Hong Kong Guide Books
Lonely Planet Hong Kong & Macau
by Andrew Stone, Chung Wah Chow, Reggie Ho et al
ISBN: 178657442X
320 pp
Lonely Planet's Hong Kong & Macau City Guide key word is "bluelist" and the travel guide giants have gone overboard in getting the color blue into the text at every available opportunity, unless we miss the point. So the entry headings are blue, chapter dividers are blue, page tabs blue, words in bold blue, the sea on maps is er...blue. Overall the white, black, gray and, of course, blue design is pleasing on the eye. Well, enough of the layout, what about the content?
On the plus side the book has been very well researched and is a complete upgrade on previous editions. There are more photographs, the maps in the chapters are well set out (the blue helps!) and the information on hiking and transport are first rate.
On the down side, the pull-out map at the end of the book is a great idea (careful not to rip it as you tear the edge) but it's not accurate. Hopefully this will be addressed in the next edition. Other minor gripes are that some of the night life and dining recommendations no longer exist, though in such a fast moving city as Hong Kong, this is well-nigh impossible to avoid. Overall, a solid read on the background to Hong Kong and good on travel specifics.
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Lonely Planet Pocket Hong Kong
by Andrew Stone
ISBN: 1786574438
192 pp
If you are in Hong Kong just for a few days on business or for a flight stopover you may consider foregoing a longer guide and going for something like Lonely Planet's Pocket Hong Kong.
The emphasis is high-impact color coding, images and maps
for Hong Kong's various districts with listings for shops, sights, restaurants, bars and clubs. The Snapshots section are brief one page insights into such topics as: drinking in Hong Kong, Hong Kong for kids, museums, gay life and vegetarian options. The pull-out map is a later version of the map in Lonely Planet's Hong Kong & Macau City Guide (see above). The large map includes Kowloon, Central and Wanchai, with inserts for Causeway Bay, Mong Kok, Macau, MTR, and an overview map of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region or SAR. This book fits nicely in the handbag or back pocket and the pleasing design and lower price make this a tempting buy for a Hong Kong quick visit. Easy to browse on the MTR, bus or ferry.
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Hong Kong Babylon: An Insider's Guide to the Hollywood of the East
by Fredric Dannen & Barry Long
ISBN: 078686267X
412 pp
Hong Kong Babylon: An Insider's Guide to the Hollywood of the East by journalist Fredric Dannen and Hong Kong movie lover Barry Long, published in 1997 was the first English-language in-depth investigation of Hong Kong cinema. It was written right in the middle of the final frenzy of Hong Kong cinema in the early to mid-1990's though Dannen does report on the worries of the Hong Kong film industry regarding a future under Chinese rule.
In the first chapter of the book, Hong Kong Babylon: A Reporter Looks at the Hollywood of the East, Dannen gives a thorough low-down of the complicated history of post-World War II Hong Kong cinema history, focusing on the development of Golden Harvest, the film production company that succeeded the legendary Shaw Brothers Studio in the 1970's as Hong Kong's biggest studio.
From there he branches out to the smaller studios of the 1980's and 1990's, to the people who ran them. He describes in detail his many meetings with actors such as Jackie Chan and Chow Yun-fat, actresses like Michelle Yeoh and Anita Mui, all the main producers including the heads of Golden Harvest, as well as a good number of organized crime figures involved in the Hong Kong movie business.
Dannen, who had previously written on the intersection of American organized crime and the culture industry, goes into quite some detail uncovering the involvement of Chinese organized crime (the so-called triad societies) in the Hong Kong film business. The text explains all the major interconnections between the people working in the industry at the time, it talks about the backgrounds of the people involved (including the prison records of a good number of the film producers / financiers).
Hong Kong cinema was not only energetic, high-speed, high-excitement on screen. It was glamorous, dangerous and dodgy to the extreme off-screen as well. Not to speak of the countless stunt men who jumped off high buildings and the like for very little pay and without health insurance, often working for more than one film at a time. Dannen follows his first chapter up with brief interview outtakes with many of the main players in the business. He uses the occasion to give detailed filmographies of all involved.
The third section of the book is a contribution by Barry Long. Long was a New York University Cinema Studies student in the early 1990s, he also worked as assistant manager of the Kim's Video chain outlet on Saint Marks Place. Long always attached short plot summaries to the tapes at the store. For Hong Kong Babylon, he provided more than 300 such film synopses, including all necessary data like name of director, main actors etc. The tape covers themselves were usually only in Chinese though the films all had English subtitles. All plot summaries in the book also feature the original Chinese title of the film - written in Chinese characters. This way, readers could ask for specific titles in Chinatown or Hong Kong video stores.
Johannes Schonherr
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