Kylie Chan

Over on my forums, Shiroikami asked me an excellent question. Here's my take on why Hong Kong people still talk about 'China' as if it was a different country:

Characters frequently say "I'm going to be in China." or something along those lines, when they're in Hong Kong. Why is that? I mean, Hong Kong is actually part of China, isn't it? It's not like it's a separate country or anything... (I'm American, they don't teach us much about any other country in school... pretty much everything I know about other countries comes from actually visiting them or asking people who live there. It's incredibly frustrating.)

Here’s an answer for you, Shiroikami. Warning: incoming history lesson!

Hong Kong’s relationship with the People’s Republic of China is long and vitriolic and has resulted in an unusual attitude (and terms for the different countries) from Hong Kong residents.

In 1842 after the First Opium War (Britain won), Britain forced China to cede the whole of Hong Kong island to them. (Note this is just the island, not Kowloon). This defeat still rankles to this day and is often referred to as ‘The Great Shame’.

This affects Hong Kong people’s view of themselves; they are living in a city that is a result of the defeat of their own nation. At the same time, many of them escaped from the ‘evil communist’ government during the Great Leap Forward, so they abandoned China themselves. There’s a huge cultural guilt trip happening here.

Crib Notes on the Great Leap Forward, extremely condensed version (and from memory so may not be completely accurate): Someone showed Chairman Mao a ‘modernized’ farm/commune that could produce ‘twice the rice’. The rest of the country, regardless of where they were or their particular circumstances, were ordered to follow the same bogus collective farming practises, produce ‘twice the rice’ and give the surplus half to the government. This surplus was to be stored as a buffer against famine. Now, if you’re not a lying scumbag like the original farmer, you aren’t going to produce twice your yield just from forming a commune. You’re going to produce the same, or slightly less because forced communes don’t work. The government inspector, however, is going to come and see how much you were producing last year, blithely say that you’ve doubled it now, and demand half of your doubled yield. Which is all of it. He’ll take everything, store it as a ‘buffer against famine’, execute you for being ‘unpatriotic’ if you tell him you didn’t, and after he’s taken your rice he’ll let you die of starvation anyway.

Millions did die of starvation while the grain silos were full. Nobody’s quite sure, but that number could be as high as forty-five million people. Thousands hid in the bottom of boats and escaped to Hong Kong; a grand tradition that’s been going on as long as Hong Kong existed.

In 1860, the British government won another war and China ceded the Kowloon peninsula to them as well. There’s a road in Kowloon called Boundary Road, and that’s where the old boundary was.

Everything past Boundary Road, which is a good 75% of Hong Kong, is the New Territories. Britain gained these from China in a treaty in 1898. Unlike the first two land grabs, however, this was a 99-year lease.

Even after Kowloon and the New Territories were ceded, Hong Kong people spoke of China as being ‘The Mainland.’ I think it’s sort of an emotional distancing from what was going on over there. There was a strictly controlled border with two four-metre tall barbed wire fences with guard posts on either side of a ten-metre wide No Man’s Land.

So: Hong Kong and Kowloon are permanently ceded to Britain, and never have to go back. The New Territories, however, will expire in 1997. Oh dear.

The Brits, being the optimistic people they are, tried to renew the lease. The New Territories were part of the whole colony (and it was a colony, with Governor, English language system, UK schooling and considered part of the UK). There was absolutely no difference from one side of Boundary Road to the other. People in the New Territories were just as much Hong Kong as people everywhere else. It was essentially a single territory. Makes sense, right?

The Chinese government said absolutely not, they were taking the whole lot back again. This was a Great National Shame and Part of the Nation and blah blah blah and they were doing Their Patriotic Duty etc etc. (They had a point. 95% of the HK population is Chinese.)

After many years of bitter negotiation (Brits: ‘We own HK so we should keep all of it.’ China: ‘You are playing games by saying the economy would suffer’) China won. They said the Brits could keep Hong Kong and Kowloon, but the lease was gone. Britain had to give in because the parts of Hong Kong could no longer be separated. It just wouldn’t be fair to the residents.

Hong Kong would go back to being part of the People’s Republic in 1997. China promised a separate government, free trade, and that things would continue as they had for another fifty years, in a ‘Special Administrative Region’, the HKSAR. Nobody believed them, and Hong Kong citizens, of course, panicked. Particularly after the Tiananmen massacre in 1989 - there was a huge wave of migration of people out of the territory. Canada took any Hong Kong citizen who wanted to leave – which explains Canada’s large Chinese community. People fully expected tanks down Connaught Road on the handover.

The ‘Handover’ was a huge ceremony with a five-day holiday and celebrations. Hong Kong people loudly proclaimed their loyalty to their Mainland masters. We left town and made sure our Australian passports were stamped with the new regime’s stamps when we reentered Hong Kong.

After the handover, the border between Hong Kong and China was still closed with the same barbed-wire fences and No Man’s Land. You needed a special Hong Kong ID card or immigration visa to reside in Hong Kong, even though they were technically part of the same nation. You still do.

Essentially, things haven’t really changed that much, except there’s much dewy-eyed patriotic nonsense with the Chinese flag flying on the television as the media suck up to their new Mainland masters. There used to be a Governor controlled by London; now there’s a Chief Executive controlled by Beijing. Business goes on.

As someone who lived through the Handover, the terms we used for China/the Mainland haven’t changed either. Before the handover, we were Hong Kong, and they were China. The situation’s still very much the same. The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China is a small almost independent mini-state existing inside China.  But don’t say that in front of anyone from either state, because they’ll loudly proclaim that Hong Kong is definitely a part of China, and the Great Shame has now been removed, we’re exceptionally proud to be Chinese, and let’s all sing the national anthem.

My lovely publishers at Voyager Books have launched a new global site, and as part of the interglobailityness of it, they asked me to provide a blog on behalf of Australia.

I wrote about Christmas in Hong Kong, and how it differs from the holiday I was used to. I include old family photos!

You can see the blog posting at Voyager's new website here:

http://harpervoyagerbooks.com/2011/12/15/christmas-in-hong-kong-by-kylie-chan/

Enjoy!

Supanova is such a big part of my family's life that it amuses me to actually have to explain it to people who've never heard of it. The whole week before the show, the newspaper had teaser articles about what visitors could expect there.

And for those who don't know....

Supanova is a pop-culture expo held for one weekend each year. It travels from city to city, and next year is expanding to six Australian cities.

If you've seen news articles about ComiCon in America, it's our own version of that but not quite. There are three main reasons people come along:

- Stars of science fiction and fantasy movies are special guests, and you can collect autographed photos, have your picture taken with them, and hear them talk about their experiences. My daughter was hugely excited about coming along and having her photo taken with Evanna Lynch – Luna Lovegood from the Harry Potter movies.

Billy Boyd (Pippin from Lord of the Rings) came down to the stand when I wasn’t there, and had his photo taken with Ian Irvine. Ian rolled out a map he’d done for one of his fantasy novels, and it was nearly 2m by 1m – huge and detailed. The man’s a genius at worldbuilding.

Ian and Billy - two lovely gentlemen! 

- You can dress up. Anything you like, but most people choose a sci-fi/fantasy/anime/manga character – I counted ten Doctors on my first day and gave up counting the second. You can strut around looking awesome in lycra with green skin and red eyes, nobody will look twice, and there’s a competition for the best costume. The technical term for this is ‘cosplay’ (from the Japanese) and it’s one of the most fun parts for me. If you do an awesome costume people will stop you and ask for their photo with you.

Of course, if you’re a group that’s decided to cosplay every single Doctor, four companions AND K9, you’ll never be able to move because you’re constantly having your photo taken. Four, Five and Nine were somewhere around, probably stuck in a time vortex. I stood between ‘my’ Doctors, Two and Three. Damn, I’m old.

My daughter dressed up as a character from a manga called ‘Blue Exorcist’ which was a Japanese school uniform and a long purple wig with pigtails below her waist. The wig drove her completely nuts – it was unbelievably heavy! – but she enjoyed herself tremendously.

- The trading floor is a bad place. Very bad place. I protest loudly every time my daughter nears the Madman stand – last time I was there I bought a complete collection of both Astroboys – the black and white sixties version from my childhood, and the colour eighties version - in boxed sets. There’s traders of vintage comics, awesome t-shirts and bags (I got my Hellsing signing bag at Supanova), tryouts of new games, collectible figures (my daughter got a matched set of 20cm Ezio and Leonardo figures).

Dymock’s have a stand on the trading floor, and that’s where I come in. You can come up to the stand and buy books from us Awesome Authors and have them signed on the spot, and embarrass us horribly by having your photo taken with us.

Left to Right: Rowena Cory Daniells, in front Keri Arthur, Tracy O’Hara, me (short), Marianne de Pierres (tall), Ineke, and Lynne in awesome hippy steampunk.

There’s a bunch of new fantasy and sci-fi to try out, and the staff on the stand are knowledgeable and all-around terrific people.

They can help you with every need.

I love Supanova because people can come up to me and actually have a chat about my plans for my new books, rather than having to line up at a signing and not have a chance to speak to me. There’s not often a line of people for signings, so if you’re in the mood to have a chat, I’m there all day.

For the admission fee, it’s a grand day out and as a computer/sci-fi nerd long before I was any sort of author (and a Doctor Who fan since I first saw it in the late seventies) – well, I feel right at home. The other authors sometimes asked me what a particular costume referenced – and most of the time I got it right (sorry Totoro!). I’m very much looking forward to the inaugural Gold Coast one next April, and hoping that I can make a few other cities next year.

Special thanks to Ineke Prochazka, the staff of Dymock’s, Daniel Zachariou, Dion, Roland, Missy, and Quinny from Supanova.

The Supanova site is at http://www.supanova.com.au.

School holidays have finished, and I'm back at work. I spent a week at the Gold Coast, and took my Kindle and a pile of books with me, determined to do some serious damage to my To Be Read List.

I got about halfway through it, and there's still a big pile of books that I really want to read! But here's some of the ones that I read while I was away, and I enjoyed. There were quite a few books on the list that I read and didn't really enjoy, but that's more personal taste than anything and nothing to do with the quality of the works. I find mediaeval fantasy dead-boring (mostly, I think, because of the servile/constrained limitations on females in them) and horror just as boring.

There were a few books on the list that I struggled through and won't mention here. Mostly they involved Big Hero In Armour Hitting Stuff and Women Getting Raped. Seriously, in one of the books I read, every single woman in the novel was raped and tortured, except for Virginal Young Companion Chick Who Adds Tension by Being Threatened and Kidnapped. Sigh.

But! I love snappy modern-day urban fantasy (oh look, that's what I write, what a coincidence) and here's a list of some of the books I really enjoyed on my week away:

Power and Majesty by Tansy Rayner Roberts: And I just said I don't like mediaeval fantasy. This novel won both the Aurealis and the Ditmar and it's well deserved. Don't be fooled by the tiptoeing-pretty-girl cover, this book is dark and violent and full of magic, blood and sex - in the very best sort of way. The female characters are strong and heroic (breaking the mould on what I hate about mediaeval fantasy, there you go) and prepared to do what it takes - while at the same time making pretty dresses. Brilliant.

The Iron Druid Chronicles by Kevin Hearne: 'Hounded', 'Hexed', 'Hammered' - a two thousand year old druid lives in the modern day and has to deal with an array of ancient and modern gods. I loved this, and the previous sentence probably explains why - it's very like what I write myself, which is what I like to read. Irreverent, action-packed, and sometimes extremely funny. It bounces along, never taking itself too seriously, and the pages fly by.

The Death Works Trilogy by Trent Jamieson: 'Death Most Definite', 'The Business of Death', 'Managing Death'. I confess I didn't pay for this 'cause I launched the last book in the series for Trent and he gave me a freebie. Woo hoo! This is a series about death, set in Brisbane (zombies in Queen Street Mall, anyone?) and is two things at once - a ripping terrific read and an example of a writer at the top of his craft. The three novels are published in an omnibus and I finished them in no time. Action-packed, atmospheric, and at times really funny. (I'm seeing a pattern here on what I like - maybe it explains why I'm not so hot on Grim Grim Grim of Thrones.) Also check out Roil by Trent: darker, less urban and humorous, and incredibly rich. (Whoa, the other series is about Death and this one is darker? Whew.)

The King's Bastard by Rowena Cory Daniells: Oh look, another mediaeval fantasy. I think I need to take back what I said about not liking it. If you love politicking and backstabbing and people making hard choices, this is for you. Rowena eases you into her world and then piles conflict upon conflict until you reach a thunderous, flaming conclusion that leaves you breathless.

Burn Bright by Marianne de Pierres: This is Young Adult, but that's where some of the best stuff is anyway. Marianne creates a world that's so tempting for teens and at the same time full of conflict and danger. It's traditional-vampire free (yay!) but at the same time has a undercurrent of danger in the liaisons that is mesmerising. I'll be reading the next one, 'Angel Arias', and I recommended this to my daughter, although she's past the YA stage already.

The Seventh Wave by Paul Garrety: Dear me, I fail with this one. I thought it would be all traditional world-building fantasy from the cover, expected it to be boring, and only read it because he's a Voyager debut author. I apologize sincerely, this book rocks. Seriously, it's fast-paced and action-packed. It's set in the present day and has a bunch of unlikely heroes and a huge conspiracy and internet espionage and magic and (deep breath) it's fantastic. The conclusion in the series is out, it's the Emerald Tablets. A joy to read.

I've received a couple of emails asking me 'What To Read?' - there you go, there's stuff I like. If you're looking for Asian mythology, though - I have yet to find anything that really nails it with authenticity, but I'm still looking, and I'll let you know if I find it.

Our second day at Holyhead was a full day, and after eating far too much of June’s excellent breakfast part of the B&B, we hopped into the car and headed out.

Our first stop was the South Stack lighthouse. This is a favourite location for birdwatchers; it’s surrounded by rookeries and is a puffin nesting spot. We didn’t see any puffins, but the view down the cliffs was spectacular – and we didn’t get blown off them.

There was a sign next to the entrance of the steps down to the lighthouse. ‘Must be 1m tall to enter.’

‘Too bad Mum, you miss out,’ Maddy said.

Humph.

We didn’t go down the steps to the lighthouse, we were there for the Iron Age hut circles. These are stone circles around earth depressions that originally had conical thatched tops on them to form ancient Celitic houses. There were about fifteen altogether, that had been used and abandoned over time, and marked a small settlement that would have had a few families and their children, with sheep roaming the hillside.

I can understand why they built the huts here, the view from this high was all the way, once again, to Snowdonia.

After the hut circles we headed back to town to find Trefignath Burial Chamber. Ancient Celts buried their chiefs by putting two massive blocks of stone on either side of the body, then another huge stone on the top, and then burying the whole thing under a small hill. The Trefignath chamber was so old (the oldest part is late Stone Age) that the earth hill had worn away, leaving just the stones, some of which had collapsed over time.

The burial chamber was marked as being on a road, but it turned out that the road was a bike track. We parked the car as close as seemed sensible, and walked down the path. Maddy began to question my navigational skills and I promised to stop if it didn’t appear over the next rise; fortunately for us it did.

I was wandering around taking photos of the burial chamber, when Maddy called me over nearby. I wondered what she was up to, standing in the middle of the field, until she pointed.

There was a line of standing stones, each less than a metre tall, for what must have been more than a kilometre, leading towards the burial chamber.

‘I can’t believe we missed that,’ she said.

I couldn’t believe it either. The island is covered in small monoliths like this, they’re everywhere. They must drive the local farmers completely nuts.

After our wanders, we headed to the shiny new Tesco’s shopping centre near the ferry terminal, to have lunch with Ann and Steve Roberts who run holyhead.com.