhere in between. By revealing the personal journeys of these mostly forgotten Japanese, the authors aim to add to transnational perspectives on Hong Kong and Japan during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as increase recognition of this fragmented
COUPLET PAIR REBUS explores the principle of cause and effect in art, offering various approaches to this philosophical relationship. Based on the UMAG exhibition curated by Harald Kraemer, the COUPLET section is comprised of more than twenty calligraphic pairs of poetic lines, known in Chinese as duilian (對聯). Through the multi-layered texts, one discovers the multitude of voices that can be used to describe nature and the world and how content can be visualised through various forms of calligraphy. PAIR features artworks that form a balanced equilibrium through diverse visual languages along with objects that exemplify how mankind’s pursuits create objects in symmetrical harmony across genres. While works presented in the REBUS section form a network of diverse references that connect the objects. Individuals are then tasked with decoding these connections like a 3D puzzle.This publication features an essay by curator Harald Kraemer unpacking the issues of harmony, symmetry and contr
A compilation of Ting Yin Yung's paintings and other artwork from his life in Hong Kong. University Museum and Art Gallery's exhibition is authoritative in its display of Ting Yin Yung's oil and ink paintings, watercolors, sketches, and seals, all of which cover the most productive decades of his working life in Hong Kong. The project is also highly community-centered, as the development of this project benefited greatly from the input of Ting's students, who continue to treasure their master's passion and the instructive lessons and conversations that nurtured a generation of local artists. A native of Maoming County in Guangdong province, Ting Yin Yung first studied Western painting in Tokyo at the Kawabata Painting School in 1920, and then at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. He began working in mainland China in 1925, before emigrating to Hong Kong in 1949, where he developed his artistic practice as a painter, seal carver, and greatly admired teacher. Heavily illustrated in full colo
In Man in a Hurry: Murray MacLehose and Colonial Autonomy in Hong Kong, Ray Yep explores the latest available archival materials and re-examines MacLehose’s pivotal governorship in Hong Kong (1971–1982). MacLehose arrived in the challenging 1970s, when there were expectations for social reforms, uneasiness in the relationship between Hong Kong and London, and the 1997 factor looming large. The governor successfully carried out various social reforms and he also handled various major issues, including the anti-corruption campaign, the Vietnamese refugee crisis, and the granting of land lease of the New Territories beyond 1997. Yep unveils the tension and bargaining between the British government and explains how interest of the colony could asserted, defended, and negotiated. This book is an important study of Hong Kong’s ‘golden years’ when the city’s economy took off. It is a significant contribution to our understanding of how local autonomy was defined.
In Redefining Heresy and Tolerance, Hung Tak Wai examines how the Qing empire governed Muslims and Christians under its rule with a non-interventionist policy. Manchu emperors adopted a tolerant attitude towards Islam and Christianity as long as political stability and loyalty remained unthreatened. However, Hung argues that such tolerance had its limitations. Since the mid-eighteenth century, the Qing court intentionally minimised the importance of the Islamic identity. Restrictions were imposed on the Muslims’ external connections with Western Asia. The Christian minority was kept distant from politics and the Han majority. At the same time, Confucian scholars began to acquire a new understanding of religion, but they were not encouraged to get in touch with the Muslims and Christians. This book demonstrates how, from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century, the Qing government prevented Confucian scholar-bureaucrats from interfering in the religious life of Christians an
The significance of Fong Chung-Ray’s artistic oeuvre lies in his contribution both to the global art scene and the representation of Chinese artistic traditions in late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century California. As an ambassador for art, he has played a crucial role in fostering cultural exchange between China and the West, and his artworks have introduced richly diverse artistic traditions, techniques and themes to international audiences, promoting a deeper understanding and appreciation of Chinese culture.This anniversary publication presents a careful selection of Fong’s work tracing his artistic career and stylistic development over the last 60 years. It is a testament to the master’s contribution to late-twentieth-century Chinese painting in a global context.藝術家馮鍾睿的創作夙負盛名。二十世紀晚期至二十一世紀初，馮氏以中國傳統為基礎的作品於美國加州藝壇獨樹一幟，其畫風及作畫方式多元豐碩，展現出他對融合中西藝術的永恆追求。馮氏以自身創作於海外積極傳播中華文化，在推動跨文化交流方面扮演了重要的角色，幫助國際社會更深入地理解和欣賞中國藝術。是次富有紀念意義的出版物包括橫跨馮鍾睿整個創作生涯的多幅作品，回顧他過去六十年的藝術成就和風格發展，對這位大師在二十世紀晚期中國畫壇所作出的貢獻予
This book examines the British cultural engagement with Hong Kong in the second half of the twentieth century. It shows how the territory fit unusually within Britain’s decolonisation narratives and served as an occasional foil for examining Britain’s own culture during a period of perceived stagnation and decline. Drawing on a wide range of archival and published primary sources, Hong Kong and British Culture, 1945–97 investigates such themes as Hong Kong as a site of unrestrained capitalism, modernisation, and good government, as well as an arena of male social and sexual opportunity. It also examines the ways in which Hong Kong Chinese embraced British culture, and the competing predictions that British observers made concerning the colony’s return to Chinese sovereignty. An epilogue considers the enduring legacy of British colonialism.
In the third edition of Contemporary Hong Kong Government and Politics, Lam Wai-man, Percy Luen-tim Lui, Wilson Wong, and various contributors provide the latest analyses in many aspects of Hong Kong’s government and politics, such as political institutions, mediating institutions, and political actors. They also discuss specific policy areas such as political parties and elections, civil society, political identity and political culture, the mass media, and public opinions after the Umbrella Movement in 2014. The book also evaluates the latest developments in Hong Kong’s relationship with Mainland China and the international community. This new edition offers an up-to-date and comprehensive analysis of the main continuities and changes in the above aspects since 2014. This volume will help its readers grasp a basic understanding of Hong Kong’s political developments in the last ten years.
Widely respected and beloved as one of Hong Kong’s most original painters, Gaylord Chan (1925-2020) had a dynamic career that traversed cultural epochs and the boundaries of media. He made his first serious foray into painting only at the age of 42 after enrolling in an extra-mural studies art course organised by the University of Hong Kong in 1968. Chan’s late start, however, did not at all limit his potential. While he worked as an engineer for Cable & Wireless by day, Chan continued to experiment and refine his creative practice. The artist eventually developed a unique abstract language of bold colours and rustic forms that reflects on the simple wonders of daily life, science and metaphysics, and the contemporary human condition. Referencing an evocative painting by Chan from the 1990s, Never End: The Art and Life of Gaylord Chan, presented by Asia Society Hong Kong Center, is a tribute to the late master and his invaluable artistic legacy. It explores the development of Chan’
For over 20 years, Basil Pao followed Michael Palin (and his BBC crew) around the world. He documented their journeys from the North to South Pole and around the Pacific Rim. They retraced the footsteps of Hemingway, traversed deep into the Sahara, and trekked up and down across the Himalayas. They crisscrossed post-Iron Curtain Eastern Europe and surveyed Brazil from the Amazon to Iguazu Falls. Their collaborations resulted in 11 bestselling illustrated books. In between the Palin journeys, Pao travelled extensively for a variety of clients that took him to remote and exotic locations across the globe, including an epic journey through every province across the length and breadth of China to create the classic China Revealed.OM2—Ordinary Moments+ is the distilled essence of all the miles travelled and the tens of thousands of pictures captured. This anthology of 140 photographs illuminates the purity of Pao’s vision and contains some of the maestro’s personal favourite repor
In this new study, Peter ten Hoopen reveals levels of virtuosity in the work of Sumbanese textile artists that remained overlooked for over a century of Indonesian textile research. Their richly decorated men’s wraps, hinggi, have commonly been described as symmetric along both axes. But as ten Hoopen’s investigation at Leiden University uncovered, this supposed canon only survived because crucial design elements were overlooked. Sumba’s noble weavers managed to create asymmetry by hiding tiny visual elements that disrupted symmetry and were made to be overlooked. They exploited insights in the way we process visual information by simulating regularity, while deceitfully tying in elements that break it. Ironically, they were so good at hiding these design elements that they remained unnoticed for generations. This virtuosity was a product of Sumba’s competitive culture, suffused by an ancient headhunting ethos and marked by secrecy. As the artists strove to outsmart each other, natural
Surrealism in China initially gained a foothold in Shanghai’s former French concession during the early 1930s, disseminated by returning Chinese students who had directly encountered the movement in Paris and Tokyo. Shanghai surrealism adopted a dialectical form, resonating with the modus operandi of the Parisian movement as well as China’s traditional belief system of Daoism. Reconciling the thought of Freud and Marx, Surrealism subsumed the multiple contradictions that divided Republican Shanghai, East and West, colonial and cosmopolitan, ancient and modern, navigating the porous boundaries that separate dream and reality. Shanghai surrealists were not rigid followers of their Parisian counterparts. Indeed, they commingled Surrealist techniques with elements of traditional Chinese iconography. Rather than revolving around a centralized group with a leader, Shanghai Surrealism was a much more diffuse entity, disseminated across copious different periodicals, avant-garde groups, and th
From humble beginnings in Hong Kong, Yuen Kwok-Yung rose to international prominence as an academic, physician, and microbiologist. As an advisor to governments, he and colleagues made discoveries that helped the world cope in often controversial ways with unprecedented threats to public health, including the COVID-19 pandemic. In this compelling memoir, Dr. Yuen weaves personal stories with those from his extraordinary medical careers to take readers on an inspiring journey about perseverance, courage, faith, and the ongoing peril of infectious diseases. threats to public health, including the COVID-19 pandemic. In this compelling memoir, Dr. Yuen weaves personal stories with those from his extraordinary medical careers to take readers on an inspiring journey about perseverance, courage, faith, and the ongoing peril of infectious diseases.
