Alex Kuo

I didn't know what to make of this book. It was too political to be a memoir, too semi-fictional to be journalism. By semi-fictional I mean that the sections which touched on history were written in an oblique manner with fantastic details such as "When he started out the sliding glass doors of the station building, he noticed too that everything on the outside had entirely disappeared, all of Beijing had absolutely vanished, except for his exact double, another Shun Min, walking up the show more sidewalk to the building as if it too had disappeared." This made it hard to tell exactly what was going on in a historical sense, and the notes, where provided, did not help as much as I had hoped.

My bewilderment intensified when I encountered the bridge. Yes, the card game, bridge. There are no less than six chapters about playing bridge in China, five of them with little red hearts and diamonds, little black clubs and spades, illustrating the exact hands dealt and played. This conveyed nothing to me, beyond the simple fact that bridge tournaments are held in China. I suppose there must be some people (other than the author) interested in both bridge and contemporary China, and this book would no doubt be of compelling interest to them. Unfortunately, I'm not one of that group. show less

This book was promised as a look at everyday, ordinary life in China over a long period of time. But I found that it was a collection of unconnected pieces, interviews and others, published in newspapers and journals over the author's lifetime. And although the interviews are with individuals, they do not really give a flavour of ordinary life in my opinion. I love this kind of book, and I'm afraid the disjointed nature of this (and the fact that the first piece had footnote numbers with no show more footnotes to match (I don't think this was an ARC, it looked pretty complete to me) left me cold. show less

A collection of articles and musings about China and Hong Kong written over a number of years. I was born in HK and later worked in China, so the book had particular resonance for me. It does jump about, but for people with knowledge of China or Hong Kong and their history would not be put off by this. I liked the mix of topics- history to literature, racism to politics, well-written and informative.

It's a while since I have played Bridge, so the sections with detailed Bridge notes didn't show more grab my attention. show less

I'm not sure why it took me so long to read this book, but it was worth it. It was written over ten years ago, but provides an interesting and very personal look at live in China and Hong Kong, up through the late 90s and into the early 2000s. The only downside is that I'm not a bridge player, so the sections about bridge were a bit over my head. Otherwise, quite an interest book and I liked the smattering of poetry scattered throughout as well.